Making the Choice

 DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE ROMANS

MAKING THE CHOICE

Rom 2:5-11

5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God "will give to each person according to what he has done."   7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism.

NIV

The Good, bad, and the ugly is the theme here. Well, maybe not the ugly, but then how else do we describe wrath, anger, trouble, and distress? It is also interesting how Paul uses the phrase, storing up. Jesus was clear about not storing up things for ourselves on earth, but storing up treasures in heaven. Here, Paul tells the church in Rome, and we must see he is telling the church, not non-believers, that because of their stubbornness and unrepentant heart they are storing up something which is most undesirable. In life, we have two choices, and two only, it is either one or the other, and there is no other alternative. We can decide to do good or evil. If we are persistent in doing good and we are seeking glory, honor, and immortality we will gain eternal life. We think we need to explore this further as this translation makes it sound that salvation or eternal life is dependent on our doing good, thus the doctrine of “Good deeds” many believers seem to feel is the way to show our spirituality of how “Good” a Christian we are. This may not be an attempt to show people, but to show God, how good we are by the amount or number of “Good deeds” we do. However, we are saved by grace and not by our good deeds. Still, we know what James says about faith without works is dead, but again we would think that works without faith are just as dead. But the question is about seeking glory. After an inspection of the Greek, we discover this word can be used in three ways. First to describe the judgment, opinion, or view, second an opinion of someone, whether good or bad, and third as brightness, splendor. It would seem right to think Paul was talking about the third use, seeking he who is full of brightness and splendor, the Lord God. For we are told to seek the Lord and he will be found, and that we are to be humble and that would go against seeking fame and glory for ourselves. The second would also go against humility as we would be living to impress others so they would have a good opinion of us, rather than a good opinion of God. Yet, the point of this whole thing is the choice we have, to do good and live or to do evil and die. This brings us to the choice, the only choice we have in doing good, or the only doing good that we can do which brings us eternal life is to choose to follow Jesus. Anything else that we might do that is good, is only a response to his grace toward us, and not for any purpose of salvation, or proving our obedience before men. Any good that we do for the purpose of praise from men is both boastful and prideful, which is the opposite of doing good. So we have a choice, do good, accept Jesus, or do evil, rejecting Jesus.