Romans 12 is not a soft passage. It confronts pride, calls for humility, and asks a harder question than most sermons do: what does faithful obedience actually look like when Christian community gets messy?

Pastor Matthew sits down with Pastor Phil Allman of St. John’s in Pecatonica, Illinois, for a sharp, practical conversation about preaching Romans, the tension between law and gospel, and why Paul’s commands only make sense when they’re rooted in Christ. If you’ve ever wondered how to preach or live out passages like “hate evil,” “love what is good,” and “overcome evil with good” without flattening them into moralism, this one will hit home.

You’ll discover:
– Why Romans has been so central to Lutheran theology and why it still lands with power today
– How the Ten Commandments, Proverbs, and Jesus’ parables all illuminate Paul’s teaching on love, obedience, and neighbor
– Why humility is essential if you actually want to be taught, practiced, and formed
– How “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” becomes more than a slogan
– What it means to preach “hitting the mark” when the text is full of commands, warnings, and gospel urgency

Phil shares how he approaches sermon planning, why he often builds sermons around a theme that connects Scripture, hymns, and everyday life, and why the Christian life is not about comfort or self-protection but cross-bearing, discernment, and action. Matthew brings his own sermon wrestling into the conversation, including the challenge of preaching Christian weirdness in the best sense: generosity, welcome, and sacrificial love that doesn’t fit the world’s logic.