Romans 8:18-21 Camping Out On These Verses Again

Such perfect timing, Father:

"The sufferings we have now ..."     (Man, that describes yesterday)

"... are nothing compared to the great glory that will be shown to us.  Everything God made..."     (us, rocks, trees, animals)

"... is waiting with excitement for God to show ..."     (anything He shows us should make us as excited as a kid waking up on Christmas morning!)

"... His children's glory completely ..."  (My glory!?  All creation is excited to see that!?)

"...Everything God made was changed to become useless, not by its own wish but because God wanted it ..."     (in order to reveal to us the great depths of our sinfulness)

"... and because all along there was this hope ...     (that's what I need to hear, Father -- that there is hope)

"... that everything God made would be set free from ruin to have the freedom and glory that belongs to God's children."     (creation will be restored and with that incredible move we will see the earth as God first created it, with rocks crying out to Him and mountains dancing, only now the glory God places on us will add to the cause for celebration!)

Father, I needed this.  I need to camp out another day on these verses.  Thank You for Your incredible wisdom and Your love for me, despite my sinfulness!

 

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 8:18-21 Just What I Needed Today!

Wow!  I needed to hear this, Father!

In the margin of my Bible, I'd written something I'd read about these verses:

1)  God is still in control.

2)  The best is yet to come.

3)  The victory is secure, so it doesn't matter what's happening around us.

4)  We and God are inseparable.

I don't have time to write this morning, but wanted to note this.  I can't wait for tomorrow so I can flesh these verses out more!  Thanks, Father!

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 8:1-17 The Christian's Declaration of Freedom

My commentary said this chapter is "the Christian's Declaration of Freedom where Paul declares the four spiritual freedoms we enjoy because of our union with Jesus Christ."  Two of them appear in these verses.

Freedom from Judgment -- No condemnation:  "Romans 8:1 does not say no mistakes or no failures or even no sins.  Christians do fail and make mistakes, and they do sin....they suffer consequences because of their sins, but they do not suffer condemnation ... The law cannot claim you.  You have been made free from the law of sin and death.  You now have life in the Spirit ... The law cannot condemn you.... Because Christ has already suffered that condemnation for you on the cross ... Since Jesus Christ paid the penalty for your sins and since you are in Christ, God will not condemn you ... The law cannot control you ... the law does not have the power to produce holiness; it can only reveal and condemn sin.  But the indwelling Holy Spirit enables you to walk in obedience to God's will."

Freedom from Defeat -- No obligation:  "There is no obligation to the old nature.  The believer can live in victory ... Paul describes life on three different levels, and encourages us to live on the highest level.  1)  Those who have not the Spirit.  He is contrasting the saved and the unsaved -- In the flesh vs In the Spirit, Death vs life, War with God vs peace with God, Pleasing self vs pleasing God."  2)  Those who have the Spirit.  The evidence of conversion is the presence of the Holy Spirit within, witnessing that you are a child of God.  Your body becomes the very temple of the Holy Spirit... What a difference it makes in your body when the Holy Spirit lives within.  You experience new life, and even your physical faculties take on a new dimension of experience.  3) Those who the Spirit HAS:  It is not enough for us to have the Spirit; the Spirit must have us!  Only then can He share with us the abundant, victorious life that can be ours in Christ ... Because H is the Spirit of life, He can empower us to obey Christ, and He can enable us to be more like Christ.  But He is also the Spirit of death.  He can enable us to put to death the sinful deeds of the body ... He is also the Spirit of adoption, which in the New Testament means being placed as an adult son."

"There is no need for the believer to be defeated.  He can yield his body to the Spirit and by faith overcome the old nature.  The Spirit of life will empower him.  The Spirit of death will enable him to overcome the flesh.  And the Spirit of adoption will enrich him and lead him into the will of God."

Father, please continue to empower me to live according to Your will.  Help me to overcome the flesh, and remind me daily that I am Your adult son whom You adopted because of my older brother Jesus Christ and what He did for me.

 

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 7:14-25 What We Can't Do Ourselves

Paul now shows us the inability of the Law -- what it cannot do.

It can't change us:  "The law cannot transform the old nature; it can only reveal how sinful that old nature is.  The believer who tries to live under law will only activate the old nature; he will not eradicate it," my commentary said.

It can't enable us to do good:  "The believer's mind, will, and body can be controlled either by the old nature or the new nature, either by the flesh or the Spirit ... The believer has two serious problems:  he cannot do the good he wants to do, and he does the evil that he does not want to do ... Paul was saying that of himself he could not obey God's law, and that even when he did, evil was still present with him.  No matter what he did, his deeds were tainted by sin."

It can't set us free:  "The believer has an old nature that wants to keep him in bondage ... Often we try to overcome our old nature with the law, and the law cannot deliver us from the old nature.  When we move under the law, we are only making the old nature stronger ... Instead of being a dynamo that gives us power to overcome, the law is a magnet that draws out of us all kinds of sin and corruption."

"The flesh will never serve the law of God because the flesh is at war with God.  But the Spirit can only obey the law of God.  Therefore, the secret of doing good is to yield to the Holy Spirit."

Father, on my own, I am nothing and I can do nothing good.  I need Your Holy Spirit to direct and guide me.  Keep Him close to me, Father, and cause me to trust and listen.

