[This was the first of a pair of sermons preached on this wonderful little letter of Paul. The aim was to summarise the letter, while encouraging the listener to get into the feelings and experiences of the individuals involved. The main applications came in the second sermon.]
THE MESSAGE OF PHILEMON
I want to take you back in time to a day in the year AD 61. It is early evening, and Philemon and his wife Apphia are looking out from the veranda of their home in Colossae.…
Here we have some of the very last words spoken or written by the apostle Paul. They were probably recorded just weeks, perhaps even days, before his martyrdom (he is believed to have been beheaded on the Ostian Way, near Rome).
The prospect of death, of course, concentrates the mind wonderfully. And there can be no doubt about what Paul is concentrating on in our passage tonight. It is all about faithfulness to ‘the word’, v2.…
By God’s marvelous grace Paul had come to view [the] cross as:
a. The Mirror, and this not only of his own unworthiness but also of God’s resplendent attributes, that is, of such “excellencies” as God’s righteousness which must receive its due (Rom 8:3-4); God’s power and wisdom (1 Cor 1:24); and his love, mercy, and grace (2 Cor 5:19-21; Gal 2:20); all of these in sublime harmony with each other (Psa 85:10).
b. The Means of Redemption in its most comprehensive sense (Justification, Sanctification, Glorification).…
There are those (including some Muslim scholars) who like to drive a wedge between the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection and those of Paul. ‘Paul,’ they say, ‘never mentions the empty tomb; therefore, he must have believed in a very different kind of resurrection – a ‘spiritual, rather than a physical kind’. This impression seems to be strengthened by Paul’s insistence that resurrection bodies (of both Christ and others) are ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘fleshly’.
Bultmann famously asserted:
…‘The accounts of an empty tomb are legends, of which Paul as yet knew nothing.
Where do we start with Romans 8? It’s a sumptuous banquet – but which of its dishes do we sample? It’s a glorious symphony – but which of its themes do we to attune our ears to? It’s a lofty mountain range – but which of its peaks do we try to scale?
As always, it’s good to get our bearings from the context. Chapter 5 – in Christ, we have victory over sin and death. …
Leaving aside for a moment my reading on this subject, I would like just to jot down here some of the questions and challenges posed by the New Perspective on Paul, especially in the version developed by Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright.
I’ve been posting, off and on, on Tom Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision. Haven’t finished yet. Reviews have starting appearing, and I was particularly interested to read that of Craig Blomberg, Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary. Blomberg writes:
Throughout his prolific writing career, Wright has increasingly centered his attention on the breadth of the gospel message being much more than how an individual attains salvation, defined as life in heaven after death.…
It has long been assumed that the chief emphasis in Romans is on justification by faith.
This was challenged in 1963 by Stendahl, who argued that pre-occupation with justification by faith was due to the church’s morbid conscience, based on the moral struggles of Augustine and Luther, which the church has read back into Paul. Justification, according to Stendahl,
‘is not the pervasive, organising doctrinal principle or insight of Paul,’ but ‘was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promises of God to Israel.’ …
In the light of various posts on the ‘New Perspective on Paul’, I thought I’d better clarify what E.P. Sanders meant by this term.
It will be recalled that Sanders could find little evidence that the Judaism of the 1st century AD (and therefore the Judaism confronted by the Apostle Paul) was beset by merit theology – the idea that salvation can be ‘earned’ by one’s ‘good works’. Instead, says Sanders, it was characterised by ‘covenantal nomism’:-
I summarise and comment on Tom Wright’s new book, Justification: God’s plan and Paul’s Vision, which is itself a response to John Piper’s book, The Future of Justification: A Response to N.T. Wright.
In his preface, Wright begins by setting out some of the main ‘pressure points’ in the debate over justification:-
1. The nature and scope of salvation. Wright here repeats his complaint that Christians have for a long time tended to think of ‘salvation’ as meaning ‘going to heaven when I die’. …
