Beware that you do not confound it with souls being quickened, or even brought into joy. This is called the adoption. How could the Jews say that this meant themselves? Shall be revealed in us; not only revealed to us, to be seen, but revealed in us, to be enjoyed. whereas the mind of the spirit is life and peace ( Romans 8:6 ). Here I had all my bills paid and I became current and we had the new living room furniture practically delivered, you know. (iv) In the eyes of the law he was absolutely the son of his new father. Formerly called Saul, he began as a notorious persecutor of Christians. He may be opposite to Michael or to Gabriel, but never to God. It is not a question of creature-standing. He had one of the most fabulous electric trains, a huge one. Spiritual life which results in that glorious peace. The law demanded, but could never receive righteousness from man. There is a new law that is working in me. It surely appeals to a person's flesh, because basically what this doctrine declares is that the whole world is waiting for you to be manifested as the sons of God. And his conversation is going to be addressed to spiritual things. "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people," so runs our commission, Isa. He was God over all blessed for ever, as well as their Messiah. The soul therefore now is represented for the first time as already justified and in possession of peace with God. vices, to which they were addicted, to such a degree, that they Because he had violated that spiritual aspect of the law, though he had never committed adultery, yet he found that he desired his neighbor's wife and he realized that the desire was sin. It is exquisite the delicate love with which he singles out distinctive features in each of the saints, men and women, that come before him. For as many as are lead by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.There are a lot of people today who are making claims to being sons of God. . There we find Christian knowledge as to the matter introduced; but still it is the knowledge of one who is not in this state pronouncing on one who is. And what is the world compared with God? Broadly speaking, he uses it in three different ways. 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. "The just shall live by faith" (not by law). If that is so, we become joint-heirs with Jesus Christ, God's own Son. But it should seem by the scripture that there will be some kind of restoration of them. "The law is weak to us, because we are weak to it: the sun cannot give light to blind eye, not from any impotency in itself, but merely from the incapacity of the subject it shines upon." (Poole) c. In that it was weak through the flesh: The law is weak because it speaks to our flesh. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets" (verses 20, 21). Besides this, which seems to be a most comprehensive expression for embracing every sort and degree of human iniquity, we have one very specifically named. "Earth, the universal mother, shall give to mortals her best, fruit in countless store of corn, wine and oil. Verse Romans 8:28 : "And we know that most things work together for good to them that love God." This is to fall back on a principle he had already used. The second included powers, lordships and mights. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh ( Romans 8:3 ). Hey, wait a minute. And this yoke (poor creatures) they bear in hope that it will not be so always. Now that new body doesn't grow tired. They remain on earth for this purpose: and this should be their leading aim. For the creature was made subject to vanity The Gentile world were subject to vanity of mind; but how? 3 for, being ignorant of d the righteousness of god, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to god's righteousness. Just the bottom is knocked out. "At any rate he is a saved soul," we hear. for the mind of the flesh is not subject to the law of God, and neither indeed can it be. Far from denying or obscuring what they boasted of, he goes beyond them "Who are Israelites," says he, "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all God blessed for ever." Paul seems to say: "Think of the greatest human example in the world of a man's loyalty to God; God's loyalty to you is like that." God help us to comprehend what is the length, the breadth, the depth, the height, and to know that love of Christ that God has for us in Him.Father, we thank You for Your Word and for the glorious blessings and hope and strength and comfort that is ours tonight because of Your Word. Now, suppose the adopting father died and there was some dispute about the right of the adopted son to inherit, one or more of the seven witnesses stepped forward and swore that the adoption was genuine. (b) He rose again. And we know well that this does not take freewill away. Then your principle is your condemnation. It is only to the man who loves and trusts that all things work together for good, for to him they come from a Father who in perfect wisdom, love and power is working ever for the best. This is one of the most lyrical passages Paul ever wrote. You know the amazing thing to me is that God can interpret that as intercession according to His will. At this point we enter upon a most important part of the epistle, on which we must dwell for a little. Scripture: Romans 8:1. For in the sad disorder which followed the fall of Adam, the whole machinery of the world would have instantly become deranged, and all its parts would have failed had not some hidden strength supported them. In Romans 8:32 there is a wonderful allusion which would stand out to any Jew who knew his Old Testament well. