What is the kingdom of God like? It’s like wheat growing among weeds, like a mustard seed in the ground, like a little leaven in a lump. The kingdom of heaven is the rumble underneath the earth, waiting for the time of eruption. It’s growing by leaps and bounds, swallowing up the world, until that final day when Jesus returns and makes all things new.
Jesus takes to the floating pulpit as his congregation gathers on the shore. The time has come to teach about his Father’s kingdom. He’s miraculously healed their diseases with his hands; now it’s time to touch their hearts with his words.
God’s grace is amazing and all-encompassing. But the joyful, full-bodied Christian life is not something we can drift into. It is something we press into. Every opportunity to do good, to be known, to love well is available to us. Whatever we sow we will reap. What are we sowing? What do we expect to reap?
The truth is, we are all either an Ishmael or an Isaac. We are either a child of slavery or a child of freedom. How we relate to God’s word determines which we are. If we, like Paul, hold to the gospel message as God himself first proclaimed it in the person of Jesus Christ, we are Isaac. But if we, like the false teachers, believe the gospel needs our works to gain full righteousness before God, we are Ishmael.
None of us have empty hearts. All of us are accepting something, or someone, all the time. So, what, or who, is being formed in you?
Every Christian must understand the times in which they are living. Christ came, fulfilled the law, and rose to grant new, abundant life. But the hope of the resurrection is still out in the future. We live in the in-between time—the already but not yet. We are post-law people in a pre-resurrection state.
When obedience comes first in our message, the gospel becomes a side dish rather than the entire meal.
The exchange between Peter and Paul in Galatians 2 shows us what happens when the gospel culture we’re creating goes against the gospel doctrine we proclaim.
Are you holding the pen and drawing lines or are you resting inside the bloodline Jesus has drawn?
Paul’s Judaism led him to persecute the church of God. What Paul was doing was an attack on the people he thought he was protecting: God’s elect. His desire for the purity of God’s word drove him to approve the killing of God’s people because he believed they were redefining the boundaries of Israel by following Jesus. He had no idea that Jesus had redefined the boundaries for them. It wasn’t their message. It was God’s. Paul just hadn’t heard it yet. When Paul did hear the gospel, he experienced a complete life change.
In the book of Galatians, Paul tells us what the gospel is and what it isn’t so that we stick close to it. Who would stray from the gospel, you may ask? You and I, that’s who. The storms are always forming on the horizon. Let’s beware lest we deny the message that saved us.
Paul is nearly finished with his letter to the Romans. Before he signs off for good, he sends some greetings and a final exhortation.
In chapter 14 Paul takes all he’s explained already and applies it to one specific case to show how the gospel transforms the individual and the community at the same time. He shows how gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture.
In Romans 13, Paul helps us think through how to approach government and its role in our life, and how love for others and Christ compels our lives to be lived differently.
In Romans 1-11, Paul lays out the foundation for gospel doctrine. In Romans 12, he begins to explain how that gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture.
because the Jews twisted the law from a pointer to God into a ladder to God, when Christ appeared, Israel stumbled over him because they had always stumbled over the law.
Romans 9-11 is not easy to grasp, but if you are willing to work through the initial pushback, you’ll find behind these words a big God. And as Michael Bird says, “If you wrestle with a big God, you will begin to develop big faith muscles.”
We can’t know everything about God, but one thing we can know is summed up in verse 28, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
