SMGB Indices

Featured

This is a “Site Map” of sorts for my more popular posts.

Follow and communicate with me on Facebook: Sunday Morning Greek Blog (FB)

IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ve now added an e-mail option to the blog so you can contact me directly. scott.stocking@sundaymorninggreekblog.com.

NOTE: Scroll down past this post to see the latest articles.

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

Diversity Statement

English: You may comment on any blog post in your preferred language, even one not listed here. I’ll use a translation program to convert to English.
India (Hindi): आप अपनी पसंदीदा भाषा में टिप्पणी कर सकते हैं।
Poland (Polish): Możesz komentować w swoim preferowanym języku.
Philippines (Filipino): Maaari kang magkomento sa iyong gustong wika.
Indonesia (Indonesian): Anda dapat berkomentar dalam bahasa pilihan Anda.
South Africa (Zulu): Ungaphawula ngolimi lwakho olukhethayo.
Germany (German): Sie können in Ihrer bevorzugten Sprache kommentieren.
Spain (Spanish): Puede comentar en su idioma preferido.
Brazil (Portuguese): Você pode comentar no seu idioma preferido.
Norway (Norwegian): Du kan kommentere på ditt foretrukne språk.
China (Mandarin): 您可以用您喜欢的语言发表评论。
Korea (Korean): 선호하는 언어로 댓글을 달 수 있습니다.
France (French): Vous pouvez commenter dans votre langue préférée.
Saudi Arabia (Arabic): يمكنك التعليق بلغتك المفضلة.
Swahili: Unaweza kutoa maoni kwa lugha unayoipendelea.

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

Calling All Harvesters: Matthew 20:1–16

I presented this message on September 20, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, Nebraska.

A friend of mine recently retired after spending some thirty years with the same mom-and-pop manufacturing company. He knew everything there was to know about the company, including all the computer system set-up and what the machines needed with respect to maintenance and upgrades. He was the owner’s right-hand man. He did his best to train his replacement, but as you might imagine, it’s hard to replace someone like that.

He’s told me that they’ve called him a couple times after his retirement to help with different things where he may have had some historical knowledge or special expertise unique to the companies policies and capabilities. Being a solid Christian man, he’s obliged. Now I don’t know if they paid him for such consulting, but if I were in his shoes living on a retirement income, and I was the only one who knew how to fix a problem or address an issue, you can bet I’d negotiate for a pretty penny. Not extravagant, but it would have to be enough to make me want to give up a few days off. Sometimes when you need good help in a pinch, that’s going to bump up the cost of that help.

In our parable today, Jesus tells a story about a man who goes out to hire laborers for his vineyard. He doesn’t just go out once first thing in the morning; he goes out four more times to hire laborers, even toward the end of the day. Because it’s a parable, we don’t have any historical details about a fictional story, but I think it’s safe to assume that he really needed to get his vineyard harvested by the end of the day. In this parable, unlike the story I told about my friend, the vineyard owner doesn’t need anyone with special skills; he just needs bodies to get the grapes off the vine. And apparently, the closer he got to the end of the day, the more urgently he needed workers. We don’t know why it was so urgent. Maybe a storm was coming and he needed to save the grapes. Maybe he needed money to pay off debts. Maybe there was a big wedding coming up and he needed wine for the guests.

We’ll never know the answer to why, but maybe that’s the point of the story. As he’s telling this story I’m almost certain the people in the crowd have any number of situations that they could apply the principles of the story to in their lives. Parables are like that sometimes. We don’t get the details because the details don’t matter so much as the application to our respective life-situations.

Before we get into the parable itself, I want to take some time understand the opening line of this parable: “For the kingdom of heaven is like….” But what is the “kingdom of heaven”? Does it refer only to the heavenly realms? Does it refer to the people of God? Or is it some mix of both?

The first thing to note is that the phrase “kingdom of heaven” (ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν^[1] hē basileia tōn ouranōn) is only found in Matthew’s gospel—32 times in 31 verses. The corresponding phrase in the other gospels is “kingdom of God”—14 times in Mark, 31 times in Luke, and twice in John, in addition to four times in Matthew. Because this phrase “kingdom of heaven” is unique to Matthew, I think it’s worth exploring for a few minutes so we can better understand Matthew’s perspective.

