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2 Corinthians 5:10, Paul teaches there is no condemnation for those in Christ, Jesus teaches that whoever hears and believes has passed from death into life and will not come into judgment as a condemned sinner, the believer’s appearance before Christ is for disclosure and reward, not for...

2 Corinthians 5:10, now that the fire has spoken, you can look at rewards without turning them into fantasy, scripture uses several images and each teaches something, you must hold them reverently and avoid building a precise ledger where scripture gives pictures. The New Testament speaks of a...

2 Corinthians 5:10, the passage that holds the title promise together, in 1 Corinthians 3:12, the building materials are listed as gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, six materials, three that endure, three that do not. Gold, silver, costly stones, they do not merely look valuable...

2 Corinthians 5:10, the issue is not only what was done, but what sword it was, not only activity, but quality, not only visible results, but hidden motives, a gift given for applause and a gift given in love may look the same in a photograph, they are not the same before God. Paul says in 1...

2 Corinthians 5:10, from that platform, the story moves to a second image from the same world and it adds urgency, Corinth lived for contests, athletes trained, crowds gathered, judges watched from a platform to see who ran lawfully and who cut corners. Paul tells the Corinthians to run the...

2 Corinthians 5:10, Paul says in his letter to the Romans, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and that we are made right with God, freely by his grace, that is verdict language, that is foundation language, it does not rise and fall with your mood. But scripture also...

2 Corinthians 5:10, the frame is still standing, but it is black, the air still smells of smoke and the concrete underneath has not moved at all. A builder is looking at what is left, the foundation held, the house did not and he is asking the question you feel when you hear that Christians will...

Romans 6:6, Romans 8:11, the old self dying is not the end of the story, because the old self was not crucified so you could be left as an empty shell trying to be good, the old self was crucified so the new self could live. And the new self does not live by its own strength, it lives by the...

Romans 6:6, Paul gives you something to do, Romans 6:11, consider yourselves, that word in Greek is logizesthe and it does not mean feel, it does not mean hope, it does not mean try really hard to believe something you do not believe, it means reckon, count, calculate, do the math, it is...

Romans 6:6, in Romans 6:7, freed, not improved, not enrolled in a program, not given a second chance to do better, freed, the slave market has been shut down, the auction block is empty, the papers have been torn up, the old self was a slave, the new self is free. And if you have ever felt like...

Romans 6:6, consider the phrase that confuses more people than any other in Romans 6:6, the body of sin, what is that and what does it mean that it was done away with? The body of sin is your body viewed as sin’s instrument, the hands sin uses, the eyes sin looks through, the tongue sin speaks...

Romans 6:6, consider where Romans 6:6 takes you, because the old self did not die of old age, it was crucified and the word Paul uses tells you exactly who did it. Imagine it is the middle of the afternoon and the sky has gone dark, on the middle cross hangs a man who did nothing wrong. The...

Romans 6:6, before you consider what Romans 6:6 means, you have to clear away what it does not mean, because two wrong answers have been stuck to this verse for a long time and they have crushed a lot of people. The first wrong answer is that the old self is your body, that your physical body is...

Romans 6:6, consider a prisoner who has been living in a cell that has been unlocked for years, the war ended, the door swung open, somebody won, but nobody told him or he heard it and did not believe it. So, he keeps living like a a captive, he keeps his head down, he keeps his routines, he...

2 Corinthians 5:17, Ezekiel 36:26-27, do you hear the promise, not a new coat of paint, a new heart, not a behavior modification program, a new spirit, the prophets were not promising that God would help people try harder, they were promising that God would change people from the inside out...

2 Corinthians 5:17, the already and the not yet and completed at the end. The already, in Christ you are a new creation, right now, not when you get your life together, not when you finally conquer that habit. Right now, you’re standing before God is settled, the old verdict has passed away...

2 Corinthians 5:17, here is the thing that most people completely miss, 2 Corinthians 5:17 does not sit alone, it sits inside one of the most important passages Paul ever wrote and when you see the passage around it, 2 Corinthians 5:17 gets even bigger, because Paul is not just talking about...

2 Corinthians 5:17, Paul explains in Romans 6:4, when Jesus died on the cross, the old self died with him, not the old self as a project to be managed, the old self as a verdict, the old self as an identity. And when Jesus rose from the dead, a new self rose with him, that is what it means to be...

2 Corinthians 5:17, the Greek word for new in 2 Corinthians 5:17 is kainos, not neos and this is not a technical footnote, this is the whole point, the Greek language had two words for new. Neos means new in time, something that just came into existence, but it is the same kind of thing as...

2 Corinthians 5:17, consider 2 Corinthians 5:17 again slowly, the way it actually appears, here is what most people never notice, the way you usually hear this verse, it sounds like a self-improvement program, be new, act new, try harder to feel new. And if that is what the verse means, then it...