Paul taught us that we fight a spiritual battle, both within ourselves and in our world. Both fronts will ultimately be conquered in the end through Christ, but today the battle rages. Fortunately, the Scripture and Spirit continue to empower us for our combat.
In the first of our two feature articles, Mark Jacobson tackles the ever-difficult passage of Romans 7:14-25. He focuses on the contexts of Romans 7 that help answer whether Paul is talking about a believer or unbeliever when he describes one who desires the follow the Law but cannot. In the second article, I discuss two challenges we face when we study and teach Proverbs. The first challenge is how we approach the uniqueness of a proverb. Is it true? Sometimes true? The second challenge deals with how we handle the seeming randomness of Proverbs 10-30. What do we do with what appears to be a series of disconnected sayings?
Our two book reviews also tackle common issues of ministry today. Paul Johnson reviews A Better Way. It calls us to add a new model of missions to our current mindsets by investing in missionaries trained in every vocational field to go and disciple throughout the world. This approach especially opens doors in “closed” countries. Gary Derickson reviews Women, Slaves and the Gender Debate. This book will open your eyes to an emerging hermeneutical approach that threatens to rob many evangelicals of authoritative biblical convictions.
Thanks for serving at the front lines. We hope this issue of Dedicated encourages you in the spiritual battle.
