Bible Streams

Riverlife Baptist Church, Jo Leutton

A podcast that examines the Bible and its importance for the Christian faith. From Riverlife Church in Brisbane, Australia, hosts Jo, Alex and Chris take their love of the Bible and unpack it each episode, sometimes with the help of guest Biblical scholars. Sometimes taking a bird's eye view, sometimes getting into the nitty gritty, but always trying to get to know the author better, and to better know His plans for us and the invitation He's given us to life in Him.

  1. 1d ago

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 9

    The episode opens with verses 1–5 and places chapters 9–11 within Romans. They are the "saddle" between the peaks of chapters 8 and 12, a section commentators read in very different ways and some see as the letter's climax. Paul's grief, and his wish to be cut off for his people, echoes Moses after the golden calf (Exodus 32). The discussion warns against reading Paul as anti-Jewish, and against confusing his "Israel" with the modern nation state. It also covers Israel's privileges in verse 4 and the case for reading verse 5 as calling the Messiah "God over all". Verses 6–18 set out Paul's first answer: God's word has not failed, because Israel was never defined by descent alone. Drawing on N.T. Wright, the episode argues that Israel's privileges aren't transferred to the Gentiles but gathered up in the Messiah, which is not replacement theology. Through Isaac and Ishmael and then Jacob and Esau, it weighs individual, corporate and "vocational" readings of election. It also faces the hard line about Esau honestly, without forcing a resolution. On "Is God unjust?", the point is that no one starts from neutral, so it is mercy that surprises, not condemnation. Pharaoh's hardening is read alongside his own repeated hardening of his heart, much like being "given over" in Romans 1. Verses 19–29 take up the objection "Why does he still find fault?" The potter of Jeremiah 18 still calls the clay to turn from its evil ways. The episode cautions against both resisting God's sovereignty and collapsing it into determinism. The real scandal for Paul's first hearers is that Gentiles are included, and Hosea's words about wayward Israel are now applied to them. Isaiah's remnant points ahead to chapter 11. Verses 30–33 close the chapter. Gentiles who weren't running the race reach the goal, while Israel, pursuing righteousness by works, stumbles over the stone, who is Jesus. The episode ends with John the Baptist in prison asking "Are you the one?" Chapters 9–11 belong together, so the series rides on into chapter 10. Resources used/mentioned: Michael F. Bird, Romans (Story of God Bible Commentary), 2016C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (Moffatt New Testament Commentary), 1932James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9–16 (Word Biblical Commentary 38B), 1988Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Romans: A Commentary, 2024Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans (NICNT), 2nd edition, 2018Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans (Pillar New Testament Commentary), 1988N. T. Wright, "The Letter to the Romans", in The New Interpreter's Bible, vol. 10, 2002David J. A. Clines, The Theme of the Pentateuch, 1978 (2nd edition 1997)N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology, 1991N. T. Wright, Paul in Fresh Perspective, 2005N. T. Wright, "Romans in a Week", Regent College Summer School lecture seriesPseudo-Philo, Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Biblical Antiquities)  Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 9
  2. Sep 28

