Old Testament stuff. We’ve been redeemed from the law, now our focus is on the gospel, not the law.”

Let’s continue the experiment. Let’s read some excerpts from another biblical writer, only this time from the New Testament. Let’s hear from a man who loved the Gospel, preached it, and taught it as much as any mortal. Let’s hear from Paul: • But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter (Rom. 7:6). • What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through law (Rom. 7:8). • Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good (Rom. 7:12). • For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man (Rom. 7:22).

Does this sound like a man who believed the law of God has no place in the Christian life? Read Paul carefully and you will find a man whose heart longed for the law of God as much as David’s.

Church history witnesses that at periods of revival and reformation there has been a profound awakening to the sweetness of God’s law that can easily degenerate into legalism, which usually provokes a response of antinomianism. Neither is biblical. The law drives us to the gospel. The gospel saves us from the curse of the law but in turn directs us back to the law to search its spirit, its goodness and its beauty. The law of God is still a lamp unto our feet. Without it we stumble and trip and grope in darkness.

For the Christian the greatest benefit of the law of God is its revelatory character. The law reveals to us the Law-Giver. It teaches us what is pleasing in His sight. We need to seek the law of God—to pant after it—to delight in it. Anything less is an offense against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

While it is, of course, possible (and sometimes desirable) to preach expository sermons textually—in Romans this week, in the Psalms the next, and in Haggai the following week—there is something about the very discipline of exposition that makes it impossible not to pick up the threads of an argument that begins in one chapter and runs on for several more. Few passages are complete in themselves, requiring little, if any, reference to preceding verses or what follows (individual psalms taken as whole psalms are one example, though not if only one or two verses of a particular psalm constitute the text). It is very difficult to read Paul without following a lengthy argument that unfolds over lengthy passages requiring a series of sermons to unpack. It might be helpful, then, to ask, “What are some of the advantages of the consecutive expository sermon?” Below I’ll summarize what I see as six advantages of this methodology:

1. Expository preaching introduces the congregation to the entire Bible.

J. W. Alexander writes, “All the more cardinal books of Scripture should be fully expounded in every church, if not once during the life of a single preacher, certainly during each generation; in order that no man should grow up without opportunity of hearing the great body of scriptural truth laid open.”

In an age of relative biblical illiteracy in many parts of the world, the need to preach the whole Bible, rather than serendipitously picking a text from here and there, is all the more urgent. Writing over a century ago, William Taylor opined, I have seen a slimly attended second service gather back into itself all the half-day hearers that had absented themselves from it, and draw in others besides, through the adoption by the minister of just such a method as this; while the effect, even upon those who have dropped casually in upon a single discourse, has been to send them away with what one of themselves called “a new appetite for the Word of God.”

2. Expository preaching ensures that infrequently traveled areas of the Bible are covered.

The inspired quality of Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16–17) implies that the whole canon—”all Scripture”—bears the mark of divine authorship. Our knowledge and holiness are hampered to the degree we neglect certain portions of Scripture. What preacher will preach from Zechariah, Jeremiah, or Revelation (except it be a favorite text or two) unless driven to it by a programmatic attempt to preach through the whole Bible? Large tracts of the Bible will never be touched unless the discipline of consecutive expository preaching forces the preacher to do so.

3. Expository preaching prevents preachers from unwittingly shaping the way their hearers read their Bibles.

Large areas of the Bible are rarely read by many Christians. They arouse greater dread than the Mines of Moria did for Gandalf and Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. Consequently, the Bible is reduced to favorite verses, underlined or highlighted to provide steppingstones through murky waters. Preachers who jump from text

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians stands alongside Romans as a classic example of his thought. Ephesians is heavenly in its content and expansive in the truths it proclaims, while remaining approachable and pragmatic in its instructions. Here are three things you should know when you read Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.

Unlike Colossians, where Paul had not met the people to whom he was writing, he had pastored the Ephesians for three years (Acts 20:31). During that time, he regularly taught in a public lecture hall, laying a broad foundation of Christian teaching in Ephesus before this letter was written (Acts 19:9–10). So, what Paul writes is not a reaction to heresy (as in Colossians) or to public scandal (as in 1–2 Corinthians), but the essential gospel. Ephesians is gloriously and majestically general. It is a digest, hitting the high notes of the years of gospel teaching he provided as their pastor.

Paul’s balanced summary presents the two great functions of faith: to receive the redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ and to respond in new obedience. Chapters 1–3 lay out the gospel facts. They recount God’s eternal plans to bless His people, to give new life to those who were spiritually dead, to unite those who had been divided and far off into the one church, and to “do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” (Eph. 1:3–14; 2:1–10, 11–22; 3:20). The first three chapters essentially ask the question, Will you believe?

