Today we get through the more theological content during our read-through, hitting chapters 7 through 11, and tomorrow we will roll through the application of all of this content.  In terms of big ideas that stood out to me today were as follows.

I have heard it said that we can’t know the painter fully by looking at his painting.  We can often times figure a lot out about him.  We can often get a sense of who he is and what he thinks...but we can’t judge the painter or know the painter by his painting.  Paul makes a similar point, though his example is with a potter, about God.  It is a GREAT point.  In this life, our view of God is pretty much that of a person looking at a painting...we can only see what God’s done in us and around us.  We can’t know God like we get to know each other.  Now, we have a blessing of having the Holy Spirit to help us, but we must recognize and embrace the idea that there is some amount of ‘being the dark’ that is always going to be true.  And we have to be okay with that.

Another idea that Paul argues has to do with the issue of fairness.  Think about that, what could be more fair - everyone gets in with God in the same way, and everyone gets the same reward for entering?  It couldn’t be more fair than that!  Really, if you think about it, that’s true.  The only thing that is potentially NOT fair would be that some people haven’t heard about the gospel.  Remember, the gospel, or ‘good news’ isn’t anything that someone would come up with apart from being told about it.  We won’t get into this here, but it seems like Paul actually addresses this, in a way, as well.  But, the point is, the only reason it doesn’t seem fair is because we feel like we are more deserving than others, or that they got an easier road...and this reveals the real motivation that is in our hearts...that it is all about US.  That’s the journey we have in front of us, rooting that motivation out!

The biggest idea for me today is this - that Paul isn’t giving “instruction”, he is working out how our bodies and our sin are related and how the Holy Spirit works in and through us.  Paul is tying together theological ideas to make a coherent argument about how faith and works are related.  I have heard people take these passages and use them as if Paul is providing instruction to the church, as if this is a second verse of ‘the law’.  This is why it is important to do these read-throughs before diving into the weeds.  Paul is not doing that.  Paul is not giving instruction on various topics, he is using various topics to illustrate his point.  I think one big mis-use of a lot of Paul’s teaching is to take the theology and try to impute instruction into it when, contextually, Paul is just trying to illustrate ideas.  The instruction, in Romans, comes in chapters 12 and forward.  These are not instructions.  We will definitely spend some time on this idea when we get here.

For today, I am just praying that God would continue to open my mind to the big ideas that Paul is trying to communicate, and that I would have both the wisdom to hear what God is teaching me, and the courage to apply it in my own life.  I have certainly lived long enough to realize that it is these two dynamics, in combination, that are truly key to my spiritual growth and development!