Category: Romans
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ot believers… regenerate… roms 7
One of the difficult questions to answer is the status and experience of OT believers. This post does not pretend to answer this question but I hope it points to fruitful fields of inquiry. Old Testament believers were justified by faith (Roms 4: Gen 15:6). Abraham’s faith=justification serves as the template for all future justification…
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roms 7 … life under law (1)
Romans 7 In Ch 5, Paul has demonstrated that humanity is divided into two different peoples united to two humanity heads. One group belongs to Adam and is dominated by sin and death. By natural birth everyone belongs to Adamic humanity. The second group is in Christ where, by contrast, grace, righteousness and life reign.…
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romans 8:1-4 the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in us
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own…
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christ the end of the law
Romans 10:4-13 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. 5 For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in…
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i am crucified with christ (2)… dead to law
If we are dead and our life is hid with Christ in God we will discover that this death is not simply to sin. Our death, in Christ, has even farther-reaching implications. We have died not only to sin but to every power and authority that would seek to control us in a fallen world. …
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the righteousness of god in the gospel (2)
Our previous post argued that when Paul speaks of ‘the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel’ (Roms 1:17) he means precisely that; in the gospel God reveals himself acting righteously, that is, acting consistently with all he is in himself (Roms 3:21-26). Among the ways God reveals himself acting righteously is in declaring righteous those…
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romans, and the righteousness of god (2)
Rom 1:16-17 (ESV) I am not ashamed of the gospel… for in it the righteousness of God is revealed… A world that is right is what is needed. Creation groans eager to birth a world right in every way, a new world suffused with righteousness where righteousness is the plumb-line (Isa 28:17), flows like the…
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romans, and the righteousness of god (1)
Righteousness gets a bad press in life. In fact, it is a word rarely used today (we may speak of justice, or right, but not righteousness). If used or conceptualised it tends to suggest ideas of a moral uprightness devoid of love. We connect it with assumed moral superiority; righteousness for us means self-righteousness. Even…
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do this and live
The Law, that is, the Sinai Covenant, in the words of the NT, is ‘not of faith’ (Gals 3:11). God’s covenant with Abraham relied on God’s promise for its fulfilment received simply by faith (Gals 3:17-19, 22). Law, by contrast, depends on human ‘works’. It is a covenant of works and so Paul speaks regularly…
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imputed active obedience (IAO), a must or a misdirection? (8)
We saw in the previous blog that both Methodists (C18) and Plymouth Brethren (C19) raised dissenting voices at IAO. The initial teaching of J N Darby and W Kelly (that justification is located in the death and resurrection of Christ, not IAO) prevailed in Brethren theology well into the C20. W E Vine (1873-1949), a…
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flesh and spirit in romans,and beyond (7)
Rom 7:1-6 (ESV) Or do you not know, brothers-for I am speaking to those who know the law-that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the…
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romans 7: dead to law (1)
I have written a few blogs previously related to ‘the law’ and to a related topic ‘flesh and spirit’. These are somewhat of a background to a few intermittent blogs that I intend to write on Romans 7 (God willing). At the moment, I want simply to flag up a couple of major blinders that…
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flesh and spirit in romans, and beyond (5)
If you look at the preceeding blogs on this topic you will be better placed to grapple with the issues in this one. The fundamental point made is that Christians ought to view themselves not as ‘in the flesh’ but as ‘in the Spirit’. This is a biblical distinction between two realms or two worlds. …
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flesh and spirit in romans, and beyond (3)
We have been considering two alternative realities in Paul’s theology – the flesh and the Spirit. For clarity’s sake we should emphasize again that these two realities – flesh and Spirit – although involving principles and peoples are for Paul perhaps primarily , provinces or principalities. They represent two realms, spheres, kingdoms, – two distinct…
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flesh and spirit in Romans, and beyond (2)
This is the second in a short series of blogs reflecting on the ‘flesh/Spirit’ contrast that controls Romans and beyond. In a previous blog we observed that this contrast is not metaphysical, a God/Man divide nor anthropological, a Body/Soul divide but chronological and eschatological, a divide of two Realms and Eras. The gospel is about…
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flesh and spirit in romans, and beyond (1)
We cannot properly understand Romans until we learn it describes two realms of existence. In fact, the Christian gospel, which is of course the theme of Romans, has not been truly grasped until it is seen as the story of two distinct and deeply different worlds. Different images are used in the Bible to describe…
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the hope of righteousness
Gal 5:5 (ESV) For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. It is worth a comment or two on this text. Some, like N T Wright, suggest ‘the hope of righteousness’ refers to future justification. It may well do so, and I am not prepared to assert dogmatically…
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the righteous shall live by faith (2)
Hab 2:4 (ESV) …the righteous shall live by his faith. Many scholars maintain that ‘faith’ in Hab 2:4 really should be translated ‘faithfulness. The reason given is twofold. Firstly, the Hebrew noun ‘emunah‘ used in Hab 2:4 is normally translated ‘faithfulness’ in the OT ; secondly, the OT doesn’t normally sharply distinguish between faith and…
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the righteous shall live by faith (1).
Hab 2:4 (ESV) “… the righteous shall live by his faith. This short text, even part of a text, would be easy to miss while reading Habakkuk and the OT. Yet, to do so would be a mistake for it is a text that has key significance in the NT. It is cited no less…
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what was wrong with C1 judaism?
What was wrong with C1 Judaism? Was anything wrong? There must have been something wrong since Israel rejected her Messiah. About what was wrong, scholars are divided. Surprise, surprise! The traditional answer (the old perspective) is Judaism was legalistic; it taught salvation by works. The modern answer ( the new perspective) is it was nationalistic;…
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is faith for Paul really faithfulness?
Faith as ‘nothing in my hands I bring…’ is under concerted attack and from different directions. We have considered one or two. A further popular attack claims that the traditional perspective on Romans, that Paul juxtaposes ‘faith’ and ‘works’, is false. Paul’s antithesis is not, we are told, one of ‘trusting in grace for salvation’…
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is faith meritorious?
Paul tells us that in God’s salvation plan we are considered righteous through faith, that is, ‘faith is reckoned as righteousness’ Rom 4:5 (ESV) ‘And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness’ Most evangelicals probably take it for-granted that a big…
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not law works, not any works
Rom 3:19-20 (ESV) Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the…
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faith vs works
Intense debate takes place in scholarly circles on the nature of C1 Palestine Judaism. Traditionally, C1 Judaism was believed to be largely legalistic; Jewish people generally, it was thought, believed they must earn God’s favour by keeping the Law of Moses. Through law-keeping they aspired to gain eternal life. This traditional view has come…
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boasting excluded
Theologians spill a lot of ink (or hit a lot of binary codes) telling us about God’s Covenant of Works with Adam. What they don’t know about this covenant (if such a covenant existed) they are not slow to make up. Whole books are written about a Covenant that Scripture never directly calls a covenant…
Cave Adullam 