Reflection on Paul’s Letter to the Romans: ‘Would you call Him?’

[This ‘Summary reflection on Romans’ had been published on FES Malaysia website. To read, click HERE. For ‘How to read Romans’, click HERE.]

Imagine this:

Both of us are infected with serious skin diseases. We want to attend an open-to-all grand wedding feast. We want to go, but we have serious skin diseases. We both realize it, but we ignore it. It doesn’t hurt us that much anymore because we are used to it – in fact, we think that it is so common that hardly anyone would care about it. It’s normal, we say. No big deal…

Imagine again:
Paul suddenly come and said, “Both of you have a serious skin diseases! [Shout] You might lose your hands and legs… even your life if you don’t go for emergency operation. Furthermore, don’t expect that they will ever gonna welcome you to the feast. However,I assured you, if you go to this Good Doctor, you’ll be cured 100%. This is His Name card. Please, please, call him!”

Would you call him?

So it is with Paul’s letter to the Romans. For the most part, Paul was focuses on how sinful people can be restored to a right relationship with a Holy God through the atoning death of Jesus Christ. He tells us that we have a serious problem, namely, we are sinners. He writes,

“As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’” (Romans 3:10NIV).

Again,

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

In other words, there is not escape – death end. We have to admit, like it or not, that we are sinners.

‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12).

And to make it worst, he writes,

“For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a).

By now, there’s no hope in attending the wedding feast… or is there?

After Paul states the real conditions of our depravity, he then reveals our need for God’s righteousness. He proclaims that only by faith in the crucified and risen Lord that we can have this free-but-costly-gift of God’s righteousness.
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

That’s amazing! It’s like, while we still having skin diseases, the Feast Master invites us to come... well, only if we’re clean and cured, of course. Now, it’s up to us either we want to accept the invitation or not. If we believe in Christ, God will make us righteous; we will be “declared righteous” (Roman 2:13). God provides us the righteousness He demands of us.

The call is to believe and to be cured; to trust the Good Doctor and to let Him do the operation; to accept the invitation to the wedding feast; to meet the Master and to have a relationship with Him. On the Name card, Paul assured,

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10).

And in case we missed it, he writes a remark behind the card, P.S:

“For, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved’” (Romans 10:13).

This is my summary reflection on Romans:
Sin is humanity’s problem.
Salvation is God’s solution.
Faith in Jesus is sinner’s hope for eternal life.

What is your response?
Would you call Him?

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.