Birth Pains. Why Pains?

It seems “birthing” new, whole parts of us hurts, much as creation is pained until we become God’s sons and daughters.  What is God saving in you now?  That question may be the same as a doctor asking, “Tell me where it hurts.” 

This truth describes much of life!  Let’s scour the verses to see what God hints at.  These verses are thick, and … mystical. 

Before I get too mystical, trust this.  Some say they have a way to God’s glory sans suffering.  They lie.  See the truth in these verses.  Let’s map them.  The Greek words are highlighted identically with the English words. 

  Romans 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him
sumpascho; sum & pasch; suffer with.  (One Word!)

  in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
sundoxazo; sun & oxazo; to join in approving, hence to glorify together. Again (One Word!)

  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
pathema; from pascho; that which befalls one, a suffering, a passion.
We get our word for paschal suffering or the “Passion” of Christ.

  of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is
doxa; opinion (always good), hence praise, honor, glory.
God’s opinion is the truest and best opinion of us.  His is the most glorious of us.

  With the glory that is to be revealed to us.
apokalupto; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal. 
(Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ¹⁹For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of God’s daughters and sons.
apokaradokia; from apo & kara (the head) & dokeo; strained expectancy, earnest longing. 
We have thoughts about the way things should be. 
apokalupsis; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal. 
(Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ²²For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
sustenazo; from sun & stenazo; to groan together.  .  (One Word!)
sunodino; from sun & odino; to be in travail or suffer childbirth pains together. .  (One Word!)

  ²³And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
stenazo; to groan within oneself, to complain, deep sigh, grief.
the redemption of our body.

apolutrosis; to release on payment of ransom; redemption. 
This is not the Body, the church.  It is me: my flesh.  It is my lusts, my angers, my humor, my soul. 

Now, read them again. 

Romans 8:17 We are heirs. We suffer with Him
that we may also be glorified with Him.
  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
we endure now are nothing compared with the glory that is
to be revealed to us. 

 ¹⁹For the creation’s anxious longing waits eagerly for us to be revealed as God’s children! 
²²We know the whole creation groans and suffers childbirth pains together until now.

²³We also, having the Spirit’s fruits in us we groan within ourselves,
waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters
 — the redemption of our body.

First, these verses show God as Father (Abba).  They show our status as His children is unshakable. 

Now, from these thick, rich words, explore some depths.  A warning: this one may finish fuzzy.  Why? I don’t know these depths.  I am one swimming over the Marianas Trench.  I can say, “Tall waves!” when the powerful reality is I am seven miles above the ocean floor!

Start here: we suffer.  Paul takes it for granted: you suffer.  So see two parts of suffering.  (Part One) Life comes with suffering attached.  Ours is a fallen world.  Alcoholic parents, anger, abusive people, depravity, gossip, divorce, cancer, dying children, dying friends, dying parents, war, bigotry, sexual damages, dementia, child exploitation, porn, money troubles, anxiety, anorexia, allergies, cheating spouses, depression, new diseases teaching me their initials as they kill someone close, and accidental anything — all come as part of life.  Can you possibly be untouched?  Life comes with suffering.  We live in a fallen world.  Any Christian message not dealing honestly with suffering is faux, fraud, a lie, a scam. 

Any preacher saying God only gives the good drives a Mercedes.  Any message shouting all sickness comes from unconfessed sin is nuts.  Easy religion sells.  Beware of who says “There is no suffering!”  Yes, liars are bold, but see who is listening!  Hear their listeners!  They’re angry, broken, questioning, and suffering.  Paul wades saying, “Suffering surrounds us!”  We live in a fallen world. 

That is not all to this broken Paul with visions and spells befalling him.  It is not all he wants you to see on suffering.  (Part Two of Suffering) Paul suffers for Christ.  He catalogues his sufferings a couple of times, beaten, cold, stoned, cast adrift and in peril.  He suffered for Christ.

A warning.  If you won’t embrace your suffering and trust God in it: if you won’t choose to suffer for the Lord — then the rest of Romans Chapter Eight belongs to someone else.  This is hard.  I repeat.  Paul builds the rest of this chapter on embracing this world’s suffering and trusting God in it, if you won’t suffer for Him any sacrifice or discomfort — then the rest of this chapter belongs to those trusting Christ here. 

What is built on this suffering and trusting?

You want intercession beyond words (26)?  You want all things working for good (28)?  Like being more than conquerors (37)?  DO YOU LOVE that nothing can separate us from God’s love (38-9)?  All these follow suffering.  You can’t reach the heights and bypass suffering.  Life brings suffering and God is in the middle of it.  You won’t follow Christ and NEVER suffer!  Jesus costs some fights … others hurt you.  Christ costs you gossip. Others hate that you don’t gossip.  He costs you anger.  Others see you as weak, and it all hurts!

You can’t reach the great stuff bypassing suffering.  See suffering sown among these great promises!  Great stuff is out there in Christ.  None comes before some suffering. 

We don’t like it.  We disagree.  Be careful.  With whom do you then agree?  “Buy this car, and drive happily ever after!”  “Wear these clothes, and be cool!”  “Use this skin care so your face looks happy!”  “If the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!”  Did you miss Jesus’ holes in His hands?  Paul has welts on his back. 

Paul says suffering happens…can it compare to the coming glory?  Hmm.  We go to doctors like other patients, but we don’t tell them, “If my suffering passes into death’s portal into heaven, that will be glorious!”  More doctors would be shaken and come to Christ. 

Popular theology turns and twists everything.  I am not out to guilt you, but this is true.  We assume quietly, “God never intended me to suffer.”  The result?  More born-again Christians divorce in America than atheists! 

Do you hunger for God’s opinion of you?  Do you thirst for God’s great opinion of your kids, of you to be true?  Do you believe God’s opinion of (glory in) you is more real than your feelings about you?  Paul thunders, “Glory is truer in you!”  Hold out for God’s opinion!  Endure suffering beautifully, gloriously my child!   Why?

Glory is revealed to & in us.  That word revealed is the mysterious, convoluted word for Apocalypse and Revelation!  John’s Revelation is off the charts deep and mysterious.  He sees beings covered in eyes, winged beasts, horrors ride up from hell, unimaginable cities of beauty descend from heaven, and a wounded-in-love Lamb!  Mystical.  Magical.  Wondrous. 

Suffering men, women and children across this globe serve God and see healings, miracles, visions, and hope, and more suffering.  This painful, crazy mystery is building to an Apocalypse — a revealing of God.  We hunger to know the Apocalypse of eternity and Paul screams, “Big deal.  It’s coming.  YOU are the major mystery!  Who will you become?!”

(22) God hears seal pups groan to death for fur. God hears species extinguished.  Do you hear creation groan for us?  God hears millions of rainforest acres groan with a melting Antarctic.  They suffer under our subjection.  Creation sighs and suffers awaiting our being birthed.  They trust their Creator to make it worthwhile as we are revealed as sons and daughters. 

Hear the groans of children dying early.  They are now birthed as God’s daughters and sons.  On dying their glory is finished in Father’s face.  Children start, suffer, and leave us.  Jesus wept.  Either they die and their glory is completed before Christ, Who suffered for them or we’re a joke.  Do you believe their glory lies beyond their suffering?  Do you trust Christ enough to suffer through to His revealing what is truest, most glorious of you? 

Why is suffering so important?  Why is it so important to us as Christians?  Look at 22 & 23. 

We make choices in suffering.  Suffering is neutral.  Some men lose wives, rail at God, and discard their faith.  Other men bury a wife and draw close to God.  Some die of cancer testifying of the Lord.  Others grow angry at God over disease and leave Him. 

Don’t miss this.  All Creation suffers along with us, birthing us! 

The ideas are indissoluble.  Groans together with, and endures birth pains together with cannot be reduced.  “With” is built into “groan” and into “birth pains”.  No whale chose to be hunted, but suffers in its Creator.  A rhino killed for its horn so a rich Japanese businessman powders and drinks it … groans.  They groan with us… as parts of the creation.  See the irony?  We are attached to them as well.  We groan at some level as they suffer. 

Do you see the view from here?  We’re on top of the world here, in Paul’s letter.  Seriously, this is a pinnacle.  All creation, all that became through I Am, all that is spoken by the Word of God, Jesus, is for this single purpose: birthing God’s daughters and sons.  This is the climax!

My wife’s exertion as she burst blood vessels in her eyes and sobbed: her trembling as she regrouped, sweated and her face burned red tell me we are birthed in pain: in another’s pain. 

I see three painful truths.  1) Did you arrive where you are in Christ, costing other souls much pain?  Did you thank them for what they endured for you?  We are self-absorbed, but can grow to see their pain, and thank God for them, and thank them for Christ in them. 

2) We make lousy midwives.  We allay others’ pain, when God intends the pain to birth a new thing new in her.  We prescribe for each other, substitute ourselves for the Comforter, and preclude what God was birthing in them.  Hear God.  Suffering and pain’s demise are promised only in heaven.  Down here, suffering and pain may be God’s midwives at the birthing of a child of the Living God. 

3) Why so much pain?  I’m attached to dead things in me, and He must tear them from my living soul! 

God is, in verse 23, redeeming even our bodies.  I saw one man’s addiction to pornography transform into his burning passion to tell others of the Lord.  It hurt.  Oh, he suffered, but God birthed something eternal that has saved others.  Don’t sin as a Gnostic thinking God saves my soul, but the body is a loss.  God is buying back even your body’s most painful parts! 

How precise is He in redeeming?  8:1 tells us He does not condemn us.  In 8:3 He condemns sin in us. That means the Physician’s scalpel cuts only necrosis.  It assures us that His laser comes for cancer cells only.  It assures that arthroscopy snakes in me for necrotic horrors only. 

Everest climbers say the height is dizzying, the air too thin and dry and hurts, the sun too bright, the cold too piercing to stay.  Maybe suffering is too wonderful for them to miss, as they express awe, ineffable wonder from the roof of the world. This chapter, these verses form the roof of our world.  How much will you endure to see the view from up there?

The Bible warns that others will not want you to be birthed, or to help birth others.  (John’s Apocalypse, the 12^th chapter).

BLESSING FOR YOU:  If you cry out to Him in pain.  Look out from that height to be astounded at how high He brought you in your suffering.  If you exclaim how beautiful it is, be not surprised if He smiles to say, “That beauty is nothing compared to what I’ve done in you, My child,” as He hands you a mirror.  Go in that great grace.  Amen. 

Have You Ever Been in Love?

