By Travis Biller
Pastor, Immanuel Baptist Church, Elizabethton
Focal Passage: Romans 2:17-29
There is an old saying, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” If something is good for one person, then it should apply equally to another as well. Today we talk about equality. The word implies impartiality and fairness. Unfortunately, we live in a fallen world where things like pride create a false sense of superiority. One of the worst forms of superiority can come when someone thinks they are better than another because of their religious practices. Paul was addressing this very problem in the Roman Church.
Our text this week is Romans 2:17-29. The Roman church was composed of both Jewish believers in Christ as well as gentile believers. It appears that there was division in the church along those lines.
Those from the Jewish background were experiencing pride. While it was easy to charge the gentiles with sin, they were having a harder time applying that label to themselves. They had mistakenly come to believe they were righteous by virtue of their religious tradition and participation in religious ritual. In these verses Paul takes a veritable sledgehammer against that position. [Read more…]