Rocky doesn’t shame his son, but points him to who he already is. Rocky reminds his son of his true identity. And Paul does the same thing in Romans 6:11 when he says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Paul has already laid the ground work and made very plain that their bodies are no longer to live in sin, but now he hammers the point: Consider it….
Romans 1-5 is about good news, not good advice. Romans 6 begins by anticipating a normal response to such radical grace: If salvation is by grace alone, then how do people change? Why be good and do good at all?…
Can too much grace be a bad thing? Won’t too much grace simply produce sons of anarchy, sin gone wild? I mean, c’mon, if it’s grace, grace, and more grace, what’s going to keep people in line?..
Frank was baptized as an infant and confirmed at the age of fourteen within the Episcopal Church. During his first year in college, he left the church and became agnostic. At a point of crisis in his sophomore year, Frank had a religious experience through an evangelical campus ministry; to mark this experience he was re-baptized in a river…
Whenever we rejoice for our suffering instead of in our suffering, we try to justify ourselves by our suffering. Justification makes a difference in our lives by ending our suffering-by-works and beginning our suffering-by-grace.
Springs in the Valley tells the story of a man who found a barn where Satan kept his evil seeds stored, ready to be sown in the human heart. After a quick survey of the barn, the man discovered that the seeds of discouragement were more numerous than all the other seeds stored in the barn.
In other words, the cosmic acceptance and affection we crave and strive for is not found in people or in our performance but rather is found in Jesus and His performance.
Paul assumes all are trying to build themselves up, trying to construct confidence. Whatever we boast in is what gives us confidence to go out and face the day. Whatever we boast in is what supports the weight of our lives - it fundamentally defines us.
Justification is a big deal. Every human heart craves it, inescapably needs it, and yet struggles to obtain it. Why the struggle to obtain a solid and true sense of acceptability, approval, security, meaning, or justification? The answer is in the way we try to obtain it…the default way of human effort or performance…
Fear is a problem. H.P. Lovecraft, an early 1900’s author of horror, said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.” Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a pastor in London famously called the last Puritan preacher, said, “When a man is defeated by life it is always due, ultimately, to the fact that he is suffering from a spirit of fear….