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 8

    With Jo on holiday, Chris and Alex open with a quick recap of chapter 7. The law was good but powerless, sin was pervasive, and the chapter ended with Paul's cry: who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ. They then read verses 1–11. They unpack "no condemnation" as both a verdict and a penalty. The cross deals with the believer's forensic status, but it also deals with sin's power and its wages of death. They note how the chapter brings the Holy Spirit to centre stage, and how Paul contrasts "the law of the Spirit of life" with "the law of sin and death". For the Trinitarian nerds, verses 3–4 show all three persons at work. Chris points out that the Greek peri hamartias ("for sin") carries the language of the Septuagint's sin offering. Christ both fulfils the law's standard and becomes the offering for those who can't meet it. They also hear echoes of Ezekiel's returning Spirit and Jeremiah's law written on the heart. And, as promised to Jo, the new Exodus gets a mention. Verses 12–17 move the metaphor from slavery to family. Chris suggests adoption is less a picture than the underlying reality of the relationship, with both obligations and blessings. Alex brings in the prodigal son and his older brother: our identity rests in the Father, and our obligations flow out of that identity rather than earning it. The pair explore adoption in first-century Jewish and Roman settings, where an adoptee took on a new father's name, status and inheritance (hence the outrageous number of men called Gaius Julius Caesar). They discuss how best to render "Abba": not "Daddy", but something closer to an Australian "Dad", both reverent and intimate. They close the section on verse 17's condition that heirs suffer with Christ in order to be glorified with him. Verses 18–27 zoom out to the cosmic scale. Paul's "present sufferings" carry real weight coming from a former persecutor who now suffers for the faith. Alex pushes back on a narrow "where do I go when I die?" view of salvation. Paul's vision is a whole creation set free from its bondage to decay, reversing the effects of Genesis 3. Chris draws on being present for his wife's two labours to unpack the childbirth imagery: real anguish, with anticipation and new life on the other side. The Spirit becomes the bridge between the now and the not yet, interceding with groans too deep for words, a striking contrast to the helplessness of chapter 7. Both hosts firmly reject the idea that suffering is a sign that blessing has failed. The final section, verses 28–39, is a dense run of famous verses. "All things work together for good" is read against Genesis 50 and the Joseph story, where the good God brings may land generations later, and where the personal good is conformity to Christ rather than material blessing. On the "golden chain" of foreknew, predestined, called, justified and glorified, Chris and Alex outline several readings. They include whether foreknowledge and predestination should be merged or kept distinct, and whether "calling" is an invitation or a summons. Chris also notes the link between kaleō and ekklēsia. Both argue the chain is mainly about sanctification and family likeness to Christ, read corporately more than individually. The past-tense "glorified" speaks of a future so certain it can be described as done. Alex notes that every link in the chain is an act of God rather than a human response. Then come Paul's rhetorical questions, the quotation from Psalm 44 and the rare word hupernikōmen, "more than conquerors" (or in Chris's words, "uber victorious", not to be confused with the delivery app). The episode ends on Paul's sweeping list of things that cannot separate us from God's love, which Alex offers as the pastoral takeaway. Chris and Alex also flag that chapters 9–11 are coming next, where Paul turns to what all this means for the history of God's people. Resources used for this episode:  Tom Schreiner and Colin Kruse on Romans; Douglas Moo; Ernst Käsemann; N.T. Wright's Paul: Fresh Perspectives and The Climax of the Covenant;Beverly Roberts Gaventa's When in Romans; Michael Gorman; Leon Morris.  Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 8
  3. Sep 21