In the last three chapters, Paul lays out the faithful response to redemption. A person’s “walk” is a motif in the letter. The term first appears when describing how unbelievers “walked” in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1–2). But, beginning in Ephesians 4, believers are called to “walk” as a response of faith. Paul calls the faithful to walk worthily of Christ (Eph. 4:1). Then, there are calls to not walk as unbelievers, but rather to walk in love, to walk as children of light, and to walk in wisdom (Eph. 4:17; 5:2, 8). Chapters 4–6 ask the question, Will you obey?

The Ephesian Christians were a tiny minority in a vast metropolis. The estimated population of Ephesus was 200,000–250,000 people. Only Athens and Rome were larger. The most prominent religion in Ephesus involved the worship of Artemis. However, there were many different cults, including emperor worship. While other religions were welcomed, Christianity was not. It was viewed as a threat to the honor and majesty of Artemis (see Acts 19:27). Ephesian Christians carried in their recent memory the silversmiths’ riot, where some of them had been attacked and dragged into the great theater. Some of them had been there when a mob of fifty thousand angry people shouted, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Acts 19:23–41). The Christians in Ephesus lived their lives outnumbered, in the shadow of the Temple of Artemis, surrounded by the

there was and is a clear desire to normalize homosexuality, transgenderism, etc. through media and individuals’ platforms. And thirdly, there has been and continues to be a concerted effort to demonize those who oppose the revolution. Dissenters will be canceled at nearly any cost.

The West as a whole, and America in particular, is not, I suggest, in the mess that Phillips describes because it is immoral—not ultimately. We are in such a mess because we worship modern-day Baals rather than the living God. The moral squalor, the brokenness of our culture, is merely the clearest evidence of “the wrath of God” being “revealed from heaven” (Rom. 1:18). The actual immorality is not the cause; it’s the evidence. It’s what happens when we turn in upon ourselves.

And the evidence is all around us. When Paul describes both men and women giving up “natural relations” in favor of those that are “contrary to nature” (Rom. 1:26–27), he uses the word “natural” to describe the material order as God intended it. (In fact, the words that he uses for “women” and “men” are actually “female” and “male” in Greek—a deliberate echo, I think, of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”) Anatomy, physiology, biology—all of them, even without theology—testify to God’s perfect plan, the violation of which leads to chaos, sadness, and despair.

Homosexuality, then, is not simply an alternative lifestyle. According to Scripture, it is an unnatural decision born of a preceding idolatry. It is an expression of rebellion against God: “I will decide who I am, what I am, what I’m doing, and with whom I am doing it.” It’s not the greatest sin, but it is perhaps the clearest evidence of a society’s defiance of God. When a culture finally reaches the place where even manhood and womanhood, gender itself, is deconstructed and reconstructed according to whatever agenda an individual has, whatever ethical set of norms they’ve decided to embrace, then that culture is in deep trouble.

We see this disintegration not only on a societal level but also on a personal level. When our longings are no longer filled by God, who has made us for Himself, the longings don’t go away. We still have to satisfy our questions about our identity. We still have to answer the yearnings of our heart for peace, for fulfillment, for joy, for satisfaction, for sexual gratification—whatever it might be. When we read Paul’s words about men and women “receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” (v. 27), we can easily jump to conclusions about just what he meant. I find William G. T. Shedd’s observation helpful: “The recompense is the gnawing unsatisfied lust itself, together with the dreadful physical and moral consequences of debauchery” (i.e., excessive indulgence in sensual pleasure). When we reject God as the answer to our longings, we don’t stand on morally neutral ground; we actually become, in Paul’s words, “consumed with

lot of attention for him.

The Climax of the Covenant was the first monograph he produced speaking to the themes of Paul, covenant theology and the NPP. I agreed with him that "covenant theology is one of the main clues, usually neglected, for understanding Paul"6 but it also became apparent that his definition of covenant theology and mine were different. I had a generally positive response to the material, it was helpful to me in supporting aspects of my thesis, but I was often left scratching my head a lot of the time asking, "what is he doing here?"

My point, though, is twofold, first I had a generally positive response to Wright's work, and second, I was reading Wright a decade before he became fashionable to read in the more "conservativish" evangelical community. It was not until the second half of the decade of the 1990s, when back in the United States, after a few years teaching Systematic Theology to seminarians, that I found students reading Wright and then coming to question historic, evangelical, and Reformed formulations on the doctrine of justification. In fact, some of the best, or at least some of the most intelligent students that I taught over that course of time, were deeply affected by Wright. This made me then go back and read more of Wright's work, both his early articles and his later writings. Since that time, I've read most of what Wright has published, and I am committed to trying to read everything he produces (and he is very prolific).

