Category: Romans
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Romans 16 shows Paul’s support for women leaders
In this series of articles about Romans, I’m planning to jump around. It’s because I buy into Scot McKnight’s view that the book is much more understandable when reading it backwards – digging early on into the effective conclusions in the final few chapters. Some read Romans as though Paul was writing it to defend…
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Romans 1 introduces a pastoral letter to Jews and Gentiles
The big risk in reading Paul’s letter to the Romans is not realising its context. This is a letter with a pastoral intent: Paul is trying to help Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus to get along. As Scot McKnight has noted, parts of the letter are really aimed at only one of the two…
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Romans: a new series
This current aim on this blog is to write a blog post of 400+ words about every chapter in the New Testament. I’ve got through quite a number of books, especially the shorter ones! It’s now time for me to address a toughie: the book of Romans. The first time I read Romans, when I…
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Romans 8 v1: ‘there is now no condemnation’
I was at a big church in the centre of a major town. The preacher was speaking about Romans 8 and kept repeating its opening, when a someone interrupted from the back. The text in question says (NIV): Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus…
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Do Christians have to obey bad rulers?
The start of Romans 13 is an important steer from Paul on how Christians should act towards authority. It says: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is…