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 7

    After a short break, Jo, Chris and Alex are back for episode eight of the To Rome with Love series, and they open with a quick recap of chapters 1 to 6: the universal problem of sin, Israel's share in it despite having the law, faith as the way into right standing, the Adam and Christ contrast, and baptism as union with Christ's death and resurrection. They point out that chapter 7 has Paul coming back to something he raised briefly in chapter 5 and then left alone: the law's arrival made sin increase. They also flag that chapters 7 and 8 really belong together, and that verses 5 and 6 work almost as headings for the rest of chapter 7 and for chapter 8. Verses 1 to 6 start with the "which law?" question. One reading separates "works of the law" (the covenant markers like circumcision and purity) from "the law" as the whole Mosaic framework, ethical commands included. Another follows N.T. Wright's language of solidarities, where the law is a sphere you take part in, much like being "in Adam" or "in Christ", and Paul gives it an almost personal force. The marriage illustration gets unpacked against first-century practice, where only the husband could start a divorce, so a wife was bound until death. The team push back on reading every detail of the analogy as code. Is the husband sin and death, Christ, or the Adam life? The metaphor is probably doing several jobs at once, and the main point is that death releases you legitimately into a new covenant. Fruitfulness, the natural result of a marriage, becomes the image for what life with God produces, and the alternative is fruit for death. There's also a note of caution about sarx (flesh). Paul doesn't always mean "sinful nature" by it, and every translation choice is also an interpretation. The middle section (verses 7 to 12) takes on Paul's next mē genoito: is the law sin? The discussion separates "is the law sinful by nature?" from "does the law give sin an opening?" The law works as a diagnostic tool, holy and good in itself, and sin takes the opening it creates. The choice of "you shall not covet" is picked out as deliberate, because it's an entirely internal command and it follows naturally from the marriage illustration. There's a pastoral aside about how simply naming a sin from the pulpit can plant the idea. The team then wrestle with Schreiner's description of sin as an "alien power". Scripture personifies sin ("sin is crouching at your door") without making it Satan or a demon, and the team suggest sin works as much from inside us as from outside. That leads into the big question of who the "I" is. The options on the table are Paul himself (drawing on his own experience but not straight autobiography), Adam, Israel personified, or some mix that retells a universal story. They also cover the two readings most common in church life. The first is the pre-conversion reading linked to Origen and Augustine and later German scholarship. The second is the Christian's ongoing struggle, linked to the Lutheran and Reformation tradition. Philippians 3 ("as to righteousness under the law, blameless") is weighed against the chapter, and the team agree that being blameless before the law is not the same thing as being sinless. The final section (verses 13 to 25) covers the "I do not do what I want" passage. The problem isn't knowing what's right. It's approving of the right thing and still not being able to do it. The law is spiritual, but it provides no power to keep its own commands, and whatever you live under ends up filling you and showing in how you live. Paul switching between past and present tense is part of why the debate never settles. The team land on a representative reading with some personal element: this is "pre-Christ" more than "pre-Christian", Israel's story and Adam's story told in the first person, and they argue chapters 9 to 11 only make sense on that reading. It isn't only a Jewish experience either, because devotion to any moral code without transformation meets the same dead end. They close with Paul's use of classical rhetoric (logos, pathos and ethos). His "I" builds a connection with his listeners, and in a way that turns the usual rules upside down, admitting his own struggle becomes part of what makes him worth listening to. Resources mentioned in the episode:  Tom Schreiner and Colin Kruse on Romans; Douglas Moo; Ernst Käsemann; N.T. Wright's Paul: Fresh Perspectives and The Climax of the Covenant; Beverly Roberts Gaventa's When in Romans; Michael Gorman; Leon Morris. Suggested pre-reading for chapter 8: N.T. Wright's Into the Heart of Romans. Don't forget the code word for this episode (even Chris missed it on the day).* Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 7
  4. Aug 24

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 6

    Chris, Jo and Alex are back as a trio for episode seven in the Romans series, opening with a read-through of chapter 6 verses 1–14. They set the scene first: Paul has spent chapters 1–4 establishing the universal problem of sin and the inadequacy of the law to deal with it, and from chapter 5 onwards the vocabulary shifts — Jesus is back on the scene, justification language recedes, and life, freedom and reigning take over as Paul moves into the second act of the argument, heading for the crescendo of chapter 8. The chapter's opening question is a piece of Greco-Roman rhetorical technique Paul loves: anticipating your opponent's refutation and defusing it before it lands, necessary in a letter sent halfway across the known world with Phoebe carrying the delivery instructions. The team disagree amiably over how cynical the objection is: Chris and Alex read it as "why bother caring about right and wrong", Jo suspects someone hearing it as a licence to sin deliberately. The first half works through the death/burial/resurrection imagery, picking up the basileia kingdom-and-ruling-power language from chapter 5: sin isn't merely a catalogue of acts but a structural status, a dominion you're either under or dead to. They dig into baptism as both metaphor and action (down into the water and up out of it) and its resonance with the Exodus and the Red Sea, while insisting it's union with Christ, not the rite itself, that does the work (otherwise chapter 4's argument about faith preceding circumcision collapses). Jo highlights the pile-up of Greek sun- compound verbs: buried with, crucified with, raised with, living with; as the grammatical backbone of Paul's "in Christ" theology and, he argues, of a covenantal reading of Romans. There's a detour into what "the glory of the Father" in verse 4 might mean, including the reading that identifies it with the Spirit, and a discussion of Paul's habit of planting hints early that he unpacks chapters later. The pastoral heart of the episode sits in the sinless perfection debate: is verse 7's "anyone who has died has been set free from sin" a description of present moral reality, or a forensic status held in tension with verse 12's "do not let sin reign in your mortal body"? Jo names the two failure modes he's seen — either whatever I do can't be sin, or if I do sin I have to hide it, breeding hypocrisy and shame. Alex pushes the conversation out of the individualistic weeds and back into Paul's big covenantal categories: a new era for the people of God, not a status report on one person's behaviour. Chris nuances the "forensic" label as also sacramental. Alex's question about where sanctification fits gets a deliberate deferral; Paul starts the thought here and doesn't finish it until chapter 8. The second half takes up verses 15–23 and the antinomian objection's second form: if we're not under law, why is sin a problem? They set the slavery metaphor in its ancient context — a lifelong status attaching to the whole person, ownership of the body, exploitation, being counted among assets — with a recommended side trip to Philemon (and a plug for the podcast's own Philemon episode). The key move is that there's no neutral third state: you're a slave to one master or the other, which Jo links back to Jesus on serving two masters, and to the "freedom to, not freedom from" argument of Galatians. Order matters throughout: you're set free first, and obedience is the response, never the means. They touch on the commentators' storm-in-a-teacup over what "the standard of teaching" refers to, the responsibility-without-autonomy of the doulos, and Douglas Moo's phrase for what's happened: a salvation-historical regime change, which Chris gently contests on the grounds that grace was the operative regime all along — only the instrument changed. The chapter closes with Paul mixing his metaphors on purpose: freedom, wages and fruit. Slaves don't earn wages; free people do — so death is the wage sin honestly pays, while eternal life is precisely not a wage but a free gift. Sanctification finally appears by name in verse 22, closing the loop on Alex's earlier question. Next episode: chapter 7, which Jo bills as the genuinely hard one: who exactly is the "I" wrestling with sin? Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 6
  5. Aug 17