The first two occurrences of “kingdom of heaven” are found in Matthew 3:2, spoken by John the Baptizer, and Matthew 4:17, spoken by Jesus. Both of them use the same phrase: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near you.” Both of them use the phrase to kick off their respective preaching ministries. Later on in Matthew 10:7, Jesus instructs his disciples to use the same phrase. But Jesus puts more oomph into the instruction so his followers have a practical, visible way to demonstrate the kingdom of heaven is near: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”^[2] Not that they were counting any of this (maybe Matthew the tax collector was!), but those are measurable events, actual signs of God working and moving in and among his creation.

In Matthew 11, Jesus speaks of this “here-and-now” nature of the kingdom of heaven:

¹¹Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. ¹² From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it.^{^[3]}

A few verses later (vs. 16), Jesus would confirm this “here-and-now” nature by asking, “To what can I compare this generation?” In 18:4–5, Jesus compares the little children to the kingdom of heaven:

“Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. ⁵ And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”^[4]

Matthew 13 contains a series of seven parables that begin with the phrase “The kingdom of heaven is like…” but Jesus puts this group of parables in a slightly different context. Although all the parables could be considered true to life, Jesus tells his disciples they’re getting something special, something no one else has access to at that time.

“¹⁰ The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

¹¹He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. ¹²Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.”^[5]

This passage has nothing to do with money, by the way. That last verse may sound an awful lot like, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” However, the passage is about spiritual knowledge and insight. Of course, we see that the disciples themselves have questions about these parables, so they hadn’t gained immediate understanding. Jesus still had to explain a couple parables to them. Most of those parables relate to the coming kingdom, especially to those who are open to it and will inherit it.

They also show that the kingdom of heaven is not a universal promise to all of humanity. As in Romans, there is an emphasis in taking the message to heart and making the commitment to believe in and follow Christ with that “obedience of faithfulness.” We give up everything for the pearl of great price or the treasure in the field. We receive the word with joy and gladness and hand over the worries and cares of this life to the savior, since we are powerless in and of ourselves.

The parable of the net is the most obvious one that has to do with the final judgment, confirming that there will indeed be a separating of the wicked from the faithful at the end. In Matthew 7:21–23 says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²²Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ ²³Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”^[6]

This passage serves as a hinge to take a look at the future aspect of the kingdom of heaven, that is, our actual experience of heaven when our own work on earth is finished. Jesus speaks of this in his encounter with the Roman centurion whose servant was paralyzed:

“I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.”^[7]

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins at the wedding banquet. I won’t read the whole parable but I think you remember it well enough. Five of the virgins remembered to bring extra oil, while the other five did not. Those that forgot their extra oil had to go find more at the last minute, and completely missed out on the wedding banquet. All these parables in Matthew 13 suggest that intentional effort is needed to secure your place in the kingdom of God.

So there you have it: the kingdom of heaven embraces the now and the not-yet. It embraces the everyday and the extraordinary. It’s made up of the obvious truths of the kingdom and the not-so-obvious principles “hidden” in the parables. This brings us back, then, to our passage in Matthew 20 about the vineyard owner hiring workers for his vineyard.

I mentioned above that we really don’t have any details about why the owner had to keep going back and hiring laborers. If you think about it, though, this is probably the best way to handle this type of parallel, to leave such details vague and open ended so that the application isn’t narrowly limited to a handful of situations.

This parable itself would seem to be a follow up to Jesus’s final instruction in Matthew 9:37–38 before he commissions and sends out the disciples in chapter 10. Most of you are familiar with this passage:

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”^[8]

The most obvious application, especially in the context of Matthew, is that we are called to do all we can to reach out to those who need to be brought into the kingdom before it is too late. This parable is the last one Jesus delivers before his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. That’s why the connection to the Matthew 9 passage I cited above is important. It closes the chapter on Jesus’s general ministry and sets the stage for the final week of his life.

I don’t think there is anything special about the five times the owner went out to hire people. Five is not a commonly used symbolic number in the Bible. The underlying lesson of the story, though, seems to be captured in the final verses of the story, especially when it comes to the order in which the workers get paid. We read that the late-comers got paid a denarius for their work, while the early birds got the same pay as the late-comers.

The final verse in the parable is “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”^[9] Not only does that wrap the parable and give a high-level summary of what it was about, but if you read forward from there, you will see that this principle is important is addressing one final issues among his disciples before he enters Jerusalem.

