The wonderful people at IVP (esp. Adrianna Wright) have welcomed me into their book review family. I received two volumes from their IVP New Testament Commentary Series. The first one is the Romans commentary by Grant R. Osborne. The blurb on this volume is as follows:

IVP NT Commentary on Romans by G.R. Osborne

Few individual books of the Bible have changed the course of church history the way Paul’s letter to the Romans has.

Whether one thinks of Augustine’s conversion in the fourth century, Luther’s recovery of justification by faith in the sixteenth or Barth’s challenge to recover theological exegesis of the Bible in the twentieth, Romans has been the catalyst to personal spiritual renewal and the recapturing of gospel basics.

Paul, in seeking to bring unity and understanding between Jews and Gentiles in Rome, sets forth in Romans his most profound explication of the gospel and its meaning for the church. The letter’s relevance is as great today as it was in the first century.

Throughout this commentary, Grant R. Osborne explains what the letter meant to its original hearers and its application for us today.

The second is the Philippians commentary by Gordon D. Fee. The blurb is as follows:

IVP NT Commentary on Philippians by G.D. Fee

Nothing cripples a church’s effectiveness like internal strife. In Philippi, Paul addressed a congregation whose private struggles were compounded by opposition and suffering from without. Paul’s strategy was to write them a letter of friendship and moral exhortation, reminding them of their “partnership in the gospel,” their mutual suffering for the cause of Christ, and their need to “stand firm in one spirit.” His approach and counsel can serve us well today.

In this warm study of Philippians by Gordon Fee, you will discover what this letter meant for its original hearers as well as what it means to us today.

As soon as I get a chance to become more familiar with these two works I will say more here.