The question insinuates itself occasionally. 

As a boy two answers saw me through.  First, I hoped I was in love with Christ, with serving Him, the joy of seeing people’s lives bettered.  Second, and I only thought to answer this to a girl/woman, “No, but with the right person with the right qualities (think “babe for Jesus”); we might share an abiding love.” 

How many people was I privileged to see married all their lives to construct an idea of “abiding” love?  I missed costs or continual sacrifices they paid to still be married when I came along. 

Then came Jill.  She never asked, but we discussed it.  I was engaged once already.  She was twice.  She had a font of questions, so I took the position of the “sure” one.  Walking in falling snow in Minneapolis’ Minnehaha Park she finally erupted, “I thought I was in love twice before.  How do I know you’re not just the third time?”  With boy-faith I stopped to say, “I’m not the third.  I’m the one.”

We weather tests and trials.  On passing one, a new one emerges like this: studies show more older couples are splitting.  I thought we arrived where everyone stays together.  Not so.

So, have I ever been in love?  I have three working hopes.  I need three, when one might have sufficed for that boy talking to a girl. 

One, Yes.  Probably.  Maybe.  I am selfish, prideful, an ass thinking I am spiritual.  Those tarnish, they downgrade any answer.  So I learn in marriage seminars, and talking to others, and failing and asking forgiveness.  God must make up the difference between my answers and living.  I now know my falling short is more frequent like a sunrise.  I invent small ways to fall short.

Two, and this is important.  I was “in love” from my first breath.  I had mom and dad, who assisted in my delivery as a newly minted MD.  But my mom’s mom stood outside Labor and Delivery doors enrolling me in Sunday school at the age of a squawk.  Much later I saw that my bearing Mammaw’s beloved’s name, Thomas L., was their only hope to pass on either name.  Childless, they adopted mom.  They named no boys.  I was “in their love” early.  Dad’s parents weathered a public affair.  Many others held me “in love.”  I was rich.  Undeserving.  Unaware.

Three.  All of that calls forth from me much for others, and much in His Name.  See above for failings, shortcomings, and selfish manipulations of that sacred truth. 

So yes.  Mostly.  Undeservedly.  I have been in love.

Now, the face I see as I answer the question is not some babe, but One with holes in His hands. 

Birth Pains.  Why Birth Pains?

It seems “birthing” new, saved, whole parts of us hurts, much like creation is pained until we become God’s sons and daughters.  What is God saving in you now?  That question may be the same as a doctor asking, “Tell me where it hurts.” 

This truth describes much of life!  Let’s scour the verses to see what God hints at.  These verses are thick, and … mystical. 

Before I get too mystical, trust this.  Some say they have a way to God’s glory sans suffering.  They lie.  See the truth in these verses.  Let’s map them.  The Greek words are highlighted identically with the English words. 

  Romans 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him
sumpascho; sum & pasch; suffer with.  (One Word!)
 

in order that we may also be glorified with Him.
sundoxazo; sun & oxazo; to join in approving, hence to glorify together. Again (One Word!)

  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
pathema; from pascho; that which befalls one, a suffering, a passion.
We get our word for paschal suffering or the “Passion” of Christ.
 

of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is
doxa; opinion (always good), hence praise, honor, glory.
God’s opinion is the truest and best opinion of us.  His is the most glorious of us.

  With the glory that is to be revealed to us.
apokalupto; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.  (Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ¹⁹For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of God’s daughters and sons.
apokaradokia; from apo & kara (the head) & dokeo; strained expectancy, earnest longing. 
We have thoughts about the way things should be. 
apokalupsis; from apo & kalupto; to uncover, reveal.  (Apocalypse, Revelation)

  ²²For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
sustenazo; from sun & stenazo; to groan together.  .  (One Word!)
sunodino; from sun & odino; to be in travail or suffer childbirth pains together. .  (One Word!)

  ²³And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
stenazo; to groan within oneself, to complain, deep sigh, grief.
the redemption of our body.
apolutrosis; to release on payment of ransom; redemption. 
This is not the Body, the church.  It is me: my flesh.  It is my lusts, my angers, my humor, my soul. 

Now, read them again. 
Romans 8:17 We are heirs. We suffer with Him
that we may also be glorified with Him.
  ¹⁸For I consider that the sufferings
we endure now are nothing compared with the glory that is
to be revealed to us. 

 ¹⁹For the creation’s anxious longing waits eagerly for us to be revealed as God’s children! 
 ²²We know the whole creation groans and suffers childbirth pains together until now.
²³We also, having the Spirit’s fruits in us we groan within ourselves,
waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters
 — the redemption of our body.

First, these verses show God as Father (Abba).  They show our status as His children is unshakable. 

Now, from these thick, rich words, explore some depths.  A warning: this one may finish fuzzy.  Why? I don’t know these depths.  I am one swimming over the Marianas Trench.  I can say, “Tall waves!” when the powerful reality is I am seven miles above the ocean floor!

Start here: we suffer.  Paul takes it for granted: you suffer.  So see two parts of suffering.  (Part One) Life comes with suffering attached.  Ours is a fallen world.  Alcoholic parents, anger, abusive people, depravity, gossip, divorce, cancer, dying children, dying friends, dying parents, war, bigotry, sexual damages, dementia, child exploitation, porn, money troubles, anxiety, anorexia, allergies, cheating spouses, depression, new diseases teaching me their initials as they kill someone close, and accidental anything — all come as part of life.  Can you possibly be untouched?  Life comes with suffering.  We live in a fallen world.  Any Christian message not dealing honestly with suffering is faux, fraud, a lie, a scam. 

Any preacher saying God only gives the good drives a Mercedes.  Any message shouting all sickness comes from unconfessed sin is nuts.  Easy religion sells.  Beware of who says “There is no suffering!”  Yes, liars are bold, but see who is listening!  Hear their listeners!  They’re angry, broken, questioning, and suffering.  Paul wades saying, “Suffering surrounds us!”  We live in a fallen world. 

That is not all to this broken Paul with visions and spells befalling him.  It is not all he wants you to see on suffering.  (Part Two of Suffering) Paul suffers for Christ.  He catalogues his sufferings a couple of times, beaten, cold, stoned, cast adrift and in peril.  He suffered for Christ.

A warning.  If you won’t embrace your suffering and trust God in it: if you won’t choose to suffer for the Lord — then the rest of Romans Chapter Eight belongs to someone else.  This is hard.  I repeat.  Paul builds the rest of this chapter on embracing this world’s suffering and trusting God in it, if you won’t suffer for Him any sacrifice or discomfort — then the rest of this chapter belongs to those trusting Christ here. 

What is built on this suffering and trusting?

You want intercession beyond words (26)?  You want all things working for good (28)?  Like being more than conquerors (37)?  DO YOU LOVE that nothing can separate us from God’s love (38-9)?  All these follow suffering.  You can’t reach the heights and bypass suffering.  Life brings suffering and God is in the middle of it.  You won’t follow Christ and NEVER suffer!  Jesus costs some fights … others hurt you.  Christ costs you gossip. Others hate that you don’t gossip.  He costs you anger.  Others see you as weak, and it all hurts!

You can’t reach the great stuff bypassing suffering.  See suffering sown among these great promises!  Great stuff is out there in Christ.  None comes before some suffering. 

We don’t like it.  We disagree.  Be careful.  With whom do you then agree?  “Buy this car, and drive happily ever after!”  “Wear these clothes, and be cool!”  “Use this skin care so your face looks happy!”  “If the going gets tough, the tough go shopping!”  Did you miss Jesus’ holes in His hands?  Paul has welts on his back. 

Paul says suffering happens…can it compare to the coming glory?  Hmm.  We go to doctors like other patients, but we don’t tell them, “If my suffering passes into death’s portal into heaven, that will be glorious!”  More doctors would be shaken and come to Christ. 

Popular theology turns and twists everything.  I am not out to guilt you, but this is true.  We assume quietly, “God never intended me to suffer.”  The result?  More born-again Christians divorce in America than atheists! 

Do you hunger for God’s opinion of you?  Do you thirst for God’s great opinion of your kids, of you to be true?  Do you believe God’s opinion of (glory in) you is more real than your feelings about you?  Paul thunders, “Glory is truer in you!”  Hold out for God’s opinion!  Endure suffering beautifully, gloriously my child!   Why?

Glory is revealed to & in us.  That word revealed is the mysterious, convoluted word for Apocalypse and Revelation!  John’s Revelation is off the charts deep and mysterious.  He sees beings covered in eyes, winged beasts, horrors ride up from hell, unimaginable cities of beauty descend from heaven, and a wounded-in-love Lamb!  Mystical.  Magical.  Wondrous. 

Suffering men, women and children across this globe serve God and see healings, miracles, visions, and hope, and more suffering.  This painful, crazy mystery is building to an Apocalypse — a revealing of God.  We hunger to know the Apocalypse of eternity and Paul screams, “Big deal.  It’s coming.  YOU are the major mystery!  Who will you become?!”

(22) God hears seal pups groan to death for fur. God hears species extinguished.  Do you hear creation groan for us?  God hears millions of rainforest acres groan with a melting Antarctic.  They suffer under our subjection.  Creation sighs and suffers awaiting our being birthed.  They trust their Creator to make it worthwhile as we are revealed as sons and daughters. 

Hear the groans of children dying early.  They are now birthed as God’s daughters and sons.  On dying their glory is finished in Father’s face.  Children start, suffer, and leave us.  Jesus wept.  Either they die and their glory is completed before Christ, Who suffered for them or we’re a joke.  Do you believe their glory lies beyond their suffering?  Do you trust Christ enough to suffer through to His revealing what is truest, most glorious of you? 

Why is suffering so important?  Why is it so important to us as Christians?  Look at 22 & 23. 

We make choices in suffering.  Suffering is neutral.  Some men lose wives, rail at God, and discard their faith.  Other men bury a wife and draw close to God.  Some die of cancer testifying of the Lord.  Others grow angry at God over disease and leave Him. 

Don’t miss this.  All Creation suffers along with us, birthing us! 

The ideas are indissoluble.  Groans together with, and endures birth pains together with cannot be reduced.  “With” is built into “groan” and into “birth pains”.  No whale chose to be hunted, but suffers in its Creator.  A rhino killed for its horn so a rich Japanese businessman powders and drinks it … groans.  They groan with us… as parts of the creation.  See the irony?  We are attached to them as well.  We groan at some level as they suffer. 

