Category Archives: Romans

Putting the “Christian” in Christian Friendship

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Is there anything distinctive about Christian friendship? What’s different about how two fellow followers of Jesus relate to each other, compared with two friends who don’t identify with Christ? Romans 15:2 helps us consider one essential component of what puts the Christian into Christian relationships.

“Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”

Who Is Our “Neighbor”?

“Neighbor” can be used very broadly (as Jesus does in Luke 10:29), but in this case, Paul is plainly talking about fellow believers (as he does in Ephesians 4:25). This is confirmed in the verb “to build up” — a word which Paul reserves exclusively for the church. We’re talking about Christians here in Romans 15:2 — Christian neighbors, fellow followers of Jesus with whom we share some proximity. So we could say this text carries significance for Christian friendship.

And the imperative is to “please” them, to accommodate them, to make their welfare of higher interest than our own. To please our Christian neighbor is to serve them. Undoubtedly, this will be for our own joy — no one is really served when it’s done in stiff reluctance. But it being for our joy doesn’t mean it’s always (or often!) comfortable. Pleasing our neighbor will take sacrifice. It’s not typically easy — it’s “not to please ourselves.” We’re giving something up for something better and that better is the building up of our brother or sister.

Sacrificially Build Up One Another

The sacrificial building up of one another — this is what makes Christian friendship, well, Christian. It’s Christian both in the adjective (sacrificial) and in the verb (building up).

Sacrificial building up (“not to please ourselves”) means it’s Christian in its manner. The foundation to our serving, our sacrificial edifying of others, is rooted in the example of Jesus. We’re to have the Philippians 6:6–8 mind among ourselves. He didn’t give prominence to his own comfort when he “left glory.” Nor when he prayed in the Garden. It wasn’t easy when he bore our sins and suffered the wrath we deserved. Yet even in the midst of the pain, there was a joy set before him. It wasn’t easy, but it was glorious. And when we walk in that example, it works the same way (1 Peter 2:21). It shocks the world — for the glory of God.

But this sacrificial building up is not only Christian in its manner. It’s also Christian in its goal. The friendship goes beyond discussing the latest scores (though it may involve that), or the newest app (though that may be a part, too), or the best book we’ve read (another good one). The purpose is to build them up. This is what the pleasing is about, for their good. It’s about their conformity to Jesus. Our little place in their life is to serve the goal to which God has elected them, Jesus has died, and the Spirit is working. We want to build them up.

For Your Friends

Now then, let each of us, by grace, please our neighbor for their good — count them more significant than ourselves, and their needs more pertinent than our own; to build them up — play the God-ordained role of a means of grace in their lives, investing in their transformation into the likeness of Jesus. Let’s stir this Christian intentionality in our relationships — that we not seek to please ourselves, but that we pursue the pleasing of our neighbor for their good in Jesus.

Read the original post at DG.

Believe, Sent, Speak, Heard, Believed, Sent…

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Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, Paul tells us, will be saved (Romans 10:13).

This is good news.

And then comes the best possible question, and subsequent questions, that could be asked.

How then will they call of him in whom they have not believed? There’s not going to be a confession of the mouth if there’s not a believing of the heart. Okay, okay, next question. How are they going to believe in him of whom they have never heard? There’s not going to be any believing unless they hear about the one worthy of their faith.We’re tracking with him now. Another question: how are they to hear without someone preaching? There’s not going to be any hearing about Jesus unless someone tells about Jesus. Last question: And how are they going to preach unless they are sent? Those who tell others about Jesus have to go forth, leaving one spot and traveling to another.

So the good news of salvation to everyone who calls on Jesus is coupled with a glorious mandate: tell this good news to others. No Uncle Sam posters here. No long, skinny finger is pointing at you. This is a call more amazing than we can imagine.

There is good news! This is good news that’s meant to be told. And we’re the ones, you and me, us, we’re the ones who get to tell it.

Let us be sent. Let us go speak. Let them hear. Let them believe and call on Jesus. Then let them be sent. . . . This is how it works.

Read the original post at Fighterverses.com.

