This Sunday we begin our union of Wollongong and Corrimal Anglican churches with the first in our series of sermons and growth group discussions on the fundamentals of our Christian faith. We shall reflect upon the nature of our salvation, the object of our devotion, the authority for our learning, the essence of our community living, our essential lifestyle attitude, our lifeline to the supernatural, our confidence in venturing forth, our principle of life and our overriding emotion as we lead up to and rejoice over the death and resurrection of Christ at Easter. It will be a season of thinking, reasoning and joy over our being disciples of Jesus Christ.
I invite you to take further advantage of this season by using “The God Who is for Us” in conjunction with the sermons and group studies in our personal times with God. This year the Lenten Bible Studies book will take us through the letter to the Romans in 40 days. This is Paul’s great treatise on the same fundamentals of the Christian faith explored at the deepest level.
Paul was seeking to persuade the church at Rome to be his launching pad for a mission in the West of the empire. To do this he shares his gospel with brilliant reasoning. With vigorous exposition he leads his readers through the assertion of his apostolic authority, the rebellion of humanity whether they be pagans, moralists or religious zealots and the free gift of God’s righteousness in Christ to be received by faith. He then explores the liberty that arises out of God’s action to remove guilt, persistent sin and feelings of the futility of life with the climax of three triumphant questions shouted into the cosmos, “If God is for us who can be against us? Who can lay any accusation against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” with the threefold answer of, “No one and No thing”. He then gives a grand overview of how God is saving his people through history. Having addressed our minds with God’s truths he then urges practical action in good citizenship, in genuine love of neighbour and enemy, in generous living with fellow Christians of different traditions and in praising of our eternal and only wise God through Jesus Christ.
I commend to your personal devotions my attempt to draw out these great doctrines of Paul, our apostle, in this book “The God Who is for Us”. May God bless us with his Spirit as we lay the foundations for our together invading our secular world with the Kingdom of God. If you think this option may help, the book can be purchased for $15 from the church office or from the Youthworks Media website in book or electronic form.
Every blessing in Christ
Reg Piper
If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?
Romans 8:31-32
