Christian community is made up of lots of different people at different stages of Christian maturity. Throughout his writings Paul corrects and disciples those who are immature with regards their character and will. But for those who are simply weak in faith - those who struggle to believe everything that Jesus has done and it’s implications for them - there is grace and patience. Even for those who are misguided in their faith, those who are stronger in faith are called to be accepting and non-judgemental. The reason for this is that fundamentally, in God’s economy, love and truth are not of equal value. Love supersedes all else. It is the currency of the kingdom. By love the Spirit is given, and the Spirit it is who brings all of us to fullness of faith. So we can entrust everyone to the Spirit’s maturing. And as a result see his community grow and mature.

Having established that all of humanity - Greek, Jewish, Pagan or otherwise - has at its heart the brokenness of sin. Paul then depicts the glorious act of God righting what was wrong. Sin is a cosmic, societal, but also particularly personal problem and it is far more than simply moral performance. In Jesus God becomes the lightening rod of all human sin, and in his body, he gives it what it deserves - annihilation. Jesus’ death is not a just death at the hands of God, it is an unjust death at the hands of sinful humanity. Jesus is what humanity was always supposed to be - innocent and perfect. And in his sinlessness he takes on humanity’s sin in his body to destroy it on the cross forever. God’s justice is then gloriously displayed in raising the innocent Jesus from the dead. Death cannot hold the guiltless God-Man. God makes a spectacle of all the powers of evil - personal, religious, societal, national and supernatural - exposing them for what they are and robbing them on the cross of their power. What this means to us is that God is not angry - he never was. God is love. And it means all our attempts to appease him through moral or religious performance are futile. None of us will be good enough, but he is. We can simply receive the gift of sin destroyed. And it means we can be changed. Jesus’ death is the defining emancipation of the whole universe. It sets us free from all the power of sin, death and the devil, and restores to us his image-bearing vocation - to be his people and do his work. 

For many people the opening chapter of Romans has appeared to be Paul having a judgmental screaming rant against the terrible disgusting immorality of people. And people have often written themselves into it as objects of his, and therefore God’s, disgust. But rather than Paul’s primary purpose being to beat up on pagan idolaters, ultimately his goal is to expose more pressing issues of judgmental attitudes amongst those he is writing to. Paul’s point is not to shame anyone. Rather he is simply but deftly exposing a universal truth: all of us have varying degrees of brokenness at our heart, and none of us is immune. Jesus, gloriously, wonderfully, kindly, lovingly, and powerfully has come to set us free from it all. He’s the only one who can do it. And he has done it. This is the extraordinary good news of the gospel.