Wednesday in the Word

Romans 8:1–11 announces some of the best news in the Christian life: in Christ, we are no longer trapped in the moral paralysis of Romans 7. God has not only declared us righteous; He has given us His own Spirit as the living power to change us from the inside out. Where our own effort could never produce real holiness, the Spirit of life now frees us from the old reality of sin and death and begi...

Romans 7:7–25 pulls us into the honest, inner struggle of the Christian life: we genuinely want to obey God, yet we keep tripping over the same sins we hate. In this episode, we look at Paul’s confession—“I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate”—and unpack how the Law exposes our sin, intensifies our awareness of it, and ultimately drives us to cry out for rescue in Christ rather t...

Romans 6:15–7:6 tackles a lingering accusation against the gospel of grace: if our inheritance is secure and we are no longer under the Law, why not sin freely? In this episode, we walk through Paul’s answer that there is still a powerful incentive to avoid sin—death in our present experience—and that the Law was never able to produce holiness in the first place. Instead, in Christ we are freed fr...

Romans 6:1–14 tackles a sharp and unsettling question: if God’s grace covers all our sin, why not keep on sinning? In this episode, we walk through Paul’s resounding “Absolutely not!” and see that grace is not permission to remain in slavery, but God’s promise to free us from sin’s mastery and give us a new destiny marked by life, righteousness, and hope.  In this week’s episode, we explore: How R...

Romans 5:12–21 shows us that the whole human story hangs on two people—Adam and Jesus—and that God’s grace in Christ is far stronger than the damage Adam unleashed. In this episode, we trace Paul’s argument that sin and death are real, deep, and universal—but that God’s mercy is even more real, more powerful, and absolutely prevailing. Where sin increases, grace does not merely keep pace; it overf...

Romans 5:1–11 opens up a stunning reality: in Christ, we are not just forgiven—we are guaranteed to become the kind of people who are truly and forever “good enough” in God’s eyes. In this episode, we trace Paul’s argument that justification by faith gives us a solid reason to rejoice: we stand in grace, we have peace with God, and we can be absolutely certain that God will finish the work of maki...

Romans 4 invites us to watch Paul hold up Abraham as the family pattern for everyone who will ever know God—not as a spiritual superstar who earned his way in, but as a sinner who received righteousness as a sheer gift. In this episode, we trace how Paul dismantles religious boasting, exposes our prejudice, and shows that the promise of God rests not on our performance but on grace, received by fa...

In this episode, we sit with the hard but honest news of Romans 3: that no amount of self-help, positive thinking, or religious effort can cure the deeper disease of sin. Paul brings both religious insiders and obvious outsiders into the same courtroom before God—and then announces that the only hope we have is the righteousness God freely gives in Jesus Christ.  In this week’s episode, we explore...

God’s judgment is not just for “those people out there”—it comes home to the moral, the religious, and the respectable as well. In this episode, we walk through Romans 2:1–29 to see how Paul turns the spotlight from obvious sinners to those who trust in their ethics, their religion, or their spiritual performance, and shows that all of us stand in need of mercy.  In this week’s episode, we explore...

Before Paul announces the good news of the gospel, he first tells us why we so desperately need it. In this episode, Krisan Marotta walks through Romans 1:18–32 to explain what Scripture means by the wrath of God, why it is already being revealed in human history, and how our culture’s “feel-good” spirituality—what researchers call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism—falls far short of the biblical pictu...

Romans is not just another New Testament letter—it is Paul’s most careful explanation of the gospel and what it means for God to make sinful people truly holy. In this introductory episode, Krisan Marotta traces how Romans has changed lives throughout history and lays out the key themes that will guide our journey through the first eight chapters, with special attention to Romans 1:16–17.  In this...

How do you handle it when life isn’t fair? It’s easy to grow frustrated with our own lot in life and resent those who seem to have it better. Consider the story of Miriam. Most people fail at Bible study because no one ever taught them how. Bible Study Boot Camp fixes that: one short email a day for a week, plus a worksheet you can use on any passage for the rest of your life. Sign up for Bible St...

