“The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – Romans 3:22-23

Our world is obsessed with division. We are increasingly divided along lines of politics, nationality, race, gender, age, economics, and much more. However, at least one thing unites us – we have all sinned. We have all given in to the temptation to rebel against God’s good will and design for human flourishing. We have all placed ourselves and our preferences over God and His perfect standard. All of us. All. Of. Us.

None of us are righteous on our own. None of us can climb back to the heights of God’s goodness, glory, and righteousness on our own. None of us can undo our mistakes and sins and make ourselves sufficiently holy to be reconciled to God on our own. None of us. None. Of. Us.

Thankfully, God made a way for us to become righteous anyway! Thankfully, our holy God made a way for us to be reconciled to Him despite our personal unholiness. Thankfully, God’s love for us created a path to overcome the wrath we deserve because of His justice. God sent His perfectly righteous Son Jesus to die on the cross and rise from the dead on our behalf.

Jesus made the way, and His righteousness becomes our righteousness when we believe in Jesus, the Christ. God forgives our sins, declares us to be righteous, and embraces us in love when we put our faith in Jesus. His offer of love, grace, and restoration is available to all without distinction. God’s mercy through faith in Christ is available to every person who believes, regardless of your past or present situation and sin. All of us. All. Of. Us.

“But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means!” – Romans 3:5-6a

As Paul explores in extraordinary detail, we’re all unrighteous in ourselves. We may well aspire to be “good people” or even imagine we are. But we are also, at times, selfish and self-centered. We set our goals, preferences, desires, and ambitions above God’s standards, above ethical concerns, above the law and above the well-being of others. We all sin and fall short at times – whether it’s in what we think, what we say, what we do, or what we fail to say and do in the face of unrighteousness and injustice.

One thing our unrighteousness does is highlight God’s pure, perfect, wonderful righteousness! He never cuts the corners we cut. He never uses or abuses people as we do. He never acts inconsistently with His character and values. God is holy, good, wise, kind, merciful, gracious, just, patient, and so much more. The more we recognize our unrighteousness, the more glorious, beautiful, and overwhelming we discover God’s righteousness to be.

Our unrighteousness and the way it highlights God’s beautiful righteousness is no excuse or rationalization for sin. We aren’t doing God a favor! In His righteousness, He is still absolutely just and right to condemn us for every one of our sins. Yes, we’re all sinful – that doesn’t let anyone off the hook. It simply means that we’re all naturally condemned and under God’s righteous wrath for our personal acts of rebellion and disobedience.

If we can begin to accept this truth, and telling ourselves and others, “Well, at least I’m better than that guy over there” then we can begin to realize we have a profound sin problem that we can’t possibly solve ourselves. We…need…a…Savior!

“When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.” – Jonah 3:10

There’s a widespread myth in our culture about God, a myth based in deep ignorance about the Old Testament. This myth claims that in Old Testament times, God was always angry, always smiting, and acted in a manner inconsistent with the message of grace and love found in the New Testament. The pervasiveness of this myth, even within churches, can make the Old Testament a stumbling block to faith.

This myth is not true! This misunderstanding of God’s nature is grounded in three things: failure to actually read the Old Testament thoughtfully, failure to understand the extremely long time periods addressed in the Old Testament (decades and centuries rather than months and years), and failure to understand how truly vile and awful sin is.

The repentance and restoration of Ninevah described in Jonah is a wonderful example of God’s consistent mercy. The Assyrians were a vicious, cruel, pagan people who’d done terrible things to numerous peoples, including the people of God. When God sent Jonah to Ninevah to prophesy its coming destruction, they fully and completely deserved it.

Yet, when they heard that message, they responded immediately with sorrow and repentance. They didn’t presume to deserve mercy and didn’t expect to receive any. Nonetheless, they humbled themselves in the hope that perhaps they might receive mercy. Because God is fundamentally merciful and gracious, always has been and always will be, loving all people created in His image and desiring to restore and reconcile all peoples, God showed them mercy. In this, He pointed forward to His greatest mercy – the willing sacrifice of His Son Jesus on the cross to restore and reconcile all who believe in Him. God’s mercy and grace shine through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, if we’re careful to actually read it. Thankfully, He has not changed!

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” – Romans 1:20

For all of time, God has revealed Himself to those willing to look. While it’s true that His Scripture hasn’t always been widely available (and still isn’t in many parts of the world), all of creation speaks of its Creator. Though creation can’t teach us how to be saved and reconciled to God, we can certainly learn enough about the Creator, His nature, and His will to recognize our own shortcomings.

We see His love of beauty in the snow-capped mountains, golden sunrises, and fiery sunsets. We see His immense power in the rolling and crashing of the mighty seas. We see His orderliness in the regular movement of the stars across the sky throughout the year. We see His deep and loving attention to detail in the miraculous cycle of conception, birth, life, growth, and death. We see His passion for life in the way the very properties of this world are ordered to promote life. We see His creativity in the wondrous variety of colors and shapes of living things.

The world around us can teach us much about Creator God. In that teaching, there’s more than enough information for us to know that we each fall short of God’s nature and will. Thus, there is no one alive without excuse for their disobedience to God’s fundamental goodness, kindness, orderliness, and love for life. We are without excuse and so can and will be justly held accountable for our sins and shortcomings. We need a solution to this or else there is no hope when we meet our Creator! We cannot save ourselves. We need a Savior. Who is that Savior? Jesus Christ, the Son of God!

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” – Romans 1:16

No matter what happened to Paul, he wasn’t going to be embarrassed or ashamed about what he preached. Mobs didn’t intimidate him. Arrests and beatings wouldn’t silence him. Near-death experiences couldn’t keep him quiet. Paul knew the profound truth and life-giving importance of what he proclaimed: the gospel.

Paul preached the good news of Jesus Christ: that the innocent Son of God sacrificed Himself on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins, dying and rising from death, so to that all who believe in Him are forgiven for our sins, reconciled to God, saved, adopted, beloved, Spirit-filled, and transformed. There is no better or more urgent and important news for every person on earth to hear. So Paul didn’t care who or what opposed him and would put up with whatever he had to endure to keep sharing the gospel.

In a world full of schemes to save ourselves, the gospel is the only power that truly saves. For everyone of every nation, race, ethnicity, and prior religious background who have embraced it, the gospel is God’s saving power. We must be similarly unashamed. As followers of Jesus, we too must be willing to be doubted, questioned, hated, embarrassed, opposed, silenced, ridiculed, rejected, and persecuted for the sake of the gospel. Because we believe, we must speak, and what we must speak is the gospel. No matter the cost.