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 5

    With Chris away this week, Jo and Alex tackle Romans chapter 5 as a two-hander, opening with a read-through of verses 1–11. They start with the "where does this chapter sit?" question. After the argument of chapters 1–4, Paul pivots: Jesus returns to the centre of the text after being largely absent since the "mission statement" of 1:16–17, and the vocabulary shifts from justification language toward grace, the Spirit, and life. Jo and Alex read the chapter's opening "peace" as a pointed contrast with the Pax Romana, a peace won by conquest, versus the Old Testament's promised peace realised through the Davidic king. From there they trace Paul's move from "access" and "grace" (charis) into the well-known chain of suffering, endurance, character and hope, discussing whether this is a formula to be pursued or simply a description of how faith holds up under real hardship (with a detour into the early church's problem of Christians actively seeking out martyrdom, and why the "mature church leaders" pushed back on that). The middle of the episode works through verses 6–11: Christ dying for the weak, the ungodly and sinners while they were still God's enemies, the odd logic of verse 7 (why someone might die for a genuinely good person but not a merely righteous one), and how that sets up the scale of the argument: justification by blood, salvation from wrath, and reconciliation as entirely God's initiative rather than something humanity brings about through repentance. Jo and Alex sit with the tension of God's holiness being genuinely opposed to sin, and why that makes the reconciliation described here more than a simple apology-and-restoration. The second half of the episode covers the notoriously difficult verses 12–21, which Jo and Alex both flag upfront as one of the hardest passages in Paul to interpret. They work through Paul's Adam/Christ typology: Adam and Jesus each functioning as a representative "head" of a category of humanity, not unlike Abraham's role in chapter 4; and the grammatical detour Paul takes between verse 12 and verse 18 (a broken sentence structure, sometimes called an anacoluthon, where he starts a thought and doesn't complete it until several verses later) to deal with two side questions: how sin and death applied before the Mosaic law existed, and how Adam's sin connects to the rest of humanity. On that second question they lay out several ways scholars have read it: a shared inheritance, corporate representation, universal individual sinning, or some combination, without landing on one answer, and touch on the historic Augustinian reading of inherited guilt as one tradition among several. They also flag N.T. Wright's minority reading of Romans 5–8 as a "new Exodus" narrative as an interesting, if contested, lens. The episode closes on the chapter's asymmetry: the "free gift" is not a mere restoration to Eden but something that abounds beyond the original trespass, and the closing verses on the law increasing the trespass while grace abounds all the more raise the now-and-not-yet question of what "reigning in life" looks like for Christians today, including a brief aside on where that question sits behind live conversations about Christian nationalism. Jo and Alex flag that this sets up chapter 6's question of how believers are meant to live in light of it. Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 5
  6. Aug 10