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized unto Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death?" The rest of the chapter (7-25) is an instructive episode, in which the impotence and the misery of the renewed mind which attempts practice under law are fully argued out, till deliverance (not pardon) is found in Christ. Although there is undoubtedly that profoundness which must accompany every revelation of God, and especially in connection with Christ as now manifested, still we have God adapting Himself to the very first wants of a renewed soul nay, even to the wretchedness of souls without God, without any real knowledge either of themselves or of Him. We are often so hard on ourselves and are in the position of condemning ourselves, but I can tell you one who is not condemning. Through the new birth there is an inversion, and man becomes then spirit, soul, and body. That must needs be a great, a transcendent glory, which all the creatures are so earnestly expecting and longing for. They cannot merit that glory; and, if suffering for Christ will not merit, much less will doing. The fruits of it are not expanded here; but, in point of fact, to joy in God is necessarily that which makes praise and adoration to be the simple and spontaneous exercise of the heart. One might know a most real clinging to Jesus; but this would not set the heart at ease with God. Did the Jews take the ground of exclusively having that word of God the law? You say, "Oh, but I have failed God so miserably. We did not make the story; we only received the story. In regard to his father, a Roman son never came of age. He says that all things work together for good, but only to them that love God. If I think of prayer as an instrument by which I can get my will done, I totally misunderstand prayer. It becomes popular about every forty years. For you did not receive a state whose dominating condition is slavery so that you might relapse into fear; but you received a state whose dominating characteristic is adoption, in which we cry, "Abba! Faith is the mother of hope. But we have to note that that experience comes only to those who love God. It was the logos ( G3056) which put sense into the world. "Well, I know, but not this case. subjected the same", and not Adam, by whom sin entered into the Joint-heirs with Christ. (b) Our belief is in a Christ who died and rose again and who is alive for evermore--that is the statement. Light affliction, it is just but for a moment. And if it be objected, What use will they be of to glorified saints? idolatry, WILLINGLY; but they were subjected to vanity UNWILLINGLY; for this proceeded from the just indignation and vengeance of God. The righteousness of God, then, could now go forth in virtue of His blood. And where? 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. And because God has the foreknowledge, He can speak as Paul said of things as existing even though as yet they do not exist, because He knows they are going to exist. In other words, that we might be made the sons of God, but the firstborn is first in prominence, Jesus first in prominence, but He is the firstborn of many brethren. (verses 22-32.) For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor the present age, nor the age to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And we know that all things are working together for good to those that love God, and are the called according to his purpose ( Romans 8:28 ). The majority of the people in the world are living after the flesh. . I really think that Jesus was talking about what Paul had been talking about in II Corinthians 5 , that mansion is that new body that He has prepared for you. But "justification of life" goes farther, though involved in the latter, than the end of Romans 4:1-25; for now we learn that in the gospel there is not only a dealing with the guilt of those that are addressed in it; there is also a mighty work of God in the presenting the man in a new place before God, and in fact, too, for his faith, clearing him from all the consequences in which he finds himself as a man in the flesh here below. No war shall be any. I am an heir to God's kingdom. The Rabbis had a legend that when God appeared on Sinai to give Moses the law he was attended by his hosts of angels, and the angels grudged Israel the law, and assaulted Moses on his way up the mountain and would have stopped him had not God intervened. Conscious deliverance, to be solid according to God, must be in the line of His truth. It is not a soul's overcoming its difficulties, but a sinner's submission to the righteousness of God. How we appreciate this marvelous position that we have in Christ Jesus where nothing can separate us from Your love. The last time it was popular was 1948, and it is beginning to get popular again, so thirty years. Verse Concepts.King James Version. He would not therefore have them ignorant how they had lain on his heart for a visit (ver. First of all, the groundwork of it is laid in the first four verses, the last of them leading into every-day walk. They believed that a man was born under a certain star and thereby his destiny was settled. I have rested in this verse over and over and over again. In such a condition what has been found in Jesus is too often misused to make a kind of difference, so to speak, between the Saviour on the one hand, and God on the other ruinous always to the enjoyment of the full blessing of the gospel. He was regarded as a new person entering into a new life with which the past had nothing to do. The object of this expectation. He is interceding in your behalf. By the creature here we understand, not as some do the Gentile world, and their expectation of Christ and the gospel, which is an exposition very foreign and forced, but the whole frame of nature, especially that of this lower world--the whole creation, the compages of inanimate and sensible creatures, which, because of their harmony and mutual dependence, and because they all constitute and make up one world, are spoken of in the singular number as the creature. Sin is a burden to the whole creation; the sin of the Jews, in crucifying Christ, set the earth a quaking under them. This is the point in verse 21. