In the season of Advent, we wait. God is on his way and we anticipate with joy and longing. The news that God plans to soon show up in our day, in our schedule, in our moments of hurt and confusion, ought to stir something up within us. Excitement, hope, and perhaps some uneasiness about the things in our lives we’d like to rectify as we prepare for his sudden presence in our midst. “You know what time it is,”…

Typically, the letters of Paul in the New Testament are addressed to churches that he was directly involved in planting. He likes to draw from his personal history with the specific churches in order to then offer his validation of and challenges for them. But Rome is different. Paul didn’t plant the church there. He’s never even been there. Whatever information he has about them is secondhand. His ministry has taken him to many other places, places where “Christ has…

As Paul comes to the final points of Romans, he takes one last opportunity to shower the church with praise. “My brothers and sisters, you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.” (Romans 15:14) He surveys the foundational DNA of his ministry as “obedience from the gentiles by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, and by the power of the Spirit.” (15:18-19) That is Paul’s ministry to the gentiles.…

Be subject to the governing authorities? Those authorities have been instituted by God? They are God’s agents to execute wrath on the wrongdoer? We might dismiss these ideas outright if not for the fact that they come to us from scripture. Since these are Paul’s words in Romans 13, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that perhaps he knows what he’s talking about. But we also wouldn’t be wrong to admit our discomfort with this teaching. We wouldn’t…