Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 8-10.

In today’s passage Paul expands on his commentary about on living by faith.  Here he talks about how we must choose to live either by the Spirit or by the flesh.  If we set our minds on the desires of the flesh then we are living according to the flesh.  On the other hand, if we live according to the Spirit, we will set our minds on the desires of the Spirit.  One of the ways in which the Adversary attempts to draw us back into living according to the flesh is by causing us to focus on the fears of the flesh.  Those fears all too often distract us from pursuing the desires of the Spirit.  That is why we must allow God’s Spirit, which lives within us to pray for us.  We often do not know for what we should pray, but God’s Spirit does and will do so.  Further, Paul tells us some things which will help us resist the distractions of fear which the flesh uses to distract us back into serving its desires.  First, if God is for us, who, or what, can be against us?  Obviously, the problem with taking that to heart is that how can we know that God is for us?  Paul addresses that by reminding us that God loves us and nothing can separate us from His love.  The same power of God which assures us that nothing can overcome us if God is for us assures us that nothing can separate us from His love.  Paul gives us a list of things which he is convinced cannot separate us from God’s love: trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword, death nor life, angels nor demons, neither height or depth, nor anything else in all creation.  None of these things can separate us from God’s love, neither in the present nor in the future.

As Paul completes his commentary about righteousness being given to us by God through our faith in Jesus, he discusses his desire that all of the people of Israel would accept salvation through that faith.  He desires for this to happen with all that he has, to the point that he is willing to be separated from God for all eternity if that is the price required.  However, he points out that, when it comes to salvation, there is no difference between Jew and Gentile.  God is Lord of all and will bless everyone who calls upon His Name.  Paul then tells us something which we should all take to heart.  First, Paul tells us that no one can call upon God unless they first believe in Him.  Second, no one will believe in God unless they had heard about Him.  Next, Paul points out that no one will hear about God unless someone preaches to them.  Finally, no one will preach about God unless they are sent to do so.  So, there is place for all of us in that.  Those of us who are not yet called by God to preach should do what we  can to support, and to send forth, those who have been so called.  Those who have been sent forth to preach about God to those who do not know Him should do so with all that they are.  Those who hear about God should believe in Him.  Those that believe in Him should call on His Name.  Which brings us back to the beginning.  I want to note that all of us should be prepared to preach about God when the opportunity presents itself.  Not only prepared, but we should seek those opportunities in the activities to which God has called us.  At the end of Matthew Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission.  Paul reiterates here that we should all follow that command to go and make disciples of Him in all nations, whether that is the one we are in, or another nation.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

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Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 8-10.

I do not fully comprehend the message which Paul has for us in today’s passage.  As I have said previously, Paul is trying to communicate the truths about an infinite God to people with finite minds, and Paul himself had a finite mind.  However, there is one point about which I am sure.  I have no basis to claim to be better than anyone else.  I was not saved because of anything I have done.  I have been reconciled to God because of His mercy, not because of my desire or effort.  My action can bring me no closer to God, only by God drawing me to Him can I approach Him.  Which brings me to another point which I see in this passage. We, who love the Lord, need to tell others about what He has done for us so that they also might come to know Him.  In today’s passage, Paul writes that God has mercy on who He would have mercy, and hardens those whom He wishes to harden against Him.  Yet he ends today’s passage by telling us that held out His hands to those who were disobedient.  As I said, I have no basis to claim to be better than anyone else, because all that I do with any good to it results from what God has done in and to me.  And if I were to pursue sin and wickedness I would have no basis to claim to be worse than others because there also I would be constrained by what God chose to make of me.

Really, there are two messages in today’s passage.  First, we are saved by God’s mercy and the faith which it inspires within us.  Second, that faith comes from hearing the message, so once we have been brought to God through the faith He gives us by His mercy, we are obligated to preach that message to others so that they too might come to put their faith in Him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 8-10.

