God's Dynamite: Broke and Needs Fixing!


This week, we celebrated Ash Wednesday.  Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent.  Lent is the 40-day season before Easter, the greatest day on the church calendar.  It's a time of prayerful preparation for the celebration of the resurrection of Christ.

In our church during Lent, we're going to focus on the book of Romans.  That's because Romans answers the question: Why did Jesus come to the world to die for our sins and rise from the dead?  It's a great guide to preparing for Easter!

Romans 1:16-17 is the theme of the book.  Paul says the gospel is the power of God for salvation.  The word "gospel" is the English translation of a Greek word that means "proclaim good news."  The good news is that the Messiah has come, died on the cross for our sins, and risen from the dead.  Whoever puts his or her faith in him will receive eternal life.

The word Paul used for "power" is dunamis, the root for our word "dynamite."  Of course they didn't have dynamite in Paul's time.  But the image of dynamite is a great one for the explosive power of the gospel!

In the rest of Romans 1, Paul presents an unflinching look at the world.  He showed that it was broken and needed fixing.  Beyond that, we're broken and need fixing!  We're broken people living among broken people!

This is important to our understanding about the human condition.  It isn't that we're ignorant about the right, or that we're mistaken about the right.  It's that we've know the right and refuse to do it.
We're godless.  That doesn't mean we're atheists.  It means we believe in God, but live like we don't!

Our world today isn't much better.  It's still broken.  It's so broken, we can't fix it or ourselves.  Instead, we must receive redemption as God's gift by faith, and allow God to transform us.  As he transforms us, we transform the world!

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