Thy Strong Word from KFUO Radio

People often talk about faith like it is something you find inside yourself if you look hard enough. Paul reveals just the opposite. Faith comes from outside you––from the Word of Christ spoken into your ears by someone God sent to speak it. That is how it reached you, and that is how it has reached every Christian who has ever lived. Paul traces the chain all the way back from the believer to the...

You own a Bible. You have probably started reading it more than once. And somewhere along the way, you wondered whether you were doing it right. On this Free-Text First Friday, we walk through the basic rules that help Christians read Scripture faithfully: why context matters, how Law and Gospel shape everything, why the whole book points to Christ, and how these tools belong to every Christian in...

Paul opens this chapter with a dramatic expression of grief, like Moses before him, saying he would forfeit his own salvation if it meant his fellow Israelites would be saved. That alone should tell you how personal this gets. God chose Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, and showed mercy to whom He would show mercy. The potter has authority over the clay, and that offends us because we want God...

Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. St. Paul lists them all in this section of his letter because he has faced most of them personally and he knows the Christians to whom he writes are facing the same and losing hope. He tells them plainly: none of it can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christians have been holding on to these verses th...

You have had moments where you needed to pray and could not find the words. Paul knows. He says the whole creation is groaning like a woman in labor, and we groan with it, waiting for what God has promised. The Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, praying on our behalf when we cannot do it ourselves. And God works all things together for the good of those He has called. The...

If you have ever laid awake wondering whether God is angry with you, Romans 8 is where Paul answers. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. After seven chapters proving that sin and death have a grip on every human being alive, Paul announces that God has done what the law could not do. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and that makes you a child of...

Every Christian knows the sin you confess, mean it, and find yourself back in anyway: “I do the very thing I hate. The good I want to do, I don't do! Why?!” Paul clears the Law of any blame: it is holy, righteous, and good, even as it exposes how deeply sin runs in us. So, what’s the issue? Our sinful natures battling to regain control. The Apostle describes the Christian life from the inside as a...

Every Christian knows the sin you confess, mean it, and find yourself back in anyway: “I do the very thing I hate. The good I want to do, I don't do! Why?!” Paul clears the Law of any blame: it is holy, righteous, and good, even as it exposes how deeply sin runs in us. So, what’s the issue? Our sinful natures battling to regain control. The Apostle describes the Christian life from the inside as a...

Should we keep sinning since Christ already died and atoned for all of our sins? Paul’s answer to whether we should simply sin in the face of abounding grace is clear: absolutely not! In baptism you were buried with Christ and raised to walk in a new life. Grace does abound over and against sin, but sin is no longer your master because you have a new one—Jesus—and this master gives life. The wages...

Adam sinned, and death spread to every human being who ever lived. Paul states that plainly and does not soften it. But the free gift is not like the trespass. Where sin increased, grace increased all the more. One man’s disobedience made the many sinners; one Man’s obedience makes the many righteous. Paul draws the contrast as starkly as possible, and the math always favors grace because Christ’s...

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That is where Paul plants his feet before he says something strange: we boast in our sufferings. Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame. This is not a self-help sequence. It works because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. While we w...

Abraham is Paul’s test case. Was he justified by works? No. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Paul makes sure you notice the timeline: the faith came before circumcision, not after. Circumcision was a seal of a righteousness Abraham already had by faith. That matters because it means the promise belongs to everyone who shares Abraham’s faith, Jew and Gentile alike....

Paul has spent two and a half chapters proving that every mouth is stopped and the whole world is guilty before God. Then he writes two words: but now. The righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. There is no distinction. All have sinned. All are justified freely by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ J...

Paul is building a courtroom and nobody gets acquitted because no one has obeyed the law. The Jews have the law and break it. The Gentiles have conscience and ignore it. By works of the law no human being will be justified in God's sight, because the law's job is to show you what sin is. It does not fix it. Paul needs you to hear how total the diagnosis is before he gives you the cure in the next...

If you read Romans 1 and felt good about yourself because Paul was talking about other people’s sins, chapter 2 is for you. You who pass judgment have no excuse, because you do the same things. Paul strips the moral high ground out from under the religious person who assumes the rules only apply to everyone else. God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance. It is not confirmation that you ar...

Three times Paul writes "God gave them up." The wrath of God is revealed against all ungodliness, and it looks like God stepping back and letting humanity have what it wanted. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped the creature instead of the Creator, and God gave them over to the consequences. Paul describes a world that looks uncomfortably like the one outside your window.  T...

When Paul says "gospel," his Roman readers would have heard a political word. For them, "gospels" were the emperor's birth, his military victories, and his decrees. Paul takes that word and gives it back to God. The Gospel he preaches is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, Jew and Greek alike, and it reveals a righteousness that comes by faith. "The righteous shall live by fai...

Why does doing the right thing sometimes feel impossible? Why do feelings of guilt follow us even when we've been forgiven? These aren't new questions. St. Paul wrote his letter to the Romans for a church he had never visited, and yet he addressed the struggles every Christian knows firsthand: the weight of the law, the persistence of sin, the sufficiency of what God has done in Christ. Romans cov...

When you're suffering, who do you go to? James closes his letter with an answer the modern world doesn't expect: call the elders of the church. Let them pray over you and anoint you with oil. Elijah was an ordinary man, and his prayers shut the sky for three years. James saves his final word for the whole congregation: if someone wanders from the truth, go get him. God puts His people in each othe...

James opens with a line that sounds like an Old Testament prophet: weep and howl, you rich, for the miseries coming upon you. Your gold has corroded and the wages you withheld from your workers are crying out to the Lord of Sabaoth. Then he turns to the brothers who are suffering under all of it and tells them to be patient like a farmer waiting for rain. The Judge is standing at the door, and He...

You made plans for next year. James wants to know who told you you'd be here for them. Your life is a mist that shows up for a moment and then it's gone, and the people who say "tomorrow we'll go to this city and make money" are writing checks on a future they don't own. That sounds grim until you realize the flip side: the God who holds tomorrow also holds you.  The Rev. Keith Lingsch, pastor of...

The fights in your church, your family, your head: James traces all of them back to the same source. You want what you don't have, and it eats you alive. He calls friendship with the world adultery against God, which is a hard word to hear. But he follows it with a promise: God gives grace to the humble. Draw near to God, and He draws near to you.  The Rev. John Lukomski, pastor emeritus and co-ho...

You've said something you can't take back. Everyone has. James knows it, and he spends twelve verses on why the tongue is the most dangerous thing in your body. He compares it to a wildfire started by a single match, and his conclusion is blunt: no human being can tame it. But the God who created the mouth also forgives what comes out of it.  The Rev. Brian Davies, pastor of Lord of Glory Lutheran...

A man is cold and hungry and you tell him "hope things get better." James wants to know what kind of faith that is. Martin Luther wrestled with this passage because it sounds like James is saying your works save you. He isn't. He's saying a living faith moves your hands, the same way a living body breathes. Abraham and Rahab both trusted God, and that trust showed up in what they did. Faith that d...

A man walks into your assembly wearing a gold ring and fine clothing, and you say "sit here, please." A poor man walks in wearing shabby clothes, and you say "stand over there." James catches the church playing favorites and calls it what it is: you have become judges with evil thoughts. God chose the poor to be rich in faith. Mercy triumphs over judgment, but only for those who show it.  The Rev....