CLIMBING THE ROMAN ROAD STEP 1 & 2 (THE BROKEN HEART/SIN PROBLEM)

 

     Do you think people are born with innate goodness in them—as many people claim? Or do people have broken hearts as a result of sin as the Bible claims, even though they may not realize it—or won’t admit it? Here are a couple of Bible verses that contradict the assertion that people are born with innate goodness.

1. In the first verse Jeremiah says the following in chapter 17, verse 9:

“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?”

(Jeremiah said that the hearts of people aren’t just a little bit wicked—but they are “desperately wicked” and deceitful. In other words, instead of people being innately good, they are innately wicked and sinful. The internet cite “Got Questions” compares the sinfulness of man to being born with a “terminal, incurable illness”.)

2. In the second verse Paul wrote in Romans 1:29-32 the following about the sinfulness and depravity of mankind: 

“They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.”

(Wow! Paul makes it clear that mankind is unquestionably wicked and they “deserve to die”. He wasn’t talking just about a physical death however, but an eternal death in hell.)

     I’ll use myself as an example. Almost 48 years ago I had a good job and plenty of money. Everything seemed to be going A-Okay. But, what I also had was an incurable ache in my heart, a broken heart if you will, that nothing could satisfy. What was causing the incurable ache?

  It’s been said repeatedly and almost ad nauseam, “To solve a problem, the first step is to realize that you have one.” This statement seems like old-hat, but it is so very true when it comes to every person having a broken heart as a result of sin.

     I don’t want to imply that we have the ability in ourselves to cure our own aching, broken heart. The aching, broken heart in us is just a fact—and it’s something for which WE have no answer. We need someone else to tell us about it, and tell us the solution for the cure. That someone else is God!

     God can, however, use other Christians to tell or show us how to help our broken heart. He can use an evangelistic service. He can use difficult circumstances—and a myriad of other things too deep for us to understand. He can even use a gospel tract.

     What I like about The Roman Road gospel tract I created is that it uses Paul’s writings in Romans to simply and clearly outline the problem of sin, and the aching, broken heart it produces. And then Paul simply and clearly tells us the remedy to heal our heart. Let’s look at the first two steps.

Step 1: The Roman Road tract shows at the foot of the road a broken heart as a result of sin. The verse that coincides with the picture of a broken heart as a result of sin is Romans 3:23:

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

(So the first step to solving the broken heart/sin problem is to realize that you and I are born very sinful and wicked beyond repair on our own.)

Step 2: The Roman Road Tract shows a gravestone a short way up the road with the word “Die” on it. The verse that coincides with the gravestone is the first part of Romans 6:23:

“For the wages of sin is death.”

(Paul asserted that to be born with sin means certain death. Again, Paul wasn’t just talking about a one-time physical death. He was talking about a forever death in hell.)

    So, we’ve covered the first two steps on the Roman Road tract. I hope and pray it has been meaningful to you. God’s ways are very mysterious and deep, but I think He is very wise to reveal them clearly in the Bible—so even a child can understand them. Recognizing our brokenness and our broken heart as a result of sin for which we have no answer is the first step toward God. And then, the second step is to recognize that our sin leads to death—eternal death in hell.

     See you the next time when we’ll cover the next two steps of The Roman Road tract.

CLIMBING "THE ROMAN ROAD"

     I’ve been a Christian for going on 48 years, and my passion has always been evangelism. I want others, especially family members, to know the wonderful love of Jesus that I have felt these many years. It’s also why I started the “Soulwinnersr.us” website doing evangelistic videos.

     In my many years of being a Christian, I have come across numerous evangelistic tracts—although to be honest, I have only used them a very few times. I guess honesty is the best policy—although it makes me sort of ashamed that I haven’t witnessed more than I have, given my passion for lost souls.

    I practice witnessing a couple of times per week, given what 1 Peter 3:15 says, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” I want to be persistent in that way—just like the widow with the unjust judge—who never stopped asking for justice. I want to never stop asking God for opportunities to witness—and I want to be ready for the inevitable time/s that He gives them to me.

     I’ve tried many gospel tracts at one time or another. Some told stories of famous people, perhaps sports stars, who gave their hearts to Christ—and encouraged the readers to do the same. Some had cartoons with the gospel message in them to draw in the younger reader. Some had colorful pictures of nature or people talking to one another. Some included stern warnings to the readers on how to avoid hell. I had a whole drawer full of gospel tracts.

     My mind always went a little “boggle-woggle”, as my wife sometimes says, trying to remember the gist of each tract, and trying to discern which one to use for a specific encounter with a specific person. So I decided to develop my own Gospel tract.

     In 2014 I found “The Roman Road” image on the internet, so I developed a tract based on that image. It made sense to me to make a tract that had the theme of ‘climbing’ The Roman Road. I made several iterations of the tract in the ensuing years. I made it for personal use, so only me and a dear elderly couple in my church used them.

     In 2019 I retired from about 29 years of mental health work, and I again began thinking about The Roman Road Image. I didn’t want to use the image in the tract on a wider basis without permission from the owner of the rights to the image. So, I researched and found that “The Tract League” was the owner who had commissioned the painting of the image for their own Roman Road tract.

     I went to The Tract League website and found an email link to contact them about using the image. To my surprise, The Tract League wrote the following response:

“Arlen: Thanks for your inquiry. You are welcome to use that image and any/all parts of that tract. By the end of next year, our Roman road tract will no longer be available as we are closing operations in the US.”

     You can imagine how excited I was to get blanket permission to use the image in any way that I felt the Lord leading me. I know many other wonderful gospel tracts out there are effective in sharing the gospel, and I had many of them in my drawer. But last year I bit the bullet and threw them out and focused only on The Roman Road tract I created.

     Why did I do that? It has nothing to do with the fact that I thought the tracts were bad or poorly made. They in fact were wonderful. But, I’m a concrete thinker, and if I am to share the gospel with others it needs to make explicit sense to me. And, The Roman Road tract that I created does just that for me.

      So, I plan to share a post, or two, or three focusing on The Roman Road tract that I created, and why I think it’s a logical way of sharing the gospel with others. I ask you to give your opinion about what you use, and what you think of using the Climbing ‘The Roman Road’  theme to share with the lost.