I memorized Romans 8 for a class in college. These were my thoughts as I was memorizing it....
The first verse in Romans 8 is very popular in churches today, but it is interesting in thinking of it in context with the rest of the passage. All of the struggle we have in the flesh does not affect our salvation! We are saved no matter what! The winning of the struggle only affects the reward we will receive in heaven. I firmly believe that there will be a reward in heaven based on what we did. Otherwise why is there such a strong call from Paul to live in a manner worthy of our calling? If just getting to heaven is all that it is about would it matter how we live once we have the Spirit? I love what he says to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).
Another concept I have been musing on that this passage relates to is what about for those who do not win the battle between the flesh and the spirit? I was reading a lot of the New Testament lately and the passage in Hebrews has always bothered me. “Hebrews 6:4-6 “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” But that is not the only place that this is mentioned in the New Testament. The next time we see it written it isn’t even Paul who is saying it! It is Peter. Therefore, if the same view comes from what I would say are the two greatest apostles, what does that mean for us? Peter says in 2 Peter 2:20-21, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” There is not only that but the parable of the 10 virgins has bothered me for awhile. I talked to Dr. Sanders about it and he noted that every other time in the Bible oil seems to denote the holy spirit. So I was thinking, why would it not be him here? It has to be! And it can be if these two passages are to be taken for exactly what they say! So Christians can loose the holy spirit.
I have been thinking more about this concept of whether or not a Christian can fall away. Why do people change, I wonder? I had a teacher in high school, my English teacher, who said he once believed what I did but changed what he believed. How can a person do that? People change, yes, but how could someone forget God? Then I realized that we all do it. That is why Jesus says, “take up your cross daily and follow me.” I had always thought it was a one time deal. We say the prayer and magically we are in forever. However, through the studying of Romans and Revelation and Isaiah I have been doing lately it seems more that perseverance is actually something we have to work at. Just because the spirit of God is in us does not mean we can kick back and do nothing. That is what I had always believed. But it is both us and God. This passage seems awfully repetitive but I have come to realize that though he seems to be saying the same thing twice he is not. First he lays out that living by the sinful nature leads to death and by the spirit leads to life. Then he talks of us who have the spirit of God and are children of God. He seems to leave the option still open that children of God CAN live by the sinful nature if we chose to do so. He says in verse 13, “if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Does that mean that one who already has the Spirit can die? Well is that not what Hebrews 6 seems to imply? A person can have the Spirit of God and loose it through the decisions they make. That is scary to me, but that is why Paul says, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Granted God does half the work, but not all of it. We are responsible for our own choices as well.
The phrase, “so he condemned sin in sinful men,” is key I think. It is like when Paul talks about the law prior to this in Romans. He says if we had not gotten the law we would not have known what sin is. In the same way, God sending his son to earth revealed to us that we were not enough to make it. We could not get ourselves to heaven. The incarnation; something we always only see as the implementing of God’s grace was also the implementing of his wrath and justice. It says he “condemned sin in sinful man.” He decided he would not put up with mankind anymore. Before he had allowed men to try to gain access to him by offerings, but they had missed him. In Genesis before God sends the flood to destroy mankind he says, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever.” Some translations say “strive,” “my Spirit will not strive with mankind forever.” There is a point when God says, no, that is enough. It is the point at which Romans 10 talks about God cutting off the branch of Israel and grafting the Gentiles in. It is the point in Romans 1 when it says that “God gave them over” to their sin. Jesus’ coming was not only to save, but was also to condemn sin. We always think of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son.” I have heard a phrase spoken, “God loves you just as you are, but he loves to much to keep you that way.” The two statements are congruous. God loved us, but also condemned our sin. This is why Jesus is referred to as the “light of the world.” He brought to light man’s sin. He revealed it for what it was.
At Rock Harbor recently Mike Eyre has been speaking a lot about how opposed Jesus seemed to be to the Pharisees. Why was it that the sin he detested most was the self-righteous pride of the Pharisees? Mike notes that he never condemned the sin of “the sinners” as they did. He condemned the Pharisees because their hearts were far from him. With the sending of his son it is as if God was saying, “sacrifices are not enough, I want your hearts too.” I love the phrase that Jesus repeatedly says in the gospels, “go and see what it means, ‘I desire compassion not sacrifice.’” That is Jesus in Mathew 9:13 quoting Hosea 6:6. Following that in Isaiah God says to the people that they were “unfaithful.” It also parallels what Jesus repeatedly says to the Pharisees, “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Sin is sin. Sin is in the heart, not on the outside. Just as when Jesus says to the Pharisees that it is what comes out of a man’s heart that makes him unclean, not what he eats. Jesus was quite the rebel among the Pharisees. They did not like him, because they had stopped loving God. They, like the church in Ephesus from Revelation, had lost their “first love.” In Revelation Jesus declares that if they do not return he will “remove their lamp stand.” Loving God is one of the two central commandments. Not loving God is sin.
