The Power of the Gospel

God gives pastors a remarkable responsibility: to keep watch over our souls. And for this, they must give an account (Heb. 13:17). One of the ways that you can encourage your pastor is by listening to him, not only when he encourages you from God’s Word but also when he does the hard work of calling you to repentance from God’s Word.

Luther was an expert in the law of God, and every day he was in terror as he looked in the mirror of the law and examined his life against God’s righteousness. We are not in terror, because we have blocked out the view of God’s righteousness. We judge ourselves on a curve, measuring ourselves against others. We never judge ourselves according to th

As we will see later in Romans 1, Paul labors the point that God has manifested Himself so clearly to every human being that nobody has an excuse for denying Him. When Jesus is declared to be God’s Son through the power of the resurrection, that declaration may be all that we ever get. We might be like Thomas and say, “Unless I see in His hands the

In the New Testament, the title “lord” or kurios is used in three ways. There is a simple, common usage, where calling someone kurios is like addressing him as “sir,” a polite form of address. The supreme use of kurios refers to the sovereign God, who rules all things.

There is yet a middle usage of the term kurios in the New Testament. It is used to describe a slave owner, which is an apt description of Jesus, and it is from this that Paul describes himself. He is not just a servant but a slave.

Consider the significance of what it means to have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Is this peace something that you experience even when confessing your sin to our loving heavenly Father? Just as Paul extended his greeting of “grace and peace” to the Romans, may our experience of this grace and peace create in us a longing for it to b

God used the Apostle Paul mightily, and he is a lesson of God’s grace. Paul himself reminds us, “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy” (1 Tim. 1:13). This was the Paul whom God had set apart. Just like Paul, we have been delivered from our former sins in Christ, and God calls us into His service for t

Paul moves quickly from his own call as an Apostle to the call shared by every Christian in the church at Rome and by every Christian in every church in every age. The Bible calls them elect, “the called-out ones.”

Paul: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ (v. 16a). If we think our culture is hostile to the gospel, the first-century culture Paul lived in was much more so.

What are you called to be? To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints (v. 7a). That is your vocation.