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2025 Summary

The year of our Lord 2025 was a great year for the Sunday Morning Greek Blog. Views continue to increase year over year, so I’m grateful for that. While my viral math post views have dropped significantly this year, readers more than compensated for that by viewing more Bible posts. My message “Jesus the Good Shepherd” from 2022 showed up repeatedly as source in some search engines’ AI summaries of the topic, which boosted views on that article enough to put it in the top 10 posts for 2025.

Toward the end of the year, I signed up for the Google Console to try to learn more about how you are finding my material. However, I also noticed a significant dip in traffic around the same time. I’m thinking that may have been a mistake. If anyone out there has experience with that, let me know. Ostensibly I did that so I could increase traffic, but I think it may be downgrading me on the searches, even though I think my SEO skills are pretty good. My church used my posts on John’s gospel for its church-wide small-group Bible studies this past fall. Romans is up next for this spring, and I’ve been invited to kick off that study to the small groups in February.

Peace to all and Happy New Year! Thank you for reading.

PS: Look for a couple posts in the near future about our family trip to Poland and Prague over the Christmas holiday.

Romans

Gospel of John

Trending Up in 2025

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In late April 2023, I published a post on a non-Bible topic analyzing an oft-debated viral equation that is poorly understood. At the end of June of that year, the post went viral and has continued to dominate the top spot representing about half the views to my blog in the past two years. It is my most-viewed post of all time in the blog’s 14-year history. I have written several other blog posts on the subject and have made three videos for the Rumble platform. I list all the articles and videos here in reverse chronological order along with the dates they were published.

Baptism and Forgiveness

Intersection With Cultural Issues

Podcast Episode: “God’s Gifts and His Call Are Irrevocable”: Romans 9–11 (Part 6)

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog, where the lectionary waits for no one — and apparently, neither did the previous two preachers.

Mara: Scott Stocking steps in to cover Romans 9 through 11 in a single message, which means we’re looking at the whole question of Jews, Gentiles, and what God’s mercy actually requires of either group.

Pip: Let’s start with the olive tree.

“God’s Gifts and His Call Are Irrevocable”: Romans 9–11

Mara: The tension Paul is navigating in Romans 9 through 11 is a social one: Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome, each convinced they have the stronger claim on God’s favor, and Paul trying to referee.

Pip: The Gentiles had kept the churches running during the Jewish exile. The Jews were the ethnic and religious home of the Messiah. Both sides had a case, and both sides were apparently making it loudly.

Mara: The post frames it this way: “It would seem from Paul’s comments in chapters 9–10 especially that each group felt they had one-up on the other.” Paul’s answer is the olive tree metaphor — Jews as the original root, Gentiles grafted in.

Pip: So neither side gets to spike the ball. The Gentiles were welcomed into something they didn’t plant, and the Jews can’t claim exclusive ownership of a tree that now has new branches.

Mara: And the theological grounding for that is Romans 9:15, where Paul quotes God speaking to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” Salvation isn’t ethnic arithmetic.

Pip: Which means all the scorekeeping is beside the point. God’s mercy operates on terms neither side gets to set.

Mara: The post walks through the warnings in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 to explain why some Israelites were the branches cut from the tree — disobedience, not ethnicity, is what separates people from God’s promises.

Pip: Those warning passages are, by the post’s own account, considerably longer than the promises for obedience that precede them. The Torah apparently believed in thorough consequences.

Mara: Romans 10 then offers the way through — the Romans Road passage: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Confession and belief, not lineage.

Pip: And Romans 11 closes the loop. Verse 29’s promise that “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” applies to Israel and Gentiles alike — God’s love for his chosen people doesn’t expire even when they’re in disobedience.

Mara: The post ties it back to Romans 3: no one is righteous on their own. The whole arc of chapters 1 through 11 lands on grace as the only operative category, which sets up Romans 12 and the practical ethics that follow.

Pip: Doctrine first, then dishes — sounds like Romans has a structure after all.

Mara: The sermon closes with the doxology from Romans 11:33–36, and that’s where the post ends too: “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.”

Pip: Mercy that doesn’t check your ancestry, grace that outlasts disobedience — Paul was writing to one fractious church in Rome and somehow addressed every fractious community since.