Immediately after the parable, Jesus makes his third and final prediction of his death. This evidently gets a couple of his disciples (and their mother) to think, “Hmm, if he’s going to be killed, he’ll need a successor. We know just the guys!” In fact, immediately following that death prediction, James’ and John’s mother pleads with Jesus to make them his right- and left-hand men. You may remember that James and John were two of the earliest disciples to follow Jesus, joining their fishing buddies Peter and Andrew. So the mother of the sons of Zebedee figured since they had that kind of tenure being enduring, long-term disciples of Jesus, they deserved the first shot at succession.

Jesus was straight-up with them and said it wasn’t his decision to make who occupied those spots. Jesus went on to say that those who wanted to be great had to be servants. That seems to fit right in with “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” As a further point of emphasis to this principle, Jesus closes out chapter 20 by healing two blind beggars of their blindness. Are these beggars the final two “laborers” Jesus “hired” to proclaim the good news and get the crowd “ripe” for his triumphal entry?

For your own setting here at Mount View, I think this parable of the laborers has an important message. Never give up on reaching out. We have over 75 years of history here, a great history of having a full auditorium on Sunday morning and a vibrant youth group, both of which I experienced in my youth here. If you believe in the mission and the message of this congregation, and I know you do, consider what simple things you could do to help with the “harvest” of souls and bring them into this fellowship.

The harvest is still plentiful and we need more laborers. Let us pray and consider how we can help with that harvest. Amen.

^[1] Aland, Kurt, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, Maurice A. Robinson, and Allen Wikgren. 1993; 2006. The Greek New Testament, Fourth Revised Edition (with Morphology). Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft.

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

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[6] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[7] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[8] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[9] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Love Over Judgment: Romans 14

I forgot to bring my voice recorder to the pulpit, and I tried videoing my sermon using the Reels app, but evidently Reels has a 15-minute limit, so Meta didn’t save my video at all. So I offer my apologies for not having an audio file. Enjoy the read! Message presented September 13, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE.

Good morning! The Lord be with you!

Well, I had forgotten I was doing the rest of the Sundays in September, so here I am with one more chance to share some insights from Paul’s letter to the Roman church with you. As we read through the passage this morning, I’m sure there were a couple words or concepts that stuck out to you: judging, despising, quarrelling stick out to me, in a negative way. Since the concept of passing judgment is so prevalent in this passage, I think it’s important to take a few moments to dig into the biblical meanings of these concepts.

The word Paul uses for “judgment” (κρίνω krinō) is also the root of our English words “critic,” “critical,” “criticize,” “critique,” and so on. It is also the root in words like “hypocrite” The word can refer to formal verdict from an approved court; discernment between two or more options; an informed opinion about a matter; or a statement of rebuke, whether justified or not, against another individual. One of the definitions for the word in Merriam-Webster is “the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing.”^[1]

The most basic teaching we have about judgment in the Bible comes from Jesus’s own mouth in Matthew 7:1: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.” That passage comes from the Sermon on the Mount, so you may be familiar with what comes after it. Here’s Matthew 7:1–6 in full:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

³“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. ^[2]

This is the kind of judgment, I believe, that Paul addresses in Romans 14. But the gospels and Paul also deal with a legitimate form of judgment, church discipline. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on that this morning, but it is important we have a fuller scope of understanding the concept.

Jesus addresses this in Matthew 18:15ff:

¹⁵“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. ¹⁶But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ ^d ¹⁷If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

¹⁸“Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. ^[3]

Although the word for “judgment” doesn’t occur in this passage, the implication of such is quite clear. It may start as a one-on-one encounter, but any final decision about ostracizing the offending member for a credible charge of sin must ultimate rest with the local church body.

Paul addresses this as well in 1 Corinthians 5:9–13:

⁹I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—¹⁰not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. ¹¹But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister ^a but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

¹²What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked person from among you.”^[4]

Of course, as a church, we hope we never have to employ this kind of discipline. I’ve had enough experience as a pastor in my career to have seen the sequence of Matthew 18 played out on a few occasions.

But as I said above, Paul isn’t really addressing church discipline issues in Romans 14. What he’s dealing with is a clash of Jewish and Gentile cultures, as I’ve discussed all along in Romans. Let’s take a closer look at that passage.

Paul sets the context of his comments with the first verse of chapter 14: “Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions”^[5] as the version in the bulletin says. First of all, the word for “quarreling” (διάκρισις diakrisis) is based on the word for judgment. This reflects the aspect of judgment about having used your own critical thinking skills to form your own opinion about something. It also carries with it the idea of “distinguishing” between good and evil (Hebrews 5:14) and “discernment” of spirits in 1 Corinthians 12:10.

