The Guardian, the Shadow, and the Reality: Understanding the Law's True Purpose One of the most consequential misunderstandings in Christian thought today is the belief that the Law of Moses remains an active instrument in the world — condemning, judging, and driving people toward Christ. It is a well-intentioned reading, but it misreads both the nature of the Law and the radical finality of what God accomplished in Jesus. To understand why, we have to go back further than Sinai. We have to go back to Adam, to the hidden mystery of an eternal covenant , and to the appointed moment in history when everything the Law was pointing toward finally arrived. Paul's letter to the Galatians gives us the clearest window into the Law's actual design. In Galatians 3:24-25 he writes, "Therefore the Law has become our guardian until Christ, so that we may be declared righteous by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under that guardian." The guardian, παιδαγω...
Paul’s Vision of Gifts To Build Up There is a kind of ministry that fills a room with the presence of the minister. And then there is the kind that fills the room with the glory of God. The ministry of Paul is an example of the latter, it is the kind that empties itself so others might be filled. In Romans 1:9–11, Paul writes with remarkable vulnerability about his longing to visit the church in Rome: not to showcase his apostolic authority, but to “impart some spiritual gift” to strengthen them, and to be “mutually encouraged” together with them in faith. This theme of strengthening the church in faith is throughout his letters. This passage itself opens a window into the soul of a man whose entire ministry was animated by grace — the same grace that saved him, the same grace that now compelled him toward others. At the heart of it all is a simple, driving conviction: Jesus loves His church, including Paul, and that love motivates the end goal of Paul’s ministry. Grace gives ...