Do you see the view from here?  We’re on top of the world here, in Paul’s letter.  Seriously, this is a pinnacle.  All creation, all that became through I Am, all that is spoken by the Word of God, Jesus, is for this single purpose: birthing God’s daughters and sons.  This is the climax!

My wife’s exertion as she burst blood vessels in her eyes and sobbed: her trembling as she regrouped, sweated and her face burned red tell me we are birthed in pain: in another’s pain. 

I see three painful truths.  1) Did you arrive where you are in Christ, costing other souls much pain?  Did you thank them for what they endured for you?  We are self-absorbed, but can grow to see their pain, and thank God for them, and thank them for Christ in them. 

2) We make lousy midwives.  We allay others’ pain, when God intends the pain to birth a new thing new in her.  We prescribe for each other, substitute ourselves for the Comforter, and preclude what God was birthing in them.  Hear God.  Suffering and pain’s demise are promised only in heaven.  Down here, suffering and pain may be God’s midwives at the birthing of a child of the Living God. 

3) Why so much pain?  I’m attached to dead things in me, and He must tear them from my living soul! 

God is, in verse 23, redeeming even our bodies.  I saw one man’s addiction to pornography transform into his burning passion to tell others of the Lord.  It hurt.  Oh, he suffered, but God birthed something eternal that has saved others.  Don’t sin as a Gnostic thinking God saves my soul, but the body is a loss.  God is buying back even your body’s most painful parts! 

How precise is He in redeeming?  8:1 tells us He does not condemn us.  In 8:3 He condemns sin in us. That means the Physician’s scalpel cuts only necrosis.  It assures us that His laser comes for cancer cells only.  It assures that arthroscopy snakes in me for necrotic horrors only. 

Everest climbers say the height is dizzying, the air too thin and dry and hurts, the sun too bright, the cold too piercing to stay.  Maybe suffering is too wonderful for them to miss, as they express awe, ineffable wonder from the roof of the world. This chapter, these verses form the roof of our world.  How much will you endure to see the view from up there?

The Bible warns that others will not want you to be birthed, or to help birth others.  (John’s Apocalypse, the 12^th chapter).

BLESSING FOR YOU:  If you cry out to Him in pain.  Look out from that height to be astounded at how high He brought you in your suffering.  If you exclaim how beautiful it is, be not surprised if He smiles to say, “That beauty is nothing compared to what I’ve done in you, My child,” as He hands you a mirror.  Go in that great grace.  Amen. 

He Who has it all, has Me.

He Who has it ALL has Me. 

26 …The Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Knows all that the mind:  oida; to have seen or perceived, appreciate, understand.

28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Causes…to work together: sunergeo; helps in the work, works with.

All things: pas; every, all respects or things, constantly, continually, every, everything, forever.

For good: agathos; good, generous.

Purpose: prothesis; specifically the showbread in the temple.

[See three levels of “the good”]

                                                               

God’s Glory

Me

Things and Circumstances

Physicists religiously hunt a theory to explain everything, to explain all.  God already has. 

In the Bible’ most misquoted verse, see some mistranslations in case one is yours.  “Well, everything happens for the good.”  “Every cloud has a silver lining.”  “Everything always works out for the best.”  Those are impotent Band-Aids … for a heart attack. 

Again: start with verse 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because He intercedes for the saints according to God’s will.  God searches my heart by means of His Spirit.  Again the Spirit intercedes for us.  God understands. He absorbs all the Spirit brings Him; concerning you.  Why?  God as His Holy Spirit ferrets out what is most true about you… we know God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.

We know God sunergeo; causes things to work together.  Calvinists, say God helps nothing.  He’s in charge.  He ordains.  He predestines.  God dictates. all else follows.  Paul visits predestination later, but hear this verb — sunergeo.  God works together with.  He responds.  He orchestrates the pieces. 

See three possibilities.  (Godet, 1870) All things work in concert together: like ecology.  Everything is in ML King’s “inescapable web of mutuality”.  Another possibility: all things work in common with God, under His direction: cue the universe’s Conductor.  A last possibility is where we take a turn.  All things work in common with a believer, aspiring for His good. 

God causes and we work with Him aspiring for “the good”.  This is Joseph’s word to his brothers.  They sold him into slavery.  Bloodied his coat.  Lied to his parents that Joseph died.  His brothers now stand before him in Egypt, him who they worse-than-killed and Joseph says, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.[1]  How hard is this to trust?

God made his brothers hate Joseph and barely back off from killing him?  OR God used the brothers’ hatred of Joseph?  God used their animosity?  God let his brothers “send” Joseph ahead to Egypt?  Which?  Ask this, “Which is more amazing — a puppet-master God, Who makes brothers hate and almost kill Joseph, or the One who works with the brothers’ actions?

All things is pas.  Paul says God works together with — all, all respects, all things, constantly, everything.  This God numbers hairs on heads.  For me that’s increasingly easier.  This God lets no sparrow fall to ground but that He knows.  He causes all things.

May I suggest practicing using this bit word, all in your life in Christ?  Some people deride baby Christians, who pray for everything, like parking places. 

What if we place more of our lives for review by God?  We might ask Him about little things like what we eat, smoke, and drink.  We can pass our entertainment to God’s all things column.  Many small things make up “my all”.  Nissan taught me this. 

I called Nissan to replace an AC condenser covered in my extended warranty.  A pleasant lady told me Nissan would not pay for the condenser because, I love this, I could buy a condenser in smaller parts.  If it were a clutch, or a bit or small part, they would cover it, but since I needed the whole enchilada… an entire condenser… she could not pay.  She hung up.  I needed a day.  It cost two more calls and I got heated, but Nissan paid for one, entire condenser.  The point is this: You can’t say you want God to make ALL work to the good and then exclude component parts.

Small bits of my life make my ALL.  Each second with my wife makes the ALL of our life.  Each business decision makes the ALL of my business.  Back to parking places from God.  If I never bother with millions of small bits, then I exempt most of my life from the ALL I hope He uses for good in my life.  Don’t hang the heavens on parking, but examine small life bits in Him. 

Good: agathos.  Good: do you trust it?  We define good in a zillion ways.  Some of our ways are lies.  We’ll bypass the trap of what is good, and look at a wiser version.  Whose good?

For whom may things work out for the good?  See three circles.  In the outer circle, we have the good of my things or circumstances.  Things work out for my dog, my car and house. 

What’s good for my things?  It is good if I’m happy or I get it.  I want a house.  Pray that I get a house.  I want “us” to happen, so pray for us and pray we’re happy. 

As goal-oriented people, we get caught in this.  How did I do on grades?  Did my job go well?  Have a nice trip, date, buying spree or negotiation?  Did “the thing” happen?  Are you “happy”?  Did you finish your race, or go to a doctor, and did those turn out well?

We busily hope church was good, club went well, and work went well.  The outer ring to analyze this verse is “did things and circumstances turn out how I thought good should be?  Did everything come out well, as good as I hoped?”  

This verse does not insure that.  Sorry.  I often think wrongly what would be “good”.  I twist ideas of good-for-me.  Joseph got sold for dead, and yes, it turned out wonderful, but it didn’t start that way.  Joseph took some nose dives, and people Jo helped forgot him for years. 

That’s why Paul says I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to be revealed to us” (verse 18).

Circumstances go awry.  We die in prisons so Paul says the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God (verse 21). 

Saul hunted David.  Wars happen.  Deserts kill.  Kings tortured Isaiah and other prophets.   Jews died in Babylon, Germany, and Israel.  Esther’s predecessor was discarded like a used tire.  Other women in Boaz’ fields paid sexual favors to glean behind the men.  Tell the truth. 

In this outer circle, I learn to celebrate any kindness, any victory as God’s gift, not as what I earn or deserve.  A promise of all things in my favor is magic; not faith.  Satan dangles magic’s false promise to enslave people all day.  Be smarter than that. 

Pelagius: Whatever we do or suffer out of love for God grows into a reward for us.[2]  Theodoret of Cyr: This is not true of every one but only of believers.  Nor do things simply work together… they work together for good.  If you ask for something which will not contribute to your good, you will not get it, because it is not good for you to get it. [3]

In the outer circle of circumstances coaches pray for victory.  One country’s priests prepare men to fight with a mass, another’s chaplains hold a prayer meeting, who wins the battle?  All those things lie in the outer circle.  God does not bleed your school colors. 

Consider the second (middle) circle. Where is my hope if not in how circumstances pan out?  What is “good” in what I hope?  If my things do not all happily succeed, how does good work?  Perhaps it is IN us that things work out for the good. 

What lies in the second circle?  I do.  Do things work out for my good?  It depends on my criteria for good.  If good means I will always be healed, then no.  We wear out and surely die, unless Christ returns.  What did Paul write before sharing I can do all things in Christ? [4]  He wrote: I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty.  I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  Circumstances rise and fall.  Who am I in the rising and falling?  Who am I becoming in all this?  What have I learned?

Paul gave us something else.  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.[5]  Does this truth color your definition of “the good?”  Truth: going Home is better than staying.  Dying and being with Christ is better.  Slaves and soldiers hummed this.  Can I?  Passing from here to Heaven is better, it is gain, it is wonderful.  Does that define your good?  Going Home to Heaven is good. 

Truth: circumstances do not define good.  I was more alive in a hospital close to death than anywhere else.  Maybe you experienced a deeper joy in a funeral home than in worship.  Good lies not in externals, it is a choice I believe.  I hunt the good in hope in my character.

Who are you becoming as a soul, a person of character and honor?  The second circle is important.  Your character is a good.  Is it most important?  No.  With Christ as Lord, move to the most important circle.  Move to the inmost circle. 

“The good” is larger than me, my family, my church, and my country.  The good ultimately rests in God’s hands.  My grasp of the good must bring Him glory and honor.

Jesus struggled with this, Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour?’  No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.[6]  Jesus leads us into “the good’s” inner circle.  Jesus says “yes” to God.  He died for us to show us how to do good, be good, even in horrid circumstances.  Move to this good for God’s good, for His glory.

Jesus showed us this good.  People die in Christ’s name, as He died obeying the Father.  Are their deaths “good”?  Balthasar Hubmaier was tied to a stake and recanted.  He returned teaching a believer is baptized after knowingly professing Christ as Lord.  They tied him to a stake again.  This time he begged for a hot fire to finish well, to rub Sulphur in his beard.  People laughed, told him he was a fool, and asked if he wanted to recant again.  These people were the last thing in this world Balthasar saw!  Was his death for good?