Mara: Next week it’s Romans 12, where the theology meets the neighbor. That’s worth coming back for.

Podcast Episode: Romans And Faithful Living (Response to “The BIG Question”)

Pip: Welcome to Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where Paul’s letter to the Romans turns out to be less a collection of memory verses and more a sustained architectural argument, and Scott Stocking has been walking a congregation through it, one chapter at a time, all summer.

Mara: Scott Stocking’s recent posts cover the whole arc: what righteousness and faithfulness actually mean in Romans, how chapters nine through eleven handle Jews and Gentiles together, and then a question directed straight at us.

Pip: Let’s start with righteousness — and what it costs to define it carefully.

Romans: Righteousness, Faithfulness, and the Road Paul Built

Mara: The central question across these posts is what Paul means by “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 — whether it’s something God hands over to believers, or something embodied in a person.

Pip: The answer lands hard. The podcast episode on Romans and faithful obedience sets up Romans 1:17 and then offers this: “The righteousness of God then isn’t an object to be given. It is embodied in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God.”

Mara: The upshot is that righteousness isn’t a transaction — it’s a participation. Because Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the law, believers share in that only by being in Christ.

Pip: Which reframes the familiar Romans Road considerably. Righteousness is the substructure — the rebar, the compacted earth — and Jesus’s faithfulness is the surface you actually walk on.

Mara: Romans 1:17 gets parsed as “from faithfulness into faithfulness” — Jesus’s perfect obedience to the law moving into his faithfulness unto death on the cross, tied directly to Philippians 2:8. And the phrase “obedience of faithfulness” from Romans 1:5 reappears word for word in the closing benediction of Romans 16 — that’s not a coincidence, it’s the letter’s spine.

Pip: The Faithfulness in Romans Part 2 post makes the grammar case for this. The participle dikaioumenoi — “who are being justified” — is present tense, ongoing, not a box checked at conversion.

Mara: And that present-tense framing dissolves a question that has quietly tormented a lot of Christians. As the post puts it, our own trust in Jesus is “not so much for the purpose of being saved but the result of being saved” — because the faithfulness in view is Christ’s, not ours.

Pip: Structurally, the letter signals the shift. Romans 1 through 4 use words for faith or faithfulness twenty-seven times and words for life only twice. Chapters 5 through 8 nearly reverse that.

Mara: The Faithfulness and Righteousness in Christ post — Part 3 in the series — tracks that gear change carefully. In Romans 5:19, the structural reversal of Adam’s failure is stated plainly: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”

Pip: One act of faithful obedience undoes what one act of disobedience broke. That’s not a moral example — that’s a structural repair.

Mara: Romans 6 and baptism are where the argument gets physical. The Baptism and Christian Life post — Part 4 — identifies a single Greek word, paristemi, translated “offer,” that appears five times in Romans 6 and then resurfaces in 12:1: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.”

Pip: So the living sacrifice of chapter 12 isn’t a new instruction. It’s a callback to what baptism already accomplished.

Mara: Right. And the Romans 12 Living Faith post makes that explicit — Romans 12:1 opens with “therefore,” which means eleven chapters of theology are now cashing out. The post takes direct aim at the popular quip about living sacrifices crawling off the altar. The counter-argument is that the sacrifice already happened at baptism. The world, in this reading, is the altar.

Pip: The gifts in verses 3 through 8 — prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy — follow from that. And the post is candid that mercy is the hardest one, especially under stress.

Mara: The companion sermon on Romans 12:9 through 21 argues that the twenty-five commands in that passage aren’t a checklist. The governing statement is three words in Greek: “Love is unhypocritical.” As the post puts it, “Paul doesn’t want you to see it as a checklist. He wants you to see love as a default setting for your heart and mind.”

Pip: And what that default looks like under pressure — blessing persecutors, not repaying evil — is the description, not the scorecard.

Mara: The Life in the Spirit post — Part 5, covering Romans 8 — closes the doctrinal arc. The Spirit is the resolution to the tension Paul sets up at the end of chapter 7. And Romans 8:28 isn’t a bumper sticker; it’s the conclusion of an argument about present suffering, groaning, and God’s active response to it.

