Romans 5

I was interested to note that according to Anders Nygren (Commentary on Romans), Romans 5 is seen as an aside, a parenthesis, by many commentators.
That doesn't make sense to me. Romans 1:18-3:20 portrays humanity as under God's wrath, under the power of sin, condemned by the law, and not helped by it but rather driven further into sin by it, and doomed to die. Romans 3:21-5:11 explains what God has done outside of me, portraying the righteousness that is from God and is appropriated by faith.
Something has been done for me, that assures me of eternal hope, God's love and final salvation from wrath. But one more step needs to be made in the argument, or Romans 6ff won't make sense. I need to be shown that I am not just saved from things happening to me by something happening for me, but that something has happened to me: I have come under something new. I am not under wrath, sin, law and death, but under Christ and righteousness. Justification is not simply a legal deal outside of me, but it impacts on my relationship with everything that I was under, because I have been shifted out of the old humanity and into the new one. Neither the symbolism of baptism and its impact on my sinning (Romans 6:1-14) nor the tyranny of the law and its ending (Romans 7:1-6) makes any sense without understanding my transfer explained in Romans 5. Does it?
I'm beginning to think Romans 5:12-21 is the key to Romans, even if Romans 8 is the high point and Romans 9 the point at which the monergism of the book is driven home.
Anyway, I prayed very differently this morning, praying that I would live the life of one baptised into Christ and free from law's tyranny, as appropriate to one under Christ and not in Adam, and as I did so, it was so obvious sin just doesn't fit with who I am by grace in Christ.

Quiet times in Psalm 119

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105)

The reader might find it hard to grasp, but the spiral-bound notebooks that accompany me in my daily devotionals read like this blog: expositions, preachy bits, language that reads like commentary, homily or just plain appeal from the heart, poetry, songs, one liners, verses copied out. Whatever comes to me as I meditate on the Scriptures.

Here's what I wrote on Psalm 119:105-112 yesterday (Saturday) morning:

I walk in darkness
My path errs and strays
Folly and foolishness
Mark much of my ways
O Lord, light the way up
Lord, let me see
All you have done Lord
And all you command me

Open the Scripture, Lord
Your word is a lamp to my feet
Your word is a light to my path
Gathered all together
Lord, let us hear
Through the mouth of your preacher
Your word loud and clear

Who has lived 119:105-112 like Christ? Christ our Righteousness!
For I can do 119:112!!

The first bit is a congregational song, starting with my own feelings as I responded to the Psalm, but looking for God's ordained instrument to bring light.
If the second bit makes no sense, you may well not understand the Christian message.

"...YHWH being merciful to him ..."

A few thoughts on Genesis 18:16-19:38 have been on my mind since I started writing this blog: in fact, finding a place to publish them is one reason I started. The passage concerns Sodom and Gomorrah, and in all the fuss about what all the sin of Sodom was and all the postmodern reaction to fire and brimstone (19:24), I guess others have like me missed that the passage is, like all of the story of Abraham, about the God who saves.
It kicks off with Abraham's intercession. God's chosen one has special access to God, that he might intercede for others and their salvation: Abraham is here a type of Christ - he shows us the work of Christ foreshadowed.
In Abraham's intercession, he prays on the basis that the righteousness of some is not just sufficient to find some way of getting them out of the city, but is sufficient grounds to save the whole city: again we see Christ foreshadowed, who, by virtue of His righteousness delivers the entire church of all ages - the righteousness of One delivering a great people, not of ten delivering a city.
Then there's the escape of Lot. Notice how he's dragged out of the city? C S Lewis recounts similarly being dragged into salvation by God. Free will? Praise God - He loves us too much.
God's mercy to Lot is again quite dramatic: it extends to delivering the town of Zoar too. So committed is God to saving Lot that His deliverance is extended to others - that's what I call a wideness in God's mercy.
Finally, the story ends with the strange story of Lot becoming the father of his daughters' sons. We assume the sin of Sodom is that of homosexuality, first called a sin in Leviticus 18:22. Lot and his daughters commit sins listed in Leviticus 18:5-17, the same chapter but, by virtue of their positioning in the chapter, worse sins. If the traditional assumption is right, then the final story speaks a powerful message to all, but particularly those who single out sexual sins as particularly bad: our God saves sinners, even the ones we consider the worst (cf 1 Timothy 1:15).