The phrase that I just is “the law of sin and death.” Paul talks about the law in depth in Romans. Isaiah talks of this when he says in 8:13-14, “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy…but for the house of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” The stumbling stone was the law. The Pharisees completely missed God! The people of Israel had amassed a giant book that acted as a fence around the 10 commandments to ensure that no one broke them. However, they started to regard these laws as more important than what God actually commanded. That is why Jesus later says to the Pharisees, “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” The law was a stumbling block for the people of Israel. The very thing that should have led them to love God even more and fear him led them away from him. They got SO good at following the law that they felt they no longer had to depend on God. I have come to realize that there are two dangers in following God, that we will disrespect Him and pay no attention to living holy lives worth of him, or we will disrespect him in thinking we deserve heaven because we are so righteous and holy on our own. God condemns both attitudes, and the law is what leads to both. Aquinas labeled these two extremes as “despair” and “presumption.” In the middle is freedom. I love that this passage I am memorizing ends with, “in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” How do we have freedom? Paul say earlier that we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit. Therefore, the freedom is not total freedom. But it is like what Jesus says, “whoever looses his life for my sake will find it.” If we submit to the Spirit and let our minds be controlled by him we will have “life and peace.”
I have pondered this whole semester why Paul begins each of his letter with “grace and peace to you.” Why grace and peace? Could it be that the reason is that these two things lead to freedom and are directly opposed to the law. The “law of sin and death” does not involve grace and peace. Grace is the opposite of legalism. Grace is what God offered us in his son. If we live by the law it will lead us to sin and death. We would become like Pharisees; constantly comparing ourselves to others and so forsaking the law to “love your neighbor as yourself. Also we would constantly be thinking that we ourselves could earn our way to heaven if we focused on the law, thereby forsaking that we are to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind. We would become our own God. Either is an easy and slippery slope in the Christian faith. And so many Christians miss it! It is so easy to. It is true that “all the law and prophets hang on these two commandments,” to love God and love your neighbor.
The first verse in Romans 8 is very popular in churches today, but it is interesting in thinking of it in context with the rest of the passage. All of the struggle we have in the flesh does not affect our salvation! We are saved no matter what! The winning of the struggle only affects the reward we will receive in heaven. I firmly believe that there will be a reward in heaven based on what we did. Otherwise why is there such a strong call from Paul to live in a manner worthy of our calling? If just getting to heaven is all that it is about would it matter how we live once we have the Spirit? I love what he says to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).
Another concept I have been musing on that this passage relates to is what about for those who do not win the battle between the flesh and the spirit? I was reading a lot of the New Testament lately and the passage in Hebrews has always bothered me. “Hebrews 6:4-6 “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” But that is not the only place that this is mentioned in the New Testament. The next time we see it written it isn’t even Paul who is saying it! It is Peter. Therefore, if the same view comes from what I would say are the two greatest apostles, what does that mean for us? Peter says in 2 Peter 2:20-21, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them.” There is not only that but the parable of the 10 virgins has bothered me for awhile. I talked to Dr. Sanders about it and he noted that every other time in the Bible oil seems to denote the holy spirit. So I was thinking, why would it not be him here? It has to be! And it can be if these two passages are to be taken for exactly what they say! So Christians can loose the holy spirit.
I have been thinking more about this concept of whether or not a Christian can fall away. Why do people change, I wonder? I had a teacher in high school, my English teacher, who said he once believed what I did but changed what he believed. How can a person do that? People change, yes, but how could someone forget God? Then I realized that we all do it. That is why Jesus says, “take up your cross daily and follow me.” I had always thought it was a one time deal. We say the prayer and magically we are in forever. However, through the studying of Romans and Revelation and Isaiah I have been doing lately it seems more that perseverance is actually something we have to work at. Just because the spirit of God is in us does not mean we can kick back and do nothing. That is what I had always believed. But it is both us and God. This passage seems awfully repetitive but I have come to realize that though he seems to be saying the same thing twice he is not. First he lays out that living by the sinful nature leads to death and by the spirit leads to life. Then he talks of us who have the spirit of God and are children of God. He seems to leave the option still open that children of God CAN live by the sinful nature if we chose to do so. He says in verse 13, “if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” Does that mean that one who already has the Spirit can die? Well is that not what Hebrews 6 seems to imply? A person can have the Spirit of God and loose it through the decisions they make. That is scary to me, but that is why Paul says, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” Granted God does half the work, but not all of it. We are responsible for our own choices as well.