Does your definition of “the good” pull you into the inner circle?  The inner circle brings God honor and glory.  Chrysostom said “even things that seem most painful: tribulation, poverty, imprisonment, famines, or deaths, God can change them into the opposite.  God can make painful things appear light to us, and turn them into helpful things.”[7]

God turns even opposition and disappointment into good. This happened in Paul.[8]

Step into the inner circle and face, “To be called according to God’s purpose is to be called according to “the will.”  But is this the will of Him Who calls or the will of us who are called?”[9]

How about it, His will, His good or yours?  Can you see why so many in the world consider us to be no threat?  You can live for God’s will over your own! 

In the inner circle we meet a strange word.  Prothesis; specifically showbread, was sacred, consecrated.  Priests displayed this “bread of face” by the curtain to the Holy of Holies.  When I fell in love with God, I knew to do the good He asked.  God makes us indistinguishable from Jesus.  When you touch that inner circle, you rest in God, you rest in His purpose for your life, and you live out of depths others want. 

Why use such old sources?  They wrestled as do we.  They knew long before us.  They lived and died well. 

Do you see how the Bible defines “love God?”  You are called according to His purpose.  You live as one who has seen His face. 

---

[1] Genesis 50:20

[2] Pelagius Commentary on Romans  AD 370

[3] Interpretation of the Letter to the Romans  AD 430

[4] Philip. 4:12

[5] Philip. 1:21

[6] John 12:27

[7] John Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans 15.3 390 AD

[8] John Chrysostom Homilies on Genesis 67.19  392 AD

[9] Cyril of Alexandria  Explanation of the Letter to the Romans  444 AD

Much Obliged, Really.

Much Obliged, Sir.

My obligations bring me, what exactly?

Paul rapturously proclaims what God does for us. God places us beyond condemnation.  He lavishes on us His Spirit, the part of God empowering Jesus and raising Him from the dead.  In the Spirit, God frees us free from wrath, sin and death.  He condemns sin in us, to help us overcome it.  God enters us to dwell in us.  WOW.

Now Paul turns to our response. 

So what is our response?  Paul: Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.[1]  We stare at the Builder generation to ask, “What is this obligation business?  It’s not our style.  We love Christ’s love and free stuff!  Thanks so much!  See ya!” 

The Builders knew obligations.  The world called on them to lift us from a depression, fight World War II and Communism.  The builders responded when the world called.  They left their footprints on the moon. 

Who now takes their places?  Men and women were obliged to mortgage homes to start an economy.  They were obliged to teach scriptures, love friends, paint, change light bulbs, and sacrifice driving new cars to give to the Lord.  Who now takes their places?  People were obliged to sense God’s call on them and serve ‘round the world.  Who now takes their places?

Paul says you will take their places, if you love Jesus.

We live with obligations.  Do you know the seven dwarves’ song in the original Snow White?  “Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it’s off to work I go!”  I laughed to see a bumper sticker on the back of a Benz in Miami.  “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!”

Jill’s sister trained employees for Amex.  She said new, young ones are a bit scary.  They know what they want.  They clearly see what Amex can do for them, but have no sense of what they owe the company in return.  She found some are hard to train.

This study is about doing God’s work — building His Kingdom as we owe Him so much. 

Paul recites God’s amazing works in Christ.  We obligingly respond asking God to do great things in us: amazing things through us.  Look at vows: If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or takes an oath to bind himself with a binding obligation, he shall not violate his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.[2]  The word, issar, is a bond, a binding obligation.

Mr. Marshall’s knees were scarred.  He promised God that if he returned from World War II he would go to church … on his knees.  He did: two miles.  His knee pads helped for 500 yards.  He painfully kept his vow.  Is your vow your bond?  Can God bank on your word?  How strong are your obligations?

The sense of obligation springs from early ideas of revenge and law.  In a personal offence a transgressor became a debtor to the injured party (I hurt you. I owe you).  Only an injured party can liquidate revenge on a debt owed to him.  That moved from personal revenge to national law, and the guilty party became a debtor to the law.  (Dump oil in an Alaskan harbor, and you owe America.  See you in court.)  In Israel it also meant a guilty party owed a penance to God.  So, if I hurt you, I may owe you, the law (nation), and God all three!

A sense of owing a debt to a virtue derives in Greek thought.  I’m obliged to fairness and honesty. Again, Greeks spoke of inner obligations.  The Jews owed debits to the Law and God.  The Greeks aspired.  Jews guilted! “He died. What’s it cost?  Two bulls and a ram?)  Philo merged both streams so we are obliged to Someone higher.  Out of Divine Law, we cherish a sense of the sacred … to be good or courageous.

The Jews got stuck thinking our relation to God is a legal relationship. Indebtedness marks our relation to God.  Jesus bridged the gap, even before the cross where He leveled the playing field.  Jesus told a story.  Do you know it?

The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began settling them, workers brought him one who owed ten thousand talents. (Think trillions.)  [This slave] had no means to repay. The king commanded him to be sold, with his wife, children and all he had, to make the payment.  The slave prostrated himself before the king, saying, “Have patience with me, and I’ll repay everything!” (In a thousand lifetimes if you never eat or sleep!)  And the lord of that slave felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. But the slave went out, found a fellow slave who owed him [a hundred bucks].  He seized him and began choking him, saying, “Pay back what you owe me!”  The king calls the forgiven servant to ask, “Should you not also have mercy on a fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’  And his lord, in anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. ‘So shall My heavenly Father also do to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart.’[3]

Jesus says we’re obligated.  Our first obligation forgives others as we have been!

Paul lived out a deep obligation to Christ’s amazing grace.  Reread this letter’s opening: I am obliged both to Greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish. [4]  Paul begins with his obligation to us because of Christ.  Now he includes us so brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.  [5]

The verse sounds so odd!  It’s a rhetorical tool, a meiosis, where less is said than intended.  This meiosis is more than what is not said, in it the direction of the thought changes. 

Let’s say I tell you how excited I am for my wedding anniversary: how Jill puts up with me, blesses and loves me.  How she makes each day possible.  As I build to a climax to say, “Thanks for the years, Jill,” I say, “I owe so much of our years, not to Elon Musk!” 

The weirdness hits you.  Elon and I are not an item… never married.  I owe him nothing.

This meiosis is even stronger.  Let’s say I tell you how thrilled I am to leave a hospital after ten surgeries … on being hit by a drunk driver.  I thank doctors, nurses, therapists and chaplains.  I build to a climax: “And I owe so much, not to the drunk who hit me.”  I stop.  What you want to fill in screams at you in its absence.  Do you fill in where Paul stops?  

Read the verses again.  Paul never answers the second half!  Do you? 

Brothers and sisters, we have an obligation ¾ but not to the sinful nature, to live according to it???  For if we live according to the sinful nature, we die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the body’s misdeeds, you will live, because we who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s children!  For we did not receive a spirit making us slaves again to fear, but we received the Spirit of sonship. And by Him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit (my most true self) that we’re God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order to also share in His glory. [6]

Sin in me, law, religion, anything less than Christ’s miracle in me, in my soul, is worthless.  Paul: I count all things as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ![7]  If you lose nothing, give nothing, obligated nothing, you miss this truth. 

Jesus promises.  We leave behind our debts our obligations as we forgave others.  And forgive us our debts, (failed obligations), as we forgive our debtors, [8] Jesus’ word is the one Paul uses: opheiletes; a debtor, culprit, indebted, owed as failed obligations!

Jesus explained further: If you forgive men their transgressions, your heavenly Father also forgives you.  But if you don’t forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Jesus hates wrecked obligations.  Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If I swear by the temple, it means nothing; but if I swear by the temple’s gold, I’m bound by my oath.” Blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?[9]  

Do you think we have a problem with obligations? We thank God for His gifts, yet spend 2% of our incomes on philanthropy.  How much are you obliged to God for His gift in Christ to you?  Skip smarmy sap.  Look at your scheduling app and check book.  Read the truth there. 

Do you think losing obligations affects us?  Bankruptcies fell to 683 thousand last year.

A lawyer friend recently remarked how many people are criminally irresponsible in finances if they have no picture of obligations.  Why is all this happening?

Alexander Pope described a man he despised.  Pope condemned the man saying he blamed everyone else for his shortcomings.  Worse, he made a timid foe and suspicious friend.  Even fools and flatterers dreaded him.  The worst, though, was that “He was so obliging, that he ne’er oblig’d (sic)” [1607].  People have ducked obligations for a long time.

Bankruptcy, divorce, cheating in marriages, workplace theft all show missed obligations. 

Is there a minimum amount of obligation…say for moms?  Governor Mike Huckabee and the courts agreed with Marie Riggs. She deserved to die. She was executed within two years of her crimes, at her request.  She asked for morphine and potassium chloride: she used them on her babies.  Marie told jurors: “I want to die. I want to be with my babies. I want the death penalty.”[10]

People need at least our minimum obligation in Christ.  In Jesus’ story of a failed minimum. a master vested a servant with a hefty amount, one talent.  As others doubled each trust, he buried his.  Felt bad doing nothing.  Fretted over his follow-up interview with the lord.  He wasn’t immoral.  He didn’t lose it.  He sat on it fearing his master.  Jesus says the servant of the failed minimum was banished to darkness: with weeping, gnashing of teeth and maybe Marie Riggs? 

See another thing.  Our highest obligation is a calling to stagger the imagination: those led by God’s Spirit are His daughters.  You did not receive a spirit making you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  By Him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit: we are God’s children.  Now if we’re children, then we’re heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings we may also share in His glory. [11]  What an obligation!

See then a wide range of obligation. In a bare minimum slaves and unhappy people work all the way up to the astounding reaches of being God’s sons and daughters, heirs worth their word!

Blessing:  When you find yourself out in life this week, and hear God’s greatest confidence in you, your deepest obligation, be thrilled, “I knew I could count on you, my child.”

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[1] Romans 8:12

[2] Numbers 30:2ff

[3] Matthew 18:23ff 

[4] Romans 1:14

[5] Romans 8:12

[6] Romans 8:12 ff

[7] Philippians 3:8

[8] Matthew 6:12 

[9] Matthew 23:16ff 

[10] (USA Today, May 3, 2000, page 4A).

[11] Romans 8:14 – 17

David, WYSIWYG

David wrote the Psalms. Those Psalms have comforted people for thousands of years.

David was deeply spiritual.

David was a warrior. He and his Mighty Men killed tens of thousands of enemies. He exterminated cities. He utterly hated his enemies, except for the Mighty Men from those enemies. He loved them.

