Reading the Sunday School lesson through theological lenses

This summer I'm spending about an hour a week writing a series of fourteen brief 750-word columns providing commentary on the weekly Sunday School lesson texts for issues of the Alabama Baptist newspaper published in June, July, and August. The first, from the June 4 print edition, appears online here. In these columns I'm avoiding offering the sort of exegetical help that may easily be found in the lesson guides and biblical commentaries. Instead I'm trying to equip laypersons with the larger theological framework that will help them understand how the passage fits into the overarching Christian story--in other words, I'm trying to help readers do theological interpretation of Scripture (without calling it that, of course). I've enjoyed the overlap between the texts for the June lessons from 1 John and the work I'm doing on the forthcoming Reformation Commentary on Scripture volume on 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, and Jude.