Romans 3

Any good Lutheran pastor would blog on verse 28 where the Lutheran theology of justification by faith comes from. If you want to read a blog on that, see my blog on the book of James.

Today I want to write about verses 5-8 where Paul is arguing against telling lies to enhance God's truthfulness.

I wish there was more context to these verses. What kind of lies were the Romans telling? Remember, the Christians in Rome did not have the gospels at this time. The Gospels were written many years after this letter. Maybe they were making up stories to make Jesus seem more divine. I wonder how outlandish they were. Did they say he flew around like Superman? Did they say that he glowed at night? (Opposite of the hundreds of emails that I have seen that are full of lies about our Muslim extremist President)

Because the stories we have about Jesus are pretty awesome. He walked on water. He fed 5,000 people with a little bit of fish and bread. He turned water into wine. He healed the sick and raised the dead. He himself was raised from the dead and floated away to heaven. What more do you need to say about him?

Maybe this is a warning to preachers. A warning not to make up stories to better help people understand the Truth. But then again, didn't Jesus do that? He called them parables. And what if Jonah wasn't really in a whale for 3 days or the earth wasn't created exactly how Genesis says it was? Aren't the writers of those books making up stories?

Maybe Paul is writing to the church leaders that mislead people on purpose for the sake of the gospel. Like saying the world is going end on a certain day, that way people are forced to make their peace with God. Creating false urgency... kind of like a used car salesman.

The problem with the Great Commission is that Jesus didn't create a training module for all the disciples to follow. We have been sent to tell the world. We will make mistakes along the way.

Which is why grace is such good news.