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit ( Romans 8:1 ). Nor does this in the slightest degree weaken the principle of law. Thus one could not fail to see these two weighty inferences: the bringing in to be God's sons of those that had not been His people, and the judgment and destruction of the great mass of His undoubted people. Did the Jew fancy that the gospel makes very light of Abraham, and of the then dealings of God? For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope, To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient, Baker Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Hastings' Dictionary of the New Testament, International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians, Corinthians, First and Second, Theology of. This brings in the contrast with the other Head, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we have here not as One bearing our sins in His own body on the tree, but as the spring and chief of a new family. The created order will therefore share the destiny of the sons of God. This concern that God has for his people involves everything. It had its interest. He was the promised Messiah, born King of the Jews. But then it will be complete, when the Captain of our salvation shall bring the many sons to glory, Hebrews 2:10. That always amazes me, but it shouldn't surprise me because He knows everything. 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. He speaks with a poet's vision. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings which baffle speech to utter; but he who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because it is by God's will that he intercedes for those whose lives are consecrated to God. Because of what Jesus did, there opens out to the Christian a life no longer dominated by the flesh but by that Spirit of God, which fills a man with a power not his own. It was a message that went out from God to sinners as such. If he will submit his life to the control of the spirit.Paul had felt the condemnation of the law. or who hath been his counsellor? He which has begun a good work in me shall surely continue to perform it. 14, 15). But we are hoping for that which we see not, then with patience we are waiting for it. But then Paul goes on to declare to the saints of God. This is a textual problem in the Greek manuscripts - some manuscripts have 'me', some 'you'. 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. God, I am going to do better." for on your own showing, according to that word to which we all bow, you must admit that one man's sin brought in universal moral ruin and death. Their present state is a state of education and preparation for the inheritance. ed. John Piper Sep 9, 2001. Of it nothing has been heard till now. May the Lord bless you. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death ( Romans 8:2 ). Twice the father symbolically sold his son, and twice he bought him back; but the third time he did not buy him back and thus the patria potestas was held to be broken. Let me refer in passing to a few points more in the introduction, in order to link them together with that which the Spirit was furnishing to the Roman saints, as well as to show the admirable perfectness of every word that inspiration has given us. But he seeks to relate himself again to God, because he is living after the Spirit.So Paul declares, "They that are after the flesh are constantly mindful of the things of the flesh, but they that are after the Spirit, then, are mindful of the things of the Spirit." Not thus does God deal with souls. For the present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed. Even as you have all had a fleshly birth, we are here, it is just as necessary that you have a spiritual birth, for man by nature is alienated from God. So I went up to spend some time with my cousin. Under the bondage of corruption,Romans 8:21; Romans 8:21. And the cities shall be full of good, things, and the fields rich; neither shall there be any sword, throughout the land or battle-din; nor shall the earth be, convulsed any more with deep-drawn groans. To man this is the hardest of all obedience; but when once secured, it leads peacefully into the obedience of every day. Here, then, it is not a question at all of pardon or remission. But Paul goes on from there. 20.For to vanity has the creation, etc. But what is testified by Christian baptism is Christ's death. It is through the help of the Spirit that we put to death the deeds of the body or that they become subservient and the spirit becomes dominant.I see the trinity of man in a storied area: upper story, middle story, lower story. The blazing truth that lit life for Paul was that the human situation is not hopeless. I rest in faith that God is even going to use this for my good and His glory.Now if you will just take this and file it up here to where you will live by it, you won't have to come to Romaine and get his hammer on your head. Albert Barnes' Bible Commentary AND WE KNOW - This verse introduces another source of consolation and support, drawn from the fact that all flyings are under the direction of an infinitely wise Being, who has purposed the salvation. See the gains of suffering for Christ; though we may be losers for him, we shall not, we cannot, be losers by him in the end. <p>Lot Of 10 Chuck Missler Bible Commentaries-CD-ROM/Mixed Media With Bonus DVD. 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