 

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 7:1-13 Not a Mistake or Weakness, But Sin

Here, Paul answers those who would ask, "Since we're not under the law, then it's okay to sin, right?"

He uses an example of a married couple where the husband dies.  The law of Moses permitted the wife to remarry in that case.  She couldn't do it otherwise.  "Death broke the marriage relationship and set her free [from that provision of the law]."

In the same way, we died to the law when we trusted Christ and were united with Him.  We died to the law, just as we died to the flesh ... In Christ, we arose from the dead and now are married (united) to Christ to live a new kind of life," my commentary continued.

"To be dead to the law does not mean that we lead lawless lives.  It simply means that the motivation  and dynamic of our lives does not come from the law; it comes from God's grace through our union with Christ."

He also discusses the ministry of the law.  It reveals sin.  But it also arouses sin," the way a magnet draws steel," my commentary said.  "Something in human nature wants to rebel whenever a law is given ... Believers who try to live by rules and regulations discover that their legalistic system only arouses more sin and creates more problems."

The law also kills - "It cannot give life:  it can only show the sinner that he is guilty and condemned... The law shows the sinfulness of sin ... We excuse our sins with words like mistakes or weaknesses, but God condemns our sins and tries to get us to see that they are exceedingly sinful."

"Paul's argument here is tremendous:  The law is not sinful -- it is holy, just, and good; but the law reveals sin, arouses sin, and then uses sin to slay us ... See how sinful sin is when it can use something good like the law to produce such tragic results ... The problem is with our sinful nature."

Father, thank You again for reminding me of the terrible sinfulness of any sin I commit.  Don't let me minimize it by using words like mistake or weakness.  It is an affront to You.

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 6: 12-23 Know, Reckon, Then Yield

Paul had said he was giving us three instructions.  In the first half of the chapter, they were:  Know that you have been crucified with Christ and are dead to sin; and reckon this fact to be true in your own life.  Now he finishes with, "Yield your body to the Lord to be used for His glory."

"He asks all of us to live for Him, sacrificing our bodies in holy living ... How are we to yield?  As an act of the will based on the knowledge we have of what Christ has done for us.  It's an intelligent act, not an impulsive decision of the moment."  My commentary said to carefully notice the tenses of the verbs:  "Do not constantly allow sin to reign in your mortal body so that you are constantly obeying its lusts.  Neither constantly yield your members of your body as weapons or tools of unrighteousness to sin; but once and for all yield yourselves to God.  There must be in the believer's life that final and complete surrender of the BODY to Jesus Christ.  This does not mean there will be no further steps of surrender, because there will be .... To be sure, we daily surrender afresh to Him, but even that is based on a final and complete surrender.  

"Why does God want your body?  To begin with, the believer's body is God's temple, and He wants to use it for His glory.  But Paul wrote that the body is also God's tool and God's weapon in verse 13.  God wants to use the members of the body as tools for building His kingdom and weapons for fighting His enemies."

"Why are we to yield?  Favor, freedom, and fruit.  Favor because of God's grace, which gives us a reason to obey.  Freedom?  Whatever you yield to becomes your master.  Before you were saved, so were the slave of sin.  Now that you belong to Christ, you are freed from that old slavery and made a servant of Christ.  Fruit?  In the old life we produced fruit that made us ashamed.  In the new life in Christ, we produce fruit that glorifies God and brings joy to our lives."

"Now that you know these truths, reckon them to be true in your life, and then yield yourself to God."

Father, I needed this refresher.  Thank You for stating it so clearly for me.

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford

Romans 6:1-11 The Reckoning

"Paul anticipated three objections to what he'd written in chapter 5."  The objectors would go to extremes ranging from, "If God's grace abounds when we sin, then let's continue sinning so we might experience more grace!" to "If we are no longer under the law, then we are free to live as we please!" to "You have made God's law sinful!"

"When Paul defended justification, he also explained sanctification ... He explained the relationship to the flesh, the law, and the Holy Spirit, and gave three instructions for attaining victory over sin," my commentary explained.

The first was know:  "Christian living depends on Christian learning ... If Satan can keep a Christian ignorant, he can keep him impotent ... At Romans 5:12, Paul made a transition from discussing 'sins' to discussing 'sin' -- from the actions to the principle, from the fruit to the root ... Justification is not simply a legal matter between me and God; it is a living relationship ... Because of the living union with Christ, the believer has a totally new relationship to sin:  He is dead to sin and he should not serve sin."

"Paul uses the word reckon 41 times in the New Testament and 19 times in Romans alone."  It's not the "I suppose...." we're used to in Texas, but rather it means to "take into account" or "to calculate or estimate", but maybe the best is "to put to one's account," my commentary said.  "It simply means to believe that what God says in His Word is really true in your life.  Paul didn't tell his readers to feel as if they were dead to sin, or ever to understand it fully, but to act on God's Word and claim it for themselves.  Reckoning is a matter of faith that issues in action.  It's like endorsing a check:  if we really believe that the money is in the checking account, we will sign our name and collect the money.  Reckoning is not claiming a promise, but acting on a fact."

Father, help me to fully understand and accept that Your promises are indeed facts in my life!

 

Your Brother In Christ,
Gary Ford