The Solution to Our Problems

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crucifixion, discipleship, gospel, grace, jesus, new testament, old testament, paul, romans, salvation, sin, theology

I know this sounds cheesy, but I believe it’s Jesus. I think Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection saves us completely, and I know of nothing else adequate to the task. Yesterday I talked about how sin works – the process of corruption that results in our world of broken families, political instability, a crisis of spirituality, and injustice all around. Read that one first because without it this won’t make full sense. There I described this process as having five essential steps: we reject God (rebellion) and replace him with something else (idolatry), with the result that we come to increasingly reflect our new idols and thereby lose our full humanness (corruption); we set ourselves a trap from which we cannot escape (bondage), eventually giving in totally to sin or at least resigning ourselves to a “realism” that is actually hopelessness or nihilism (depravity or despair). Here I want to show how Jesus’ death and resurrection save us from this fivefold curse.

1. Jesus reveals to us that God is truly Love and as such can be trusted safely. Remember the root problem of sin is that we doubt God’s love, we fear that he’s holding out on us, so we rebel against him and take our fate into our own hands. If God is love, this rebellion is altogether unnecessary.

Life Journal 005 // Joel and the New Testament

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America, church, heaven, jesus, joel, life journal, new testament, old testament, paul, politics, romans

Last week I posted on the message of Joel the prophet here, and I promised to add some thoughts about how Joel impacts our understanding of the New Testament. I have three texts / topics in mind.

First, I think Joel’s understanding of pagan armies helps us understand Romans 13, where Paul tells the Jesus-followers in Rome to “submit to the governing authorities because they have been put in their place by God,” etc, etc. People have read this as indicating God’s support of this or that nation or government, with the implication that what nations do is good and godly. Today I’m not agreeing or disagreeing with the application points, but what we often miss is that for Paul, Romans 13 has everything to do with the way God works through pagan nations in the prophets. According to them, especially in texts like Isaiah 10 and here in Joel, pagan armies are both (a) tools accomplishing God’s purposes, and (b) enemies of God awaiting eventual judgment. The key thing is that God can use nations for his purposes, and he can call his people to submit to their rule, without them having his approval or blessing. This was certainly true of the Roman Empire of Paul’s day.

Life Journal 002 // “son of God” in Romans 1

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jesus, life journal, new testament, paul, politics, romans, son of God, trinity

Yesterday I posted on the word “gospel” as it is used in Paul, specifically in Romans 1. I talked about how we need to let this word what it means rather than forcing it to say so much more (and thus, so much less). I want to reflect similarly on the word “son of God.” When most of us hear this word, we automatically think it refers to Jesus’ divinity. And indeed, this is what the word has come to mean. It actually came to mean this late in the first century. But I would argue that in Romans 1 (and in the Gospels) it mostly meant something different from “divine being” or “God in the flesh” or “second person of the Trinity.” It meant, most centrally, King of Israel.

Life Journal 001 // “gospel” in Romans 1

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gospel, isaiah, life journal, new testament, paul, politics, romans, salvation

Recently our church took up the task of “feeding ourselves” by reading the Bible regularly using the same reading plan and journaling format. You can read about it here. I won’t post regularly on this because I don’t want to ruin my own devotions by going public with them, but I’ll throw out some thoughts as I see fit. Part of yesterday’s reading was Romans 1. The first few verses are jam-packed with goodness. But there’s a lot in there that has been caked over with dust through the centuries, so it’s important for us to be clear on what some of the key terms originally meant.

“gospel” – I can’t stress enough how important it is that we get a clear grasp of what this word meant and means. It’s one of the most loved words in the Christian world, but sadly one of the most misunderstood.