Today’s passage contains a lot of things to which we should give careful thought.  It also contains a thread of thought which I want to follow.  Paul continues his thoughts about what it means to saved by faith in Christ.  He writes that those who have faith in Christ have been set free from the law of sin and death by the Spirit.  Some might interpret this to mean that we can act in anyway which we choose because the Law which specifies how we should act has been nullified.  However, Paul says that those who interpret what he said in that way are still living according to the flesh.  He writes that now that we have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ we should no longer live according to the flesh but instead live according to the Spirit.

Which brings us back once more to questioning if we are truly saved when we sin again after having accepted Christ as our Savior.  Once again, Paul addresses this by telling us that we struggle in our weakness, but that the Spirit will help us.  After telling us that we should live according to the Spirit and be dead to the flesh, he reminds us that this is what our faith is about.  Our faith gives us hope that the Spirit will transform us into beings who live according to the Spirit.  Then he reminds us that hope is about what we look forward to, not what we already have.  So, we strive to be brought into the freedom and glory of God, living according to His Spirit.

Paul goes on to quote Joel who said that everyone who calls on the Lord will be saved.  From there Paul goes on to make some points which should influence the way we practice “Church” today.

• People can only call on the Lord if they believe in Him
• People can only believe in the Lord if they have hear about Him
• People will only hear about the Lord if someone tells them about Him
• People will only tell others about the Lord if someone sends them to do so

So, each and every congregation of those who worship Jesus Christ should be sending people out to tell others about Him.  Church is not about getting our spiritual needs met.  It is about preparing ourselves or someone else to preach the good news about Jesus Christ to those who have not yet heard it.

There are many other things which Paul wrote in this passage that each of us should hear, but that is all I am going to write on today.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 8-10.

Paul finishes his exposition on salvation by grace through faith in today’s before moving on to some of the implications it has for us.  First, Paul tells us that if we have the Spirit of God living in us we will live according to the spirit (or possibly the Spirit) not according to the flesh.  So, we need to set our minds on what the Spirit desires and turn our minds from what the flesh desires.  Paul also tells us that if we do not have the Spirit of Christ we do not belong to Christ.  One could easily misinterpret what Paul is writing here to think that since we need to live according to the spirit rather than the flesh that the physical world is irredeemably evil.  But Paul recognizes that and points out that God raised Christ from the dead as an example that He will give life to our mortal bodies.  That is, just as Christ’s physical body was raised from the dead, so too our bodies will be raised from the dead (should we die before the day of transformation arrives).

From there Paul goes on to point out that as we live in these untransformed bodies we suffer in various ways, perhaps just the pain of our bodies getting older, but perhaps pain and suffering inflicted on us because we profess faith in Christ.  However, we have the hope of God transforming our bodies, just as He did Jesus’ body.  In the meantime, God’s Spirit will help us in our weakness.  While we do not all for which we should pray, the Spirit does and it will intercede for us according to the will of God.  Further Paul tells us that God works in all things for the good of those who love Him.  Knowing this, why should we fear anything?  If God is defending us, is working for our good, who can bring harm to us?  Perhaps you fear being separated from God, but Jesus said that no one can snatch us out of His hand and here Paul tells us that nothing can separate us from Him.  In fact, one of my favorite declarations of faith is here:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I too share that conviction.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Romans 8-10.

Paul expands on his theme about serving righteousness rather than sin in today’s passage.  He tells us that if we live according to our physical desires, we will remain in sin and be dead to the Spirit.  But, if we live according to the desires of God’s Spirit, we will die to our physical desires and experience true life.  Further, as we teach ourselves to live by the Spirit, we will lose all fear because we will feel God within us.  Paul even addresses those of us who struggle knowing what we should pray.  He tells us that as we work to do what is righteous, the Spirit Himself will intercede for us.  Paul points out that any suffering we experience for doing God’s will binds us closer to Christ and reminds us that He died for us.  If God has given His own Son to die for us, how much more will He give us going forward?  As I think about what Paul writes I realize that there is nothing to fear.  Any suffering which I may experience in serving Christ will be temporary, but the joy which will follow will last forever. So, I will seek to embrace suffering just as Paul did.  Remember how God sent prophets to warn Paul what would happen when he returned to Jerusalem that final time?  Yet Paul still went to Jerusalem.  He did so because he embraced suffering in order to server Christ.  There is joy from following Paul’s example.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 8-10

I often quote from verse 31 in chapter 8 to give hope and confidence to my fellow believers: “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” Recently, someone responded, “Yes, but that is a big if.”  So, in order to address that “If” I am going to start at the end of today’s passage and work back, because there are many promises in today’s passage which rely on us knowing that God is for us.