David was diametrically opposed to, ugh, David.

David loved God. Unreservedly. He trusted God always. Except in the Psalms when he is asking God, “When will you show up?” “Where are you? I am dying here.” “Deliver me from my enemies. Heal me. Kill my enemies.” “And I love you, God. You know that.”

David did not try to hide ugly parts of himself from God. David never put on airs that he was better than he was. If David loved God one instant, and was anxious the next second, it is there in the Psalm.

What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) took years of programming to put on your computer. For David, it was his divided consciousness, ADHD soul from early on in life.

David never intended to hide his ugliness or sin, except for that thing with Bathsheba where David had his friend, Uriah, a Mighty Man killed when he refused to bed his wife and cover for David unwittingly.

WYSIWYG. David confesses his sin for use in church hymns for the country of Israel. He leads the country in worship, even when it offended his wife, Michal. Maybe he got a little excited, but he refused to apologize, and never slept with her again.

And God describes David as the Apple of His Eye.

I tend to dress up for God, present my best self in my prayers even when confessing sins. I know, like changing underwear for the God with X-Ray vision. David never bothered. David brought his most intimate self, immediately, unreservedly to God.

WYSIWYG. God loved the guy for putting on no faces, not dressing up, not trying to put a good spin on his self-presentation.

David says it another way: When I hid my sin, my body was wasting away!

He dwells and indwells where invited

10 But for you who welcome Him,
in whom [Christ] dwells —
even though you still experience all the limitations of sin —
you yourself experience life on God’s terms.

11      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? 
èWhen God lives and breathes in you (and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. 
èWith his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! Romans 8:10-11 (The Message.)

 

When I was four, my family lived on 22^nd Street in Beaumont, TX.  Our 1940s house held high ceilings.  A tall, glassed in book case filled one wall of my brother’s and my room.  I know it was tall, as my brother stuffed me high on a shelf for being four!  Those high shelves were the next to the last place I dreaded!  The last place I wanted to be “in” the house was the porch.  It had two large white eyes in the dark cement.  My older brother told me the two circles were angel eyes watching if I ever lied to him.  I never told a lie on that porch.  In fact, I avoided that porch.  I loved the house, but avoided porch and our shelves because unseen things dwelt there, unbidden. 

We hold two sorts of places in memory.  Some we avoided, dreaded.  The other places we loved.  Maybe your loved place was Granny’s attic, or closet where you hid.  Was it a fort you built in the living room or out in the bushes?  Was it under your bed consuming forbidden foods?  Remember those places to grasp two words: dwell and indwell in verse 11.  Consider a favorite place where I dwell I love.  I feel safe.  I am comfortable there.  Places I must indwell, must change before I can stay, or I must grow up to live there.  The eyes must come out of that concrete before I sit there to enjoy a snack!  Or, I can grow up, and be unafraid to sit on that porch at age 24.  I drove by and saw the house was for sale.  I stopped.  I had to know if the eyes still were in the concrete.  (They were.)  I sat there to watch cars go by.  Smiling.

The places I love and avoid can be close together.  I avoided some places in my house on pain of death: like my brother’s desk, and older sister’s dresser.  I never went in my parent’s bedroom if the door was closed — ever.  I might die in the hallway, but that was preferable. 

So I had places where I dwelt.  I had life and flourished in them.  I had places where I felt as a visitor or trespasser.  Paul says that is how the Holy Spirit feels about parts of our lives. 

Romans 8:10-11 “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

11But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
èHe who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life
to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

Use some imagination now.  Visit your imaginarium, or doff your imagining hat.  Suppose you dwell in a lovely country with mountains, deserts, rain forests, volcanoes, and beautiful coasts.  Let’s call your country Mexico.  You dwell in Mexico.  You love your village and extended family, but you your crops have failed for two years.  There are no jobs.  You dream of a place called America where families have as many jobs as they want.  Their children, can you believe it?  Drive cars!  They spend more time worrying about taxes than worrying if there will be enough to eat this week!  Some houses have three bedrooms, even the cars have bedrooms!  You dream of indwelling America, to immigrate there.  How hard will it be?  How wonderful?  Would Norte Americanos let us indwell among them?

Your dream of indwelling to America could consume you.  Indwelling to America may be your favorite topic at church, at home, and at work, but the reality is you dwell in Mexico.  You spend every sleeping hour in Mexico, no matter where your dreams take you.  Though you aspire to Indwell America, you dwell in Mexico.  This is how the Holy Spirit feels watching me sin!  I get in trouble and pray, “Dear God, please come and clean up my mess!”  He responds, “I can.  Would you also like Me to indwell and clean and claim it?”  I answer, “No, I just want you on stand by for clean-up, thanks!” 

Say you live in Juarez, down from El Paso.  You see the place of your dream, America, up on a hill.  Maybe you clean houses in El Paso, in America.  Maybe you shop in America, but dwell in Mexico.  You have no rights and no power in America.  That is how God’s Spirit feels in me many days. 

God dwells in my soul.  Why?  Because if I asked Christ Jesus to save me, that part of God that is the Holy Spirit came in to fulfill the bargain.  Now, in God’s Spirit (the verse says) God dwells in that part of me guaranteed to live forever — my soul.  Part of me is packed for eternity.  God dwells in there. 

Read the verse again: if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you[1] (there are still places in me God wants to INdwell).

Look at the clue in the last phrase: He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

The Greek word for dwell is the word for house.  It’s your crib, tent, cave, palace, or shanty.  In your dwelling you live, you relax, sleep, retreat in calamity, and love it if you have no other place you have to be.  The place looks like you.  If you are a gerbil, it looks like it. 

The word, indwell in Greek uses that preposition — in. 
We in habit a place. 
What is interesting, is that the word indwell is ONLY used in a spiritual sense in Scripture. 

“What has the temple of God to do with idols?
èFor we are the temple of the Living God; just as God said,
è‘I will indwell them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’” [2]

DO you see all Paul says here?  We must throw away “house idols” hanging around in us, since we are the temple of the Living God.  And God walking among us might be uncomfortable!

“Let the word of Christ richly indwell you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God,” [3]

Obviously, God should indwell my worship.  Maybe I should attempt more joyful noises, or maybe let Him indwell my face with a little joy?

God says that I listen to sermons, and sing spiritual songs, to focus on my places uninhabitable by God’s Spirit to date.  I must let Him indwell those areas, so the Spirit can transform them. 

“I am mindful of the sincere faith within you,
which first indwelt your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice,
and I am sure that it is in you as well,” 2 Timothy 1:5. 

Timmy’s hometown of Lystra was a small, frontier garrison town: a cultural and religious crossroad.  Lois taught her boy how to be different from everyone else!  Do you hear a challenge?  If I have Christ, then I, build differences in me.  I show how God’s Spirit indwells new areas of my life for all to see.

Do my friends and coworkers think I am still growing?  I must be learning.  I must help others see Christ indwell me.  Do people watch you give, witness, or serve?

Guard, through the Holy Spirit
Who indwells us,
the treasure
which has been entrusted to you. 2 Tim. 1:14

Hmm.  God made a beach head in you when you professed Christ as Lord.  He pitched a tent in your soul: prepaid for eternity in Heaven.  Amen.  How do you know?  Look!  He placed treasures in you!

How much of you do you want to go to heaven?  Seriously.  Where did you learn the most about going to heaven: from All Dogs Go to Heaven, or Warren Beatty (Heaven Can Wait), or Robin Williams?

That is the same question as “How much of my life, have I asked God to indwell?”  Beyond a tiny, guaranteed soul-overnight-package, how much do I give Him on weekdays?  Ten minutes in a morning?  How much of your character, of your spirit and of your mind have you deeded to God? 

See it another way.  How many movies from this year are repacked for your eternal trip?  How many conversations this week can you send ahead?  Bear in mind, heaven is perfect.  No guano allowed.  Heaven is holy.  No trash whether it’s in your hand or your mind — it’s inadmissible. 

CS Lewis toyed with this in The Great Divorce.  Every Tuesday, a bus left hell for heaven.  If you wanted to you boarded the bus.  You could stay, even.  Lewis showed something that colors my thinking. 

I may think what is headed to heaven is ethereal, insubstantial, ghostly, a shadow at best.  Lewis thunders, “Just the opposite!” 

Lewis (and Jesus) counter that          (Heaven and earth will pass away
but what is eternal My Words
are MORE substantial                        will never pass away!)
than what we are. 

He counters that what is eternal is MORE substantial than what you are. 

Physics supports this.  Take a BB and place it on the fifty yard line in a football field, that’s your proton.  The electron is spinning around in the end zone.  That is a HUGE invisibility in the atom!

That is right, the end zone holds your electrons for your tiny nucleus of one proton.  That is the old Bohr model.  The electron cloud theory says that there is a slight chance your electron from your proton is miles away for an instant.  That is a lot of space in a molecule.  We have mostly space in us!  Scripture says we’re like a morning mist on a lake, gone by noon.  We’re the ghosts!  We’re the blow away souls!  We’re insubstantial!  This indwelling is how we become substantial. 

What the Spirit invades and packages for eternity in you has more substance than the leftovers of you.  Your leftovers blow away like ash in an incinerator.  We’re fragile, insubstantial, and unkind to each other.  We are ghostly, and cling to our insubstantial dark pleasures, proclaiming our freedom, rather than working at becoming substantial, eternal, lasting men and women. 

When was the last time you denied yourself anything: a meal?  When was the last time to discipline an hour rather than entertain yourself?  When was the last time you served the Living God in some way commanded by scripture?  What the last hour you packed for heaven that you did not spend in church? 

The 25 cent word for this is “sanctification.”  Sanctification is any hour, thought, or place in me that I asked God to indwell, and then acted on his changing me, empowering me to do something different?

Sanctified means I take a thought and ask God to indwell it.  I take my humor or anger, and ask God to indwell it.  I take my passion and ask God to indwell it.  He changes lust and porn to loving people enough to give them Christ. 

Sanctified means I use my entertainment to grow me in Christ, to build eternal “new” in me.  Being sanctified, I invite God to indwell my business hours, so I grow in character, and others see Jesus where I work.  Do you say, “God, thanks for saving my soul, but the rest of me is mine to waste!”  Can you hear how silly that sounds on death’s other side?  How much of you now lives eternally?

