| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 47 secs | 0 Comments
These chapters are difficult and controversial! The American Religious Right has bought into Zionism and so US foreign policy follows that. Many Christians, inspired by the Scofield Bible and US Television preachers, buy into a version of Christianity which I believe is wholly at odds with Paul’s writings here, and based on a misunderstanding […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 25 secs | 0 Comments
Righteous by law observance = no-one Righteous by faith through God’s grace = anyone We don’t need to look for Jesus in heaven or anywhere else, he is close at hand. Close at hand when people like us open our mouths and tell others. Verse 9, which we use in baptism services, tells us if […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 0 secs | 0 Comments
Yesterday we started to look at the question, ‘If God is sovereign and chooses who to save and who to harden, how can we be responsible?’. God is patient in his wrath, wanting all to have the chance to repent. In Chapter 1 we saw that God’s wrath is currently shown in giving people over […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 57 secs | 0 Comments
Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, but he is a Jew, an ex-Pharisee and a Hebrew of Hebrews (Phil 3:5), so of course he is aggrieved that Jews have rejected the Messiah as much as he is passionate about the Gentile mission. This is a fairly complicated passage, probably one of the ones Peter […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 20 secs | 0 Comments
In our life group we have been going through Crazy Love by Francis Chan and a couple of weeks ago I was challenged by discussion on where our home really is – that we can get far to comfy here on earth with friends and families and jobs and houses that we never want to […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 3 secs | 0 Comments
I’m an armchair mountaineer; which is a little strange as I’m scared of heights and wouldn’t real-life climb for all the tea in China! I loved Joe Simpson’s “Touching the Void” and have just finished Bear Gryll’s “Facing Up”, describing his ascent of Everest. He reached the pinnacle, the summit, safely and made it back […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 48 secs | 0 Comments
Romans 7:7-25 is one of those passages that people take in isolation from the thread that Paul has been building thus far, and therefore get wrong. This is not describing the battle of the Christian life. Sure the Christian life is a battle, but this passage should not be used to describe your struggles with […]
| By Andy Moyle | 4 mins 51 secs | 0 Comments
Sin, law, grace, … and marriage?? I love the fact that twice in chapter 6 of Romans, the ‘logical’ conclusion of what Paul says is “let’s keep sinning because of grace”. To me that shows good grace based teaching. Of course the conclusion is wrong (hence the inverted commas around ‘logical’). However when grace is […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 45 secs | 0 Comments
If in our reading of Romans to this point we are not asking the question “Can we continue in sin then?”, we have not understood grace yet. Grace begs that question. The answer is “By no means!”, “Perish the thought!”, “No way, man!” Throughout the book of Romans, Paul asks a series of questions with […]