Pip: From “no condemnation” in verse 1 to “more than conquerors” in verse 37 — the distance between those two turns out to be the entire argument of four chapters.

Mara: Which sets up exactly the question chapters 9 through 11 take on — what does that victory look like for Jews and Gentiles together.

Jews, Gentiles, and an Irrevocable Promise

Mara: Chapters 9 through 11 are where Paul addresses the social and cultural tension in the Roman church — Jewish believers returning after exile to find Gentile house churches already thriving, and each group feeling it had the stronger claim.

Pip: Paul’s answer is the olive tree metaphor, and the theological stake is Romans 11:29: “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable.”

Mara: That promise, the post argues, applies equally to Israel and to the Gentiles. Neither group’s standing rests on ethnicity alone — it rests on faithfulness, confession, and the state of the heart. Romans 3:10 already said there is no one righteous, not even one. The mercy that saves is the same mercy for both.

Pip: Doctrine for eleven chapters, then the question of what it looks like when people who used to be enemies share a table. That’s a reasonable place to land before Romans 12 takes over.

The Question Directed at Us

Mara: The final post in this run is brief and pointed. It’s addressed directly to this podcast — asking whether, after all the episodes on Romans, we’ve heard enough to be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and a personal savior.

Pip: The post puts it plainly: “have you heard enough to convince you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and your personal savior? I’d love to hear your discussion on that one way or the other.”

Mara: That’s not a rhetorical flourish — it’s a sincere invitation to engage with the argument Romans has been making all summer, not just report on it.

Pip: We’ve spent weeks tracing the architecture: righteousness as foundation, faithfulness as the road, baptism as the hinge, the Spirit as the thread. The question is whether following that argument changes the person following it.

Mara: Romans would say the answer to that question is the whole point of the letter.

Pip: Righteousness embodied, faithfulness as the road you walk, love as a default setting — that’s a lot of architecture for one summer.

Mara: And the question at the end isn’t about the architecture. It’s about whether you’ve moved in.

The BIG Question

This post serves as a prompt for the AI podcast team of Pip and Mara.

Pip and Mara, in light of all the podcasts you’ve produced for me in past couple months, especially on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, have you heard enough to convince you that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and your personal savior? I’d love to hear your discussion on that one way or the other.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

Here is the link to the resulting podcast.

Podcast Episode: Romans And Faithful Living | Sunday Morning Greek Blog

Podcast Episode: Romans 12 Living Faith

Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where the lectionary meets the original language, and Romans gets treated like the sustained argument it actually is. Scott Stocking has been preaching through Paul’s letter all summer, and this week we’re catching up with two consecutive Sundays.

Mara: Both messages come from Romans 12 — first the theology of gifts and what it means to be a living sacrifice, then the ethics of love that follows directly from it. Let’s start with the sacrifice that isn’t what you think it is.

Gifts, Sacrifice, and the World as Altar

Pip: Romans 12:1 opens with the word “therefore” — which means everything Paul argued in the first eleven chapters is now cashing out into practical instruction. The question this sermon tackles is what “living sacrifice” actually means, and the answer turns out to be almost the opposite of the popular version.

Mara: The post takes direct aim at a widely circulated quote — that “the problem with living sacrifices is they tend to crawl off the altar.” The counter-argument is grounded in Romans 6: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Pip: So the sacrifice has already happened — baptism is the moment of dying with Christ, and what follows is a life lived out in the world, not a posture of remaining on an altar. The world, in this reading, is the altar.

Mara: That reframe carries through to verse 2 as well. The call not to conform to the world’s pattern, and to be transformed by the renewing of your mind, is described as an exercise in faith — comparable to building muscle memory in a sport or skill. The more you practice, the more instinctive faithfulness becomes.

Pip: Which brings Paul to verses 3–8 and the gifts — prophecy, service, teaching, encouragement, giving, leadership, mercy. The sermon walks through each one, and the framing is notably practical: prophecy is less about predicting the future than forth-telling the gospel, sometimes in ways that make people uncomfortable.

Mara: On leadership specifically, the post notes that it doesn’t require knowing the Bible as well as the preacher — strong people skills, financial stewardship, or compassionate ministry all count. And on mercy, there’s a candid admission that it’s an area requiring ongoing work, especially under stress.

