Romans 1:1: The Gospel of God

Think back to the time you received really good news. Maybe you can remember the feeling of the time you learnt that the girl you liked, also liked you and was willing to go on a date. Maybe it was the news that you passed your final exams; passed your driver’s licence; maybe it was the news that there was no more cancer, that you were pregnant, that NZ had won the Rugby World Cup. Maybe, if you were alive at the time you can remember how it felt when you heard that the war with Hitler was over, and Japan had surrendered. As we come to the study of Romans, we are coming to the best news ever reported, the greatest story ever told, the good news/gospel of God. We are a society inundated with news, most of it bad news. We have bad news about the economy, bad news about climate change, the earth’s resources, the state of the poor, uneducated, oppressed, etc. However, the good news that God brings to us in the Gospel is not just a break in the darkness, a respite in the storm before it hits us from the other side after passing through the eye of a hurricane. The good news of God makes all this bad news unworthy of comparison to what He has done and is announcing to us.