Posts from July 2019
Pastors Ponderings
The main theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans has been described as ‘the gospel’:- chapters 1-4 are the gospel and the righteousness of God; chapters 5-8 are the gospel and the power of salvation; chapters 9-11 are the gospel and Israel; and finally chapters 12-16 are the gospel and the transformation of life. The trouble is when we think of the word ‘gospel’ (or ‘good news’ which is what the word gospel means) we tend to put out…
Pastors Ponderings
Recently, Daniel gave an introduction to the book we are going to study over the next season – Paul’s letter to the Romans. He mentioned that although it is known for setting out much of Paul’s theology and some confronting sections on living as Christians, the central purpose is to talk about how to live in unity with one another especially where there is diversity. Paul uses the term ‘weak and strong’ to draw out how he expects Christians of…
Salvation… the full story
It happened one day quite suddenly when the pastor was preaching from John’s gospel. I’d been taught from a very young age that the story of salvation began with John 3:16 but something made me flick back to the beginning of the gospel. Why, here was where the story of salvation began; not in chapter 3 but here in the words, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” Why, I…