Pip: Mercy being hardest when luggage keeps flying west instead of east across the Atlantic — which, fair enough, is a genuinely difficult test of the fruit of the Spirit.*

Mara: The sermon closes with a congregational challenge: look around, identify a gift you see in someone else, and name it to them during fellowship time. The post also links to a 108-question spiritual gifts survey for anyone wanting to explore further. The underlying argument is that unity in the body depends on each person knowing and exercising their particular gift.

Mara: And if gifts are how the body functions internally, the next passage asks what that same love looks like directed outward — even toward people who make it hard.

Love as a Default Setting

Pip: Romans 12:9–21 looks at first like a checklist of twenty-five commands. The sermon on “Unhypocritical Love” argues that’s the wrong frame entirely.

Mara: The governing statement in the Greek is a three-word declarative: “Love is unhypocritical.” As the post puts it, “He’s setting a standard… Paul doesn’t want you to see it as a checklist. He wants you to see love as a default setting for your heart and mind.”

Pip: What follows in the passage — bless persecutors, don’t repay evil for evil, live at peace — is then a description of what that default looks like under pressure, not a scorecard.

Mara: The post also notes that “hate what is evil” is the first phrase Paul uses to describe unhypocritical love. Love doesn’t overlook or tolerate evil — that’s built into the definition from the start. The pivot to the next segment’s territory lands here: if Romans 12 defines what love does, the question is what posture sustains it.

Pip: Two Sundays, one sustained argument — sacrifice orients you outward, gifts equip you for the work, and love without hypocrisy is the operating system underneath all of it.

Mara: Romans 13 and 14 are next on the lectionary. We’ll see what Paul does with that foundation when the preaching resumes.

*In the message, I relate my frustration with a problem we were having with an airline at the time. My wife and step-daughter were traveling in Scandinavia, but their luggage never made it to them.

As I’ve experimented with these AI podcasts in WordPress, I’ve been impressed for the most part at how they’ve turned out. Occasionally they may get things a little jumbled, but any foibles I’ve seen have not significantly distracted from my messages or intent. I do try to fact check each one to ensure any necessary disclaimers or corrections are applied. I consider WordPress to be liable for the content of the AI podcast.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

Unhypocritical Love (Romans 12:9–21)

I preached this message on August 30, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska. This is my last Sunday to preach on Romans for this year’s liturgical calendar. Romans 13 and 14 are on the calendar for the next couple weeks when I’m on a short road trip and out of the pulpit, but when I’m in the pulpit again, I’ll either be addressing Philippians 1 or a Gospel passage.

Good morning! The Lord be with you!

At first glance, when you hear or read this passage, I can imagine you have a thousand thoughts going through your mind. On the surface, it sounds like we’ve just read a whole list of commands, by my count 25 in all from verses 9–21. It’s easy to see then, how the pastor at my home church was able to take 12 weeks this summer to work through Romans 12. Each of the would-be commands are great subjects by themselves for sermons. But alas, I do not have 12 straight weeks to do that with you, nor would I want to “borrow” my pastor’s sermons to accomplish such a task. “Twelve on Romans Twelve”; that would make a nice sermon series title.

As I looked at the passage and began to ponder how I might be able to organize my thoughts, it seemed like the paragraph breaks in my version might do for a convenient and simple organizing structure. But as I’m wont to do, especially with a passage that’s a bit challenging, I looked into my Greek text to make sure the paragraph breaks were justified by the text, and I was not disappointed. So, here’s how I’ll approach the text this morning to respect the way Paul wrote it.

The text is divided into three main sections, each beginning with a direct statement that indicates the theme for each section. Beginning in verse 9, we have the statement about love and what that looks like. We might think that could be kind of squishy, but it’s not. We’ll look at the intensity of the concept when we get there.

The next section starts in verse 14, digs a little deeper into our souls, and challenges us to do some things that might be really difficult: “Bless those who persecute you.”^[1] Kind of makes you want to squirm a little bit in your seat, right?

Finally, Paul cuts to the heart of the matter directly in verses 17: “Do not repay anyone evil for evil.”^[2] Paul gets pretty intense in that last section. So, let’s get started this morning and break this down.

