Too often, in our quest to spread the gospel, the church has missed our calling of being built into a dwelling place for God. I do wonder what percentage of the church even knows that this is one of our primary goals. When you ask people how church is going many times they will point to how many people are in the seats or how full the parking lot is. Although they do have a point and numbers matter because people matter, too often numbers are seen to compensate for a lack of depth. Church leaders easily become tempted to dumb down their message, because the more dumbed-down things are, the more acceptable they are to a larger group of people. Church growth means more revenue, more acclaim and more power; the combination becomes too much to resist. As I said before numbers are good, but not if we can only get them by ignoring our calling.

Plus, quality is hard. That means you have to deal with character issues, relationship issues, and the gifts of the Spirit. That’s too difficult by half. It’s tempting to take the default of preaching that Jesus will make your life better and have good lighting in the sanctuary. But then you have the old problem of accountability. James says that teachers will be judged more harshly than the rest of us. That’s a tough combination. The people who are the most tempted to compromise are the ones who will be most harshly judged for doing so.

When thinking about church quality versus church size we need to think both and not either/or. How can we become a church firing on all cylinders, period?

“The purposes of God are reducible to his will, a will that initially appears equally set to harden or to save, but turns out on closer inspection, and in the end, to harden only in order to save, to hate only in order to love, and to consign all to disobedience only in order to have mercy on all. What has twisted Paul’s theology into this strange shape is his understanding of a “gift” that has redefined the meanings of charis and eleos and defies explanation or rationale. That gift is the Christ-event which reconciled the world “while we were enemies” (Rom 5:6-10) and justified the ungodly (4:4-6)”
- John Barclay

From reading this article you should have an understanding of where your battle with sin actually lies and what the cross has actually done for you. This will help us in our struggles with sin, because if we feel the situation is hopeless than we won’t fight very hard to resist.

Romans 6-8 (see also Col 2:10-15)

There are various places in Paul’s writings where he talks about these issues but he lays it out so neatly in Romans that I’ll focus there. It’s hard to summarize Romans 6 and 8 without quoting the entire chapters, but I will do my best. Chapter 6 starts in baptism. We are baptized into Christ’s death. This is where we are united with his work on the cross. Here our old man is crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed and we might no longer be slaves to sin (also Gal 5:24). Whoever has died, which is Christ and those baptized into him, is set free from sin. And having been united with Christ in his death we are certain to be united with his resurrection. Therefore, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. We are no longer IN sin or IN the flesh but IN Christ.

This being the case we are not to let sin exercise rule in our mortal bodies. Wait a minute. I thought we were dead to sin? I thought our old man had been crucified with Christ? So here is the kicker. Our bodies are still subject to decay. Although other parts of our being have been redeemed our bodies have not yet. Therefore, sin can still exercise dominion in us if we give into our body’s passions. We are to present our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness (I like that phrase) instead of to sin for evil. For sin will no longer have dominion over us, since we are not under law but under grace (see Gal 5:13).

We have died to the law through the body of Christ so that we could belong to God. Before we were in Christ our sinful desires, which were stirred up by the law, worked in our bodies to bear fruit for death. But now we have been set free from the law and become slaves to God.

Umpteen Reasons why Romans 7 is Not Talking about Christians
Probably the biggest reason for confusion about the power sin has over Christians is because of a bad reading of Romans 7. Not to be to forward here, but there is just no flipping way Romans 7 is describing the proper Christian experience. Here’s why I feel I can say that so boldly.

1. The person in Rom 7 was not fallen at one point, but died when the commandment was given. This wasn’t true of Paul or any other Christians in history.
2. The person in Rom 7 was alive when the law was given. Same comment as above.
3. The person in Rom 7 is of the flesh and IN sin, clearly not a possibility for Christians.
4. The person in Rom 7 isn’t able to do good. Christ came so we could do good.
5. The person in Rom 7 is a captive to the law of sin. Again clearly not true of Christians.

There are more reasons but that’s enough to prove my point. The trick is to not stop reading at the chapter break. What Paul is doing in Romans 7:14 – 8:11 is giving a history of the relationship between man and sin from Adam to the present to defend the law, on one hand, and to show that we are no longer dominated by those same struggles on the other. The law of the Spirit has set you from the law of sin and death. Since God has condemned sin in the flesh we are now able to fulfill the intention of the law, if we walk according to the Spirit and not the flesh.