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 4

    We find Romans 4 in the flow of Paul's argument: having shown that no one is justified by works of the law, Paul turns to Abraham to prove that faith, not law-keeping, has always been how people entered right relationship with God. Verses one to eight set up the contrast between wages earned and a gift freely given, with David's psalm on forgiven sin reinforcing the same point from the other direction. The episode gets into the chronology that matters most to Paul's case: Abraham was counted righteous in Genesis 15, well before his circumcision in Genesis 17, making him father of the uncircumcised who believe as much as of the circumcised who share his faith. Jo, Chris, and Alex unpack why this timing dismantles any claim that ethnic or ritual markers secure a place in God's family, and how the promise to Abraham was always meant to rest on grace and cover "all his offspring," not just those under the law. The episode closes on the second half of the chapter, where Paul paints Abraham's faith in vivid terms: believing against hope that he and Sarah, both as good as dead, would have a child, fully convinced God was able to do what He had promised. Jo, Chris, and Alex trace the echoes of Isaac's near-sacrifice and the language of God giving life to the dead, showing how Abraham's story anticipates the resurrection of Jesus and becomes, in Paul's hands, not just an example for us but the pattern our own faith is counted by. Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 4
  7. Aug 4

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 3

    Chris is back from his New Zealand trip and rejoins Jo and Alex for Romans chapter three, after a recap of the ground covered in chapters one and two. They open with Paul's question about what advantage there is in being Jewish, reading it alongside his insistence that Israel was entrusted with God's promises to steward on behalf of the world, not to keep for itself, and that human unfaithfulness cannot undo God's own faithfulness to what He has promised.  The middle of the episode covers Paul's catena of Old Testament quotations in verses nine to twenty, a chain of Psalms and prophetic texts hammering home that no one, Jew or Gentile, is righteous. Jo, Alex, and Chris talk through why Paul builds his case this way, drawing on scripture the Jewish audience already treasured, before turning to the hinge of the chapter: the righteousness of God revealed apart from the law, in Jesus Christ. This leads into a careful, wide-ranging discussion of justification, redemption, and propitiation, including the Old Testament mercy-seat imagery behind that last word and how it should and shouldn't shape our picture of God's wrath.  The episode closes on the final verses of the chapter, where Paul concludes that boasting is excluded and that God is the God of Jews and Gentiles alike, justified by faith rather than by works of the law. Chris, Jo, and Alex are careful to note this doesn't mean Jewish believers need to abandon their heritage, just that it was never what secured their standing with God. It's a dense, hopeful turning point in the letter, and one that sets up the worked example of Abraham still to come in chapter four. Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 3
  8. Jul 27

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 2

    Still with Chris away, Jo and Alex press on through Romans chapter two, picking up straight after chapter one's diagnosis of the Gentile world. They open with a quick recap of where Paul's argument left off, before showing how chapter two springs the trap chapter one quietly set: those quick to judge Gentile wrongdoing turn out to be doing the same things themselves.  The middle of the episode works through Paul's diatribal style, his use of a chiasm in verses six to eleven around works and judgment, and the tricky question of whether Paul is describing a hypothetical or a real possibility when he speaks of eternal life for those who persist in doing good. Jo and Alex dig into what the law meant for Jewish identity, the role of conscience for those without the law, and why Paul is at pains to remove any sense of exceptionalism, whether ethnic, religious, or otherwise.  The episode closes on Paul's argument about circumcision, contrasting outward, physical markers of belonging with an inward circumcision of the heart worked by the Spirit. Jo and Alex read this alongside Old Testament texts including Ezekiel and Deuteronomy, and flag the bigger, unresolved question it raises about the identity of true Israel, one Paul returns to later in the letter. It's a dense chapter, but one they work through carefully and with good humour, closing with the question that opens chapter three: what advantage, then, is there in being Jewish? Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

    To Rome With Love! The Letter to the Romans: Chapter 2

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About

A podcast that examines the Bible and its importance for the Christian faith. From Riverlife Church in Brisbane, Australia, hosts Jo, Alex and Chris take their love of the Bible and unpack it each episode, sometimes with the help of guest Biblical scholars. Sometimes taking a bird's eye view, sometimes getting into the nitty gritty, but always trying to get to know the author better, and to better know His plans for us and the invitation He's given us to life in Him.