2. Proof that this view is right is found in 20b where Paul said, not of its own will. This is another example of personifying nature (human emotions are applied to inanimate objects). So God elected me. "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ," he says. Of it nothing has been heard till now. Vanity describes the wretchedness, sufferings, disappointments, frustrations, futilities and general tragedy of mortal life in a state of separation from God, due to man's sin. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the There is hardly any phraseology that tends to more injury of souls in these matters than a loose way of talking of salvation. There are passages that refer to Gods eyes and fingers (see Job 38:7 for an example). It was the logos ( G3056) which kept the stars in their courses and the planets in their appointed tracks. Now this should be to each of us tonight a very searching verse, and upon reading this, it is important that each of us now make a personal inventory and evaluation and ask ourselves the question: Is my life led by the Spirit of God? If children, then heirs,Romans 8:17; Romans 8:17. It was undoubtedly enough for present purposes. The quickening power of God therefore was here set forth, of course historically in a way connected with this life and a posterity on earth, but nevertheless a very just and true sign of God's power for the believer the quickening energy of God after a still more blessed sort. All the curse and filth that now adhere to the creature shall be done away then when those that have suffered with Christ upon earth shall reign with him upon the earth. "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ( Romans 8:3 ): What I could not do for myself through the Mosaic Law, that is, have a righteous standing before God, God did for me through sending His Son in the flesh. The adoption ceremony was carried out in the presence of seven witnesses. It is not here a question of how a man is to be saved, but of God's indispensable moral judgment, which the gospel, instead of weakening asserts according to the holiness and truth of God. I have not always done for God the things that I would do for God. God is not his friend but his enemy, and no man ever won the last battle against him. As Christ was, so the saints will be, declared to be the sons of God with power, by the resurrection from the dead, Romans 1:4; Romans 1:4. What gives glory to God like this? First, as to practical holiness, it is not merely that Christ has died for my sins, but that even in the initiatory act of baptism the truth set forth there is that I am dead. Was he not himself, says Paul, a proof to the contrary? . I reckon that this suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed. When you finally see it, it becomes then a rational reality. The inner man is dealt with, and searched through and through. Not only all of creation, but ourselves also, which even have the firstfruit of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body ( Romans 8:23 ). He has subjected the same in hope because, or for we know. It is the deep experience of the Christian that all is of God; that he did nothing and that God did everything. And in the area of the spirit and God's Spirit is bearing witness with my spirit that I am a son of God.Thus, I am united with God and joined with God and I have fellowship with God in the realm of the spirit, only when the spirit is uppermost. But now, to meet the question that was raised, they pleaded the distinguishing promises to Israel. When you have got it in escrow you are feeling pretty good about it. They too should live. When God created Adam, God said, "It is not good that man should live alone." He quotes from Joel, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Having shown first, then, the sources and the character of the blessing in general as far as regards deliverance, the apostle sums up the result in the end of the chapter: "That as sin hath reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life," the point being justification of life now through Jesus Christ our Lord. Man had sinned deliberately; but it was involuntarily that nature was subjected. Let's turn to the eighth chapter of Romans. Sin came into this world and with sin came death, the consequence of sin. 8:1 The Greek emphasizes the word "no.". It doesn't require sleep. Subject to vanity - The word subject to means placed in such a state; subjected to it by the appointment of another, as a soldier has his rank and place assigned him in an army. Not just some of the things, but because you have been called according to His purpose you can rest in the confidence that God is in control and all things are working together for good. As Jesus said, "Not my will, but thy will be done," and that is always the real thrust of prayer. Then you really aren't a part of God or His kingdom. 14, 15). On the contrary, the doctrine of faith establishes law as nothing else can; and for this simple reason, that if one who is guilty hopes to be saved spite of the broken law, it must be at the expense of the law that condemns his guilt; whereas the gospel shows no sparing of sin, but the most complete condemnation of it all, as charged on Him who shed His blood in atonement. God is gracious, but holy; He is faithful, but righteous. THE LIBERATION OF OUR HUMAN NATURE ( Romans 8:1-4 ). But then it will be complete, when the Captain of our salvation shall bring the many sons to glory, Hebrews 2:10. Those that will deal with God must deal upon trust. The soul therefore now is represented for the first time as already justified and in possession of peace with God. Finally he brings in Isaiah, showing that, far from retaining their blessing as an unbroken people, a remnant alone would be saved. That is, it is not merely pardon of past sins, but deliverance from sin, and in due time from all its consequences. Formerly called Saul, he began as a notorious persecutor of Christians. This designs the vanity and emptiness of the minds of the Did they venture to plead that it must be not only the same father, but the same mother? He which has begun a good work in me shall surely continue to perform it. And that beautiful, sparkling, darling little gal wouldn't have to lie there listless and crying and thrashing in the bed. So then we who are still living in these bodies do often groan, for we ourselves also groan within ourselves. Who is he who condemns? This is precisely what salvation does not mean; and I would strongly press it on all that hear me, more particularly on those that have to do with the work of the Lord, and of course ardently desire to labour intelligently; and this