Devotional
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 2 and Psalm 114 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that…
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Daily Readings: 1 Corinthians 1 and Psalm 113 Having completed the letter to the Romans, we now turn to 1 Corinthians. This letter was written by the apostle Paul to the Christians in Corinth, most likely towards the end of his 3-year ministry in Ephesus (see Acts 19). He wrote it mainly to address specific…
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Daily Readings: Romans 16 and Psalm 112 Paul had not yet visited Rome when he wrote this letter, and yet he was able to greet quite a number of Roman Christians and their households by name. That’s because many of the people he had led to Christ during his missionary journeys had ended up in…
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Daily Readings: Romans 15 and Psalm 111 “(Christ Jesus) gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (v.16) What a wonderful way for the apostle Paul to view his ministry. He understood that the Lord had…
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Daily Readings: Romans 14 and Psalm 110 Are our disagreements loving, or do we just love disagreements? Romans 14 addresses the unloving way in which some early Christians in Rome were allowing “disputable matters” to cause division among themselves. God’s Word remains clear on many, many matters, but it seems that each generation finds points…
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Daily Readings: Romans 13 and Psalm 109 8 Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not covet,’and whatever other command there may be, are summed…
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Daily Readings: Romans 12 and Psalm 108 Romans 11 invited us to marvel at the mercy of God, and now chapter 12 begins with the instruction: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true…
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Daily Readings: Romans 11 and Psalm 107 Personally, I find it more edifying to consider Romans 11 from a birds-eye point of view than to place it under a magnifying glass. Paul’s arguments might feel very convoluted to us, but his two over-riding concerns in this chapter are to encourage Jewish Christians in Rome not…
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Daily Readings: Romans 10 and Psalm 106 In Romans 10, Paul makes a very straightforward point: Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, there is only one way to be made right with God. No one will ever be able to do so by obeying the Law, because no one can ever perfectly obey…
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Daily Readings: Romans 9 and Psalm 105 In Romans 9, the thoroughly Jewish Paul wrestles with a tragic reality. In every city he visited (remember Acts) he had gone first to the synagogues to share the Gospel with the Jews, yet by and large the Gospel was rejected there, and only a small number received…
