Think Bigger

2 August 2026  Romans 8:35,37-39

“What will separate us from the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35)    

Most of the spiritual and moral problems people will ever have can be resolved if they remember that all sin is death, all salvation is grace, and all ethics is gratitude.

One of the reasons that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Romans was the biggest controversy of the apostolic era: can Gentiles be Christians? A lot of Jewish Christians said that they could, but they would have to follow the Law of Moses first. This issue had already led to the Jerusalem Conference after Paul’s first missionary journey (cf. Acts 15), which decided that Gentile believers would not be required to follow the Law of Moses. But in Rome the issue was so unresolved that there were fights in the streets.

Emperor Claudius got so fed up with the disturbances that he chucked all the Jews out of Rome around A.D. 49 (including all the Jewish Christians – at that time Romans couldn’t tell the difference between a Christian and a Jew). Some of them fled to Corinth, where Paul was staying at the time – that’s how he found out about the problem.

Jewish and Gentile Christians alike were not thinking big enough. Neither their notion of sin, nor their notion of Jesus, was big enough. They needed to remember that all sin is death, all salvation is grace, and all ethics is gratitude.

Paul had not founded the Church in Rome, but he did want their help for a planned trip to Spain, so he decided to try to settle their quarrel. In his Epistle to the Romans, Paul suggested that the Jewish and Gentile Christians alike had two problems. For one thing, their view of sin was too small. Jewish Christians thought sin could be handled by a little remorse and a sin offering prescribed by the Law of Moses. Gentile Christians thought remorse, and making it up somehow to people they had hurt was sufficient. Paul said they were both wrong, that sin was a far bigger problem than they thought. Sin had been causing spiritual death since Adam and Eve, and the Law of Moses, good as it is, had not solved the problem. The Law could identify sin, but not fix it. For another thing, their view of Jesus was too small. There was only One who had enough life to give to overcome death-dealing sin, and that was God. God in Jesus freely gave His life to reconcile all the sins of the world, and He did it all because of His unquenchable, unfathomable love for us: “God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (cf. Romans 5:1-21).

Your notion of sin is too small, Paul told the Romans. All sin is death, big or small, for Jew and Gentile alike. Only God can fix that, so all salvation is grace, for Jew and Gentile alike.

Paul was aware that there would certainly be some knuckleheads who would reason that if grace turns up as a solution to sin, we should keep on sinning so that grace keeps turning up (6:1). Paul went on to say that a bigger view of sin, and a bigger view of grace, would lead to a bigger view of life: “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (6:4), and our gratitude for that new life would be the motivation for virtue.

Jewish and Gentile Christians alike were not thinking big enough. Neither their notion of sin, nor their notion of Jesus, was big enough. They needed to remember that all sin is death, all salvation is grace, and all ethics is gratitude.

The churches that are growing today, and the people being saved, are doing the same thing. They recognize that their sin is worse than they thought, that no amount of sorry is sorry enough, that Jesus is bigger than they suspected, and that heaven is once again a respectable hope.

So think bigger. All sin is death, all salvation is grace, and all ethics is gratitude. It will solve pretty much all of the spritual problems you will ever have.