The first three statements in verse 9 are actually summaries of what I’ve just described above, but Paul doesn’t lay them out in the same order. Let’s take a look under the hood here and break down what’s going on.

The lead-statement sets the tone of the rest of the passage. In the original language it is a simple, three-word sentence that makes a statement of fact:[3] “Love is unhypocritical.” This should be a straightforward translation in most cases, but our English translations have interpreted what follows as a series of short commands about things we should or shouldn’t do. [4] So they have transferred that understanding to this first phrase as well: “Let love be genuine” or “Let love be sincere” as some translations have it.

This is completely acceptable when it comes to Bible translation, because the goal is to make it understandable to average English reader. Also, sometimes we have a mindset as Christians that we just want God to tell us what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to live. Then we can just check off the boxes and grade ourselves on how well we think we’re doing. But we also know that living for Christ isn’t just about checking off behavioral boxes and those with a passing grade get into heaven. In fact, it isn’t about checking off boxes at all, really, because we’ve already seen that when we’re “in Christ,” we already have the victory. Christ has checked off all the boxes, so to speak, and has imparted his righteousness to us.

Paul knows this as well, and I think in this case, especially with a mixed group of Jews and Gentiles, I would suggest that instead of giving us a checklist, he’s giving a definition of unhypocritical love. Again, the governing statement is “Love is genuine.” That is an absolute statement of truth. He’s setting a standard, much like he does in 1 Corinthians 13, but customized for the Corinthian culture and church. In fact, what he’s probably doing here in Romans is defining ἀγάπη (agapē) love for both Jews and Gentiles. What follows then is a description of actions that demonstrate what unhypocritical love looks like. So, in some respects it is still a checklist of sorts, but Paul doesn’t want you to see it as a checklist. He wants you to see love as a default setting for your heart and mind.

It is important to note, then, that many of the things that follow this statement are descriptions of other-centered behaviors. Several of the key words in this list are words that are rarely found in the NT, in a few cases only once or twice, so these are worth noting. I won’t go into detail on each one; as the pastor of my home church demonstrated, each one of the concepts is worthy of its own sermon.

I want to save the last two phrases in verse 9 for a little later, so let’s look at verse 10. “Be devoted to one another in love” is how the NIV translates it. Our reading has “love one another with mutual affection.”^[5] First of all, the word for “mutual affection” here (“love” in the NIV) is not agapē, but φιλαδελφία (philadelphia)^[6], that’s right, “brotherly love.” This of course refers to real love and mutual affection, not the kind of “love” you might get from a Philadelphia Eagles fans, who’ve been known to boo Santa Claus.[7]

The word for “love” in our bulletin reading (“devoted” in the NIV) is a compound of two words that mean two different kinds of love in Greek (φιλόστοργος philostorgos). The first part of the compound is the same as the φιλία (philia) in Philadelphia; the second part of the compound is a word that C.S. Lewis describes as familial love, especially that kind of love a mother and child share.[8] It’s easy to see, then, how the concepts of devotion from the NIV and mutual affection from the NRSV are appropriate for this passage. We’re called to love our brothers and sisters in Christ like we love our own families. If we do that, then the rest of the items in that first paragraph—zeal, spiritual fervor, honor, hope, patience, etc.—fall into place. That’s why “love your neighbor as yourself” is the second greatest command in Scripture.

I want to return to the second phrase in vs. 9, “Hate what is evil.” I must point out that this is first phrase Paul uses to describe unhypocritical love. Love doesn’t overlook evil. Love doesn’t tolerate evil. This verse would seem to tie into verses 17–21, since “evil” seems to be a prominent theme there, although it is a different Greek word [κακός (kakos)] that emphasizes evil deeds and actions specifically. In verse 9, “evil” refers to an evil thing, not an evil person as it does in the Lord’s prayer.[9]

The word for “hate” is another one of those words that only appears once in the New Testament. It is not based on the typical word for “hate” that is used in the New Testament. It derives from the root of our modern English word “stigma.” The Greek word has a prefix added to it that implies your hatred of evil should be so strong that you run away from, much like Paul often warns his audiences to flee sexual immorality, idolatry, and greed.