In chapter 10, Paul tells us, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ”  This really sums up the two things which we must do, we must accept that Jesus is our Lord and we must openly declare that this is the case.  Which answers the question raised by the “If”.  How can we know that God is on our side? By openly declaring that Jesus is Lord and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead.  If we do that then we are on God’s side which means that God is for us.

From there we can go back to the beginning of this passage and see what more is needed with confidence that such is attainable.  Back at the beginning Paul told us that we must not allow our sinful natures to control our minds because doing so leads to death.  That is easier said than done, but Paul provides us with the answer to that as well.  We must instead allow the Spirit of God which lives within us to control our minds instead of our sinful nature.  In fact, if we have the Spirit of God living within us, we will be controlled by the Spirit.  And the Spirit of God lives within us if we do what I referenced in the previous paragraph.  Actually, Paul addresses one of the arguments made by our society to justify sin, “I have these inborn desires that I have to carry out.”  Paul tells us that, no, we do not have to carry out those sinful inborn desires.  We have no obligation  to carry out the urges which our sinful nature pushes us towards.  Paul further tells us that, while we can willingly walk away from the benefits of serving God, nothing can force us away from God’s love.  Even our walking away from God will not separate us from God’s love, even though He will not force us to experience the joy which serving Him will provide us.

So, we can have confidence that God stands with us.  Part of that confidence is the knowledge that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.  This does not mean that we can choose how things will work out.  Perhaps we have been chosen by God to experience suffering similar to that which Christ experienced.  We will find that if we allow the Spirit to control our minds that the joy we experience will overcome, and outweigh, any suffering which might come our way from following God’s will.  More importantly, who are we to demand an explanation from God as to why He made us the way that we are.  This applies not just to the issue of suffering, but to many of the social issues which we see around us today.  My heart breaks for those who have become convinced that God got it wrong when He made them as they are; those who seek to change the way which God has made them.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 8-10

Some of what Paul writes in today’s passage is relatively easy to understand and some of it is extremely difficult to understand.  We easily understand that if we allow ourselves to think about sinful things we will find ourselves doing those things, while if we allow the Holy Spirit to control our thoughts and think about godly things we will do godly things.  Following up on that is the idea that if we allow the Holy Spirit to do so, He will help us to do God’s will. (The part about helping us pray syncs right up with my comments I made the other day about needing to pray more).  We can even easily understand that nothing, no power, thing, or being, can make it so that God does not love us.  We will experience God’s love whether we wish to or not.  For those of us who desire the experience of God’s love there can be no greater comfort than to realize that God is looking out for our best interests.

Which brings us to the things which are more difficult to understand.  Elsewhere Paul speaks about the need to choose to do God’s will.  Even at the beginning of this passage he writes that we must not allow our sinful nature to control us.  Yet he also writes that we can neither choose nor work to receive God’s mercy; that God chooses to whom He will show mercy and to whom He will not.  So, what does this mean?  There may be more to it than this, but at the very least, it means that I cannot consider myself better than any other person.  Being a follower of Christ does not make me better than someone who is not, not even the vilest sinner I can imagine.  I am not a better person than Adolf Hitler was, than Josef Stalin was, than the murdering rapist just caught by the police.  I have not done those evil, terrible things because of God’s grace and mercy, not because I am somehow better than those people.  Yet, to fully experience the joy which God has in mind for me I must choose to embrace His love and allow it to transform me.