Back To The New Perspective

So, to repeat, at the heart of the NPP's critique of both Protestant and Catholic interpretations of Paul is the charge that Reformation-era theologians read Paul via a medieval framework that obscured the categories of first-century Judaism and resulted in a complete misunderstanding of his teaching on justification. The meaning of Paul's phrase "the righteousness of God," the idea of "imputation," and even the definition of justification itself -- all these, according to the pro-NPP crowd, have been invented or misunderstood by both the Lutheran and the Catholic traditions of interpretation.

So, if you were to quote approvingly the answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism's Question 33 as your view of Paul's teaching on justification, "Justification is an act of God's free grace, wherein he pardons all our sins, and accepts us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone," and then ask N.T. Wright to comment, he might say something like this "Well, there are at least three problems with that particular answer. First of all, it doesn't understand what justification is. Justification has a forensic aspect, true, but it primarily has to do with how you know you are a member of God's people. Second, this definition imports an idea alien into the biblical text, the idea of imputation. Imputation is nowhere to be found, in either the teaching of Paul, anywhere else in the New Testament, or indeed

Martin Luther confessed, “The Scriptures are our vineyard in which we should all work.” And work in that vineyard he did. Luther’s formal education initially took him into the fields of the arts and sciences. He was schooled in the subjects laid out and developed by Aristotle. His keen mind prepared him well for master’s studies in law. All the while, he struggled deep in his soul.

The infamous thunderstorm that caught Luther on the road to Erfurt sent him into the monastery. Yet, a monk’s duties could not assuage his inner battles. His overseers, now taking a keen interest in him, prescribed more study. And so Luther embarked on a course of theological inquiry.

Studying theology and the Bible in the 1510s meant little more than studying what the masters had to say about theology and the Bible. Sources upon layers of sources—writings of earlier theologians, popes, and others—were Luther’s texts, and it was expected of him to do little more than master the sources so that he too could point future students to the masters.

As Luther transitioned from student to teacher, a new star was rising in education, a star that would light up both the Renaissance and the Reformation. Historians refer to this new way of learning with the Latin phrase ad fontes—“to the sources.” Peel back the layers of tradition and secondary sources; go directly to the original. Luther went to the source. He read Paul, he read the Psalms, he read the prophets. In the vineyard of Scripture, Luther found the resolution to his struggles and far more.

Erasmus published his Greek-Latin New Testament text in Basel in 1516. Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the church door a year later. The very first thesis challenges the Latin translation of the Greek word for “repentance.” With Bible in hand, Luther and the Reformation took off in earnest.

It was a few short years after the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses that Luther produced his labor of love for his own people: the New Testament in German. Later, both testaments would be made available to German readers. In 1525, Tyndale produced a New Testament, from the Greek, for the English-speaking world.

The Reformation was built upon the Bible, so we should not be surprised to find in the Reformers a robust doctrine of Scripture. One helpful construct to unpack the doctrine of Scripture involves four key terms: authority, necessity, clarity, and sufficiency.

Italian Reformer Peter Martyr Vermigli stated the authority of Scripture rather clearly by drawing attention to the two-word Latin phrase Dominus dixit, meaning “Thus says the Lord.” The Bible is God’s Word, therefore it is true; therefore, it is authoritative; therefore, it is inerrant; therefore, it is infallible; and therefore, it is our only sure guide.

John Calvin famously likened Scripture to spectacles. Apart from Scripture, we misread the natural world, human nature, and the Creator. Scripture alone gives us the clear picture of who God is, who we are, and what God's plan for the world truly is. Without Scripture,

There’s a section in department stores these days called “shapewear.” It’s in both women’s and men’s clothing. These stores are banking on our concern with the shape of our bodies and our willingness to invest in garments that promise to give us the shape we’re looking for.

But when we read Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, we discover it’s not what is shaping our bodies that he is most concerned about. He’s concerned about what is shaping our perspective, our priorities, our pursuits, and our opinions. He writes: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom. 12:2)

His words force us to ask ourselves: What external forces are shaping my internal dialogue about what matters? What pressures me to make the choices I am making about how I spend my money, my time, and my energies? Am I self-aware enough to know?

Ever since we were born into this world, it has been working to press us into its mold.

Of course, we don’t like to think of ourselves as this impressionable. We like to think we are independent in our thinking. But the truth is, we are such products of the environment we live in that we often don’t recognize what is pressing in on us. Or perhaps we don’t feel the pressure because we simply give in to it. It makes no sense to Paul, however, for the lives of those who have been called and foreknown and predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son instead to be conformed to this world.

Instead of being conformed, Paul instructs us to be transformed. There’s a contrast here between something pressing in on us from the outside that causes us to be conformed and something taking place on the inside that causes us to be transformed. Where inside is this taking place? In our minds. And what is happening in our minds? They are being renewed. There’s a renovation project going on.

