Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 192
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IMMERSE
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MESSIAH
1:13-32
I want you to know, dear brothers and sisters, that I planned many times
to visit you, but I was prevented until now. I want to work among you and
see spiritual fruit, just as I have seen among other Gentiles. For I have a
great sense of obligation to people in both the civilized world and the rest
of the world, to the educated and uneducated alike. So I am eager to come
to you in Rome, too, to preach the Good News.
For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of
God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the
Gentile. This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight.
This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It
is through faith that a righteous person has life.”
But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people
who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about
God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world
was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God
made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and
divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give
him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.
As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise,
they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious,
ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and
birds and animals and reptiles.
So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts
desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s
bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and
served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their
shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have
sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead
of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each
other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin,
they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved.
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned
them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never
be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed,
hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip.
They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They
invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse
to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy.
They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve
