Morning Prayer: 13 August – Romans 8:5-8 ~ the Spirit-controlled mind

Reading through Romans

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening sentence

Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
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A reading from Romans: Romans 8:5-8 (NLT)

Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.
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Reflection: Romans 8:5-8 (John Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World)

God’s Spirit in God’s children (8:1–39)

The Christian life is essentially life in the Spirit, that is to say, a life which is animated, sustained, directed and enriched by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit true Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, indeed impossible.

(vs 5– 8) The mindset of the Spirit

Paul’s purpose [here] is to explain why obedience to the law is possible only to those who walk according to the Spirit… I.e. the personal Holy Spirit himself who now not only regenerates but also indwells the people of God.

First, our mindset expresses our basic nature as Christians or non-Christians…. It is a question of what preoccupies us, of the ambitions which drive us and the concerns which engross us , of how we spend our time and our energies, of what we concentrate on and give ourselves up to. All this is determined by who we are, whether we are still ‘in the flesh’ or are now by new birth ‘in the Spirit’.

Secondly, our mindset has eternal consequences…. That is, the mindset of flesh-dominated people is already one of spiritual death and leads inevitably to eternal death, for it alienates them from God and renders fellowship with him impossible in either this world or the next. The mindset of Spirit-dominated people, however, entails life and peace.

Thirdly, our mindset concerns our fundamental attitude to God. The reason the mind of the flesh is death is that it is hostile to God, cherishing a deep-seated animosity against him. It is antagonistic to his name, kingdom and will, to his day, his people and his word, to his Son, his Spirit and his glory. In particular, Paul singles out his moral standards.

To sum up, here are two categories of people…, who have two perspectives or mindsets …, which lead to two patterns of conduct …, and result in two spiritual states …. Thus our mind, where we set it and how we occupy it, plays a key role in both our present conduct and our final destiny.
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Canticle

Christ, as a light illumine and guide me. Christ, as a shield overshadow me. Christ under me; Christ over me; Christ beside me on my left and my right. This day be within and without me, lowly and meek, yet all-powerful. Be in the heart of each to whom I speak; in the mouth of each who speaks unto me. This day be within and without me, lowly and meek, yet all-powerful. Christ as a light; Christ as a shield; Christ beside me on my left and my right.

Blessing

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you, wherever He may send you. May He guide you through the wilderness, protect you through the storm. May He bring you home rejoicing at the wonders He has shown you. May He bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors.

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Morning Prayer: 12 August – Romans 8:1-4 ~ Spirit-empowered obedience

Reading through Romans

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening sentence

Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
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A reading from Romans: Romans 8:1-4 (NLT)

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.
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Reflection: Romans 8:1-4 (John Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World)

God’s Spirit in God’s children (8:1–39)

(vs 1–17) The ministry of God’s Spirit

(vs 1) The first blessing of salvation is expressed in the words no condemnation, which are equivalent to ‘justification’…. Our justification, together with its corresponding truth of ‘no condemnation’, is securely grounded in what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ.

(vs 2–4) The freedom of the Spirit

The second privilege of salvation is… a certain ‘liberation’… which [is] ours if we are ‘in Christ Jesus’…. Our liberation is the basis of our justification. It is because we have been liberated that no condemnation can overtake us….
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Verse 4 is of great importance for our understanding of Christian holiness.

First, holiness is the ultimate purpose of the incarnation and the atonement. The end God had in view when sending his Son was not our justification only, through freedom from the condemnation of the law, but also our holiness, through obedience to the commandments of the law.
Secondly, holiness consists in fulfilling the just requirement of the law…. Although law-obedience is not the ground of our justification…, it is the fruit of it and the very meaning of sanctification. Holiness is Christlikeness, and Christlikeness is fulfilling the righteousness of the law.
Thirdly, holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit…. Romans 8: 4 insists that we can and must [keep the law] because of the indwelling Spirit. Looking back over the whole passage which runs from 7: 1 to 8: 4, the continuing place of the law in the Christian life should be clear.

Our freedom from the law… is not freedom to disobey it. On the contrary the law-obedience of the people of God is so important to God that he sent his Son to die for us and his Spirit to live in us, in order to secure it. Holiness is the fruit of trinitarian grace, of the Father sending his Son into the world and his Spirit into our hearts.
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Canticle

Blessing

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Morning Prayer: 11 August – Romans 7:14-25 ~ help me, Jesus

Reading through Romans

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening sentence

Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
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A reading from Romans: Romans 7:14-25 (NLT)

So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.

I have discovered this principle of life — that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.
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Reflection: Romans 7:14-25 (John Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World)

God’s law and Christian discipleship (7:1–25)

Legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfill it.

(vs 14– 25) The weakness of the law: an inner conflict

The law is good, but it is also weak. In itself it is holy, but it is impotent to make us holy…. Christians are caught in the tension between the ‘already’ of the kingdom’s inauguration and the ‘not yet’ of its consummation, and that this tension can be painful….

