Posts from April 2025
The Gift of the Past Tense
There is a gift we receive from the apostle Paul that I don’t think he gets enough credit for – the gift of the past tense. This gift is on full display all over Paul’s letters, including Romans 5. We have peace with God and have obtained free access to his grace. God has poured his love into our hearts. Christ died for all of us sinners, and we have been justified (that is, our relationship to him has been…
The DNA of the Church
I think it’s worthwhile to read Romans “backwards,” that is, viewing the whole letter through the lens of its later chapters in which the worshiping community in Rome itself comes to the fore of Paul’s attention. Everything that is rich and challenging in Romans eventually adds up to the (strained) relationships between the members of the church. “Let us no longer pass judgment on one another,” Paul says in Romans 14:13. The whole letter has been working its way toward…