Romans 1:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
What is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes? Why?
Why would one be ashamed of the gospel?
Are there elements of the gospel that one might find embarrassing?
Does the gospel make sense to the natural mind?
What does it mean that “The righteous will live by faith”?
Phillipians 3:10-14
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
How does Paul deal with the fact that he’s not yet “arrived”?
What reason would any of us have to be ashamed of our destiny?
Do we need to be ashamed of the fact that we haven’t “arrived”?
Does this apply to the body of Christ at large as well as us individually?
Donald Miller, in the context of preparing a “Confession Booth” with some fellow believers at Reed University, had the following to say regarding the purpose of the confession booth:
“We are going to confess that, as followers of Jesus, we have not been very loving; we have been bitter, and for that we are sorry. we will apologize for the Crusades, we will apologize for televangelists, we will apologize for neglecting the poor and the lonely, we will ask them to forgive us, and we will tell them that in our selfishness, we have mirepresented Jesus on the campus. We will tell people who come into the booth that Jesus loves them.”
Blue Like Jazz
Donald Miller
For so much of life I had been defending Christianity because I thought to admit that we had done any wrong was to discredit the religious system as a whole, but it wasn’t a religious system, it is people following Christ; and the important thing to do, the right thing to do, was to apologize for getting in the way of Jesus.
Blue Like Jazz
Donald Miller
Have you ever been confronted by your own sins or the sins of others in the body of Christ?
Are those who misrepresent Christ our brothers and sisters?
If so, do we have the right to disown or discredit them?
What would change if we took responsibility for the sins of the body of Christ?
Would we have more credibility or less credibility?