Some Christians say terrible things about each other.  It starts like, “Well I love Tom, but….”  Jesus isn’t fooled.  Leave the “Well, I love whoever” part out, God is not fooled.  If it stinks like gossip, grieves the Spirit like gossip, and makes the soul of hearer and listener ghostlike, it is gossip.  Don’t like this part?  Ask it another way.  Do you wail about reasons the Lord can’t do anything around you, rather than live as though He indwells you to do all He promised? 

Ask it another way.  How much of what you do here is eternal?  Do you “cover for God” that, “Many people make little invisible decisions.”  Wouldn’t you rather see, “what the Holy Spirit did in him, her, and in me?”  Eternal stuff is substantial.  Visible to anyone looking!

God indwelt Mount Sinai, so you saw it for miles and people were drawn to it and had to be warned to be careful near it as they were drawn to it, but not clean to touch it.  

God indwelt the temple and a cloud chased everyone out that first morning! 

God indwelt Paul and his merry band, no matter how messed up a town they entered, people came to Christ.  No matter how stupid Paul acted toward Jon Mark or Barnabas, God still changed lives, and in time changed Paul.  If you say God indwells you, but you feel dead, guess what this scripture says? 

And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit Who indwells you.

Parts of me are dead due to sin.  See it?  Where sin dwells things die.  They pass away. 

Parts of you live because of Christ’s Spirit in you.  Where Christ lives, things live, already eternal. 

The rest of you: emotions, past, life, choices — do you ask God who raised Christ from the dead to indwell your mortal, dying areas?  Ask that He empower those if His Spirit now indwells those areas.  My used-to-be dead parts, now in God’s power that raised Christ from the dead, now live in Him.  That’s it.  God indwells, enlivens, makes eternal.  He raises what was dead to life, as with Jesus: the Prototype. 

Will Saint Peter unwrap a bag of chips that was you and sad at the label’s warning: “Some settling of contents may have occurred in shipping.”  Peter says, “Not much here, but the wrapper made it!  Give him a room.  He’s missing his entertainment, his laughter, and best friends.  Sad!” 

OR, will you be substantial?  Will God’s indwelling be substantial?  Will the movies, friendships — She brought 20 friends; conversations — see how our Lord entered his conversations! “She avoided conversational cesspools to love her friends!”  Will the areas God indwelt you be empowered in the same way God raised Jesus from the dead?  Will they be indwelt by the Spirit, and so be eternal, substantial?

Do you speak of Him, but have never asked Him to indwell you, taking up residence in your soul?  You might say, “I go to America, so I am an American!”  The reality is, no, you complete a citizenship process for it to be true in you.  You may say, “I go to church, so I must be a Christian!”  The reality is no, you must submit to His dwelling you first, and then ask Him to indwell new parts every day!

Won’t you?

---

[1] Romans 8:11

[2] 2 Corinthians 6:16.

[3] Col. 3:16.

Live in the Spirit: There is Always More

I will ask how you know you are in the Spirit later. 

On our delayed honeymoon, Jill and I enjoyed upstate New York, Niagara Falls, Canada and drove across Michigan.  Driving in Michigan’s heartland, we crossed an invisible line.  Having passed hundreds of farms, suddenly all of them displayed beautiful order.  Trees lined up in rows.  Hay from mown pastures filled perfect barns beside perfect houses.  We both said, “We crossed into another world!”  We were correct.  These farms were settled by German immigrants.  It could not have been clearer if they had put up signs, “German Chamber of Commerce welcomes you!  Deutchsland loves America!” 

In New York City, the signs are unmistakable: if unreadable.  The Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Lebanese, and Puerto Rican shops and languages scream: you’re on our turf! 

I don’t know about you, but, when I heard that the Holy Spirit is in us along with this lower nature, this sarx, this squishy area, I got confused.  I wondered, “When am I working in the Spirit, and when in the flesh?”  How do I recognize these lands?

Let’s (re)examine some verses. 

Step One: God invites me to move from condemnation to being “in Christ.”  In Romans 8:1, God delivers astonishing news, there is now no condemnation to those who are IN Christ Jesus. 

Step Two: I see two powers (laws) in me.  I can choose the power God put in me to live for Him.

     He is the Power of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus (Verse 2).

     He is the Spirit (verse 5).

     The Spirit is life and peace (verse 6).

Step Three: In Texas they ask, “How ‘bout chew?” (How about you?)  Choose to live in the Spirit.  Either way, we ALL choose.  What we choose is the rest of our life.  You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, she does not belong to Christ Romans 8:9.

Why is this Spirit so important?  As a Baptist I did think much about Him.  Religion, denominations politicize truth, and are poorer for it.  Hear Paul.  If you are not IN the Spirit, or He is not IN you then:

Romans 8:9b He or she does not belong to Christ. (NIV)
He or she is none of his. (KJV)
He or she does not belong to Him. (NASB)
He or she is not His. (NKJV)
He or she does not belong to him. (NRSV)
If you don’t have the Spirit of Christ living in you, you are not a Christian at all. (The Message)
[Without Him you] won’t know what you’re talking about. (Living)

What word means all of these possibilities?  The word is eimi; I exist, I am.  It is translated: am (142 times), been (45), being (26), belong (12), come (8), exist (8), or mean (11).  If you do not have the Spirit, God’s third person on planet earth today in you, then you do not exist in God.  You have never been in Christ.  You don’t belong to the Father.  If you think Christianity is exclusive because of Christ; THIS is the exclusive clause!

Paul throws us a sideways question: Where you at?  To help answer it, let’s see some signs to better help us see where we live. 

The way I tend to answer this question is how I was instructed to answer in my Ph.D. orals.  “If anyone asks you a question you do not know, reflect on how good a question it is, and answer another question you do know.”  Do you also do that with “the Spirit” question? 

Someone asks, “Is the Holy Spirit living in you?”  If we have no answer, we answer another question.  “Yes, I ‘got saved’ as a child, and was baptized at such-and-such a church.”  

Consider another question, “Are you alive?”

Now get this answer: “Of course, I’m alive.  My birth certificate’s on file in Garfield County.  I was born at Bass Hospital there.”  The answer does not touch the question. 

Consider yet another question. 

“Did you and your spouse have a wonderful time last night on your date?”

And see this answer: “Of course, we’re married.  We got married in St. Joseph’s Catholic Church 20 years ago!  We keep a copy of the marriage certificate in our safe deposit box!” 

These questions explore the nature of our lives.  The sad answers are book-keeping answers: I am legal in my life and marriage.  I am religious.  Who cares?  Are you ALIVE? God Spirit?  Feel any Power?  How about some joy?

The questions ask after hope, joy, or power and wonder in our relationship.  Our answers are theological and pasty. 

The question is, are you controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit?[1]

Whether you are legally married does not answer how you treat each other or if you’re happy.  Whether you have a birth certificate does not answer if you were thrilled to be alive this week. 

Whether you are saved is an interesting question.  The more important question today is, if saved, do you have power to live for God?  Are you alive in what Christ calls you to do?

Let’s have a grammar lesson.  Am I “in” Christ, or is the Holy Spirit “in” me?  Hmm.  I get confused with the prepositions.  Let’s look at God’s Word.

Jesus lived, died and came alive again “in” the Spirit. 
Luke 4:14 “Jesus returned to Galilee
in the power of the Spirit.”
1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ also died for sins once for all . . .
having been put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the spirit.”

What about us?

Scripture talks about the Holy Spirit being IN us. 
1 Cor. 3:16 “You are a temple of God. 
The Spirit of God dwells in you!”
2 Tim. 1:14 “Guard the treasure which has been entrusted to you
through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us”
2 Cor. 1:22 “[God] also sealed us and
gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge.”

But Scripture equally talks about us being IN the Holy Spirit. 

Ephes. 1:13 “[Having believed],
you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit — ”
Ephes. 2:22 “In whom you also are being built together
into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
Ephes. 6:18 “With all prayer and petition
pray at all times in the Spirit — ”

Both are true at the same time! 
I’m IN the Holy Spirit and He is in me! 
1 John 3:24 “You who keep His commandments abide in Him,
and He in you.”

1 John 4:13 “By this we know that we abide in Him and
He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.”
Romans 8:9 “However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,
if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.”

Paul, John, and Peter agree.  We are In the Spirit AND He is in us.”  God’s envoy, the Holy Spirit, invades us to seal us against all claims, and empower us to good works! 

Hear both parts.  When you ask God to save you in Jesus’ name, the Holy Spirit invades you, takes up residence, and never leaves.  He saves & keeps you.  Cool.  When you obey and accept God’s invitation, you step into God’s sphere, His world running on Holy Spirit laws.  Can the Spirit leave you?  No.  Can you act like stupidly rather than IN the Spirit?  Yes. 

I must do two things. 

One: I hope to make you uncomfortable at the idea of living in the flesh.  I do so because living in the flesh kills you in pieces.  Always has, always will. 

Two: I want you to try all God has for you.  Why?  He placed His Spirit IN you so you can live life in the Spirit.  Chapter 8 spells out “in the Spirit” Nothing can conquer you!  Nothing can separate you from God’s love in Christ!  Nothing can steal your status as His child! … So… “Stay in the Spirit!”

IN the Spirit or IN the flesh?  See more markers to tell whose “hood” you’re in.  John: Those who obey Christ’s commands live in Him, and He in them.  And this is how we know He lives in us: We know it by the Spirit He gave us.[2]  How do I know I’m in a real surgical unit?  People dress and act like doctors and nurses, yes.  More importantly they operate on patients, who get better when they stay until healed. 

IN the Spirit or IN the flesh?  See more markers to tell whose “hood” you’re in.  If anyone obeys God’s word, God’s love is truly made complete in him or her.  This is how we know we are in Christ.[3]  Notice two terms blurring together.  Is it that I am in the Spirit, or is He in me?  Which is it?  The answer is “yes.” 

Paul paints the neighborhoods.  It’s common sense, but read So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature.[4]

(19) The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.”  Paul warns, those who live like this will not inherit God’s kingdom.  Grace does not excuse these behaviors.  They lack love.  My horror if I see this garbage in you is if you feel comfortable with this because God’s Spirit hates it!

Can I tell if the Spirit is in me, and I am in Him?  The Spirit’s fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.[5]

James sketches in more of the landscape.  You can tell where you live by your mouth: The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts.  Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue also is a fire.  It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of a life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.[6]  James, John and Paul say, “Saved people are not comfortable with horrors.” 

I ask others how they know they quit depending on God to operate in their flesh.  They share these things.  “I have fear and anxiety in the night.  I stagnate.  I know I’m living by my own efforts — alone — so I get tired, defeated, broken easily.  My anxieties swarm.  My powerlessness hits me.”

