Romans 14 is usually read as a new section dealing with disagreements within the community over such matters as diet and observance of holy days. There is, however, an immediate and decisive eschatological aspect to the discussion:
Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is… (
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Following the exuberant exclamation and doxology of Romans 11:33-36, Paul gets to the practical consequences of his gospel for the saints in Rome. This is where he outlines the nature of the “obedience” required of those from among the nations who have been called to identify with Christ Jesus (1:5… (
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What is going on here? Is this a tolerable way for Christians to behave? Should we all be doing it? And before you ask, no, it has nothing to do with helping them to keep the fire going.
The larger concern in this section of Romans is how the believers will react to persecution. At least, we have… (
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Paul’s letter to the Romans is held together by a prophetic narrative. God has made Jesus Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead, and he will one day rule the nations. This means that there will be “wrath” against the idolatrous civilisation of the Greeks, but since God’s own people… (
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Romans 7:1-8:39The argument about the status of the Law of Moses in this critical period of eschatological crisis continues. Paul speaks to “those who know the Law,” but now he seems to be addressing Jewish believers, who “have died to the Law through the body of Christ” (7:4).… (
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I recently did a long and enjoyable interview with Sean Finnegan, talking about my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. Sean is lead pastor of Living Hope Community Church near Albany, New York, and teaches at Atlanta Bible College. He knows his … (
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Romans 5:1-6:23
Let’s remind ourselves, first, that in these chapters Paul has been recapitulating a dialogue with the Jews of the diaspora, for the most part about the Jews of the diaspora. They have failed to provide a benchmark of piety and right behaviour among the… (
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One obvious retort to the argument that Paul allows for the existence of unbelieving righteous Gentiles who will be justified on the basis of their good deeds on the day of God’s wrath is that he goes on to state emphatically, quoting the scriptures, that “None is righteous, no, not one” (… (
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I have finally got round to reading John Barclay’s highly esteemed Paul and the Gift, and he almost persuaded me to change my mind about the identity of the Gentiles who do not have the Law but do what the law requires (Rom. 2:14).
I have been going backwards and forwards over the… (
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Romans 3:1-4:25
As an apostle of the gospel of God concerning his Son, Paul has argued so far that the Greek-Roman world, as he has encountered it in the course of his missionary journeys from Antioch to Athens, faces a day of God’s wrath or judgment. This constitutes the historical horizon… (
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Romans 1:19-2:29
Why does good news need to be heard regarding the “power of God for salvation”? Why does God have to justify himself by ensuring that the righteous person lives because of faith or faithfulness?
The reason is that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all… (
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Jesus tells a rather disturbing story about the judgment of his people at the end of the age of second temple Judaism. This is my very functional translation:
Again, the kingdom of the heavens is like a dragnet (sagēnēi) thrown into the sea, and it gathered from every kind (of fish… (
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Romans 1:1-18
Paul, apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ (1:1-7)
Paul introduces himself to those in Rome who are “called to be saints” as a slave of Christ and an apostle, “set apart for the gospel of God.”
The “gospel” is the proclamation of good news, anticipated in the Jewish… (
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I take several chapters in my book In the Form of a God: The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul to argue that in the first part of the Christ encomium in Philippians 2:6-11 the direction of travel is ontologically flat: not from heaven to earth but from celebrity to… (
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Christians who think that it is right and good to maintain a form a patriarchy, at least in church and home, will often argue that by naming the woman Adam exercises or asserts an innate, creational authority over her that is not abrogated by salvation.
In search of a suitable helper… (
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John says that Isaiah saw the glory of Jesus (Jn. 12:41). Is this a reference back to the “glory” of God that Isaiah saw in the temple? Or is it something else? Well, I’m going to say that it was something else, not because I’m anti-trinitarian but because I don’t think that’s what John means at… (
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I have been working through Craig Keener’s Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (2016) to prepare some teaching materials on Pentecostal hermeneutics. It’s a fairly casual read, so far at least. I could really do with something a bit more technical. But it’s a good… (
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In an article on the Gospel Coalition website, adapted from a book about evangelism, Matt Smethurst attempts to explain the gospel. He suggests, to begin with, that we can view the gospel from two perspectives: a high level or aerial view, which reveals to us the overall shape of the biblical… (
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Stephen Fowl thinks that it’s impossible to get from history to theology—to start with historical-criticism and arrive at an account of the being and intentions of the Triune God and of the various beliefs and practices that derive from that core Christian doctrine.
So we have to start at the… (
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This is a brief re-examination of Thomas’ famous declaration “My Lord and my God” in John 20:28. I looked at this some years ago, noting the common argument that the wording of the confession reflects the “custom,” recorded in Suetonius and Dio Cassius, of addressing the emperor Domitian (AD 81-96… (
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