Looking Back to The Future

Over the last two years of helping coach basketball at the high school, I have realized two things: 1) how much I loved playing the game in high school (and still do); 2) despite a year of experience, I am still ineffective at team coaching. Experience as a player gave me a love for the game, but I need training if I am going to develop as a coach. So I have a choice, I can dwell on my past as a player, I can forget involvement in basketball at all, or I can do the work to learn a new aspect of the game thus growing in my love for basketball and the ability to pass that love to the next generation.
Similarly, after his Damascus road encounter (Acts 26), Paul could have continued on his path as a pharisee doing what he already knew, or he could have given up, ignoring his past and future ministry involvement. Instead, he went back through the scriptures and relearned them in light of his encounter with the resurrected Jesus. As such, here in chapter 5 of Romans, Paul reminds his readers that perseverance through current challenges in the new era of the resurrected Christ is training ground and anticipation of the resurrection of human-kind. So he says to them and to us, we have hope for the future because of what Christ did in the past…while we were still sinners.