Have you ever renovated anything? The word used by Paul for the “renewal” of our minds literally means “to renovate”—to rip out the old and put in the new. The one doing the renovation work is the Holy Spirit. But there is something here for us to do. The tool the Holy Spirit uses is the Word. This means we must bring ourselves under the influence of the Word.

In his book Growing Your Faith, the late Jerry Bridges explains this process as similar to what we tell our son when he comes in from playing on the dirt pile: “Go take a shower.” It is the soap and water that will wash away the sweat and the dirt. But Tommy must bring himself under their cleansing action to become clean. So we say to him, “Go take a shower.”

Likewise, when Paul says to us: “Be transformed by the renewing of your

Once we relocate justification, moving it from the discussion of how people become Christians to the discussion of how we know that someone is a Christian, we have a powerful incentive to work together across denominational barriers. —N.T. Wright, “New Perspectives on Paul,” in Justification in Perspective, p. 261

One of the great connections that N.T. Wright emphasizes in his work is the one between soteriology (how we are saved) and ecclesiology (the church: who are the true people of God?). He properly (and repeatedly) reminds us that Paul saw these questions as inseparable. Interestingly, so did the Protestant Reformers, as historians have often obser ved. As on so many points, however, Wright distorts the Reformation positions and almost never footnotes his sweeping allegations. For example, in his latest book, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision (IVP, 2009), Wright once more complains that the Reformers simply did not read Paul with his own concerns in mind, such as God’s plan “to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10), with the two peoples (Jew and Gentile) becoming one family in Christ in fulfillment of the promise to Abraham (p. 43).

A cursory reading of Calvin’s Ephesians commentary tells a different story. Nevertheless, Wright states confidently: “And, as I have argued before and hope to show here once more, many of the supposedly ordinary readings within the Western Protestant traditions have simply not paid attention to what Paul actually wrote” (p. 50). The Reformation tradition simply doesn’t see any “organic connection between justification by faith on the one hand and the inclusion of the Gentiles within God’s people on the other” (p. 53).

In this, as in his earlier works, Wright practically never offers a single footnote for his manifold assertions concerning Reformation exegesis. However, he hangs much on the slender thread of several quotes from Alister McGrath’s expansive yet controversial study of the history of the doctrine of justification, Iustitia Dei. Assuming discontinuity more than refinement, McGrath argues (as approvingly cited by Wright, p. 80), “The ‘doctrine of justification’ has come to bear a meaning within dogmatic theolog y which is quite independent of its Pauline origins” (Iustitia Dei, pp.2–3).

According to Wright (and McGrath), justification “has regularly been made to do duty for the entire picture of God’s reconciling action toward the human race, covering everything from God’s free love and grace, through the sending of the son to die and rise again for sinners, through the preaching of the gospel, the work of the Spirit, the arousal of faith in human hearts and minds, the development of Christian character and conduct, the assurance of ultimate salvation, and the safe passage through final judgment to that destination” (Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, p. 86).

This is simply not true. The main point of the Reformation was to stress the distinction between justification and the other gifts of salvation. It was Rome’s confusion of justification and sanctification that the Reformers challenged.

For all of his concern about ecclesiology

exegetes had read Paul and Judaism as if Judaism was a form of the old heresy Pelagianism, according to which humans must pull themselves up by their bootstraps and thereby earn justification… No, said Sanders. Keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a covenantal scheme. God took the initiative, when he made a covenant with Judaism; God’s grace thus precedes everything that people (specifically, Jews) do in response. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude… not, in other words, in order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in.

In the place of the traditional Protestant view, Sanders coined the now-famous term covenantal nomism. Under this scheme, which he detected as the normative Jewish view in Paul’s time, he posited that Jews entered God’s covenant by grace and stayed in by works. According to Sanders, Paul did not reject this scheme of salvation when he became an apostle of Jesus Christ. He added to it his belief that Jesus is Lord, and therefore the one through whom the covenant offers atonement. The covenantal nomism that Paul taught, according to Sanders: is the view that one’s place in God’s plan is established on the basis of the covenant and that the covenant requires as the proper response of man his obedience to its commandments. . . . Obedience maintains one’s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God’s grace as such. . . . Righteousness in Judaism is a term which implies the maintenance of status among the group of the elect.

Notice the shift that takes place in this scheme: “righteousness” no longer denotes one’s legal standing before God but one’s membership in the covenant community.

