Chris­tians don’t do bad things. At least they shouldn’t. If they do they should repent and make ret­ri­bu­tion. Repen­tance with­out ret­ri­bu­tion is not gen­uine. It is self-deception. If one robs his neigh­bour he can­not repent unless he restores what was stolen. Ret­ri­bu­tion is a must. He can­not keep the stolen goods. (more…)

Let me spare a few thoughts on the above pas­sage. These lit­tle essays are not intended to indoc­tri­nate, but to chal­lenge to crit­i­cal think­ing. Whether I am right or not is not important.

Rom 8:1 There is there­fore now no con­dem­na­tion for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weak­ened by the flesh, could not do: send­ing his own Son in the like­ness of sin­ful flesh and for sin, he con­demned sin in the flesh… (more…)

Let me deal with on one of the most mis­in­ter­preted passage.

In order to under­stand the chap­ter we need to keep in mind Paul’s con­clu­sion in Ch. 6:

Rom 6:17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obe­di­ent from the heart to the stan­dard of teach­ing to which you were com­mit­ted, 18 and, hav­ing been set free from sin, have become slaves of right­eous­ness. (more…)

In Ch. 1 and 2 Paul estab­lishes that the gen­eral con­di­tion of mankind — both Jews and Gen­tiles — is pretty bleak. There is a hor­ri­ble sin prob­lem in both camps (we have seen ear­lier that the lan­guage of the Bible is not all-inclusive). He then concludes:

Rom 3:19 Now we know that what­ever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law [i.e. Jews], so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held account­able to God. 20 For no human being will be jus­ti­fied in his sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowl­edge of sin. (more…)

In an ear­lier post I argued that it was pos­si­ble that some Gen­tiles ful­filled the require­ments of the law of God sim­ply by their good nature. Tra­di­tional Chris­t­ian the­ol­ogy dis­counts such pos­si­bil­ity. Let me add a few more thoughts on the sub­ject — ver­i­fy­ing the con­text and the usage of terms will shed more lights on the mean­ing of the pas­sage. (more…)