The Word Is Here, for Everyone

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Romans 10:13–15,

For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

This is one of the mountain peaks of Holy Scripture. This significance of this text can hardly be overstated on a couple levels. For one, there is just the good these verses bring to us — we’re told how we can be saved. And then, overall, these verses encapusalte so much of the Bible, of Paul’s theology, of how it all comes together with the people of Israel and the Gentiles, the law and faith and righteousness and how Jesus is what it’s all about.

Jesus, the Better Word

Leading up to verse 13, Paul tells us how Israel has misread the Scriptures. He lays out in detail Israel’s failure to understand God’s righteousness, that is, their ignorance of Jesus (Romans 10:3–4). Paul then goes to the Torah in Romans 10:5 to draw a parallel between that word and Jesus.

Jesus has come down from heaven — we don’t go up to him. Jesus has been raised from the dead — we don’t go bring him up. The point here: it’s not human striving. It’s here. The word is here. Jesus has done it all already and this is what we’re proclaiming. Do you believe?

If you believe (Paul must be excited here!), if you believe, if you confess, you will be saved!

Believe, Confess!

These two expressions, believing and confessing, describe the one reality of faith and lead up to the two Old Testament verses quoted in Romans 10:11 and Romans 10:13. Believe in your heart because everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame (Isaiah 28:16). Confess with your mouth because everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32).

This is good news. No more white-knuckled laboring to establish our own righteousness. No more vain endeavors to impress God by how good we think we can keep his law. No more more searching up or down for someone to come help us.

The Word Is Here

Jesus Christ has come to this earth, God became man. He walked in our shoes and persevered in every way imaginable. Where we can’t but fail, he was faithful and obedient and righteous and true. And then he went to the die for us. The King went to suffer for his people. He took upon himself all of our guilt and shame, all the wrath we heaped up for ourselves by our rebellion against God.

Jesus died for us, and was buried. Then on the third day, he was raised from the dead, and he appeared to Cephas, the twelve, and later to about 500 folks. He was resurrected to be received by faith. For us to turn from our sin and embrace him. He is now ascended and reigning. His kingdom is coming. His word is being proclaimed.

This very word, the one here. The word that declares God has acted. God has done it. The dead-end roads of our efforts are exposed. Now, here is the word, and everyone who believes will be saved. Here is the word — you have heard it — here is what Jesus has done, will you call on him?

Read the original post at Fighterverses.com.

Sin as Contradiction

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John Murray:

All sin in the believer is the contradiction of God’s holiness. Sin does not change its character as sin because the person in whom it dwells and by whom it is committed is a believer.

It is true that the believer sustains a new relation to God. There is no judicial condemnation for him and the judicial wrath of God does not rest upon him (Romans 8:1). God is his Father and he is God’s son. The Holy Spirit dwells in him and is his advocate. Christ is the believer’s advocate with the Father.

But the sin which resides in the believer and which he commits is of such a character that it deserves the wrath of God and the fatherly displeasure of God is evoked by this sin. Remaining, indwelling sin is therefore the contradiction of all that he is as a regenerate person and son of God. It is the contradiction of God himself, after whose image he has been recreated.

Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955) 144.

Rethinking the Annual Ritual of One Dramatic Resolution

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Here is a helpful post by Paul Tripp—

Trading One Dramatic Resolution for 10,000 Little Ones.

An excerpt:

And what is he doing? In these small moments he is delivering every redemptive promise he has made to you. In these unremarkable moments, he is working to rescue you from you and transform you into his likeness. By sovereign grace he places you in daily little moments that are designed to take you beyond your character, wisdom and grace so that you will seek the help and hope that can only be found in him. In a lifelong process of change, he is undoing you and rebuilding you again—exactly what each one of us needs!

Yes, you and I need to be committed to change, but not in a way that hopes for a big event of transformation, but in a way that finds joy in and is faithful to a day-by-day, step-by-step process of insight, confession, repentance and faith. And in those little moments we commit ourselves to remember the words of Paul in Romans 8:32—

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us, how will he not also with him freely give us all things.