The word for “opinion” (διαλογισμός dialogismos)^[6] is an intensified form of our word for “dialogue.” The NIV translates the word “disputable matters.” In other words, the idea or concept has been thoroughly discussed or thought through, whether in your own mind or by interacting with others, so it’s likely each side is thoroughly convinced of their own view and not open to reconsidering it.

Now if these “opinions” were a matter of faith or proper doctrine, then arguing about them might be a worthwhile exercise, if done peaceably. But the nature of the issues Paul addresses are not matters of faith or orthodoxy. They all seem to be matters related to their respective cultures.

Notice also that Paul is keeping this within the body of Christ in Rome: “Accept the one whose faith is weak.”^[7] He’s not saying they have to accept people in their midst who want to work against the mission of the church. Nor does Paul explicitly define which view he considers “weak.” Your diet doesn’t save or condemn you. The days you consider special (or not) don’t save or condemn you. Whether you eat meat or not is not a matter of salvation. Paul’s only admonition here is that, whatever you believe about these things, you should be “fully persuaded” in what you believe. That reflects the word in verse 1 translated “opinion.” It’s a well-thought position that you’re unlikely to be dissuaded from.

Paul emphasizes another attitude that believers should avoid. This is the idea of “contempt” (ἐξουθενέω exoutheneō)^[8] in vv. 3 and 10. The reading in the bulletin uses the word “despise.” Paul puts this word in the mouths of his opponents in 2 Corinthians 10:10 when they describe his message as something that “amounts to nothing.” It carries with it not only the idea of a lower status, but also of rejection and ridicule as well, in effect, a form of ostracism. We should not treat our brothers and sisters in Christ in this way over matters that have nothing to do with our faith or salvation.

Paul closes out the first twelve verses by emphasizing what is truly important: our fellowship with one another made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Each one of us is responsible for our own beliefs and behaviors. Yet we also must realize that we live to encourage and love one another as well. Paul goes on to suggest in verse 13 that acting in these inappropriate ways toward one another is akin to putting stumbling blocks in the way of those who may be weak or wavering in their faith.

Paul defends his own positions on these matters but also concedes that if someone believes differently than he does, then that’s okay too. What matters is that we love one another.

I will close this message with Romans 14:17–19, because I think that is the perfect way to send us out into the mission field today.

¹⁷For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, ¹⁸because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.

¹⁹Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.^[9]

Peace to you this day. Amen.

My views are my own.

Pastor Scott Stocking, M.Div.

^[1] Merriam-Webster, Inc. 2003. In Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary., Eleventh ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc.

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

^[3] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

^[4] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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

^[8] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[9] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

Political Correctness in 1993 (My first published quote!)

From 1989 to 1994, I served as a Campus Minister at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL. At the time, a veteran campus minister named Doug Dickey was documenting the Restoration Movement campus ministries across the United States. He published the following excerpt from our February 1993 newsletter. This was my first time as a “footnote” in a published work (Campus Ministry: Restoring the Church on the University Campus, College Press, 1994). I don’t think I have the original newsletter anymore, so I’m glad part of the history of our ministry is preserved here.

In ancient Rome, Christians were not persecuted because they believed in God – Rome was very tolerant of a vast number of religions and cults. Christians were persecuted because they worshipped God only. They refused to acknowledge the Caesar as “Lord God Almighty” and paid for it with their lives. . . . Today, we have a new Caesar, Caesar Politicus Correctus. On campuses across the nation, as well as in the political arena, Political Correctness has become the litmus test for social righteousness and acceptance. Those who proclaim Caesar Politicus Correctus as Lord are readily accepted and considered “normal” or “moral.” Those who refuse to bow down to this new Caesar are automatically branded as bigots, racists, sexists, and ignorant. . . . CCM is reaching out to those who persecute us, showing them the love and compassion of Christ. Pray for a softening of their hearts that they might receive Christ. Pray that we might declare the Word of God fearlessly.

— Scott Stocking, February 1993

I publish this to honor Charlie Kirk on the one-year anniversary of his transition to Glory. Charlie succeeded wildly at the kind of ministry I tried to carry out at NIU. I was no Charlie Kirk to be sure, but our ministry did touch lives and was responsible for at least three couples getting married in one year!

My opinions are my own.

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.