Paul and Preaching the Gospel to Yourself

In the last post I briefly wrote how Martin Luther, commenting on Gal 1:4, shows how to preach the gospel to yourself. Turns out, he was just doing what the Apostle Paul had instructed the church at Rome to do nearly a millennia and a half before.

Romans 6 begins with the Apostle Paul answering a false view of grace, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (v 1) His answer? “By no means!” (v 2) Then he spends the next 12 verses expounding the gospel of the believer’s union with Christ’s death and resurrection. Listen to 2 of these 12 verses, “For the death [Christ] died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (vv 10-11; bold type mine)

In Romans 6 the answer to a false view of grace, to overcoming sin’s power, and to battling the discouragement and unbelief that comes from seeing the sin that still remains is a continual considering or reckoning of the gospel!

What the believers in Rome needed in the first century and in Germany in the 16th century is what we need in the 21st century, namely, to continually preach the gospel to ourselves.