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In the last post we saw Paul lay out the first piece of his argument that everyone is in the same boat before God and needs salvation. That first piece used common Jewish stories about Gentiles to make the case that those who have never even heard of the Law and the Prophets have no … Continue reading God’s Impartiality: Romans 2.1-24

In Romans 1.16-17 Paul proclaimed the thesis of his letter: That the good triumphal news to which he has unashamedly devoted his life reveals God’s justice in God’s welcoming everyone, both Jew and Gentile, into the Kingdom of Heaven. Today’s text (1.18-32) starts the first big section of the letter’s body, a lengthy argument that … Continue reading No Excuse, or A Story about Outsiders: Romans 1.18-32

Back when I did the series on Ephesians a few years ago, I developed a habit of pausing at the end of big chunks of text and writing a targum on it. A targum, which is a historical genre of Jewish literature, is essentially a translation but also interpretive paraphrase of a biblical text. I … Continue reading A Targum on Romans 1.1-17

We’ve been taking our time unpacking Romans 1.16-17, which mark the thesis statement for the letter as a whole. So far we’ve unpacked the meaning of the two critical pieces of vocabulary in the text, dikaiosyne (’justice, righteousness’) and pistis (and related words, ‘faith(fulness)’), and Paul’s quote from Habakkuk 2.4, which we saw is an … Continue reading God’s Justice Revealed: Romans 1.16-17, Part 3

We’re in the middle of a three-part miniseries looking at Paul’s thesis statement for his Epistle to the Romans. Last time we looked at his key vocabulary of faith and justice. Today we’ll turn to his use of Habakkuk 2.4 within the thesis statement. (For the introductory Experience and Encounter steps of the study, please … Continue reading The Just One Shall Live by Faith: Romans 1.16-17, Part 2