How eager are you to proclaim or suppress?

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Rom 1:15-20)

Here the Apostle Paul declares his readiness, his willingness, his eagerness to proclaim the good news of God to the people of God in Rome as he had proclaimed it in other regions of the Roman Empire. In fact he declared that he had an obligation to evangelize all kinds of people saying, "I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish." There is of course a difference between feeling obligated and feeling eager. Paul evidently felt both the sense of duty and the sense of desire. It is fairly easy to see, that if we are trying to do something purely out of a sense of duty without a corresponding sense of desire, our efforts are not really properly motivated. Motivation is very important. Mere outward conformity is not all that is required of us. The two greatest commandments have to do first of all with inward motivation. "Love God for His own sake and Love people for God's sake" is how Augustine summarized the Law. The problem is that as fallen creatures instead of being first and foremost lovers of God and others we are lovers of other things. Paul writes of this in his second letter to Timothy, "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God". These people are under God's wrath because they instead of being eager to see the truth made known are eager to suppress the truth. Though they are aware of God because God has made Himself plain to them they have no love for God and no love for the truth. They are enemies of both because they love something else supremely. They love their autonomy. The word autonomy comes from two Greek words, "auto" having to do with the self and "nomos" which means law. So a person who is seeking to live autonomously is seeking to be a law unto themselves. Saying, "I am a good person by my own standards" is at least as foolish as saying. "I am a world class athlete by my own standards". If you have no objective benchmark by which to measure something all attempts to quantify it will be futile. And the problem is much worse when you realize that the law does not just prove that we are all imperfect when measured against it's absolute standard. The law reveals that we all, in our natural state, are motivated by hatred for that which we should love supremely.
If you don't believe me read the rest of Paul's treatise in this first chapter of his letter to the Romans. It is not a pretty picture. There are those of us who are quick to agree that the pagan world is a horrid mess of idolatrous self-worship but are also quick to say, "Thank God, I am not like that". But to these people Paul also brings a sweeping indictment saying,"Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things." (Rom 2:1) To judge is not always bad, but for a sinful human being, self-righteous judgment is inexcusable.

The Gospel stands in stark contrast to the Law. The good news is about what God has done. It is about His loving work on behalf of rebels such as I. It is the power of God for salvation. Paul calls it elsewhere the light of the good news of the glory of Christ. How eager we are to proclaim or to suppress the truth about ourselves and the truth about God and what He has done speaks volumes about what motivates us.