Letter No. 2

Hey Kid, 
 You probably haven’t even received my first letter yet, but I’m here to tell you about Romans
chapter 2—the major points that hit me and how I want to apply them to my life right now.

Chapter 1 ended with the idea that God gave all of humankind over to the darkness, because they chose it over Him.  Remember this is a letter that didn’t have chapters when Paul wrote it, so chapter 2 follows in a similar vein.  Paul now focuses his attention on the guy that is going to be like, “Hey, I’m not as bad as these remote tribal people who worship demons.  I’m pretty good and I agree with God that those other people are bad, so God won’t punish me, right?” Wrong. 

Paul tells that guy straight out, “You aren’t good all the time, so you miss God’s standard of right-ness, too.  You’re just as bad as the other guy.” Through a number of hypothetical questions, Paul forces the “good-enough” guy to see that he isn’t good enough at all.

Finally, Paul talks straight at God’s chosen person, the Jew.  The Jew thinks that, between the Torah, the fact that he is circumcised (I know, weird), and his lineage from Abraham, he has enough to deserve a pass from God.  Paul smacks all of that into the garbage.  He says, “Nope. You have the Torah, and you teach it, but you don’t actually do it.  You fail to reach God’s standard, too!” 

The main focus toward the end of the chapter is that God doesn’t care tiddlywinks for the rules you follow if your heart doesn’t match up with your actions.  You can fool people into giving you a “good job” all you want; the reality is that only God’s “good job” matters. This all seems pretty dark, right?  It feels like we’re all in a ship that is sinking fast, and for most of humanity that’s true.  Kid, we can’t touch God’s right-ness on our own, but we both know how this story ends.

Keep reading these letters.  I promise that it gets brighter. 

The only question left is how to apply this to my life.  I think the main thing for me is that, with our background, I know a lot.  I know the rules, I know what this is supposed to look like, and I know that, in the past, I've stood on a soapbox to preach something I'm not living.  My prayer tonight is that God would keep softening my heart to recognize every effort of my own to reach His right-ness is pointless.  Like I said, this is a lot of talk about failure, but I know you know the solution for failure, too, and I'm about to write about it next time.

I love you, Kiddo

Viv