Romans 12 Why This Chapter is So Important

I had a rabbi ask me once, “Why can't Gentiles have Jesus as their Christian Messiah?” Fair question I thought. Then the answer came to me, “Because Jesus was a Jew.” But not only that, see what Paul says. He states strongly that for those who do evil there will be wrath and for those who do good there will be glory, “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile (Rom.2:8-10).” Also, through Jesus, our Jewish Messiah, we have been grafted onto the…

Why Jesus? Who Are We, Anyway?

One thing we can say about living in this world is that we have become attached to our body. Lots has been written about it and the whole realm of science is absorbed in its place in the universe. One song carries a futile quest for its meaning, “You and me, we sweat and strain, bodies all aching and wracked with pain, tote that barge and lift that bale, get a little drunk and you land in jail. I gets weary and sick of living. I'm tired of living and…

Romans 9-11 The Hinge Chapters

Another way to get an overview of Romans is to divide it into three parts: chs.1-8 the past, chs.9-11 the present and chs.12-16 the future. In this session we deal with chs.9-11, God’s answer for the present. Here is presented the cross-generational issue of the place of the Jews in God’s plan and our attitude toward them. Should they be evangelized? Are they lost? Just what is their place in the larger spiritual picture? What about the nation Israel…

The World is a Spiritual No-Fly Zone

As we said previously the Lord Jesus brought us a relationship not a religion. The obvious reason is we are created to be relational by the fact of our being an image of God. God is relational; Father, Son and Holy Spirit relational; mind, heart and spirit relational; belief, trust and faith relational. Jesus came to restore our relational existence, our relational need, our relational experience. We have a relational church which is the Body of…

Why Jesus? Beyond Gender

OK, so we talked about gender identity. But that is not what really identifies us. There is something more basic and that is being an image of God. When we operate from that premise, every human being takes on significance beyond their nationality, gender, ethnicity and cultural identities. It is those lesser identities that can cloud the way we are seen and the way we are treated. Each of those have their own legal, social and economic demands which are both…

Romans 8

Logic, trust and action, they are the sequence that activate our humanity. We think, we decide and we act. This is the process for all human behavior. It is this humanity Paul saw exposed in himself as saturated with sin and he saw in Jesus God's perfection. What gave him that insight was the Law, particularly the 10th Commandment, that said, ‘Thou shalt not covet (Ex.20:17).'

Up to that point he was consumed in getting his life (and everyone else’s) right through the…

In order to really answer this question we have to look at the individual human condition. Three things standout about the common human condition, aloneness, our perceived needs in that aloneness and how we deal with them. For now we’ll look at aloneness. From here on we will deal with needs and how we meet them.

The human condition is one of being born into a growing awareness of individual self-conscious aloneness, the needs arising from that aloneness, and facing the fact that the…

Why Jesus? It's About Who We Claim to Be

Who told you who and what you are? Who and what gave them the right? Who or what do we choose to define ourselves and others? Everyone has a lens through which they view themselves and the people around them. What principles of thought and behavior do we use to size up those in our family and the people we meet? What goes on inside us that we want the world to see whenever we are among others? What do we want to be like when we are in the midst…

Romans 7 Think of It this Way

As we have done before we start with the last chapter's closing verse, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ (6:23).”

We need to keep that verse in the larger picture of our lives. Death is the devil's dark night. Sin and its evils thrive on darkness. Eternal light is the presence of Jesus in His Kingdom of life, love, honesty and openness. What sin through fear drives within, love through faith…

On Being Number One

When you watch almost any sports game and the winner emerges you'll see a vast display of fans with their hands reaching up with the index finger extended to signify they are number one because the team won that for them. But what does it really mean to be number one? For few moments a team made us feel that we were backing a winner which made us more right than those who were backing a loser. Perhaps it was representing a town, school or region we identified as…