The three salient features of the person portrayed in Romans 7: 14 –25 are that he or she loves the law (and therefore is regenerate), is still a slave of sin (and therefore is not a liberated Christian) and knows nothing of the Holy Spirit (and therefore is not a New Testament believer).
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Application of Romans 7-8: Some church-goers today might be termed ‘Old Testament Christians’. The contradiction implied in this expression indicates what an anomaly they are. They show signs of new birth in their love for the church and the Bible, yet their religion is law, not gospel; flesh, not Spirit; the ‘oldness’ of slavery to rules and regulations, not the ‘newness’ of freedom through Jesus Christ. They are like Lazarus when he first emerged from the tomb, alive but still bound hand and foot. They need to add to their life liberty.
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We need to keep a watch on ourselves, lest we should ever slip back from the new order into the old, from a person to a system, from freedom to slavery, from the indwelling Spirit to an external code, from Christ to the law. God’s purpose is not that we should be Old Testament Christians, regenerate indeed, but living in slavery to the law and in bondage to indwelling sin. It is rather that we should be New Testament Christians who, having died and risen with Christ, are living in the freedom of the indwelling Spirit.
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Canticle

Blessing

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Morning Prayer: 10 August – Romans 7:7-13 ~ sin uses good for evil

Reading through Romans

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening sentence

Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
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A reading from Romans: Romans 7:7-13 (NLT)

Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. At one time I lived without understanding the law. But when I learned the command not to covet, for instance, the power of sin came to life, and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. But still, the law itself is holy, and its commands are holy and right and good.

But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death. So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.
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Reflection: Romans 7:7-13 (John Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World)

God’s law and Christian discipleship (7:1– 25)

Legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfill it.

(vs 7-13) A defense of the law: a past experience

The three devastating effects of the law in relation to sin: it exposes, provokes and condemns sin…. But the law is not in itself sinful, nor is it responsible for sin. Instead, it is sin itself, our sinful nature, which uses the law to cause us to sin and so to die. The law is exonerated; sin is to blame….

Indeed the extreme sinfulness of sin is seen precisely in the way it exploits a good thing (the law) for an evil purpose (death).

Take a criminal today. A man is caught red-handed breaking the law. He is arrested, brought to trial, found guilty, and sentenced to prison. He cannot blame the law for his imprisonment. True, it is the law which convicted and sentenced him. But he has no-one to blame but himself and his own criminal behavior. In a similar way Paul exonerates the law….

The law cannot save us because we cannot keep it, and we cannot keep it because of indwelling sin.
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Canticle

Blessing

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Morning Prayer: 08 August – Romans 7:1-6 ~ released to serve God

Reading through Romans

+ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Opening sentence

Praise to You, Lord Jesus Christ, King of endless glory. You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.
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A reading from Romans: Romans 7:1-6 (NLT)

Now, dear brothers and sisters — you who are familiar with the law — don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries.

So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.
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Reflection: Romans 7:1-6 (John Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World)

God’s law and Christian discipleship (7: 1– 25)

What is the place of the law in Christian discipleship, now that Christ has come and inaugurated the new era? In summary: three possible attitudes, the first two of which Paul rejects, and the third of which he commends. We might call them ‘legalism’,‘antinomianism’ and ‘law-fulfilling freedom’.

Legalists are ‘under the law’ and in bondage to it. They imagine that their relationship to God depends on their obedience to the law, and they are seeking to be both justified and sanctified by it. But they are crushed by the law’s inability to save them.
Antinomians (or libertines) go to the opposite extreme. Blaming the law for their problems, they reject it altogether, and claim to be rid of all obligation to its demands. They have turned liberty into license.
Law-fulfilling free people preserve the balance. They rejoice both in their freedom from the law for justification and sanctification, and in their freedom to fulfill it. They delight in the law as the revelation of God’s will (7: 22), but recognize that the power to fulfill it is not in the law but in the Spirit.

Thus legalists fear the law and are in bondage to it. Antinomians hate the law and repudiate it. Law-abiding free people love the law and fulfill it. Directly or indirectly Paul alludes to these three types in Romans 7.

(vs 1-6) Release from the law: a marriage metaphor

a. The legal principle (1)

Paul lays down the principle which he assumes his readers know: the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives (1)…. Death brings release from all contractual obligations involving the dead person…. So law is for life; death annuls it. Paul states this as a legal axiom, universally accepted and unchallengeable.

b. The domestic illustration (2–3)

As an example of this general principle Paul chooses marriage, and in applying it extends it…. By law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive (or ‘until death parts them’), but if her husband dies, she is released from her marriage vows. The contrast is clear: the law binds her, but his death frees her…. Only death can secure freedom from the marriage law and therefore the right to remarry.

c. The theological application (4)

As death terminates a marriage contract and permits remarriage, so we also died to the law through the body of Christ, so that we might remarry or belong to another (4a)…. Death has secured our release from the law and our remarriage to Christ…. The purpose of our dying with Christ to the law is that we may now belong to Christ… and that we might bear fruit to God (4c)… i.e. holy living.

d. The fundamental antithesis (5–6)

In our old life we were dominated by that terrible quartet — flesh, law, sin and death (5). But in our new life, having been released from the law, we are slaves of God through the power of the Spirit (6). The contrasts are striking. We were ‘in the flesh’, but are now ‘in the Spirit’. We were aroused by the law, but are now released from it. We bore fruit for death (5), but now bear fruit for God (4). And what has caused this release from the old life and this introduction to the new? Answer: it is that radical double event called death and resurrection.