Tag: Paul
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 16 [21]): The Epistle Passage – Our function and call within the Body of the Lord God
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1) Often times there is the presumption that what we do with or to our bodies is separate and distinct from what we…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 15 [20]): The Epistle Passage – Once again, Paul speaks forth
“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” (Romans 11:1-2a) Paul, being a Jew and standing firm in that identity, does not believe God can be seen…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 14 [19]): The Epistle Passage – Going another round with Paul
The late afternoon/early evening that I sat down to write this, it got up to 97 degrees with hotter weather for tomorrow. So what better time to sit down and wrestle more with a passage from Romans! “Moses writes concerning the righteousness that comes from the law, that “the person who does these things will…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 13 [18]): The Epistles Passage – Mapping some slippery slopes with Paul
“I am speaking the truth in Christ–I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit– “ (Romans 9:1) Call me a skeptic of long running, but many times when someone tells me they are speaking the truth, I prick me ears up and discern whether they are really lying. Maybe it is…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 12 [17]): The Epistles Passage – It can be a hard life, beloved reader
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26) Paul has just got done exhorting us to hope, just as I have commended to hope even though you cannot see what you…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 10 [15]) : The Epistle Passage – Wrestling with Paul’s theology again
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 9 [14]) : The Epistle Passage – Paul leads us through an obstacle course of theology
“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) What Paul, the writer of Romans, wants to do is follow God’s will. What he says he ends up doing is the opposite of God’s will and that is human…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 8 [13]) : The Epistle Passages – Paul discerns between law and grace
“Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin…
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Season after Pentecost (Proper 6 [11]) : Epistle Passage – The Beginning of Faith
“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.” (Romans 5:1-2) Boasting – it is not something that you would expect a…
A Simple Desire 