Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: “To live without hope is to cease to live.” As human beings we need hope, and yet so often what we end up placing our hope in disappoints us and lets us down. In a world filled with politicians, products, and people that don’t live up to the promises they make to us. In a time where the hope of perpetual progress seems to have been dashed; where can we find the hope we need? In Romans 15:1-13 Paul shows us how the hope we’ve been searching for is ultimately found in Christ. In him we can find a hope that will never fail, never disappoint, a can transform our lives and overflow out of us to bring transformation to the world around us.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote: “To live without hope is to cease to live.” As human beings we need hope, and yet so often what we end up placing our hope in disappoints us and lets us down. In a world filled with politicians, products, and people that don’t live up to the promises they make to us. In a time where the hope of perpetual progress seems to have been dashed; where can we find the hope we need? In Romans 15:1-13 Paul shows us how the hope we’ve been searching for is ultimately found in Christ. In him we can find a hope that will never fail, never disappoint, a can transform our lives and overflow out of us to bring transformation to the world around us.
These two chapters mark a pivotal moment in the history of the church. Here God makes it clear to Peter and through Peter to the rest of the church community that the gospel is not just good news for Jews, it is good news for gentiles as well. In fact what we see throughout the pages of the New Testament is that when it comes to the gospel barriers and partitions that divide and exclude are broken down and destroyed. As Paul says in his latter to the church in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This means all our old prejudices need to be put to death and all our previous identities are made secondary because of the supernatural unity we are given through Jesus.
It’s one thing to confess that salvation comes through Christ alone, but it’s another to truly believe it and live it out. With Gentiles now being included into what had previously been a Jewish-only church the idea that Jesus alone saves began to be put to the test. What about circumcision? What about the Jewish dietary laws? Doesn’t being a Christian also require one to follow the law of Moses? Even today it can be a struggle for us to believe that Jesus alone is enough to save. Can you be saved and not baptized? Doesn’t being a Christian also require giving to the church? Serving in the Church? Reading your Bible? While all of those are good things, maybe even obvious fruit of someone who has truly been saved, what the council of Jerusalem proclaimed and what God makes clear in scripture, is that salvation = Jesus + nothing.
These two chapters mark a pivotal moment in the history of the church. Here God makes it clear to Peter and through Peter to the rest of the church community that the gospel is not just good news for Jews, it is good news for gentiles as well. In fact what we see throughout the pages of the New Testament is that when it comes to the gospel barriers and partitions that divide and exclude are broken down and destroyed. As Paul says in his latter to the church in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This means all our old prejudices need to be put to death and all our previous identities are made secondary because of the supernatural unity we are given through Jesus.
These two chapters mark a pivotal moment in the history of the church. Here God makes it clear to Peter and through Peter to the rest of the church community that the gospel is not just good news for Jews, it is good news for gentiles as well. In fact what we see throughout the pages of the New Testament is that when it comes to the gospel barriers and partitions that divide and exclude are broken down and destroyed. As Paul says in his latter to the church in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This means all our old prejudices need to be put to death and all our previous identities are made secondary because of the supernatural unity we are given through Jesus.
These two chapters mark a pivotal moment in the history of the church. Here God makes it clear to Peter and through Peter to the rest of the church community that the gospel is not just good news for Jews, it is good news for gentiles as well. In fact what we see throughout the pages of the New Testament is that when it comes to the gospel barriers and partitions that divide and exclude are broken down and destroyed. As Paul says in his latter to the church in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This means all our old prejudices need to be put to death and all our previous identities are made secondary because of the supernatural unity we are given through Jesus.