Tag: Paul

Competing kingdoms (Romans 5:12-20)

You can also watch a recorded version of this here. So far we have discovered that we are without excuse, exception or escape in the face of God’s righteous judgement. God has clearly revealed to us who he is and we have responded by suppressing that truth. All have sinned and so all are under… Continue reading Competing kingdoms (Romans 5:12-20)

No! Paul wasn’t infiltrating Christianity to destroy it

Every so often an attempt is made to place a wedge between the apostle Paul and Jesus Christ.  The standard argument is that the Gospels present us with Jesus as the founder of a Jewish apocalyptic with limited appeal beyond ethnic Jews either within Palestine or in the diaspora across the Empire. Paul innovated by… Continue reading No! Paul wasn’t infiltrating Christianity to destroy it

How God builds hope in our lives (Romans 5:1-5)

Would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist? How do you respond when you go through periods of struggle and suffering?   Are you ever tempted to doubt God’s love, forgiveness and acceptance of you? Paul’s teaching on justification is crucial as we seek to persevere in our faith. A Look at the text V1… Continue reading How God builds hope in our lives (Romans 5:1-5)

Complementarianism and Singleness -what does the Bible say?

The other week, I wrote about complementarianism and singleness in response to the claim that Complementarianism gives no space for single women in the church or society because women are required always to relate to God and others through the authority of a man. In that article I explained that this is a misunderstanding of… Continue reading Complementarianism and Singleness -what does the Bible say?

Keeping faith in the promise (Romans 4:13-25)

How have you done at keeping your hope up through the pandemic? It has been hard at times hasn’t it. We were promised a short fight to flatten the curve and then normality by Easter last year only for the First Lockdown to drag on into the summer of 2020. Then in the Autumn we… Continue reading Keeping faith in the promise (Romans 4:13-25)

The pastor’s thorn

Paul David Tripp writes: “I was a failure and I was running. I couldn’t imagine a life of pastoral ministry anymore. It had once been a passion, a dream that seemed too good to be true but that passion had now morphed into a burden, one I no longer wanted to bear.”[1] I’m sure that… Continue reading The pastor’s thorn

We miss the radical teaching of the Bible when we impose the wrong thought categories

I think fundamentalists and liberals tend to make the same mistake about the Bible. They read it through the same modernist lens.  They miss what the Bible is saying and so they miss its applicability to contemporary life. Let me give two examples to help with our thinking. First of all, let me return to… Continue reading We miss the radical teaching of the Bible when we impose the wrong thought categories

Scandalised

One of the really sad things about recent abuse scandals in the church is the way they mirror some of the horrific things we see in the world around us.  We should be able to respond and to offer something that is beautifully counter cultural.  Yet instead, we are seen to ape some of the… Continue reading Scandalised