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Mike Davito shares Paul’s paradigm shift from Romans 1:16&17.
- Being in a sinful state represents a state of cognitive dissonance
- Cognitive dissonance: psychological conflict resulting from contradictory beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously
- Martin Luther pursued righteousness in desperate futility, hoping to achieve a paradigm shift – but Luther, just as ourselves, could not expect to change his point of view from his own active pursuit and endeavors
- Paul’s central paradigm was once that Christianity was heresy of the highest order and that it dishonored God; to that end, he’d sought to purge Christians from the Jewish community. Yet God provided a massive paradigm shift, a radical turn, the sort of reversal that people would not and could not undertake of their own volition
- Paul writes in verse 16 that he is “not ashamed of the Gospel” not because the Romans didn’t know that, but because Paul was concerned the Romans might be tempted to be ashamed due to the view of Christianity in the city of Rome
- Salvation is not a piece but the whole of God’s work in the eternal lives of his people
- The Gospel brings people from:
- Lostness
- Willful ignorance
- Evil self-indulgence
- The darkness of false religion