In Romans 4 Paul continues his attack on the idea that it's by 'works of the Law' that people are made right with God. That can't be true, he says, because Abraham was accepted by God as 'righteous' before he was circumc...

There's a clear theme in this chapter, though – like the rest of Romans – it is dense and rich in argument. Paul is overwhelmed with a sense of the scope and scale of salvation. It's not enough for God to have forgiven us – it was �...

Paul has thought deeply about what the death of Christ means. Death is an ending; it cancels everything about a person's life. If we are baptised into union with Christ and 'share' in that death (verse 4), our old life is gone; and �...

In Ephesus there was a temple dedicated to the Roman goddess Artemis, and visitors would buy silver idols to take home. Because Paul’s Christian ministry was so successful, the idol makers’ business was suffering, leading them to riot.

Here Paul delves into the long conflict between good and evil in human nature. Now, he says, we have a divine power, the Holy Spirit, on our side. The death of Christ was a decisive moment, and we share in his resurrection life.

This is another parable about the Kingdom of Heaven. The world is a very mixed bag: there’s good and evil, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Good people don’t get what they deserve, and neither do bad people – it all sometimes seems a bit random.

The Pharisees were devoted to serving God through keeping his law. We should be careful about saying they believed they could ‘earn their way to heaven’ – it wasn’t really like that – but keeping the rules could become a mark of someone’s...

Three successive passages in Matthew 20, expose the human desire to be important and respected. Hard-working people moan about the boss’s favouritism towards part-timers. Angry young men’s daydreams of booting out the Roman overlords unravel as t...

Two medieval monks agreed that whoever died and went to heaven first would tell the other if it was how they’d imagined it, by uttering one word: either ‘taliter’ (it’s as we thought) or ‘aliter’ (it’s different from what we thought). A...

Hebrews was written by a Jewish Christian to other Jewish believers to encourage them in a time of persecution. It's extraordinarily rich theologically, and deeply rooted in the Old Testament. These opening verses speak of the absolute supremacy...

Churches in the Roman Empire faced many pressures, from the insidious effects of false teaching and worldly temptations to outright persecution. Christians were sent to Roman arenas to die, some of the apostles were executed and John was exiled in an...

God has rescued the people from Egypt and guided them through the wilderness to the Promised Land, but there's a problem: the Israelites' descendants wouldn't have direct experience of God's saving work (verse 2). They would just ...

A picture of the Bible has flashed all around the world. It’s on every news channel and in every newspaper. As an organisation devoted to distributing and promoting the Bible, we might be expected to be happy about that. But we’re not.

In Hebrews 9, the author continues to reflect on how Christ fulfils the Old Testament sacrificial system. Under the law of Moses, many sacrifices were made; Christ was sacrificed just once. The priests entered the Most Holy Place in the sacred tent o...

The letters in Revelation 2–3 display Christ’s presence with his churches, his complete knowledge of their spiritual condition and his desire for their wholehearted commitment to him. Each church is addressed specifically but also told to ‘hear...

One of the great Welsh hymns that's fed the souls of Christians down the years is 'Guide me, O thou great Redeemer'. It takes the image of God leading the believer through the wilderness, a 'pilgrim through this barren land'....

Some parts of Deuteronomy can be hard going, if we're honest. Others, like these verses, are inspirational. What does God require of us? That we worship and obey him, and love and serve him with all our hearts (verses 12–13).

In this chapter the prophet rejoices in the assurance of God's salvation. There are descriptions of the way he empowers and nourishes his people, in vivid poetical language. He will make them like a 'threshing board' (verse 15) – stu...

‘Hear … See … Listen to me … Draw near to me, hear this!’ Isaiah 48 is a heartbreaking cry of frustration from a God who has spoken openly to his people, yet they act as if they are deaf and blind to all the clear signs of his devotion to t...

In verse 4 of this chapter, the prophet Isaiah says that God has given him ‘the tongue of a teacher’ – but notice that he also tells us how he listens to God ‘as those who are taught’. The two activities are linked: first he listens and lea...