The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 37-38; Romans 8; Psalm 76

The announcement of the Gospel is writ throughout all of scripture – but the eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, puts it as well and completely as anywhere else.

Here we discover the announcement that God has done what the LAw weakened by sinful flesh could never do, sending his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to condemn sin in the flesh, that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in those who walk not according to the flesh but the Spirit.

The Christian life is announced as Life in the Spirit – the Spirit of Christ – who makes us God’s children. That as Christ comes to us in the likeness of sinful flesh – so our true likeness, our true image is restored. He took upon himself our nature – this is no mere ‘incarnational’ theology, in the sense of him coming among us, no he took upon himself our condition – being like us in every respect, yet without sin. Thus his Life is the condemnation of Sin in the flesh, and the power of God for all who believe.

The evidence of this is our being led by the Spirit of God – living lives that seemingly are like the wind, whose direction is strange to those amongst whom we live, blowing seemingly where it will, and yet always with our eyes on the one who is our Father. And Paul goes further.

This life will see the future redemption of our bodies -and indeed all of Creation – that the two are inextricably linked.

Whilst we flap around trying to come up with solutions to the ecological crisis, no one is heard to cry, ‘but our true need is a renewed humanity’. The true freedom of Creation is inextricable linked with the true freedom of the children of God.

Finally Paul announces the complete and utter triumph of God in his exultant poem to Divine Love – that which is like a great Wind – coming to rearrange the landscape of all creation, and even now living and active amongst his children, the Church.