On Natural Theology: Romans 1:19-20

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Romans 1:19-20

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Paul says that there is something intelligible about God in creation that is universally plain. More precisely, God’s eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. Paul’s content on general revelation here is describing a demographic of the humanity, i.e., a culture that has incorrectly interpreted nature. These are humans, creatures of God outside of the covenant (1:25; 2:14), who have rejected what can be clearly perceived about God in creation. Their rejection leaves them “without excuse.”

The details of this passage do not lay out for us the specifics of general revelation. They only tell the reader that people can discern enough about God in creation to make them accountable. Creation is set to be interpreted. It does not interpret itself. This passage gives us the converse of what Psalm 19 and Job 38 suggest: this is what happens when nature is interpreted without the intervention of God’s particular revelation.

Calvin writes, “[W]hile some may evaporate in their own superstitions and other deliberately and wickedly desert God, yet all degenerate from the true knowledge of him” (I.IV.1, italics mine.) This passage in Paul demands his explanation in Romans 10:13-17, concluding—“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

If the human intellect would see God in creation, then God must sanctify the intellect by his work of grace, which we understand to be accomplished definitively in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Seeing nature is a work of gospel grace—it happens only in relation to Jesus Christ and is appropriated by the Holy Spirit.


Why Forgiveness in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is Not Arbitrary, Contra Forgiveness in Islam

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Forgiveness in Islam is arbitrary. In Islam, Allah’s forgiveness is not in reference to anything but Allah’s whimsical prerogative. There is no assurance. No referential guarantee. There is nothing to point to, nothing to stand on.

The forgiveness of sins that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is amazingly different. The LORD’s freedom in election is different in that it was a Trinitarian action–a work performed in the mind of the LORD’s intratrinitarian fellowship. For those who embrace Jesus Christ by faith, our election (the Father) was “in Christ”  (the Son) for the purpose of “being holy and blameless” (the Spirit) (Eph 1:4). Election was not arbitrary because it does not exist without reference to the death and resurrection of Christ or the perfecting work of the Spirit.

The “who” of election may seem arbitrary as in “that guy and not this one.” But election is not drawing from a hat, nor is it a “pick your team.” It is instead the creative work of God to make for himself a people. It is a work ex nihilo–calling into existence that which does not exist (Rom 4:17). And this creative work of election before the foundation of the world comes into fruition as people all over the world put their faith in Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus Christ is an integral episode in God’s salvation of sinners, stemming from the creative love of the Father and pointing to the perfecting work of the Holy Spirit.

We Rejoice…

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Romans 5:1-11

The reference of rejoicing in vv. 2c and 3a are specifically rooted in what is yet to be completed. I think that we can take v. 11a similarly but that it also serves to leverage the thinking that the whole of our rejoicing is based on the future. The passage is predominantly eschatological until Paul begins to support the surety of our hope in v. 5aff.

By the time that we come to v. 11a the reader can discern the multiple dimensions of his rejoicing. Indeed, the rejoicing is in the glory that the believer will experience in the future (cf. 8:23-24), but it is also in the fact that God’s love has been poured into our hearts and that God demonstrates his love for us.

The reality of vv. 5-8 provides the indispensable support for the believer to rejoice in the salvation that is yet to come. It is this foundational support alone that allows the Apostle to say “hope that will not put us to shame” and “more than that…”

The “Houtos Kai Humeis” of Romans 6:11

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Have you ever seen the connection between Romans 6:11 to 6:10? The death that Jesus died, he died to sin, once for all. This is contrasted to the life that he lives– he lives to God. It is interesting that “he lives to God” is not qualified like the adverb translated “once for all” does for “he died to sin.” It looks like this:

  • he died to sin, once for all
  • he lives to God, _____


It doesn’t need an adverb. The verb for “die” is aorist. The verb for “live” is present. How much do apples cost in Japan? The adverb for “lives” is sort of implied. The finality of Jesus’ death to sin is emphasized. The eternality of Jesus’ life to God is emphasized. This death that he died to sin is done. He won’t die again. “it is finished.” No more.

“It is finished was his cry, now in heaven exalted high, hallelujah, what a Savior!”

This life he lives to God, though. It is now and tomorrow and forever. It is not a life that he lived. It is one that he lives.

And then the Apostle says, “houtos kai humeis… ” — “in this way you also…” Remember our union (v. 3, 4, 5, 6, 8).