by Brian Walsh

So over at Wine Before Breakfast we’ve been hanging out with Paul and his letter to the Romans again. And this morning I offered these reflections on Romans 8.1-17. My indebtedness to Sylvia Keesmaat’s book Paul and His Story: (Re)Interpreting the Exodus Tradition (Sheffield, 1999) is clear.

I would recommend that you take a moment to read the Romans text (slowly and prayerfully) before launching into what I have on offer here.

No one ever said that this was going to be easy.
Not Paul’s letter to the Romans.
Not the faith that he there proposes.
Not the Jesus he calls us to follow.

I know that this stuff isn’t easy.
But if it were easy, it would be cheap.
Right?
I mean if it was any simpler,
then it wouldn’t likely be any more true
to the lives of those early believers in Rome
than it would be true of our own conflicted,
compromised,
complicit,
and contradictory lives.

Read the full text here.

Brian Walsh

Brian is an activist theologian, a retired CRC campus minister, the founder of the Wine Before Breakfast community, and farms with Sylvia Keesmaat at Russet House Farm.He engages issues of theology and culture, and has written a couple of books you might want to check out. His most recent offering is cowritten with Sylvia Keesmaat and entitled Romans Disarmed: Resisting Empire, Demanding Justice.