I have good news for you this morning. None of you are good enough to be here.

Sorry about that. I thought I saw a few of you flinch. Maybe I need to be a bit more sensitive in how I begin. Let me try again.

I have good news for you this morning: God is not impressed with a person in this room.

By the look on some of your faces, I'm not sure that was any better way to start a sermon. Give me one more opportunity to get this sermon started. Here it goes.

I have good news for you this morning: Every single one of us is a complete and utter failure.

How am I doing so far? I thought so.

It is difficult to preach Paul's letter to the Romans. This document is heavy in all kinds of ways. It is a dense and demanding piece of correspondence.

Paul writes this letter to a congregation he did n…