While physically removing yourselves from situations that could cause you to stumble greatly, the practicality of that may not always be expedient. If you see someone in danger, for example, you might be inclined to help, up to and including self defense if necessary. That would be a noble act as well, especially if you can avoid returning evil for evil as verse 17 says. You may have training in conflict resolution or deescalation of a situation that would prove beneficial for all involved. So, it’s not just about fleeing evil things, but about figuring out how you can do the right thing, the good thing, to overcome evil when it comes your way. Unhypocritical love overcomes evil.

The exhortations here are again positive: Do what is right, live at peace if you can, don’t take revenge. So again, Paul is speaking to our mindset, encouraging us to develop default behaviors. It’s all about practice and training, getting that “muscle memory” firmly ensconced in us. Doing the right thing speaks volumes in our culture that increasingly, as I said last week, sees violence as an acceptable solution. Certain Proverbs come to mind here:

12:25: Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up.^[10]

15:1: A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.^[11]

16:14: A king’s wrath is a messenger of death, but the wise will appease it.^[12]

20:3: It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel.^[13]

I’ll close by looking at the third phrase in verse 9: “Hold fast to what is good.” The word for “hold fast” there is another rare word in the New Testament. It’s used to describe the sexual relationship between a man and a woman, in the opposite contexts of marriage and prostitution. Peter uses the word in Acts 10 when he speaks of his call to go share the Gospel (and a meal) at the Gentile Cornelius’s home. Like the other descriptions throughout our passage today, the focus is other-centered, even when the “other” is one who is persecuting you.

The word for “persecute” (διώκω diōkō) here is interesting because it is the same Greek word that is translated as “pursue” in the previous verse in reference to hospitality. In other words, the word has the positive meaning of pursuing good things for others but the negative meaning of pursuing someone for whom you intend harm. The latter negative meaning is made obvious in the context when Paul emphasizes blessing the persecutors, not cursing them. In Paul’s context, a curse was a various serious thing, essentially wishing death on the one cursed.

Verses 14–16 also have a strong undertone of humility as well. Know your place; know your limits. Live together in harmony. That may be easier to do when you’re all of the same mindset. But remember Paul is addressing a mixed group here of Jews and Gentile Romans. I’m sure they had to put forth significant effort to make things work in their ethnically diverse house churches.

Romans 12 is certainly a strong contender for the best chapter on love in the New Testament. In some areas, it seems to cover a little more ground as far as the dos and don’ts of love in the Christian setting. But again, the cultural differences between Rome and Corinth can’t be ignored. Paul had to deal extensively with the speaking in tongues issue in Corinth, but there wasn’t a word about that in Paul’s gift list in the first part of Romans 12. On the other hand, Paul doesn’t deal very much with evil in 1 Corinthians 12–14, while in Romans 12, we see a great deal about that. Corinthians deals more with church order and practice, while Romans seems to focus on some larger cultural and societal issues that impacted the Roman churches.

We won’t settle the “best chapter on love” debate here, but I think we can all agree that, when we practice loving our neighbor as ourselves and loving God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, we are doing our part to advance the kingdom of God and bring about that great day of redemption and reward, when sin finally will be defeated. May the peace of God go with today and the rest of the week. Amen.

My opinions are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

To read and hear the previous week’s message on the first half of Romans 12: Life as a “Living Sacrifice”: Finding Your Gifts (Romans 12:1–8) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog.

^[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[3] Formally known as indicative voice; in this case the “to be” copulative verb “is” is implied, as is often the case with simple Greek copulative sentences.

^[4] In the Greek text, what follows is a series of participial phrases through the end of verse 13. Participles typically take on the aspect of the main verb, which in this case would be the implied copulative. If the translators think the implied copulative is imperative, then translators would interpret all the participles linked to that main verb as imperative, as seems to be the case in modern translations. As you will see, I am taking a different approach.

^[5] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

^[6] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[7] Ranking the Nicest (to the Nastiest) NFL Fanbases – The Quick Report

^[8] C.S. Lewis: Four Loves – 1. Storge (Affection)

^[9] In the Lord’s Prayer, the adjective πονηρός (ponēros) is masculine. Here in Romans 12, it is neuter.

^[10] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[11] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[12] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[13] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

2025 Summary

Romans

Gospel of John

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