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During one of Paul’s many imprisonments for announcing Jesus as the risen Lord, he wrote to a group of people that he had never met, who made up a church community that he did not start. The church in Colossae was started by a co-worker of Paul’s, named Epaphras, who was actually from that city...

Acts 16:12, Philippi was a Roman colony in ancient Macedonia, it was full of retired soldiers, and it was known for its patriotic nationalism. Paul faced resistance, when he was announcing Jesus as the true King of the world, and after Paul moved on from there, those who became followers of...

Ephesians 1:15-23, Paul prays that we would wake up to the fact, that we as God’s people, we are God’s own special treasured possession, God created a special people, who are unique and holy, who are distinct and different than the world around us, precisely to be the witnesses to his mercy and...

Paul paints the big picture in Ephesians to remind people, specifically the basic message is that through Jesus, everybody has been welcomed into the covenant family of God’s people. What Paul is really talking about, he’s focusing in on, how is it that we who are not Jewish people, but in the...

This remaking of our minds, we don’t do that in a day, we begin that journey of following Jesus with a moment of conviction, with a prayer, it is a very long process, but Paul saying, this is about a perpetual renewal of our mind, a new way of thinking, adopting this new identity. Letting our...

What is Paul up to in his letters? Paul’s core conviction is that fundamental change happens to us, when our very sense of who we are is completely revolutionized behavior, follows our sense of identity. Don’t live like the Gentiles, because we are something new, we are all new kinds of humans...

You are new kinds of humans. Holy, you are distinct and set apart now, from your previous identity. You are more loved than you can possibly imagine, beloved children. You are children of the light, you don’t have to live in the dark anymore. Parameters, these are indications of what living into...

The story of how Paul came to the city of Ephesus. “Acts chapter 19” Ephesus was a huge city, it was the epicenter of worship for most of the Greek and Roman gods. For over two years, Paul had a really effective missionary presence there, lots of people became followers of Jesus, but years...

People think of the kingdom of God as a place, there is God’s space, where God is king, there’s a reality in which God reigns and where everything that is done, is God’s will. The story of the Bible as it goes on, the earth has become a place where God’s will is not done, because we assert our...

Paul spent many years traveling about and starting new churches, he developed a large team of co-workers in this mission, Timothy was one of these. Paul was once in the city of Lystra, and he met Timothy’s faithful mother and grandmother, and he was impressed by Timothy’s passion and devotion to...

Titus was a Greek follower of Jesus, who was for years a trusted co-worker and traveling companion of Paul, helping Paul in a number of crisis situations in the past. Paul had assigned Titus the task of going to Crete, to restore order to a network of house churches. Cretan culture was notorious...

Salvation is not earned by human initiative or merits, but is offered freely by God’s elective decision to grant access to himself, the true God and his truth enter into a covenant relationship with those who embrace that access. One gains access to the true God and his covenant family by grace...

Acts chapters 13-14, Paul wrote the Galatians from a place of deep passion and frustration. Christianity began as a Jewish Messianic movement in Jerusalem, but it’s message was for all humanity and it quickly spread beyond Israel. By Paul’s time as a missionary, there were as many non-Jews, as...

Paul started this Jesus community in Corinth sometime ago on one of his missionary journeys, “Acts chapter 18” and after moving on, Paul got a report that things were not going well there, and it appears that many in the church rejected Paul’s teaching he wrote and some rebelled against his...

In Acts chapter 18, Paul’s reasonings to a church community that Paul knew really well, Corinth was a major port city in the ancient world and had lots of temples to Greek and Roman gods, it was a big economic center and so Paul strategically came as a missionary. He spent a year and a half...

All humanity is hopelessly trapped in sin and needs to be rescued, this rescue is not going to happen by people trying to obey the laws of the Torah, rather, God’s righteous character has move him to rescue the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection, so that he could create a faith-based...

Acts 18:1-2, the church in Rome had existed for some time, but at one point, the Roman emperor Clavdivs had expelled all of the Jewish people from Rome, and then about five years later all of those Jews, including Jesus following Jews were allowed to return, and when they did, they found a...

The persecutions had intensified, and the Thessalonians Christians had become confused and scared about the return of Jesus. Paul offers hope in the midst of their continued persecution, and then he offers clarity about the coming day of the Lord. Paul, with a thanksgiving prayer, for the...

Acts chapter 17, it is where Paul and his co-worker Silas went to the ancient Greek city of Thessalonica, and after just one mouth of telling people the good news about Jesus, a large number of Jewish and Greek people gave their allegiance to Jesus and they form the first church community there...

The risen Jesus spend some 40 days with the disciples teaching them about the kingdom of God, and Jesus claimed that he was restoring God’s kingdom over the world, beginning with Israel. Jesus called Israel to live under God’s reign by following him and he was enthroned as king when he gave up...