The next major figure in the New Perspective is James D.G. Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, England. Dunn tackled one of Paul’s important expressions, that threatened the emerging perspective on justification, namely, “works of the law” (erga nomou). Romans 3:28 says, for instance, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” That would seem to threaten Sanders’ appraisal of Paul’s attitude towards justification and the supposed covenantal nomism of Second Temple Judaism. But Dunn solves this problem by arguing that “works of the law” refers not to the attainment of God’s moral requirements, but rather to the observance of those ceremonial ethnic markers such as circumcision and table requirements. Paul is talking about the Torah, not about some legalistic works-righteousness. Dunn writes: His denial that justification is from works of law is, more precisely, a denial that justification depends on circumcision or on observation of the Jewish purity and food taboos. . . . “Works of the law” are nowhere understood here, either by his Jewish interlocutors or by Paul himself, as works which earn God’s favour, as merit-amassing observances. They are rather seen as badges: they are simply what membership of the covenant people involves, what mark out the Jews as God’s people.

The implication of this

works from the new perspective. His works have echoed the same charge as Sanders and Dunn, namely the Protestant reading of Paul has been influenced by alien theological issues.  Along similar lines to Sanders and Dunn, Wright argues: Judaism in Paul’s day was not, as has regularly been supposed, a religion of legalistic works-righteousness. If we imagine that it was, and that Paul was attacking it as if it was, we will do great violence to it and to him. Most Protestant exegetes had read Paul and Judaism as if Judaism was a form of the old heresy Pelagianism, according to which humans must pull themselves up by their moral bootstraps and thereby earn justification, righteousness, and salvation. No, said Sanders. Keeping the law within Judaism always functioned within a covenantal scheme. God took the initiative, when he made a covenant with Judaism; God’s grace thus precedes everything that people (specifically, Jews) do in response. The Jew keeps the law out of gratitude, as the proper response to grace—not, in other words, in order to get into the covenant people, but to stay in.  Being ‘in’ in the first place was God’s gift.

One can easily see the approbation of the general theses of the new perspective in Wright’s statement. Elsewhere, in commenting about the significance of the ministry of Christ, Wright contends that traditional interpretations miss the mark. Wright states: Those who heeded Jesus’ call to audition for the kingdom-play that God was staging through him found themselves facing a challenge.  Christians from quite early in the church’s life have allowed themselves to see this challenge as a new rule book, as though his intention was simply to offer a new code of morality. This has become problematic within the Reformation in particular, where people have been sensitive about the danger of putting one’s human ‘good works’ logically prior to the faith by which one is justified. But that was not the point.

Now, this is not to say that Wright agrees with Sanders and Dunn on every point; the overall agreement on the major premises, however, is evident. 

These accusations and affirmations obviously raise several questions. Is the Reformation reading of Paul colored by the ancient Pelagian controversy? Have Protestant exegetes since the Reformation misunderstood first century Judaism and what Paul means by ‘works of the law’? What does this mean for the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone? In an effort to answer these questions, we will first survey N.T. Wright’s views on Paul’s doctrine of justification. Second, we will then compare and contrast them with the views of John Calvin, one of the chief second-generation reformers. By this comparison, we will be able to evaluate whether the claims of the new perspective, at least as they come from the pen of N.T. Wright, are valid. Lastly, we will conclude with some general observations about the new perspective on Paul and its growing influence in the Reformed community.

N. T. Wright on Justification The Righteousness of God When we come to the new perspective from the pen of N.T. Wright, one does not find himself

Jewish problem!). Sanders strains the natural exegesis of the text (see Rom. 3:27-4:8; 9:30- 10:8; Phil. 3:2-11) in denying legalism. For instance, in Rom. 4:4 Paul speaks against the one who does works in order to receive wages from God. These wages are a debt God owes to human beings who have done the requisite works. This text cannot be dismissed as a polemic against legalism. Sanders also seems tone deaf to what is a constant in human existence, the pride which C. S. Lewis calls the root sin. I would contend, from an exegesis of the forementioned texts, that Martin Luther's interpretation of the NT is more on target than his modern critics. He was profoundly right in detecting a polemic against legalism in the New Testament.

Heikki Räisänen

Evangelical students are tempted to dismiss and ignore Heikki Räisänen's work since he detects so many contradictions in Paul's theology. This would be a serious mistake for Räisänen raises all the right questions, and even if his answers are flawed he helps us see problems in the text with which we need to grapple. Adequate space is not available here to respond in detail to Räisänen. The fundamental problem, however, is that he fails to read Paul sympathetically and contextually. Wherever he detects a logical problem in Paul's statements on the law, Räisänen concludes that a logical contradiction is present. But in virtually every case an examination of context resolves the alleged difficulties. For instance, Jeffrey A. D. Weima has demonstrated that the so-called contradictions relating to the law and sin yield a coherent sense. And Frank Thielman, by studying the Pauline statements on the law in the particular context in which they were made, shows that his theology is consistent.

