Marks of True Faith | The Rev. Dr. R. Leigh Spruill

And You get to chapter 12.

This is going to be a ridiculously simplistic summary of Romans.

But Romans chapter 1 through 11 is essentially asking the question, What's wrong with the world? What does God do to get to set things to rights? Well, of course, he sends his son, Jesus Christ, who dies on the cross, offers us forgiveness of our sins, new life, the gift of grace, and we can't do anything to earn that.

We don't deserve it.

It is simply in God's character, God's nature, and God's plan to grant us this grace that will reconcile us to him.

Everything that we've ever done in the past is forgiven.

you're forgiven.

God does not exact revenge, right? In the person of Jesus.

Jesus is on the cross.

Somebody goes by and says, if you're the son of God, come down from there.

Meaning come down and, you know, take vengeance on us all.

And Jesus refuses to do that.

Okay.

We can only accept this on faith.

We believe it.

We trust it as we were singing earlier.

Then we get to chapter 12 and the first word is therefore.

So what's happening here is Paul is going, okay, given this is the gospel, therefore, let's move from understanding it to now living it out.

And what does it look like? He's talked about our relationship to God being restored.

Now in chapter 12, what is our relationship with one another as believers in the life of the church? And then what is our relationship to Ernie? the world out there, right? So you were already introduced to the first part of chapter 12 last week.

So we're in the middle now, moving to the end of chapter 12, where Paul is saying, let love be genuine.

Meaning this is not an abstraction.

Love needs to touch down in your life in very practical, meaningful, embodied ways.

And he talks here about our love having distinctive marks, sincerity, discernment, affection, and honor for one another.

There's patience, there's generosity, there's goodwill.