“contrary to nature” and “shameless.” Here Paul is highlighting how the inward bent of sin creates such dysfunction and disorder that we defy the sovereign lordship of Christ, pursuing abnormal and unnatural relations as if they were natural and normal. Elsewhere Paul writes that before salvation we “lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind” (Eph. 2:3). In this same pattern, Jude writes that apart from Christ sinners will be “destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively” (Jude 10). The corollary to this truth is that after salvation, even as we become more and more conformed to the image of Christ, we are also becoming more and more our true selves. As the fruit of the Spirit increases in us, God restores order within us. Our minds are renewed (Rom. 12:2). We learn to do the natural thing spiritually and the spiritual thing naturally. GOD’S KINDNESS LEADS YOU TO REPENTANCE: 1 In yet another wonderful affirmation of where the source of power to change is found, Paul reminds us in Romans 2:4 that “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” Not his law, not his berating, not his exasperation or his cajoling. His kindness! It is grace, that trains us to renounce ungodliness (Titus 2:11–12). SPIRIT- WROUGHT INCLUSION: In Romans 2:29 Paul writes, “But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” No act of obedience or merit, no matter how religious, earns us favor with God. Nothing we can do will earn us inclusion in God’s good graces. God’s good
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 15:42:37 +0000
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