Does the death and resurrection of Christ affect how you live today? Paul tells it should! In Romans 6:1-14 Paul tells us three ‘effects’ of Christ’s death and resurrection for all who have been united with him through faith: we have died to sin and are no longer enslaved by it; we have been raised with him and now live to God, walking in newness of life; and we will be united with him in a resurrection like his. Because of these gospel truths, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, not letting sin reign in […]

How much can depend on one man? The gospel answer to this is ‘Everything’. In fact, we need to see that our personal and social problems are not just our own. We are part of a world problem, started and even caused by our forefather Adam. Seeing it this way tells us our problem is a problem with God and this is a step in the right direction. But Jesus is another ‘Adam’, another start to the human race. What hope there is in this! Our starting point is not a miserable act of lawlessness but God’s wonderful grace and […]

We all like to be known for something. And many of us like to boast of that very thing – just to make sure others know about it. Having shown the emptiness of all our self-righteous, hypocritical and fleshly boasting, Paul now gives us something worth boasting about. God has so acted in Christ that he has completely altered how and where we stand before him. No longer are we condemned as sinners, we have been justified. No longer are we under the law, we now stand in the grace of God. And in this we rejoice, or boast – […]

This Friday we gather to remember and reflect upon our Saviour’s betrayal, arrest and crucifixion, and the death he died for us. Our service begins at 9:30am and will be followed with Hot Cross Buns. On Sunday we will celebrate our Lord’s resurrection and the new life given freely to all who believe in Him. Jesus was ‘delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.’ From Romans 5 we learn that ‘since we have been justified by faith we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

This week we will look at Romans 4:13-25 where Paul makes it clear that God’s promise to Abraham depended on faith and was never going to be fulfilled through the law. This same promise is guaranteed to all who share the faith of Abraham. Paul goes on to explain the essence of this faith of Abraham, which we will see is nothing less than ‘resurrection faith’ – faith in God who gives life to the dead. Just as Abraham’s faith was counted to him as righteousness, so too, it will be counted to those who share this ‘resurrection faith’, believing […]

Grant will preach this week on Romans 4:1-12. He writes, “Israel’s two greatest heroes trusted God for the things most dear to their hearts—their justification. Neither of them had a leg to stand on when God pronounced them righteous. Neither do we. See if you can find the 8 times Paul uses the work ‘count’ or ‘reckon’ in our reading. God reckons on what Christ has done to save us. We need to count on the same as him and live in the blessing this brings into our lives.”

After many weeks of hearing Paul lump us all together, Jews and Gentiles alike, under sin and deserving the wrath of God, we finally reach the place in Romans where Paul wonderfully declares the gospel of salvation from this fearful judgment. He does this in the space of a few verses, declaring God to be both just and the one who justifies sinners by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood for us. This righteousness and redemption is available for all who believe. If the Jews had […]

Having accused his fellow Jews of presuming upon God’s loving kindness early in chapter two, this week as we consider Romans 2:12-29 we will hear Paul further his charges against them. He now charges them with hypocrisy – as those who have the law, and teach it to others, but constantly break it themselves. It is not those who have, hear or rely on the law who will be justified, but those who keep it. This is only fulfilled when one’s heart has been circumcised, not by the letter of the law, but by the Spirit of God. Righteous is […]

Last week we saw how Paul indicted the Gentile world for its sin and rejection of God’s glory. As a result, God’s wrath was being revealed from heaven against their ungodliness and unrighteousness. This week, in Romans 2:1-11, Paul charges his fellow Jews with the same indictment – they too are sinners and cannot escape God’s judgment. This would have caught his Jewish readers completely off guard. They had become complacent and were presuming God, in his forbearance and patience, would treat them with far more favour than any Gentile. Paul makes it clear to both the Jew and the […]

This week we look at verses 8-17 of Paul’s first chapter to the Romans where we hear of his longing to visit the believers in Rome. For both their encouragement and his own, he is eager to preach the gospel to them, in order that he might reap some harvest among them. Despite Rome being the ‘power-house’ of the day, Paul is not ashamed to declare that in the gospel lies the ultimate power, the very power of God for salvation, to which every other power must submit to, because in the gospel ‘the righteousness of God is revealed’. In […]