The Bible has about 500 verses on prayer and over 2000 verses on money and income.   While both prayer and finances are important to God, I suspect money gets more verses because we have more trouble with it -- particularly giving it away. We don't like to think about tithing; we avoid sermons on it and we have lots of questions about it. In my experience, most sermons on tithing boil down to...

A tired villager pounding on a neighbor’s door at midnight, a grumpy man in bed with his kids, and a guest who must be fed—Jesus weaves it all into a parable about prayer, gifts, and what we can really expect from God. In this episode on Luke 11:5–8, we explore the “Friend at Midnight” and Jesus’ famous promise to “ask, seek, knock,” and we discover that God is not promising to meet our every wish...

In a parable that has often been used to pressure Christians into “doing more for God,” Jesus actually offers a sobering warning about something much deeper: the danger of lowering God’s standard so we can feel like we’ve met it. In this episode on the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14–30), we place this story in the flow of the Olivet Discourse and explore why the real issue is not how many “...

Waiting for Jesus’ return can feel long, confusing, and at times deeply discouraging. In this episode on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Matthew 24:36–25:13), we explore what it means not just to be “ready” for the kingdom, but to be ready for a delay —to endure seasons when nothing seems to change, prayers feel unanswered, and the temptation grows to stop trusting God and take life i...

A wealthy, earnest young man asks Jesus what good thing he must do to inherit eternal life—and walks away sad. Then Jesus tells a story about vineyard workers who all get paid the same, no matter how long they worked. In this episode on Matthew 19:16–20:16, we explore how these two scenes fit together to expose our belief that God owes us something, and to reveal instead a kingdom where salvation...

When life feels dark, unjust, or out of control, we tend to do one of two things: turn inward toward despair and self-reliance, or turn upward in helpless trust. In this episode on Luke 18:1–14, we look at two parables—the persistent widow and the unjust judge, and the Pharisee and the tax collector—to see how Jesus links prayer with faith and shows that justification is a gift for the humble, not...

In a world that downplays sin and redefines guilt, Jesus tells a story about an unpayable debt, a merciful king, and a servant who refuses to forgive. In this episode on the parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21–35), we look honestly at our real moral guilt before God, why the only cure is real forgiveness, and how saving faith inevitably grows a forgiving heart toward others.  In this...

When Jesus tells a story about a crooked manager who cooks the books—and then gets commended —it can sound like the strangest parable in the Gospels. In this episode on Luke 16:1–8, we wrestle with the “unjust steward” and discover that Jesus is not praising fraud, but highlighting something far more unsettling and hopeful: the shrewdness of a man who finally realizes he is bankrupt, out of option...

In a culture where repentance was seen as a work you did to earn God’s favor, Jesus tells a story about a lost son, a shame-bearing father, and an angry older brother to redefine repentance entirely. In this episode on Luke 15, we walk through the parables of the lost sheep, lost coin, and especially the lost sons to see that repentance is not paying God back, but admitting you cannot—and throwing...

A man in a ditch, a priest on a donkey, a Samaritan with everything to lose—and a lawyer who wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life. In this episode on Luke 10:25–37, we step into Jesus’ debate with a law expert and discover that the parable of the Good Samaritan is not a simple “be nicer” story. It is a searching exposure of our inability to love God and neighbor the way the law re...

In a world that prefers blurred lines and “shades of gray,” Jesus tells a story about wheat and weeds that insists judgment is real, coming, and impossible to avoid. In this episode on Matthew 13:24–43, we explore the parable of the wheat and the tares as an analogy of God’s delayed but certain judgment, why evil is allowed to grow alongside good for now, and how that delay is actually an expressi...

On a crowded shoreline in Galilee, Jesus tells what sounds like a simple farming story—but it turns out to be a spiritual X-ray. In this episode on Matthew 13:1–23, we explore the parable of the sower and the soils, why Jesus chooses this moment to begin teaching in parables, and how this story explains both the mixed responses to Jesus then and the mixed responses to the gospel now.  In this week...

Parables are not children’s stories or soft edges on hard theology—they are one of Jesus’ primary ways of telling the truth about God, the world, and us. In this introductory episode, we explore what makes a parable a parable, why they’ve been so badly misunderstood, and how recovering their first-century Jewish setting helps us hear them as Jesus’ original audience would have heard them—with clar...