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.

The Confessions of St Patrick

The Confessions of St Patrick – (probably written about 450 AD)

1. I, Patrick, a sinner, a most simple countryman, the least of all the faithful and most contemptible to many ….. I was at that time about sixteen years of age. I did not, indeed, know the true God; and I was taken into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of people, according to our deserts, for quite drawn away from God, we did not keep his precepts, nor were we obedient to our priests who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord brought down on us the fury of his being and scattered us among many nations, even to the ends of the earth, where I, in my smallness, am now to be found among foreigners.
2. And there the Lord opened my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that …. I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my insignificance and pitied my youth and ignorance. And he watched over me before I knew him and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.

7. I am not ignorant of what is said of my Lord in the Psalm: ‘You destroy those who speak a lie.’ And again: ‘A lying mouth deals death to the soul.’ And likewise the Lord says in the Gospel: ‘On the day of judgment men shall render account for every idle word they utter.’

In context the Son of God said that people will give account for every careless or idle word that they speak against the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of truth. For he says, by your words (for the truth) you will be justified, and by your words (against the truth) you will be condemned” (Mat 12:31-37)

The Apostle Paul wrote that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. (Rom 1:18)

The writer of Proverbs tells us that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord (Prov 12:22) and that the Lord hates a lying tongue. (Prov 6:17)

David as Patrick quoted says, “You destroy all those who speak lies” (Ps 5:6)

John says in Revelation that, “the cowardly, the faithless… those who are idolaters, and all liars, will have their place in the lake that burns with fire…." (Rev 21:8)

Timothy says that the Law is laid down not for the righteous but for liars. (I Tim 1:8-10)

The question is why is the God, that St Patrick served so concerned about the truth about Himself that he would threaten people who do not love it with eternal justice?

Think of it this way, there may be some lies that you can easily overlook but lies against your character and against your good name cannot be ignored. These kinds of lies are called slander in their spoken form and libel in their written form. They are so serious that they are actionable in our legal system. You can take someone to court and win damages against them because they have done harm to your reputation.

So what if a person makes slanderous accusations against the Creator of the universe? Do you think that would be a serious offense? How bad of a liar is someone who makes false allegations against the Spirit of truth Himself? You see the apostle Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Romans that everyone is aware of God. No one has the excuse of ignorance because God has made his eternal power and divine nature plain to all people ever since the creation of the world in the things that are made. So we are without excuse because even though we are aware of God we are all guilty of failing to honor God as they should. We have all at some time in our lives loved other things more than God and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator. As John Piper has so aptly put it “God is infinitely worthy of our admiration, loyalty and respect” therefore “failure to love Him is not trivial it is treason”. And because God is holy, righteous and just, He cannot overlook our suppression of the truth. People will be called to account on the Day of Judgment for every careless word that they have spoken against God's character and name. And our very words will either justify us or condemn us on that day.

And that is why God sent his Son into the world to save sinful suppressors of the truth like me. And as St. Patrick said, to open my mind to an awareness of my unbelief, in order that …. I might remember my transgressions and turn with all my heart to the Lord my God.

Jesus came into the world 2000 years ago. Being fully God and fully man he lived a perfectly righteous life. He loved God perfectly as we all should love him and he perfectly loved his neighbor as himself. And 30 to 33 years into his earthly life He voluntarily went to a criminal’s death on the cross taking the full measure of God’s wrath that His people rightly deserved upon Himself. On the third day he rose from the grave, as he had promised, demonstrating that he was truly the unique Son of God and the Savior of the world.

God has commanded all people everywhere to repent and trust in Christ alone to save them from the coming judgment. In order to truly begin to love God you need a deep-seated change of heart and mind which results in a drastic change of direction like that which St Patrick experienced. If you have not yet received the gift of repentance and faith, it is our prayer that our gracious God and Savior will raise you out of death to life through faith in Christ alone. If you love the God of truth we pray that he will empower you to continue to grow in love for the truth about Him and in your willingness to speak the truth in love to others.

Check out the rest of St Patrick’s work here:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/patrick/confession.toc.html