Romans 8:10 says “but if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” So we see that our body is still dead. Verse 11 says that God will give life to our mortal bodies through his indwelling Spirit. That hasn’t happened yet.

All this being the case I have to quote Romans 8:12-13 here which really sums up what I want to communicate in this article “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” On a positive note, by the Spirit we have the power to put to death the works of the body; ALL the time. On a negative note, we still can choose to live according to the flesh, since our bodies have not been redeemed, which leads to spiritual death.

Here are the other two passages where Paul talks about the old man:

Ephesians 4:22-24 put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Colossians 3:9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

So we chuck our corrupt old man. He has been put off. Our new man has been put on. As Colossians 3:5 says we “put to death therefore the members that are on the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness.” We spend our lives having the new man renewed according to God’s image (Rom 12:2). We sow to the Spirit and not the flesh and reap eternal life now and in the next age (Gal 6:8). We put on Christ and all his attributes (Rom 13:14, Col 3:12-17). We continue to live by the Spirit putting no trust in the flesh (Gal 3:3).

Even though we are no longer in sin’s power we will never walk perfectly in this life. 1 John 1:8 says “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We will always sin. I wish I could say that eventually we could get to the point where we don’t sin anymore but I can’t. BUT just because absolute sinless living isn’t possible lets not rule out walking in almost sinless living.

So saints, onward and upward. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Go and live victoriously by the power of the Spirit.

“Paul is not given the thirty-nine lashes by his fellow Jews because he asks them to ‘try’ Jesus in the same way one might try a kebab (2 Cor. 11:24).  He is not executed for suggesting that Roman citizens may wish to invite Jesus into their hearts.  No, Paul has the courage and conviction to proclaim that the one who is to come again, the Messiah, is Jesus, who has fulfilled Israel’s hopes by being cursed on a cross and raised from the dead.  Jesus is the deliverer Israel had hoped for and desperately needed (2 Cor. 1:20; Acts 13:32-34; Rom. 11:26)” (pp. 28-29).”

Amen brother.

Read for content, not to fill a time slot. Structure your reading time around the Bible and not the other way around. The danger is turning the Bible into a series of one liners and losing what the writer is actually trying to say.

My point is that we have to let God speak on his own terms, not on ours. The only way to do this is to read the Bible as it was given to us. It seems to me that some people think what God really meant to give us was So and So’s Systematic Theology, but he tripped and the pages got scrambled and now we are stuck trying to put the Bible back how God should have given it to us. Doing systematic theology is only okay after you have a good idea what the Bible says. If you don’t, you are going to pick the topics and verses that strike your fancy and ignores the ones that don’t.

When you think about the Bible remember that it is over 30,000 verses long and written by all different kinds of people in all different kinds of settings. Then think about how long it takes to read those 30,000 verses. How long does it take the average Christian to read those 30,000 verses? One year? Two years? I would guess the average Christian would read the Bible once every three to five years. That means that the person is encountering each verse once every three to five years, for say ten seconds. From this you can see the difficulty of trying to understand the Bible by studying it sentence by sentence. It would take hundreds of years to do it that way, but which time you would have forgotten most of what you studied. That either means that you think the other sentences aren’t relevant or you have such a good grip on the whole Bible that you are ready to study it on a deeper level. The last option is perfectly fine, but I don’t know anyone personally who could say this.

To be continued…

Another way of reading the Bible that I find very helpful is to read it chronologically, meaning in the order of when it was written. You need to understand that the Bible isn’t a compilation of fairy tales or moral teachings put in at random. The Bible is something like 70% history. I don’t know many people who do history by skipping around from era to era and not paying any attention to when events happened. That’s not a good idea if you want to understand what happened and how things have progressed. Remember the letters in the Bible themselves are inspired, not the order the letters were put in at.

The cool thing about reading the Bible this way is that it brings the histories, prophets, and Psalms all together. For example, you can read in 1 Samuel about an event in David’s life and then go read the Psalm David wrote about the event. Or you can read about how a certain prophet came and talked to a king and then go read in the prophet’s book what he said or thought. This way of reading the Bible makes so much more sense.

