Through Christ's death, believers have been credited with Christ's righteousness in the courtroom of heaven and have a new identity. Yet as long as we tread planet earth we are all bound by some level of sin - none of us in this life can fully escape our fallen nature inherited from Adam which dwells in our unredeemed "flesh." Although we will not be fully released from the presence of sin until Jesus returns, we do not have to remain incarcerated by sin. Paul reassures believers that in fact we can have progressive deliverance from the power of sin to live out our new identity in Christ on earth. "Portraits of Righteousness" draws from the Apostle Paul's writings in Romans 5-8 of the Bible to elucidate this life-changing opportunity.

What have the Psalms to do with ethics? Readers prize the Psalter for its richly theological prayers, but into these prayers are woven a variety of ethical issues. This book explores the ethics of the Psalter by examining the four portraits of the righteous person that punctuate Book I. It begins by studying these psalms as individual compositions and then employs both the canonical approach and dialogic criticism to identify the complex relationship between the portraits' vision of the righteous life and its outcome. Does the righteous person enjoy security and the good life? The answer may be surprising, but joining the psalmist on the rocky path of the interface of faith and experience is certain to prove a formative experience.

What is God like? Answering this is the great quest of human existence. Because God is so different from us, we struggle to describe him. While doctrinal statements about God certainly have their place in Christian understanding, the Bible more often uses God's actions and roles to help us know him better. Indeed, some of the most helpful insights in Scripture arise when God is compared to something else: a rock, an eagle or a tower. And many "human" metaphors--metaphors taken from the world of actions and relationships--bring us even closer to understanding of God. In Portraits of God, Allan Coppedge suggests we look carefully at God as our Father, Redeemer, King, Judge, Priest and Creator. These portraits taken together give us an understaning of the Holy One for which no single category is adequate. These images work their way through the whole of Scripture. They are the doorway allowing us into the mysteries of God's very being. In Portraits of God, Coppedge offers a comprehensive survey, picturing a God who wants to be known personally and who has profoundly communicated himself. Coppedge finds the inexhaustible nature of God to be one of holiness reflected in and best described by the language of diverse roles. Approaching God in this way transforms us, as churches and individuals, to reflect God's own holy character. This is a book for students, pastors and churchgoers alike. Anyone desiring to know more deeply and wholly the Christian God revealed in the Bible will find in Portraits of God a treasure of scholarship and truth.

Are Christians merely forgiven, or do they possess the righteousness of Christ? Recently the time-honored understanding of the doctrine of justification has come under attack. Many question how-or if-we receive the full righteousness of Christ. Martin Luther said that if we understand justification "we are in the clearest light; if we do not know it, we dwell in the densest darkness." And now, in this new and important book, John Piper accepts Luther's challenge. He points out that we need to see ourselves as having been recipients of the imputation of Christ's righteousness and therefore enjoy full acceptance with God and the everlasting inheritance of life and joy. Piper writes as both a pastor and a scholar. His pastor's heart is shown in his zeal for the welfare of the church. His careful scholarship is evident in each explanation and undergirds each conclusion.

Advocates of the New Perspective on Paul appeal to the view that "righteousness" in biblical theology is a Verhaltnisbegriff (relational concept). This is the view that "righteousness" does not mean conformity to a norm, nor is it an essentially legal concept; rather, "righteousness" denotes the fulfillment of the demands of a relationship, since the relationship itself is the norm. This relational interpretation of "righteousness" was first put forward by Hermann Cremer in 1899 and exercised a profound influence in biblical scholarship throughout the 20th century. It lies at the root of the New Perspective claim that "the righteousness of God" in Paul is a cipher for God's saving faithfulness to his covenant, a view defended by N. T. Wright, among others. Charles Lee Irons provides a critical examination of Cremer's chief arguments for the relational, covenant-faithfulness interpretation. The author argues instead for the view that "the righteousness of God" in Rom 1:17; 3: 21-22; 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21; and Phil 3:9 is the status of righteousness that comes from God as a gift.

In this book, David Pawson calls the church back to the very heart of the good news. For many, the 'gospel' is that God loves everybody unconditionally. Yet neither Jesus nor his apostles ever preached like that. They seem to have thought that the world needed to know about his righteousness and his willingness, even his eagerness, to share that with us. That is because he is determined to have a universe in which there is no unrighteousness whatever. Why don't we think that is good news?

The focus of this study is to discover the identity of the emphatic ‘I’ of Rom 7 with the added purpose of attempting to ‘draw’ a spiritual portrait of a mature Christian believer. To accomplish this purpose, the process is as follows: An examination of Rom 7, within its context, is conducted. This examination is followed by an attempt at determining the experience of the emphatic ‘I’ found within Rom 7. The next step in the process is to compare the experience of the emphatic ‘I’ of Rom 7, as found within its context of Rom 1–8 with what Paul wrote elsewhere on the experience of new life in Christ for Christian believers. The purpose of this comparison is to discover if Paul had a ‘consistent’ portrait of spirituality and Christian maturity. The final step is to compare the experience described by Paul, both in Rom 7 and in the wider Pauline Corpus, with the experience which John Wesley called ‘perfection,’ and with the Mystical experience called the ‘spiritual marriage.’ The study of Romans, Wesley, and the Mystics, coupled with the wider study of the secondary literature showed that there is a remarkable consistency in the teaching and understanding that the closer a Christian believer gets to God, the more this Christian believer is aware of his or her own sinfulness. Paul, in describing the experience of the emphatic ‘I,’ is describing a person who is becoming more and more aware of his or her own sinfulness. The conclusion to be drawn from this study is that the identity of the empathic ‘I’ is of a regenerate Christian believer, one who is growing ever closer and closer to God and at the same time is in ‘pain’ over the remaining effects of sin.