I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae.
\n \u2014 Romans 16:1<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t call it \u2018just a list.\u2019\u201d That was the advice of preaching professor Fred Craddock as he spoke about Romans 16. This collection of Paul\u2019s friends, with names that are unfamiliar to many of us today, is not merely a list. Every person here has a story revealing a miracle of God\u2019s grace.Take Phoebe, for example. Paul calls her a sister, and he commends her to his Roman readers as a diaconal servant from the church in Cenchreae, a harbor town near Corinth in Greece. Apparently she was a great help to many people in a town that saw lots of travelers come and go.To use the language of this month\u2019s theme, Phoebe was a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). Having come to faith in Jesus as Savior, she was a woman who was \u201cin Christ,\u201d and the old Phoebe was disappearing while a new Phoebe was coming to expression. By the work of the Holy Spirit in her, she was becoming more and more like Jesus, the greatest giver and helper of all. She was an ongoing reminder of resurrection life, pointing us all to God\u2019s renewal of his whole world.That is what new creations, like the ones named in Romans 16, do. They become a great help to many people because they are in Christ, the one Savior and the greatest helper of all.<\/p>\n
Lord, thank you for adding us to the gathering that includes Phoebe and all other believers. Make us more like Jesus so that we may be a great help to the world, a sign of your new creation to come. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae. \u2014 Romans 16:1 \u201cDon\u2019t call it \u2018just a list.\u2019\u201d That was the advice of preaching professor Fred Craddock as he spoke about Romans 16. This collection of Paul\u2019s friends, with names that are unfamiliar to many of us today, is not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[356,9146],"class_list":{"0":"post-27658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-devotionals","8":"tag-community","9":"tag-creations"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}