James Dunn

Dunn's approach to Paul and the law is much more promising than either Sanders or Räisänen, for he attempts to understand and explain the Pauline theology of the law at a deeper level than the former two scholars. Moreover, he correctly identifies a major theme in Pauline theology. The inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God was a driving force in the Pauline mission, for it was Paul's ambition to plant churches where there were none and to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations (Rom. 1:5; 15:15-21; 16:26). Therefore, Paul passionately resisted Peter in Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14), for Peter's hypocritical actions in effect excluded the Gentiles from the people of God unless they became Jews. We can also agree with Dunn when he establishes a connection between the cessation of Torah and the inclusion of the Gentiles. Circumcision, food laws, and sabbath were boundary markers that erected barriers between Jews and Gentiles. When Paul heralds the end of the Mosaic law (Gal. 3:15-4:7; 2 Cor. 3:4-18), one of his purposes was to tear down the dividing wall that separated Jews and Gentiles (Eph. 2:11-22). The laws which signalled to all that Jews and Gentiles were profoundly different were now passé. Now Jews and Gentiles

the other apostles were called by Jesus to be the foundation of the church. He commissioned them to carry the Gospel to the world. When Philip, one of the seven, took the Gospel to Samaria, Peter and John came to recognize this work. With prayer and the laying on of their hands, the gift of the Spirit was given.

Prayer continued in the mission of the apostles. Peter opened the door of the Gospel to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, a praying Gentile believer. God had heard this Gentile's prayers and cleansed him through faith. Later, when Peter was freed from prison by an angel, he knew where to find the Christians. They were praying in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark.

The prophets and teaching elders at Antioch, meeting for fasting and prayer, were directed by the Holy Spirit to set apart Saul and Barnabas for the mission to which God had called them. After more fasting and prayer, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. As Paul established churches, he appointed elders, again with prayer and fasting.

Paul's own ministry was centered in prayer, as we know from his epistles. To the Philippians Paul wrote, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy" (Phil. 1:3). In countless trials, Paul's refuge was prayer and praise. Paul and Silas, sitting in stocks at Philippi, ignored their bleeding backs. They sang God's praises and prayed. An earthquake was the Lord's response, freeing them and saving their jailer.

On the way to Jerusalem, Paul stopped to meet the gathered Ephesian elders. He knelt on the beach and prayed. He knew the warnings of prophets who foretold what suffering waited for him in Jerusalem, but his purpose, shaped in prayer, drove him on. In Jerusalem, Paul's arrest by the Romans saved his life from a mob of Jews in the temple court. He appealed his case to Caesar, and was shipped to Rome—praying for his shipmates in the storm, and for those in Malta where the ship was wrecked.

Read Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:14–21 and hear him afresh as he knelt on the beach at Miletus with the Ephesian elders. You will see the intersection of Paul's prayer life and his public ministry. The two are always bound together. Jesus was in large part the person He was because of His prayers. Paul was the same. As are we all.

If we engage in activity that we think is evil, even if it isn’t, we enter the realm of sin by acting against our conscience. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul calls us to cultivate consciences that align with the priorities of the kingdom of God.

Why does God choose to save some people and not others? This age-old question prompts important theological discussion, yet it also calls us to reflect on the depths of God’s grace. In this sermon, R.C. Sproul teaches on God’s sovereignty in salvation, a truth that reveals His rich mercy.

In the gospel, God powerfully calls people out of slavery to sin and sets them apart for a new life in Christ. In this opening sermon from his expositional series in the book of Romans, R.C. Sproul examines Paul’s Apostolic calling—as well as the calling that every Christian experiences when they come to know Jesus Christ as Lord.

Let’s continue the experiment we began in the previous meditation. Study the excerpts from the apostle Paul that accompany this reading. Does this sound like a man who believed the law of God has no place in the Christian life? Read Paul’s writings carefully and you will find a man whose heart longed for the law of God as much as David’s.

The law drives us to the gospel. The gospel saves us from the curse of the law, but in turn directs us back to the law to search its spirit. The law of God is still a lamp to our feet. Without it we stumble and trip and grope in darkness.

For the Christian, the greatest benefit of the law of God is its revelatory character. The law reveals to us the Lawgiver. It teaches us what is pleasing in His sight. We need to seek the law of God—to pant after it—and to delight in it. Anything less is an offense against the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

One of the signature confessions of the Reformed tradition, the Westminster Confession of Faith stands out for its comprehensive summary of biblical doctrine. Chapter 14 of this confession deals with saving faith, explaining that "the grace of faith, whereby the elect are enabled to believe to the saving of their souls, is the work of the Spirit of Christ in their hearts" (14.1). This statement asserts that faith, although it is something we exercise, does not find its origin ultimately in our will or in our cooperation with divine grace. Instead, saving faith is a gift to us from the Holy Spirit. He is its ultimate origin, and we exercise faith because of His work in our hearts. It follows that since the Holy Spirit is omnipotent, we will not fail to possess faith if He works it in our hearts. Salvation from beginning to end is guaranteed by the Spirit, who gives us faith and sustains it forever.

