WATCHWORD:
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 God’s action in them find that God’s 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 isn’t 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, won’t know what we’re 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 God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll 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 Christ’s! 12-14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s 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. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! Romans 8:5-14
Meditation:
On God’s Terms
This passage in Romans 8, The Message, is perhaps one of the most encouraging and peace-giving messages of scripture. The idea of experiencing life on God’s terms is both scary, and one of those things that, as we think about it, would make us joyfully overwhelmed. However, there is a qualifier, and that is, we still experience the pains of sin. Yet, we are looking at our dark side from the standpoint of the mind of God.
The starting point for this Good News is that phase, if God himself has taken up residence in your life, God in the form of the Holy Spirit. When we speak of eternal life for those who have accepted Christ as Savior, that gift comes from the Holy Spirit who gives us spiritual life. This is the same spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, and is the same spirit which promises that our bodies will be resurrected, according to God’s terms.
Don’t get too cocky about this, the hard work of staying away from our sinful nature is before us. There is an intentionality about that. I speak from personal experience, my mind can be unbridled, and those evil, lustful, sinful thoughts creep in. There are times when it is all I can do to defeat the thoughts and to pray, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Not to point any fingers, but I don’t think I am alone on this. If anyone says it is easy to be a Christian, you gotta wonder about them.
There is an extremely important question that we must ask ourselves: How can we obtained eternal life? Some people answer this question by saying that all we have to do is to believe in Christ, and then Christ will do everything else. These people say that all we need to do is say from our hearts, “I believe,” and we will automatically be saved.
Well, in this passage, Paul gives a different answer. Yes, we must first believe in Christ. But then, we must deal vigorously with our sinful nature, and its misdeeds. That is where the hard work of being a believer must be exerted. In that work, we cannot succeed without the help of the Holy Spirit. Amen? Amen!
Bulletin Board:
I was just thinking — If we realized how powerful our thoughts are, would we ever think a negative thought?
Closing Prayer:
Lord Jesus, give me the strength to stick it out over the long haul—not the grim strength of gritting my teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy, thanking the Father who makes me strong enough to take part in everything bright and beautiful that he has for me. Jesus, give me strength in my weakness. Amen.
