The book of Romans

So it has been a loooong time. Life has been quite busy. Anyone with kids knows that. :-)
I thought I would offer some things from the book of Romans that I have been studying in class. The next 20+ posts will be from my class. Romans, like every book of the Letter from God is simply a great book. Full of doctrine and simple truths. Obviously this is not exhaustive nor is it a commentary. Just some questions that we had to answer in our class on Romans. Enjoy the start of the thought......care to add to it?? :-)

By referring to Romans 1.19-20, can you tell how a person can be saved without ever hearing the Gospel? In other words, can man know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there is a God?

Most of the time people ask about this because they are fishing for something that would make God an unjust God as far as they are concerned. However, there are many Bible believing Christians that lack the maturity or the study to understand how a God could punish those who have yet to have a Bible in their language or ever hear of the name Jesus Christ. After all, they say, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God – Romans 10.17.

These verses in particular coincide with the way in which the millions of people who lived and died before the life and death of Jesus Christ, were saved. Salvation comes through faith. This is how those whom we label as Old Testament believers were considered saved. They were saved through their faith, not the law as many teach. The purpose of the law was to magnify or exemplify their faith and trust in Yahweh.

These verses clearly support the teaching that each person has within them an innate sense of God. Liberals and non-Christians call it conscience. We all have within us a desire to know our Creator. The creation longs to know the Creator. An every day life example of this is seen in children of any age who have been left orphans for whatever reason. They have a desire to know who their parents were or are, depending on the case. There are many adults that are spending some of their time searching for their biological parents. So it is with every human being. We know we are not alone and that knowledge is directly from God when he formed us in our mother’s womb.

What is ever so clear here is that God covered all the bases. He left man with no valid excuses. Knowing the sinful state of man would prevent the gospel of Christ from reaching billions of ears worldwide, there is the complexity and beauty of the creation which surrounds us every day. From that alone, we get the sense that someone made all this at some point and must be keeping it in order. Here is where the innate sense kicks in. We see the creation and automatically start thinking about how awesome and powerful this Creator must be, there must be some way to find out more about Him.

This is why even the peoples that have not a copy of the Scriptures are without excuse when they individually face the judgment seat of Christ.