1 I will stand on my guard post
And station myself on the fortification;
And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me
And how I may respond when I am reproved.
2 Then Yahweh answered me and said,
“Write down the vision
And write it on tablets distinctly,
That the one who reads it may run.
3 For the vision is yet for the appointed time;
It pants toward its end, and it will not lie.
Though it tarries, wait for it;
For it will certainly come; it will not delay.
4 “Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him;
But the righteous will live by his faith. Habakkuk 2:1-4 (LSB)
In September/October 2021 I wrote the manuscript for my book Complete in Christ, which was a commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians.. After Stuart published it several weeks later we talked about what I should work on next. We decided on Romans. I have had many false starts on working on that manuscript. I wanted it to just “Come together” like Complete in Christ, but every time I tried to work on it something came up and caused me to have to stop. So, this post is my starting point for my commentary on Romans. I do not have a title for it yet, but I do like the title of this post. What do you think about that?….
Why would another book on Romans be necessary? it has become painfully apparent to me that so much of the Christian teaching I sat under as a child and as an adult up until God caused us to depart our old church because it was going Purpose Driven back in 2006, was mostly Law with just a little flavoring of the Gospel thrown in every now and then. Not every teacher I had did that of course, but the majority did and so did those who wrote those books I bought and read and taught those seminars I attended, et cetera. So much of the “discipleship” teaching I went through then when examined closely now is mostly “law.” From that, I have done a radical reevaluation of my own understanding of Law and Grace and the Gospel and have decided to do this study on the book of Romans from this perspective. I don’t know how I will break it down yet. I will start in chapter 1. The book of Romans was the Apostle Paul’s apologetic to the Roman Church of the Gospel, the Law, and Grace. Let’s listen to the Holy Spirit as we examine closely in proper context what He shows us. As I work on these posts I will use this work as source material for my book manuscript. That is what I did for several of the chapters in Complete in Christ.