not alone for the conversion, but for the establishment and deliverance of souls. The little kid there had a whole room full of big little books, and you young people won't understand that at all. He is body, mind, and spirit. If that is true of nature, it is still truer of man. The rest of the epistle takes up the practical consequences of the great doctrine of God's righteousness, which had been now shown to be supported by, and in no wise inconsistent with, His promises to Israel. (2.) The Bible tells me so. Yes, He suffered, but as He suffered He was looking forward to the glory of the kingdom and the joy of being able to redeem lost man. It is not only a blessing in its own direct character, or in indirect though real effects, but the Giver Himself is our joy, and boast, and glory. The adopting father went to the praetor, one of the Roman magistrates, and presented a legal case for the transference of the person to be adopted into his patria potestas. Now the man who lives dominated by his body appetites is living like an animal, because animals are body-controlled beings. The sense of the apostle in these four verses we may take in the following observations:-- (1.) Taxes; Taxes may be applicable at checkout. Romans 1:1-32. Now, that suffering saints may have strong supports and consolations from their hopes of heaven, he holds the balance (Romans 8:18; Romans 8:18), in a comparison between the two, which is observable. Now as I have told you, you are not going to always understand your circumstances. It is not a matter of choice. Of what then shall we be afraid? He now, by a kind of personification, ascribes hope to them, as he did will before. God said to Abraham: "You have not withheld your son, your only son, from me" ( Genesis 22:12). It is not the mercy of God., Many have contended that so it is, and to their own great loss, as well as to the weakening of the word of God. But for the time it is held fast, though in unrighteousness. So Paul goes on to think of human longing. For the created world has been subjected to chaos, not because of its own choice, but through him who passed the sentence of such subjugation upon it, and yet it still has the hope that the created world also will be liberated from this slavery to decay and will be brought to the freedom of the glory of the children of God; for we know that the whole creation unites together in groans and agonies. Not so, says the apostle; it is because of the evil of the nature, not of the law. As a result, they and all of their offspring were subjected to all the processes that lead inexorably to death. The apostle writes with the full assertion of his own apostolic dignity, but as a servant also. But in the days between the Testaments, when the Jews were oppressed and enslaved and persecuted, they dreamed their dreams of that new earth and that renovated world. Like it or not, God created you for His own good pleasure. God elected me. The future must be brought in by the grace of God; and this he accordingly gives us at the close of Romans 11:1-36. The judgments of God will fall on man as man, but the heaviest blows are reserved for Christendom. The apostle has come now to the nature. It was not merely "to those at Rome," but "to you that be at Rome." how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! This is a textual problem in the Greek manuscripts - some manuscripts have 'me', some 'you'. He will cause sweet fountains of, white milk to burst forth. God, I am going to do better." Many times the evil that he wouldn't do he was doing. Then if God is willing to do that much for you, the rest is easy.Nothing that you might need could possible come close to comparing what God has already demonstrated His willingness to give and do for you because He loves you so much. Or, We groan among ourselves. Xenophon tells us that Socrates taught his disciples simply to pray for good things, and not to attempt to specify them, but to leave God to decide what the good things were. (3.) If the good news of God goes out to man, entirely blotting out the difference between a Jew and a Gentile, what becomes of His special promises to Abraham and to his seed? The gospel means His glad tidings for man. As for the impotency of the law, that weakness of the law which resulted from the effects of our sinful human nature--God sent his own Son as a sin offering with that very same human nature which in us had sinned; and thereby, while he existed in the same human nature as we have, he condemned sin, so that as a result the righteous demand of the law might be fulfilled in us, who live our lives not after the principle of sinful human nature, but after the principle of the Spirit. God's love for me is uncaused on my part. Just what do you mean?" The Gentiles the despised heathen were to be brought in; the self-satisfied Jews are left behind, justly and beyond question, if they believed the law and the prophets. That would be a day of judgment when the world would be shaken to its foundations; but out of it there would come a new world. The apostle refers to Isaiah to show that God would "lay in Zion a stumbling-stone." And this leads us to see not only where there was an analogy with those who believe in a promised Saviour, but also to a weighty difference. He shall come to Zion, says the other. What would we have? If we take it as philosophy and theology and apply the standards of cold logic to it, it must mean that God chose some and did not choose others. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. You really don't belong to Him, unless you have had that second birth, the spiritual birth, which we term born again. Hence it is essentially founded on the gift not only of a Saviour who would interpose, in the mercy of God, to bear our sins, but of One who is already revealed, and the work done and accepted, and this known in the fact that God Himself has interposed to raise Him from among the dead a bright and momentous thing to press on souls, as indeed we find the apostles insisting on it throughout the Acts. He uses still another picture from Roman adoption. In that state the law simply became something that moved him to sin and he went from bad to worse, a defeated and frustrated man. That the creature doth therefore earnestly expect and wait for the manifestation of the children of God,Romans 8:19; Romans 8:19. 16). They do not come to it as purchasers by any merit or procurement of their own; but as heirs, purely by the act of God; for God makes heirs. My love for Him, my desires to please and serve Him. According to the Rabbis there were three ranks of angels. Not so Paul. 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