Lastly, the matter of Bible translations. This is pretty important because a translation can either make the Bible easy to understand or impossible to understand. The major translations I can think of are the New International Version (NIV), King James’ Version (KJV), New King James’ Version (NKJV), New American Standard (NASB), New Revised Standard (NRS), and English Standard Version (ESV). The KJV is out because the language is way out of date and the manuscripts that were used to translate from aren’t the best. NKJV fails for the same reason. Why translate manuscripts you know aren’t right? NIV is probably the most popular, but I don’t like it because it either leaves out words or adds words or totally misses the point altogether in it’s attempt to made the Bible more readable.

The three versions that I think are most accurate are the NASB, NRSV, and the ESV. I don’t like the NASB because the translation is pretty awkward sometimes, which makes it harder to understand. My recommendation would be either the NRSV or the ESV. Both are very accurate and readable. The NRSV is what most Bible scholars use. Personally I just switched to the ESV from the NRSV because there is a better audio version available for that version.

Happy Reading!

1. Read one sentence per week spending two hours going over the sentence structure and debating with yourself and friends what this sentence truly means.

2. Scan all the letters looking for words that you like, money for example. Compile a list of sentences that have the word “money” in them. Spend several months debating what your Grandfather meant by what he said in those sentences, while leaving the surrounding letters largely unread.

3. Read a paragraph per night before you go to bed.

4. Carefully read through each letter over and over again until you feel you grasp what your Grandfather was trying to tell you.

I’m betting most of you would choose option d. And yet when it comes to Bible study that is the last option that is taken. For personal Bible study, option c is probably recommended the most; someone will recommend that you should read so many chapters a day for example. For group Bible study, option a or b are the most often used methods. In an option a bible study the longer it takes to go through a sentence or paragraph the more mature and deep the members are seen. In an option b bible study the more abstract the topic being discussed and the slower the pace the more mature and deep the members are seen.

But why choose a completely different method to study God’s letters to us than we would use to understand all other letters we receive? The answer is you shouldn’t. If you want to understand the gospels start reading the gospels. Finish one and go to another. When you’ve read through them all start again. If you have trouble concentrating on what you are reading try reading out loud. After all, these letters were originally meant to be heard and not read since the people to whom they were addressed couldn’t read. The same goes for Paul. Read through a letter in one sitting if possible. Then read another. When you come back to ones you’ve already read you will discover that you are seeing things you hadn’t seen before. If you can’t understand a certain section of the letter don’t panic. Make a note of the verses. Ask God to help you understand them and then move on. You might discover that a bit from another letter helps you understand.

As you read you are getting pieces of the truth that are all intertwined. The more pieces you have the more of the beautiful tapestry you can make out and the better you can understand the other pieces.

Nothing too hard or mysterious about learning the Bible is there? If you follow this method soon you will know the Bible better than you ever imagined you could.

First, you need to know that you can understand the Bible. Too often in churches Bible study is seen as an occupation for a few smart, well-educated men. These men get the church platform and use big words like exegesis and immutable, which make understanding the Bible seem out of reach for normal folk. But take heart. The Bible is a simple book, written for poor uneducated people who can’t read. After all, the literacy rate of the areas that Paul was writing to was less than 20%. These big words that are used in the thick books in the bookstores aren’t used in the Bible. The Bible uses words like shepherd, warrior, father, husband, etc to describe God not omniscient or immutable. These are ideas that even the simplest person can understand. Once you realize that the Bible wasn’t mainly written for the guys at Harvard a barrier is removed. Housewives, construction workers, and scholars can all understand the Bible.

Next let’s talk about why you would want to spend the time required to learn the Bible. After all there are a lot of other things you could be doing with your time. The main reason to learn the Bible is to get God’s view of reality and thereby live and worship rightly. It is not so you can be your church’s Bible answer man and get a big ministry so your life can be finally be worth something. Since God is holy (different) we need God to tell us what he is like and what is really true.

What God says is true and what the world says is true are more or less opposite each other. Since we live in the world and have flesh we can’t help taking some of the world’s thoughts into our minds. Therefore we need to read the Bible until what God says is true seems more real and important to us than what the world’s says is real and important. This takes time. We have sixteen hours in the day in which we take in advertisements and television shows and the news. We can’t help being influenced by these things. “That car looks so cool I need one.” “Those people are getting drunk and sleeping around and look how much fun they are having. It can’t be that wrong.” “That guys a terrible person and look how successful he is.” Left uncorrected these influences dull our sense of right and wrong and lead to ruin. We have to come regularly to the Bible to remind ourselves of what really matters and what the end of the things the world clings to is.