- (Romans 4:17 NLT) That is what the Scriptures mean when God told him, “I have made you the father of many nations.” This happened because Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing.
In today’s text the Apostle Paul writes: “I am convinced of your goodness.”
- (Romans 15:14 NIV84) I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.
In one sense, this week’s message is a very important lesson about our freedom in Christ. And that is our freedom to speak to the goodness and the badness of one another. Without feeling like hypocrites or liars or fakes or flatterers.
- I believe that we will see today that Paul provides a biblical approach in our relationships which deals with both the depravity of humankind and the redemption of God. Our goodness and our badness.
And we need this biblical perspective to develop our ability to build one another up in the faith. We need to know and live these truths so we build up and not tear down our brothers and sisters in Christ.
We are very good. And we can be horrid. This is consistent with our biblical identity while we are “still in process.” Never to be used as an excuse but still very true.
Our problem is that we sometimes forget where we came from.
The beginning of our spiritual journey was death. We started at dead. Jesus saved us from dead. This is a problem for some people. They don’t know where a true gospel story begins. So not knowing their beginning they have a much more difficult time understanding the goodness and the badness of their lives.
Have you heard the expression, “I’m in pretty good shape for the shape I’m in”?
Well, we are in pretty good shape considering that when we started we were dead, and now God is transforming us into his new creation which will be beyond measure in beauty and awesomeness. We are going to be like Christ. God says.
MP3: LESSON 40 : Full of Goodness : Romans 15:14-21 : FFC : dave scott : 071915
