Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. Today, I'm joined by a special guest, today's Devo writer, Marianne Smiley.

Hi, how are you? Glad to be here. I'm so good. I'm so glad you're here. Marian, you're a dear friend,

and you have been at Watermark for a while you serve in a few different places. Tell us a little

bit about how long you've been at Watermark and where you serve. Well, I've been at Watermark

since a year after my daughter went to work here, which was about 20 years ago. That's Melissa

Miller, in case you don't know. And I serve on the

front lines welcome desk as a captain, and I serve as a leader of my community group. But my biggest

many, many hours of service are to groups who gather in our home. Lots of ministry teams on staff

here come over, and you and Melissa are excellent hosts. I love it. That's probably how we first met.

And today we're in Romans 3, and you wrote the Devo, and when I saw your name, I was super excited to

have you come on and share.

Oh, you're so sweet.

So tell us a little bit about Romans 3, what's the context, the big idea, set up the chapter for us.

Well, Romans 3, it's really the centerpiece, I think, of what we believe, everything that we believe, and that is

that we believe in faith in Jesus as our means to a holy God. No other way that we can get there,

not by the law. And it was written to the Roman church. The Roman church was a strong church, but it was one that Paul was concerned

about because it was a combination of Romans and Greeks or another word, Gentiles. And there

was a lot of condescension towards the non-Greeks about some of the laws that the Jewish Christians felt like still needed to be abided by.

And so Paul felt it was really, really important to establish right now. Yes, those laws were written by God.

They are important. We're not throwing them out. But that is not the saving feature.

The saving feature is the provision of Jesus who died for our sins. And faith in him is what it's all about.

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