What about in the Spirit?  What are your answers?

Can a church be “in” the Spirit? After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.  They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly![7]  They spoke God’s Word boldly.  Wow.  Everyone. 

Jesus died and rose, and the twelve gathered the church to say, it will not be right for us to neglect the ministry of God’s word in order to wait on tables.[8]  They ordained seven deacons.  The deacons ministered, caring for those in Christ.  How well did they do?  So God’s word spread.  The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.[9]

Over and over you see a phrase in Acts.  “The Word of God continued to increase and spread! Those words whet a hunger in me!  Imagine: everywhere YOU go, the Word of God continues to spread! 

Are you in the Spirit, yet?  Is your small group in the Spirit yet?  This goes beyond a wonderful feeling.  We can know.  God meant for us to be able to tell if a place is filled with the Spirit: if we are. 

---

[1] Romans 8:9

[2] 1 John 3:24

[3] 1 John 2:5.

[4] Galatians 5:16ff

[5] in Galatians 5:22f

[6] James 3:5-6

[7] Acts 4:31

[8] Acts 6:2

[9] Acts 6:7

In the Flesh. In the Spirit. Your choice.

                                                                In the Flesh or in the Spirit.  It’s up to you!

The Heart of the Message: God want to work powerfully, specifically in my weakest parts to transform me.  I can tell if He is Lord by how I let Him work here

Romans 8:1-8

In the SPIRIT, In Christ	In the FLESH, In Ourselves.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, î
	who do not walk according to the flesh,
but according to the Spirit.	ç
2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free î
	from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh,
God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, î	ç
	on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh
but according to the Spirit. î	ç
	5For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,
but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. î	ç
	6For to be carnally minded is death,
but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. î	ç
	7Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. 8So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Start with the 8^th verse.  Verse 8 makes Paul’s point.  So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  Paul says our only response to God’s justification in Jesus—  Our only loving reaction to God’s great grace in Christ is that we would want to please God. 

If you don’t want to please God, you can’t follow a discussion about struggling with flesh, or the Spirit’s power.  Intelligent? Clever?  Great, but if you don’t hope to please God, thinking won’t help.  If you most want to please you, not God, you cannot untangle loving God from your twisted flesh’s thinking.  Loving God is good, but not enough.  You must want to please God. 

How about you?  Take a minute.  Is this your end?  Is this your hope?  I seek to please God today.  I must please God in my studies, at home, in my work, driving, and in loving my family.  Do you call yourself Christian (little Christ)?  Then your end is to please God, not you.  Christ pleased the Father.  Silly one, grow up out of yourself!  Jesus sought to please the Father, or there would be no cross, no resurrection, and we would be hopeless.  Do you seek to please God?  Pray to do so.  Put it right.  Tell Him you want to please Him, or please Him again for the first time in a long time.  Ask God to empower you to please Him. 

Read the passage from the table at the top.  Do you remember the last discussion on how God krinows things?  God’s krinow is His laser blasting cancerous parts of me.  God imposes His rule, His decision, His judgment of reality.  God judges sin in my most-rotten self.  He judges sin in all my lower appetites.  God’s judgment came after Jesus busted the curve.  God’s krinow says my most rotten parts can be whole — in Jesus.  He can purify my worst parts.  He banishes my sad lies, purifying what remains, because Jesus came to live in a fleshy collection of cells, just like mine, yet He did not sin. 

Hmmm.  The Greek calls your body by two different words.  The first, translated body is soma.  Soma is your body soaring in dance, carving, cement and bricks poetry, music: good things.  We see the second word, sarx, here.  Sarx has some kind uses for the body’s substance, but it most likely refers to our weaker nature, to the messy, sad seat of sin in us. 

Why bother with my sarx?  Isn’t it my higher thinking or my best desires that God wants to make better?  Why bother with my lower, nasty, gnarly self?  It is dying and rotting anyway!  Do you cherish a notion that God only wants your “higher self” to love Him?  Why work in your “low self” where you struggle!”  God’s Spirit plants a most astonishing of possibilities in your very selfishness — that you might please God. 

So let’s discuss the sarx, the lower self.  If I want to please God, then I fight in my toughest places.  Evelyn Christenson says it eloquently.  “Lord, send a revival — and let it start with ‘not the church, or those people over there, but’ me!”  “Wait a second,” yells my sarx.  “You don’t need a revival!  You aren’t not so needy!”  My sarx points to sexual sinners, druggies, bingers, or bigots.  My sarx lies using half-truths, “They are sinners!  They need God’s Spirit to be clean!)

That is the horror of sarx.  It lies to me to preserve itself.  You see, tons of us love coming to Jesus to proclaim, “Get rid of the sin in my life!”  Then He points out a sin.  “Oh, Jesus, that’s not so bad is it?  I mean, I’m mean, but it’s not as bad as their sins!  Let’s go straight to revival, and to power.  Let’s get beyond this personal holiness silliness!”

In Sarx is where I must get specific in my sins.  I didn’t have thoughts about all women, just that one.  I didn’t cheat in business everywhere, just here.  I didn’t lie to you about everything, just this.  In Sarx, I do specific sins, so sarx is also where God calls me to be specific.  “This sin against her is where you need healing.  This business must change to please Me.  This persisting lie is killing you.  Sarx is where I quit having thoughts about other women, and love only Jill.  Sarx is where I will cherish either Jill, or things that kill my love for her. 

In Who Moved My Cheese, Johnson, points to sins hiding in all our sarx.  He points up how we think the world owes us the best cheese.  He points to our liking to make ourselves at home, rather than travel light, as Jesus said.  He points to our tendency to park where we find anything wonderful, and ignore that our cheese is growing stale, moldy, and smaller if we stay here.  We lie to ourselves here, in our sarx.  We blind ourselves here, in our sarx. 

Do you tell God about what He owes you, rather than seek to please Him?  Are you coasting off of a past experience, or hunting new ways to please God?  To show Him you love HIM? 

We all agree!  We hate sin!  Amen!  “Dear God, purge sin from my friends, especially my friend _____!”  Paul scolds, “Your sin in your sarx is blocking My Spirit’s flow in you world.”  The battlefield has always been in my flesh, in my sarx.  The Bible’s Law Books confirm this. 

The Law of Moses brought sin to the forefront.  It asks God to condemn it in us.  Paul points out in verse 3 how Law is weak  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh.  We must give an account in the secret place we want to protect!  Consider: we want to work in Columbia to keep cocaine from our children.  We focus to indict the Calli and Medellin cartels.  We arrange a meeting.  The cartels pick a safe place in a lab, 80 feet underground. 

Remember, we must keep cocaine from children.  We meet in a cave excavated by the cartel, where cocaine is refined, and money counters are running at high speed to move cash to offshore accounts.  See the craziness?  We need much more than a meeting to clobber the problem!  We need a POWER to stop a cartel or our powerful cravings!

The Law fails.  It fails because it can only point out things to the cartel or to me.  It has no power.  Sarx is powerful.  Paul says that to counter it we need: 2 the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [to] make me free from the law of sin and death.

We use the word “law” as a legal term.  So the Constitution is good law.  Texas’ 670 laws on barbed wire: not so great.  Paul’s “law” is more scientific.  His “law” is a power.  Consider the law of gravity.  Say I hear you have a law called gravity, and I respond to it as a legal injunction.  I just ignore gravity.  After all, I speed if I want.  I can embezzle.  I can dodge taxes and may get away with it!  SO, I must be able to break this Gravity Law, right?  If no one is looking, and I really want to, I should be able to break this Gravity Law and walk on air! Right?

No.  I go splat.  Why?  Gravity is more than a Law in books to point out infractions to me.  Gravity is a power.  It is a force.  Like life, gravity holds me here, and determines my speed in my walk, my car, and my bike as I peddle.  Paul whispers, “you need a power” in you to best Sin and Death.  You need a power to change your desire from pleasing you to pleasing God.  So God has provided the law (power!) of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [to] free me from the law of sin and death.  Why?  This Spirits’ power (law) is greater than Sin and Death’s power, even on Sin and Death’s home turf — the fleshly, gnarly, sarx parts of me. 

Something had to give so, Someone did give.  See verse 3: What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.  Paul cracks me up some days.  Paul slips in the universe’s most amazing news: God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh!  Jesus, (very risky) immersed Himself in — sarx!

He did it!  Christmas, is real!  The Angels got it right.  God invaded sarx!  God invades my lower side.  God invades Satan’s home turf in me.  God invades my sarx using the exact same power that aided Jesus — The Holy Spirit!

Oh, I’m ahead of myself.  See this, God fights power with Power.  He does not fight power (sin and death) with shoulds or oughts.  God fights in Jesus to win Round One.  He then sends the exact same Jesus’ power into us (His Holy Spirit) to win Round Two.

I had to take God’s condemnation (krinow) seriously.  I am now not condemned!  (8:1)  Hurrah!  God has plenty of power to condemn sin in my recesses and move it out if I hate it as He does.  In confessing I agree with God.  The sin He points out (condemns) is killing me!  I have lied to myself about this for too long!  I confess this.  You condemn it, God.  Dear, Precious, Holy Spirit, please remove this specific sin, this terrible blot from my life!”

What is God’s power?  What has He done?  Let’s recap.  First, God sent His own Son in verse 3.  He held back nothing from us.  He gave of Himself. 

Second, God sent His Son, to be like sinful me.  Paul words it cautiously.  Jesus was fully like me.  He could have sinned, but in Holy Spirit power did not.  Women were attractive to Jesus.  Money was tantalizing.  Collecting stuff held a power.  Jesus did not look kinda human, but really had a halo.  He was as human as sarx makes me. 

Third, coming in the likeness of sinful me, made Him my sin offering.  For Moses, only a living thing paid for our death in sin.  Millions of lambs, bulls, and birds lost their lives in an ongoing, horrid image of what my sin costs.  Sin costs death.  Sin takes a life: something just as alive as me.  Jesus came to pay the sin bill.  He paid with His life just as every lamb before Him. 

Fourth, God condemns sin in sinful me.  More than point a finger to say, “Hey, you  go to hell for that!”  God points His laser, judges the action (not me!) and executes that action and its desire!  If I (confess) agree with God, He begins right then to kill a craving for nicotine.  He begins immediately to kill pornography’s urge in my sarx.  If I concur with His judgment (krinow), sin’s power is immediately weakened.  Its death begins then and there!  Hallelujah!

