The duty of a pastor is to open up the Scriptures to help people understand God, the world, and themselves. We read the Bible to know how God thinks so that the people of God know how to speak and act to reflect his way of thinking on... more
The duty of a pastor is to open up the Scriptures to help people understand God, the world, and themselves. We read the Bible to know how God thinks so that the people of God know how to speak and act to reflect his way of thinking on earth. The goal of this paper is to read Romans 1-3 in order to know how God thinks to win people to God's way of thinking. The problem is there is no consensus on how the first three chapters of Romans reflects God's thinking. Nonetheless, this is an exegetical paper of Romans 1-3 to set forth Paul's argument itself.
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The debate of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” is about whether the Jews obey the law as a form of legalism. The purpose of this paper is to determine if the Jews obey the law as a form of legalism. The four pieces of evidence... more
The debate of the so-called “New Perspective on Paul” is about whether the Jews obey the law as a form of legalism. The purpose of this paper is to determine if the Jews obey the law as a form of legalism. The four pieces of evidence examined are: 1) Boasting, 2) “through the law of faith,” 3) Contrast between “faith” and “works of law,” and 4) Abraham is justified by faith not by works. After each piece of evidence is presented, the evidence is re-examined to determine if it supports legalism.
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The priority of interpretation is to hear what God actually says so we can clearly communicate the gospel. The problem is that we unknowingly inherit entire traditions from previous interpreters, often overlooking their mistaken... more
The priority of interpretation is to hear what God actually says so we can clearly communicate the gospel. The problem is that we unknowingly inherit entire traditions from previous interpreters, often overlooking their mistaken presuppositions. Since all understanding flows from our presuppositions, our controlling question is: Do our modern English translations of Romans 3:28 reflect an exegetical bias rather than the Greek syntax of the sentence? The historical-grammatical method is used to answer this question along with a plausible reading of Romans 3:27-31.
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This essay rethinks Paul’s thesis statement of Galatians 2:15-16 by examining two interpretive pieces that are often overlooked by interpreters. The first piece is the meaning of ἐὰν μὴ. The second piece is the placement of the... more
This essay rethinks Paul’s thesis statement of Galatians 2:15-16 by examining two interpretive pieces that are often overlooked by interpreters. The first piece is the meaning of ἐὰν μὴ. The second piece is the placement of the prepositional phrase ἐξ ἔργων νόμου. After fitting these two pieces into the exegetical puzzle of Paul's thesis of Galatians, it applies the adjectival use of ἐξ ἔργων νόμου to the ἐὰν μὴ debate and ends with a plausible interpretation of Galatians 2:15-16.