Romans: The Lifelong Struggle
Several weeks ago, when Joanne and I were returning from our trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota, we saw a billboard that was proclaiming our (humankind’s) creation in the image of God. It is an assertion from the Genesis 1 passage which reads, Genesis 1:26-27 – Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…so God created man in his own image.” NIV 83
The purpose of the billboard message was that it wanted readers to understand God’s view of us was so great that he created us to be like him and so we should be kind and act like people who are in the image of God. The problem with the billboard and the theology behind it is that we left the image of God. We call it sin, when we walked away from God’s perfect creation to create something else, something instead of the perfection with which God created us. We have substituted a false image, a fake image, an image that has no resemblance of the image God gave us in creation. When God finished creating us, he made this declaration, Genesis 1:31 – “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” NIV 83
God declared that his creation before sin was not simply good, but very good. Sin has left us to define what is good and bad rather than to allow God to define for us what is good and bad. The result of the loss of God’s image is that we are always insecure. We want to say we are good people, that we care about others, we may even go as far as to attempt to demonstrate to others our goodness so they will affirm that we are good.
It is never enough. If you look for your identity to come from other people telling you that you are good or from your own internal belief to tell you that you are good, you will always be searching for affirmations. This Sunday we are starting our next sermon series. It is not really a new sermon series; it is the picking up of the same summer sermon series from last summer. We are going to be studying the book of Romans and we are picking up where we left off in chapter 7 of Romans.
In chapter 7 of Romans Paul talks about this need to prove to ourselves that we are good when he writes, Romans 7:15 – “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing…What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” NIV 1984
Only Jesus! Join us this Sunday and rediscover the Gospel of God.
-Pastor Ken Harste