In his Letter to the Romans, Paul presents his most detailed explanation of the Gospel. His purpose was to deal with conflicts between Gentile and Jewish members of the Assembly and prepare the ground for taking the Gospel to the western provinces of the Empire. In doing so, he touched on key topics, including death, redemption, the Law, resurrection, and New Creation. Believers are justified through his death and saved by his resurrection life.
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Resurrection Power
In the opening thanksgiving of his Letter to the Philippians, Paul prepares his readers for one of its key themes: Going on to perfection in Jesus. The bodily resurrection of the believer is necessary for the consummation of this process, and its goal. It is an integral part of the salvation that believers will receive when Jesus appears, and a glorious hope as the past resurrection of Jesus demonstrates.
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Central to the apostolic doctrine of salvation is the promise of REDEMPTION. God will not abandon what He has created. Both the term and the concept of “redemption” mean the recovery of that which was lost, in this case, the creation itself that has been enslaved by sin and condemned to decay and death, especially humanity. In God’s redemptive plan, the end state of redeemed things and persons will be vastly superior even to their original created state, and this is epitomized in the promise of bodily resurrection.
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Paul began his Letter to the Romans with a lengthy introduction in which he identified himself and his mission. In doing so, he makes several declarations about the identity and victory of Jesus, more specifically, that he was “marked out as God’s Son” by the “spirit of holiness” that characterized his life, and by his resurrection “from among the dead.” By raising him, God validated all that the Nazarene had said and done.
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In his Letter to the Romans, Paul presents Abraham as the great exemplar of the faith, the model for all men to emulate who choose to live from the “faith of Jesus.” God counted the Patriarch’s faith as “righteousness” while he was yet uncircumcised, and thus He justified him apart from the “works of the Law.” Consequently, he became the father of everyone who is “from faith” whether Jew or Gentile, moreover, he is the “heir of the WORLD” or Kosmos.
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