G’day Church,
Last week we saw the wonderful cascade of the gospel:
- Paul was eager to share the gospel,
- because he was not ashamed of the gospel,
- because the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes,
- because in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.
- because the gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes,
- because he was not ashamed of the gospel,
It’s a cascade of amazing kindness that flows out of God himself: God is an overflowing fountain of righteousness that he pours out on sinners like you and me through faith in Jesus.
But Paul’s line of thinking doesn’t stop at the end of verse 17. Some English versions, like the ESV, make this really clear for us, with verse 18 starting with another ‘for’ or ‘because’.
Paul is eager to share the gospel because the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven.
We need God’s rescue because of our inherent unrighteousness.
God reveals his righteousness in the gospel because as a just and holy God he must also reveal his anger against sin. Anything less would be injustice on God’s part.
It’s confronting to consider such realities on any day of the week, but in particular, it’s not quite the chocolates-and-roses message that some people might expect on Mothers’ Day. However, if you’ve got family and friends who want to understand what the Bible teaches us about our relationship with God this will be a great week to bring them to church. Just make sure they know it’s going to be a pretty gritty appraisal of our human nature! (You can read ahead through Romans 1:18-32 to get a feel for some of the topics we’ll tackle)
But all this leads us to be just as eager to share it with others as Paul was. Because the gospel really is wonderful, and their situation without it really is terrible. So, in addition to an open invitation for people to join us any Sunday, we’re hoping to do a few things this year that will help us introduce people to Jesus:
– Some low-key social events scattered through the year that help you introduce people to our church family. It’s nice for your friends and family to know that we’re just a bunch of ordinary people! Please let me know if there is something in particular that your friends would enjoy coming to.
– Some excellent training in August from our mission partners at Engage-Work-Faith to help us understand more of how our friends and family see the world apart from Jesus, with some simple tools to help them get a taste of how good he is.
– An evangelistic course in term 4 that will provide a great opportunity for people to hear the gospel spelled out with clarity in a warm and winsome way.
Knowing how great Jesus is, let’s keep praying for opportunities to introduce our friends and family to him, asking that God in his kindness would bring them to the point of celebrating with us that Jesus is indeed Lord of all!
Cheers,
Simon