THE SOLUTION IS LIFE ON GODS TERMS ROMANS 8 1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christs being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. 3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didnt deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldnt deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. 5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust Gods action in them find that Gods Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isnt pleased at being ignored. 9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, wont know what were talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on Gods terms. It stands to reason, doesnt it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, hell do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christs! 12-14 So dont you see that we dont owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. Theres nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. Gods Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! 15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. Its adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike Whats next, Papa? Gods Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get whats coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then were certainly going to go through the good times with him! 18-21 Thats why I dont think theres any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for whats coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. 22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But its not only around us; its within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. Were also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, dont see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. 26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, Gods Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we dont know how or what to pray, it doesnt matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. Thats why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. 29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun. 31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didnt hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldnt gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of Gods chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christs love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. Were sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. Im absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and Gods love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. Shalom!
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 02:11:42 +0000
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