Digging in Deeper: 2 Corinthians 3:12

1 Comment

“Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

A few weeks ago I was in the Lego Store with my family and saw their Bumblebee set. I’m not talking about the bug. I’m talking about the Transformer, great warrior, and loyal friend of Optimus Prime. It may be one of the cooler sets I’ve built because it actually transforms from a VW Bug to a robot. It’s sitting on my desk in robot mode now, but I switch it up every now and then just for fun. I love Transformers. I also love cartoons. Because of this, I was most excited to see the new Transformers movie, Transformers One. I didn’t get to catch it in theaters because life, but I finally got to watch it recently. Let’s talk about it.

Read the rest…

Digging in Deeper: Romans 6:3-5

4 Comments

“Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I am a Baptist preacher. We Baptists love baptism. It’s kind of in the name. And when we say the word, we mean it with its original Greek meaning. The word batidzo, from which our English word is merely a transliteration rather than a translation, means to immerse something in water, not to merely sprinkle some water over it. One of the two things that makes a Baptist church a Baptist church is a requirement that a person has been baptized before they can be a member. Yet as important as the practice is to us, we didn’t invent it. In fact, Christians generally didn’t invent it. Lots of religions used some form of baptism as an initiatory and cleansing rite. We simply took something that was already in existence and added our own unique symbolism to it. Here we find Paul talking about some of that symbolism. Let’s walk through this with him.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 6:1-2

Leave a comment

“What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you write a lot of things, you occasionally find when you go to write something new that you’ve written it before. That happened a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to studying Romans 6 in preparation for writing about it as we continue our journey. More specifically, I discovered that I had written about these two verses before. I also found myself agreeing with what I said then. So, with some updates after six years, and for the first time ever in nearly eight years of writing this blog, here’s a repeat of an old post.

What should be the relationship of a follower of Jesus to sin? Obviously we shouldn’t do it, but let’s be honest: a simple “ought not” isn’t usually sufficient to keep us from it. We need to understand the why behind the ought before we’re going to wrap our hearts and minds around it to a sufficient degree that it begins to have the kind of power in our lives it needs to have. Here in beginning of Romans 6, after Paul has just been telling us about the power of grace in light of the power of sin, the apostle explores this very idea. His treatment may not be exhaustive, but it is powerful. Let’s start unpacking this today, and continue with Paul on the idea over the next several days.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Romans 5:20-21

1 Comment

“The law came along to multiply the trespass. But where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Every relationship has boundaries. Those boundaries exist whether we are aware of them or not. If we violate those boundaries ignorantly, we may not necessarily be intentionally at fault of anything, but we still have departed from the relationship. Knowing exactly where the boundaries are is helpful, but it also makes our transgressing them all the more problematic because now we know what we are doing. When God gave the Law He made the problem of sin even worse than it already was. But He also set the stage for even more powerfully making things right. Let’s explore this together as we finish off chapter five today.

Read the rest…

See

2 Comments

We have spent the past six weeks looking at different miracles Jesus performed over the course of His ministry. Some of the miracles have been pretty dramatic. Others fairly easily blend into the background of all the other miracles Jesus did. Some were directly beneficial to a particular individual or group. At least one didn’t seem like it really helped anyone. For all of the variety among these miracles, the one thing the apostle John notes that draws them all together is the fact that they were all really signs intended to point beyond the miracles themselves to something deeper and richer lying behind them: a vision of God’s kingdom and who Jesus really was. This next miraculous sign brings attention and emphasis to Jesus’ efforts to help us see. Let’s talk about His healing a man born blind.

See

For someone accustomed to sight, being blindfolded can be a disorienting experience. I remember once our youth minister did an activity to teach us about trusting Jesus where they had us all put on blindfolds, loaded us in the church van, and took us to a park across town, but didn’t tell us where we were going. If you can believe it, I was the smart-alecky kid who kept up with all the turns the van made and knew exactly where we were the whole time. That’s not totally my fault though, as the driver took all the main roads and didn’t try to disguise the route at all. It so happened that I had a pretty thorough map of the city firmly rooted in my memory then. Without that, though, I would have been sorely tempted to peek through the blindfold just so I knew where I was. Being able to see is essential to getting through life.

Read the rest…