Fifth, God’s final reason to send His own Son was so the law’s righteous requirement might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, (4).  What God’s Law requires, I can now live.  What is good in Law, I can now live in Holy Spirit Power!

NOW, if I agree with God, if I confess my sin specifics, God will change me!  How?  (5,6) those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  How?  I set my mind on God’s good stuff, the things of the Spirit.  What happens when I set my mind on these?

Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep in perfect peace, because he or she trusts in Thee!

How wonderful is this?  I invite Jesus to my home.  He comes.  I can leave Him at the front door. So people driving by see Him, they see my appearances.  I can run to front door and wave with Jesus as church friends drive by.  I tell my partying friends to come in through the garage. 

Jesus continually asks us to let Him come into our sarxy parts, our kitchen, into what we eat, into what we drink.  Jesus wants to specifically come into the TV room to ask “Does watching this please our Father?”  Jesus wants to explicitly review our finances, to ask if they please God, if our parties please God, if my reading pleases God, if our conversations and actions please God. 

Do you want to please God?  Say, “Yes!”  Then you can pass Paul’s acid test?  What do you think about most during a week?  Did you catch it?  (5) those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  Remember? Those in the flesh cannot please God.

What did you think about most last week?  Tell me what you had power to do about what you thought.  That answers the, “Did you want to please God last week” question. 

IN this is life.  God sent His Son, to condemn death in my innermost parts, so I can live, not in general, but specifically with my wife, my boss, children, my thoughts and entertainment, my finances, and so on.  God hunts krinows cancer cells in my thinking and leukocytes in my desires. 

How I love my wife this week is not what I feel, as much as what I said, how I said it, how I acted out of my sarxy self! Same for children, Jesus, pleasing God.

Leave the rules.  Move to a place beyond condemnation where you please your Lord!  What a freedom!

No Condemnation

No Condemnation: Too Revolutionary for You?

The Heart of the Message: God’s Grace is Jesus’ amazing revelation.  That first step in him is no condemnation.  That revolution in your thinking, relationships, and future is your first step.  Take it and you are changed ― forever.

Is Paul alone in this revolutionary thought?  Did he “add” to Jesus works and words?

Romans 8:1-4 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

Do we feel condemned or judged?  If not, why are anxiety and panic at pandemic levels?

I taught the truth of “no condemnation” this way: the law of the Spirit is a “higher” law, such as the law of aerodynamics versus the law of gravity.  Taxi a 737 onto a runway.  Push its throttles forward.  The engines thunder.  They hurt unprotected ears.  The plane nudges.  It rolls forward.  Its engines scream in air, forcing through a small auditorium’s air every 100^th of a second.  Eighty-eight tons accelerate.  As a 737 accelerates, a second, higher law countermands the law of gravity.  Do passengers turn weightless?  No.  If the power quits, will the plane crash?  Yes.  Nevertheless, gaining speed, air flows over the tops of the wings faster than below them and an unseen force pushes up on both wings, lifting all into the air.  It makes a preposterous statement real:  “I flew to Chicago.”

So I need an external-now-internal power source throughout my life to go where God directs: His Holy Spirit power.  Only by the resurrected Christ’s power can I attain the heights.  This chapter centers on the Holy Spirit.

Chapter eight reveals God’s power in you.  Do you know his power?  Does Holy Spirit power drive you, empower you?  This power enters you when you take Christ as Lord — the Holy Spirit is God’s envoy in you.  Guess who is discussed more in this chapter than anywhere in the Bible?

It is God’s Spirit.  He empowers me to make Christ Lord.  He is God’s fusion reactor, plasma, electricity, the Lord’s clout or muscle to power my life.  Let’s compare.  The Spirit is mentioned 22 times in 150 Psalms.  Isaiah mentions Him 32 times.  The Book of Acts refers 45 times to the Spirit’s spread in the world.  In the first seven chapters Paul mentions the Spirit 6 times.  In this one chapter, Romans 8, God’s Spirit is mentioned 20 times! 

As you push forward the throttles of your life in Christ, God promises the Spirit will flow, the fuel will explode, and you can fly, obey, be different, be healed, and stay new. 

I teach that the Spirit is 1) God’s power in us to be what we cannot be on our own.  Amen.  May the Spirit’s power, Jehovah Jireh’s promise to live in you, empower you.  2) Like aerodynamics, he is a higher law enabling us to overcome gravity. 

I missed a deeper truth.  Why no condemnation?  How is condemnation first before sin?  We know condemnation.  We all experience it.  Older kids chose everyone else for baseball, soccer, or football.  Everyone gets chosen but me and Elbert’s booger-eating brother, I know judging left me standing so … alone.  Judging separated me from everyone already selected.  Judging, condemnation is more than a failed standard, it separates me from God.  At the critical moment, condemnation says, “I’m left out.” 

Condemnation was that feeling walking down a school hall that “they,” whoever “they” were, judged me as less.  Worse, I felt tons of others followed “their” assessments.  If I were a slug, a geek, a dweeb, a dumb jock, or an easy girl, then “they” shared that with everyone and everyone accepted their assessment.  Their assessment separated me as a … whatever.  I was separated from someone I would rather be. 

Krino means condemnation: to decide, to rule, or to judge.  Remember this: krino does not mean an ethical norm, it means an expectation from someone who loves you.  We see judging as standards: for jock, cool or brainy that finds me wanting.  God says the opposite: “you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”  For God it is always about a relationship, and good laws safeguard the relationship.  It is always about being in love with God as He is with us. 

Paul says more than any law; more than anyone’s opinion; more than judging whispers; more than “their” assessments¾  God promised a thing, and now gives it teeth.  He moves the Spirit INTO us.  God showed a relationship is possible, but now empowers it.  God says this beats hell of judging each other.  We glimpse Heaven.  For God, it was about a relationship from the beginning.  He krinos us, loves us. 

The Jews saw God’s Law as an avenue showing we are safe.  It reaches beyond morality and ethics.  The Law helped us love God, but we sin. We fail the relationship.  We whine and hate the standard.  Paul responds, “No condemnation!”  He screams a thing beyond justice, beyond morals.  He screams, “The Bridegroom vanished our entanglements!  He makes us His again in the Spirit!”  Did Paul make this up?  No.  He knows his Bible. 

God has always sought us.  Paul knew this rang true before Jesus.  God described being God: krinowing or judging.  Krinow opposes what we do to each other.  We judge struggling souls.  All our condemnation goes wrong.  God uses krinowing to say the opposite!  He is the coach who tells the truth in love.  You CAN run faster.  He is a lab teacher, coaxing us to think through knotty problems, because He knows you can solve it.  He is always the Father who points out consequences too costly in mistakes, and too wonderful in getting it right. 

Hear God krinow us: Hosea 2:14-16.  [I will again] allure her.  I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.  ¹⁵There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make [your home] a door of hope…. 16″In that day,” declares [krinows] the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’  See God’s judgment?  He will not see us as sluts, or fools.  He judges that we always were and will be His bride. 

Jeremiah 2:2-7 Go and proclaim: “I remember the devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the desert.”  Sinning fails a standard.  Worse, it walks out on a relationship!

Always, God offers relationship and intimacy.  We think we run from His condemnation as Master.  Do you hear God?  He is more like Husband than Master!  Jesus echoes Him, John 15:15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I call you friends, for all I learned from my Father I made known to you.  God krinows us to be His bride.  Jesus krinows us to be His friend. 

God sees us as a new wife.  We fail Him.  Jesus sees us as friends who lay down our lives for HIS friends.  We fail Jesus like we fail the Father.  THAT is what Paul screams at the end of chapter seven!  Oh wretched man, WHO will deliver me?  Paul, the Pharisee was trapped in rules.  He knew Pharisees so sure of themselves, of their holiness, that they saw the rest of us as failures.  Paul knew Pharisees so entangled in failures they feared God and eternity.  Wretched man, who can deliver me from religions’ failures?  Who knows me and still loves me?  Look!  No condemnation to those who are in Christ empowered by this SPIRIT!

Romans 8:1-4 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit (Spirit = Power in the Relationship) of life set me free from the law (reality) of sin and death. 3For what the law (all truths, all realities) was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son (Jesus = Relationship) in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law (these = life in God!) might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Can we live beyond negative condemnation?  Cut “8” in half and go to chapter four.  4:3 what does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God [relationship!], and it was credited to him as righteousness.’  Abraham failed plenty, but clung to his relationship above all else.  Read further, 4:6-8 David says the same thing: ⁷“Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven…. 8Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.  Blessed am I when I step beyond condemnation to love God.  Divide 4 by 2.  In chapter 2:4:  Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance? His kindness reminds you of who you are. 

Is Paul alone here?  Far from it, rule keepers and religionists.  God makes my motivation love, not fear.  Consider a passage too radical for many Christians. 

John 8:3-12 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11″No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

12When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  Can you mean someone like her, Jesus?!  You must be kidding!

Still don’t believe how radical is a relationship God intends for you rather than what you now have? 

Divide John 8 by 2:  John 4:23. 23 … a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth (you need Spirit and Truth beyond religion!), for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

This woman used by six men was condemned (krinowed) by God’s Son as only love.  How did she react?  28-29   she left her water jar, and went back to the town and told people, 29″Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”  Translated: bring your score cards!  Come talk to this man! 

Still sitting on a runway loaded down?  God used Job to show our judgments are pointless.  God kept Job’s relationship.  Jeremiah and Isaiah knew: God restores beyond all failures.  Hosea: beyond his wife’s failures, was a love, a krinow, that he must cherish her. 

“No condemnation” requires God’s Spirit to touch it, much less fly in it.  “No condemnation” is hard to live because you must put down all your scores against, well, everyone.  “No condemnation” is hard to live as you must love and believe God changes people you know are wretches.  “No condemnation” is so hard to live since we cannot live it without Christ as Lord, and His Spirit enabling us as his revolutionary. 

A) You want to be whole?  Paul says, Wretched one, that I am, who can deliver me to a place beyond condemnation?  Only in Christ as the Spirit empowers you.  You see, we don’t replace the law of sin, but live in a higher law of the Spirit.  That’s good, but this is what I missed. 

B) I replace the Recipe Book with the Cook.  I replace a mystery book with the Author.  I move beyond rules to the Ruler.  I bag my legislation to love the King.  I move past poetry to the Poet!  This place with Him beyond condemnation: it’s a place of tenderness, of different motivation, of diametrically opposed assessment.  My failures are not damning, they are overcome as He krinows me to be an overcomer, by placing His very Self, His very Spirit in my breast!