Dear friends,

Every week or two the pattern seems to repeat itself. Some terrible thing happens in our world. Outraged or grieving victims cry out that something must be done, that the system has failed, that there’s a need for change, that enough is enough, that the government must do something.

What the government is supposed to do exactly isn’t always clear, but because being seen not to care about the issue would be politically fatal, they usually do promise to be fully focused on the issue, to be committed to it, to set up an enquiry, to fund some new programs, and in general to be ready to undertake whatever is necessary to ensure that the appropriate resources are devoted … and so on and so forth.

And around we go until the next calamity-driven campaign swings into action.

The world is full of tragedy, evil and heartbreak, and it touches all of our lives. We want the evil to change. We want ourselves to change.

But how can change ever really happen?

That’s our subject in this week’s episode as we ponder the first half of Romans 6.

Your brother

Tony

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Dear friends,

This week, Marty Sweeney (from the US branch of Matthias Media) joins Tony as they discuss the challenges of evangelism in our churches today–both in Australia and the US–as well as suggesting some ways to overcome these challenges. They also discuss what is truly at the heart of evangelism, and how doing it as a body is more crucial than we might realize. 

We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging for you to take into your own churches and communities. We would love to hear your thoughts, questions and comments, which you can share with us by emailing [email protected] or by hitting ‘reply’ to this email.

Blessings,

Jessica

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Dear friends,

In light of Anzac Day last week, Phillip and Tony converse about how our current lives are not as far removed from our forefathers and those who have gone before us as we might think.

Through the lens of Romans 5:12-21, we see how all the more true this is in our spiritual lives, and how much more powerful is the one whose sacrifice can change the entire course of our lives.

We hope this conversation is edifying and encouraging as we remember the sacrifices of the people who has made our modern life possible.

We would love to hear your thoughts, comments and questions, which you can email to [email protected] or by hitting reply to this email.

Blessings,

Jessica

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe

Dear friends,

It has been marvelous to keep receiving your emails and bumping into people who have been listening to the podcast and say thank you for the encouraging discussions that Tony and I have had.

However I do find there are also a lot of people who say to me they don’t know about the podcast yet. So if you like this podcast, please do get the word out as word of mouth is the most powerful way of spreading it.

And the second thing is, if you like this podcast, please consider supporting financially as it costs money to produce this podcast. You can do so through this link to subscribe and join the supporter’s club for a certain amount each month.

Yours

Phillip

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Dear friends

Tony is away on leave for the next few weeks, so I—Jessica Sutandar from the Two Ways News production team—will be introducing the episodes in his stead. The following weeks will feature some episodes that Tony and Phillip recorded before Tony went on leave.

Today, in this long-awaited letterbox episode, Tony has recorded his response to some of the questions that you have sent over the past few weeks, dear listeners.

Below is an edited transcript of select answers (in response to Paul Grimmond’s comment on theological application and to Sam’s question on how we interact with our homosexual friends.) If you would like to listen to the full episode, you can click the audio player above.

We hope this helps as you continue to consider the various aspects and challenges of living for the gospel.

Blessings,

Jessica

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe

Dear friends

Easter is now in the rear-view mirror—and we hope you had a joyful and spiritually refreshing celebration.

For many Christian traditions, and indeed for many Christians, the centre of gravity of Easter is Good Friday, the day of death and atonement. Easter Day with its resurrection is a nice, happy ending to the story, but it’s not the main event.

But in a way that is deeply puzzling to many us, the preaching of the apostles in Acts is kind of the other way around—it focuses much more on the resurrection of Jesus than on the atonement. For them, the resurrection was a massively significant event, anchored in the Old Testament’s understanding of who the Christ would be and what he would do.

In this post-Easter episode, we talk about what the resurrection of Jesus really means, and why it can’t be an afterthought in our gospel.

Your brother

Tony

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Dear friends

It’s hard to know how to introduce a discussion of ‘faith’. We speak about it all the time as Christians, often without really stopping to think about what we mean by the word. And when we hear it spoken of in by politicians (‘we value the contribution of faith communities’) or by secular critics (‘faith is a cop out for thinking’), we instinctively feel that they don’t understand ‘faith’ or those of us who ‘have’ it.

So in today’s episode, as we come to one of the Bible’s classic discussions of ‘faith’ in Romans 4, we have a bit of baggage handling to do—some clearing up of what we (and our society) really mean by the word. But what Romans then teaches us about this fundamental concept is life-changing and world-changing.

Your brother

Tony

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe

Dear friends

Martin Luther described it as “the chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible”. Australian biblical scholar Leon Morris went even further and called it “possibly the most important single paragraph ever written”.

It’s the paragraph we locate in our Bibles as Romans 3:21-26, and it’s where we’re up to in our podcast series walking through the opening chapters of this extraordinary book.

In Romans so far, Paul has been slowly building up to this point. He started by saying that his gospel is the ‘power of God for salvation’, and that it reveals the righteousness of God. But the only righteousness of God we have seen so far is his completely righteous and justified judgement against the universal rottenness of humanity. So if all of us—Jew, Greek, everybody—is under the power of sin, how can God be a righteous God and yet bring salvation to people like us?

It’s the age-old and very pressing question of how perfect justice can co-exist with grace and free forgiveness. And this world-changing paragraph has the answer.

I hope you find our discussion of these momentous ideas as encouraging as we did in the conversation that follows.

Your brother

Tony

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Dear friends

This week in our journey through the book of Romans, we come to a summary of the argument thus far. Having introduced the idea that his gospel reveals a righteousness from God for both Jews and Greeks (back in ch 1:17), Paul has been unfolding why this ‘righteousness from God’ is needed—in fact, why it can only come from God in the way that he will soon explain.

And that’s because of the comprehensive and universal unrighteousness of humanity—of Jews, Greeks, barbarians, all of us.

In today’s passage (Rom 3:1-20), he dispatches any final excuses or objections to this idea, and draws this part of the argument to its conclusion. In doing so, he takes us to the very depths of the human predicament, and to the reality of evil.

It’s a sombre, sobering passage. But the night is darkest before the dawn.

Your brother,

Tony

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Dear friends

Thanks for the positive feedback a number of you have sent in about our new series chatting our way through the book of Romans. It’s a slightly different way of driving a podcast conversation, and of exploring a Bible passage—so please keep letting us know how you think it’s working.

Today, we come to Romans 2, and its discussion of moralistic hypocrisy. This is something that Christians have often been accused of—of proclaiming great moral standards in public but grossly transgressing them in private. But in this passage, Paul attacks the failure of the superior, judgmental moralists of his day—the Greeks and the Jews—and holds out the possibility that true morality is indeed possible, if God writes his law on the heart.

Your brother,

Tony

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe

Dear friends

We’re back with the our second excursion into the book of Romans, this time on the second half of chapter 1, with its very bracing discussion of human wickedness and God’s angry response to it.

When we were recording this episode, the internet was awash with people discussing the Super Bowl ad that featured foot-washing Christians accepting and loving the marginalized groups of our society, with punchline ‘He gets us’. I started our discussion by asking Phillip what he thought of it.

I hope you enjoying the conversation that followed.

Your brother

Tony

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.twoways.news/subscribe