The confession draws on Ephesians 2:1–10 at this point. Verse 8 is key, telling us that we have been saved by grace through faith, and that "this" is not our own doing. But to what does the term "this" refer? Is it grace? Is it faith? Is it both?

Conceptually speaking, grace is by nature a gift, so it seems odd that "this" would refer exclusively to grace. If so, then Paul would be saying that the gift of grace is a gift; this is redundant. But if the term "this" refers to grace and to faith, we find no redundancy. The entire package of grace and faith is a gift of God, and it makes far more sense for Paul to have to tell us explicitly that grace and faith are gifts than it would be to tell us that only grace is a gift. We already knew that grace was a gift before we read Paul's letter.

Grammatically speaking, the Greek of the passage can have the whole package of grace and faith as the antecedent to which "this" refers, and the rest of Scripture confirms that the gift Paul speaks of must include our faith. Only those who are "born again" can see the kingdom, Jesus says (John 3:3). We cannot even see the kingdom, let alone enter it by faith, unless and until the Spirit changes our hearts. We are first born again; then, and only then, will we believe in Jesus.

Ephesians 2:1 says that we are dead in sin apart from Christ. God must draw us, and when He draws a person to Him, He does so effectually. Everyone whom He draws He raises up at the last day (John 6:44). Faith is God's gift to us, and if He gives it to us, we will possess it forever.

Roman Christians who read Paul's epistle to the church in Rome could easily have interpreted some of what the Apostle says in his letter as a sharp rebuke. For example, Paul's exhortation not to separate over minor issues and his warnings to the Gentiles not to boast in their position relative to the Jews might have been received as stern scoldings that charged the Roman believers with full engagement with these sins (Rom. 11:17-24; 14:1-15:7). Yet that was not at all how the Apostle viewed the Christians in Rome, which is why he reassures the original audience of his epistle as he begins to bring his letter to a close.

We find these reassuring words in today's passage. Despite everything that has been said, Paul was not worried that the problems to which he has alluded would be ongoing struggles for the Roman church. He affirms his conviction that his readers are "full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another" (Rom. 15:14). "Goodness" translates a Greek term that refers to moral uprightness as well as kindness and generosity. Essentially, Paul says that the Roman Christians exhibit those fruits of the Spirit that promote unity in the body of Christ that is grounded in the truth of Scripture and the love of God (see Gal. 5:22-23). In addition, Paul speaks of the Romans as full of all knowledge, which does not mean that they know everything there is to know about God and His truth. Instead, his point is that they are well grounded in the gospel, that they know the core of their faith inside and out. Paul has helped them learn to apply what they know about Christ in their context, but he has not presented them with a gospel that is foreign to them.

Paul's sensitivity to his audience and his desire that they not misinterpret his attitude toward them does not stem from any lack of confidence in his own authority. As an Apostle of Jesus the Messiah, Paul knows that he has the right and duty to instruct the Romans even though he did not plant the church in Rome (Rom. 15:15). More specifically, Paul is given the grace to exercise priestly ministry unto the Lord for the sake of the Gentiles (v. 16). The Apostle speaks metaphorically here. He does not endorse an ongoing system of priestly mediation such as we find in the Old Testament; rather, his work in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles so that they will believe and be acceptable to the Lord is like a priest's work in offering up sacrifices to God. In being used of the Spirit to bring the Gentiles to faith, Paul hands them over, as it were, to God as His precious possession (see 1 Peter 2:9).

Using a series of quotes from the Old Testament, Paul draws together in Romans 3:10ï¾– 18 the threads of his argument that Jews and Gentiles are both guilty of breaking God's law and stand condemned before Him. After introducing the quotes by citing the universality of sin and its effects on the mind (vv. 10ï¾–11), the Apostle looks in verses 12ï¾–14 at how the depth of our depravity manifests itself in our actions.

Verse 12 describes all human beings in Adamï¾—that is, all human beings outside of Christï¾—as "worthless." We need to be careful here not to read Paul's quote of Psalms 14:3 and 53:3 as if human beings have lost all the dignity they possess by virtue of being made in God's image (Gen. 1:26ï¾–27). The idea is one of thoroughgoing corruption that results in uselessness with respect to the things of the Lord. In other words, apart from divine grace, human beings do not and cannot fulfill the task for which they were made, namely, to bring all creation under dominion in imitation of the wise and sovereign providential rule of our Creator. We do not serve God with the strength or focus that we ought, and if the standard by which one is declared righteous before Him is perfection, then outside of Christ we are indeed worthless servants of the Lord. Human beings are not born into a natural state of being on "God's side." Actually, we hate Him and seek to overthrow His rightful claim upon our lives both overtly and with subtlety. Nothing we do truly pleases Him as long as we are not in Christ. In his commentary on Romans, John Murray puts it quite well: "As respects well-doing there is not one; as respects evil-doing, there is no exception."

