Redeemer Church of Waterford

What is your place, purpose and role within the church? In answering that question, we first must answer two others: what is the church, and how do I become a part of the church. In today's message we see that we become a part of the church by the initiative of God who through His mighty power has raised Jesus from the dead, and through our faith in Jesus, God's mighty power extends to us in raising us from spiritual death and placing us within the body of Christ.

The healing of the lame man in Acts 3 is a picture of God's plan for the world when Jesus returns in power and great glory.

What is my place, purpose, and role in the church? Before we can answer that question, we have to answer two others which Paul addresses in our text: what is the church? and how does anyone become a part of the church? Paul defines the church by giving us four pictures: a body, a community, a family, and a building.

No one doctrine of the Bible can be taken in isolation from all of the other doctrines of the Bible. In 2 Peter 3, Peter's emphasis is a reply to the scoffers of his own day who denied the second coming of Jesus. But he places his reply in the context of five foundational Bible doctrines: Revelation, Creation, Eschatology, Redemption, and Sanctification.

Why does Paul glory only in the cross of Christ? Because he has come to see the futility of his earning a righteousness of his own by strictly observing the law. In the cross, he sees that God has eradicated Paul's works of righteousness and ours by condemning sin in the flesh of His dear Son, imputing to us the righteousness of His only Son by our faith in Him.