The phrase, “so he condemned sin in sinful men,” is key I think. It is like when Paul talks about the law prior to this in Romans. He says if we had not gotten the law we would not have known what sin is. In the same way, God sending his son to earth revealed to us that we were not enough to make it. We could not get ourselves to heaven. The incarnation; something we always only see as the implementing of God’s grace was also the implementing of his wrath and justice. It says he “condemned sin in sinful man.” He decided he would not put up with mankind anymore. Before he had allowed men to try to gain access to him by offerings, but they had missed him. In Genesis before God sends the flood to destroy mankind he says, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever.” Some translations say “strive,” “my Spirit will not strive with mankind forever.” There is a point when God says, no, that is enough. It is the point at which Romans 10 talks about God cutting off the branch of Israel and grafting the Gentiles in. It is the point in Romans 1 when it says that “God gave them over” to their sin. Jesus’ coming was not only to save, but was also to condemn sin. We always think of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son.” I have heard a phrase spoken, “God loves you just as you are, but he loves to much to keep you that way.” The two statements are congruous. God loved us, but also condemned our sin. This is why Jesus is referred to as the “light of the world.” He brought to light man’s sin. He revealed it for what it was.
At Rock Harbor recently Mike Eyre has been speaking a lot about how opposed Jesus seemed to be to the Pharisees. Why was it that the sin he detested most was the self-righteous pride of the Pharisees? Mike notes that he never condemned the sin of “the sinners” as they did. He condemned the Pharisees because their hearts were far from him. With the sending of his son it is as if God was saying, “sacrifices are not enough, I want your hearts too.” I love the phrase that Jesus repeatedly says in the gospels, “go and see what it means, ‘I desire compassion not sacrifice.’” That is Jesus in Mathew 9:13 quoting Hosea 6:6. Following that in Isaiah God says to the people that they were “unfaithful.” It also parallels what Jesus repeatedly says to the Pharisees, “these people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me.” Sin is sin. Sin is in the heart, not on the outside. Just as when Jesus says to the Pharisees that it is what comes out of a man’s heart that makes him unclean, not what he eats. Jesus was quite the rebel among the Pharisees. They did not like him, because they had stopped loving God. They, like the church in Ephesus from Revelation, had lost their “first love.” In Revelation Jesus declares that if they do not return he will “remove their lamp stand.” Loving God is one of the two central commandments. Not loving God is sin.
The phrase that I just is “the law of sin and death.” Paul talks about the law in depth in Romans. Isaiah talks of this when he says in 8:13-14, “The Lord Almighty is the one you are to regard as holy…but for the house of Israel he will be a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.” The stumbling stone was the law. The Pharisees completely missed God! The people of Israel had amassed a giant book that acted as a fence around the 10 commandments to ensure that no one broke them. However, they started to regard these laws as more important than what God actually commanded. That is why Jesus later says to the Pharisees, “You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” The law was a stumbling block for the people of Israel. The very thing that should have led them to love God even more and fear him led them away from him. They got SO good at following the law that they felt they no longer had to depend on God. I have come to realize that there are two dangers in following God, that we will disrespect Him and pay no attention to living holy lives worth of him, or we will disrespect him in thinking we deserve heaven because we are so righteous and holy on our own. God condemns both attitudes, and the law is what leads to both. Aquinas labeled these two extremes as “despair” and “presumption.” In the middle is freedom. I love that this passage I am memorizing ends with, “in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” How do we have freedom? Paul say earlier that we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit. Therefore, the freedom is not total freedom. But it is like what Jesus says, “whoever looses his life for my sake will find it.” If we submit to the Spirit and let our minds be controlled by him we will have “life and peace.”
I have pondered this whole semester why Paul begins each of his letter with “grace and peace to you.” Why grace and peace? Could it be that the reason is that these two things lead to freedom and are directly opposed to the law. The “law of sin and death” does not involve grace and peace. Grace is the opposite of legalism. Grace is what God offered us in his son. If we live by the law it will lead us to sin and death. We would become like Pharisees; constantly comparing ourselves to others and so forsaking the law to “love your neighbor as yourself. Also we would constantly be thinking that we ourselves could earn our way to heaven if we focused on the law, thereby forsaking that we are to love God with our whole heart, soul, and mind. We would become our own God. Either is an easy and slippery slope in the Christian faith. And so many Christians miss it! It is so easy to. It is true that “all the law and prophets hang on these two commandments,” to love God and love your neighbor.
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