Romans 3:13ï¾–14 quotes Psalms 5:10; 10:7; and 140:4 to show how deep sin runs by looking at our throats, lips, tongues, and mouths, all of which are organs related to our speech. Scripture tells us that our tongues have great power, not in the sense that they are magical tools but in that words of blessing and cursing have powerful, lasting, and often permanent effects on ourselves and others. "Death and life are in the power of the tongue" (Prov. 18:21), and God made us to bestow life with our speech through edifying and encouraging words, the proclamation of His truth, and so on (15:4; 1 Peter 3:10). But if even those who are in Christ need to be told to stay away from "corrupting talk" (Eph. 4:29), then surely the sinfulness of humanity is so deep that it penetrates even our words. No one can claim to have kept God's law in what they have done or what they have said.

Paul’s discussion of the way men are to pray in public worship (1 Tim. 2:8) is a natural transition from his words about prayer in general (vv. 1–7) to how women should act when Christians assemble (vv. 9–15). As always, our analysis of verses 9–10 is well-served by considering the text’s cultural background.

Scholarship has revealed the “new Roman woman” of first-century Roman society whose attitudes — sexual libertinism, fueled by increasingly available contraception and abortion, and rebellion against male headship in the home — were close to those of modern, radical feminism. Jewish and pagan authors alike condemned such things, noting that a woman’s clothing could show her feelings on these subjects. Wives influenced by this “feminism” often traded the modest, many-layered garment called the stola for the more-revealing toga associated with prostitutes. “New” women commonly wore elaborate, braided hairstyles adorned with ribbons, tortoise-shell combs, and gold and silver pins. Unfortunately, this philosophy and dress affected many Christian women, if not toward sexual libertinism then toward the reversal of family roles. The false teachers in Ephesus may have even encouraged some of these practices.

Women who dressed this way did not commend Christianity to the Jews and pagans who frowned upon the new Roman woman, and their seductive dress would have been no help to the men in the believing community who struggled with lust. One commentator notes how the sparkling reflection of bejeweled hairstyles in candlelight during evening worship would also have taken the focus off of God. Knowing that godly women desire to point others to the Lord, not themselves, Paul told them not to focus on cosmetic enhancement but good works (vv. 9–10) that lead people to glorify our Father (Matt. 5:16).

Given this background and the approval of jewelry elsewhere in Scripture (Song 1:10–11), it seems best not to read Paul’s words as an absolute prohibition of precious stones and metals. He simply calls women to use good judgment and modesty when they dress and to emphasize deeds of service over their outward appearance. This principle must be heard anew in our own day.

Paul’s profound statement regarding our adoption as sons of God in Galatians 3:28 is hotly debated in our day. Liberals often promote radical feminism and perversion with this verse. Some conservatives who embrace biblical sexuality and the deity of Christ believe this verse allows female headship in the home and in the church while other orthodox Christians do not read Paul in this way.

We must always distinguish between the faithful who believe the Bible endorses female headship from those who hate our Lord. Many who love Scripture believe male headship results from the fall and is overturned by the cross. But is this interpretation tenable?

The presence of the tree of life in the new Jerusalem (Rev. 22:1–5) makes it plain that Eden’s restoration is the final goal of salvation. In many ways, life in glory will be greater than Eden, for unlike Adam, we will be non posse peccare — not able to sin (Heb. 12:23). Nevertheless, the life described in Genesis 1–2 is normative for all believers.

These chapters clearly affirm male headship prior to the fall into sin. As we have seen, Adam’s naming of the woman demonstrates his authority over Eve (2:23). Moreover, Adam’s greater culpability for the fall (God spoke to Him first, 3:9) and his being made first (2:7) both suggest men have authority in their homes and in the church.

Yet men are not more important than women. Like the persons of the Trinity, men and women are fully equal but have distinct roles (John 1:1; 5:19). Furthermore, while women may not be elders (Titus 1:5–9), they are not prohibited from occupying many positions of leadership. And though women must submit to godly church elders, believing men must do the same (1 Peter 5:1–5).

Today’s passage reminds us that under the new covenant, husbands have authority over their wives. This is a loving authority (Eph. 5:25), and therefore any emotional, verbal, or physical violence toward women is strictly forbidden (Mal. 2:16). Moreover, wives are not called to submit to all men, but only to their husbands who must be willing to lay down their very lives for the sake of their brides — just as Christ “gave himself up” for the church (Eph. 5:22–27).