Living in the Spirit

Romans chapter 8, and I’m going to read from verse 9 to 17.

Paul continues from where we left it off yesterday: “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” And then he says, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 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 dwells in you.

“So then, brothers”—or “brothers and sisters”—“we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

Amen.

A brief prayer together.

Father, we thank you again for the privilege of gathering in this way. We thank you for the opportunity to sing praise to you, the triune God. We acknowledge that while we are here, many of our loved ones and friends are far from us. Some of them are a burden to us because of the circumstances of life. And so, even in this moment, as we turn to the Bible, we seek to cast our burdens upon the Lord in assurance that you care for us and will care for them.[1]

We pray, Lord, for those who will never, in this lifetime, ever experience anything like this at all. We think of the persecuted Christians throughout the world—in North Korea, in Nigeria, in sub-Saharan Africa, and in many other places. And they are in Christ, and we are in Christ. And when they pray, they draw near to the throne of grace; and when we pray, we draw near to the throne of grace. Therefore, they and we are not and cannot be far apart. We commend them to you, and we pray that you will “take your truth, plant it deep in us, shape and fashion us”[2] in the likeness of your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

The Reality of the Spirit’s Presence

Beginning with verse 9, you will notice, if the text is open before you, that Paul moves from the third person to the second person. He has, up until verse 8, been saying these things in general terms: “Those who are…” “Those who are…” “Those who are…”[3] And now, here, in verse 9, he says, “You, however, are not in the flesh”—speaking generally to “those” and now very specifically to those to whom he writes. “You, however—unlike those that I’ve just been referring to in the flesh, who cannot please God—are in the Spirit.”

Now, there is something that you should notice immediately here, and you perhaps have. I’ll just reinforce it for us. There are a number of synonyms here. And this is one of the places that people easily go wrong, especially in home Bible study groups. You notice it says, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if … the Spirit of God dwells in you. [And] anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ…” Immediately somebody puts up their hand and says, “Excuse me! The first time he says it’s ‘the Spirit of God,’ and the second time he says it’s ‘the Spirit of Christ.’ What is going on here?”

And the answer is: These are synonyms. “The Spirit of God,” “the Spirit of Christ”: It’s the exact same. “The Spirit [who is] in you”—here’s another synonym—and “Christ [who] is in you.” It is very straightforward and important that we understand what we said yesterday: that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are inseparable in their activity in the lives of the believers. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are eternally distinct in terms of their personal modes of being. The Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Spirit. The Spirit is not the Father. They are coequal, they are coeternal, and they are distinct in their eternal mode of being, but they are united in the work of redemption. And it is this work of redemption that Paul has been referencing since the very beginning of Romans. And I want to fix it in your mind that what the Father planned the Son procured and the Spirit of God applies.

And, of course, what we’re addressing here is life in the Spirit. That is the overemphasis of all that follows in the verses that are before us. It’s a reminder to us that genuine Christianity is not just a new set of beliefs, nor is it a new pattern of behavior. It is actually a matter of belonging. “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” “Belong to him.” God looks at us, and he says to us, essentially, “Sinner, on account of all that my Son has done, you belong to me. You belong to me.” And the distinguishing mark of the Christian is the indwelling reality of the Holy Spirit—that the Holy Spirit comes to indwell the life of the Christian. Our life in Adam is the indwelling reality of [sin]. And our lives continuing in Adam are lives that are disintegrating. But our life in Christ is the reality not of the indwelling sin but of the indwelling Spirit.

Genuine Christianity is not just a new set of beliefs, nor is it a new pattern of behavior. It is actually a matter of belonging.

Now, as thankful as I am for the hymns we’ve sung and for all the new hymns that we’ve been learning to sing, I confess to the fact that I have a measure of regret for the passage of some of the oldies. And as I come to a verse like this, I go immediately in my mind to the phraseology which begins,

Jesus my Lord will love me forever;
From him no pow’r of evil can sever.
He gave his life to ransom my soul,
[And] now I belong to him.

Now I belong to Jesus;
Jesus belongs to me,
[And] not for the years of time alone
But for eternity.[4]

That the relationship into which God in his grace has brought us in Jesus is eternal.

Another one that I haven’t sung since probably the eighth of June:

Thou art the sinner’s friend,
So I thy friendship claim,
A sinner saved by grace
When [your] sweet message came.

Mine! Mine! Mine!
I know thou art mine;
Savior, dear Savior,
I know thou art mine.[5]

This is life in the Spirit. This is union with Christ. This is, if you like, basic Christianity.

Authentic Christianity is not a mathematical formula. It is cerebral, but it is more than that. It is visceral. It is, in the words of one of the old guys, “the life of God in the soul of man.”[6] “The life of God in the soul of man.”

When Paul writes to the Ephesians, he reminds them that they “are light in the Lord.” “You were once darkness,” he says, “but now you are light in the Lord.”[7] Where does the light come from? Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. [He who] follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”[8] Where does that light come? By the Holy Spirit. To the Colossians, he reminds us that we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved Son.[9]

And that’s the significance of verse 9: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” And then he puts it negatively: “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”

I’ve been looking, on this trip already… Every time I go to a different place, I look for football jerseys—football uniforms, as you call them. I mean soccer things. And I have a number of people who speak Spanish and who play on various teams that I’ve followed for a very long time. And those of you who know what I’m talking about will understand that when a person is transferred from one team to another—and, of course, it’s true in American football as well—their identity actually shifts, because they are no longer answerable to the people that they once were. They have now moved. So, for example, Messi played for Barcelona. He played in the winning Argentinian World Cup team last time around, and then he transferred to Paris Saint-Germain. And so he appeared as a very different-looking Messi, because he’d been transferred. He was no longer what he once was. And that’s the point Paul is making.

Years ago, we had in Scotland a lady that came to our church. She had been high up in the nursing profession in England. Somewhere along the line, she had become a Christian. She moved to Scotland for whatever reason and came to our church. And I remember talking with her one day, and she told me that some of her friends from her old nursing day had come up to Scotland and had got on the phone with her. And they said, “Hey, Miriam, you know, we’re… Let’s go out. Let’s go hit the town. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” And when they sensed the hesitancy in her voice… And then she says, “You know, I don’t think I want to do that.” And one of them said, “Oh, come on now! That doesn’t sound like the old Miriam to me!” And she said, “That’s because I’m no longer the old Miriam.” And then she told them that she’d had a complete, radical transformation, and the Spirit of God was now at work in her heart and had made her a new person.

It’s vitally important we recognize here that Paul is not distinguishing between two different kinds of Christians. He’s distinguishing between those who are regenerate and those who are unregenerate—between two radically different folks. And there is no separable gospel of the Holy Spirit. It is the very same.

The Results of the Spirit’s Presence

So, in verse 9, Paul is affirming the reality of the Spirit’s presence; and then, in verses 10 and 11, he begins to speak concerning the results. What happens when the Spirit invades a life? And it is very clear in verse 11: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised … Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.”

Now, it is this matter of our mortal bodies. We are mortal. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you? If you haven’t, just look around a little bit about some of the people who are here. Watch how we’re walking and trying to get on. It is perfectly clear that “in Adam all die.”[10] “The wages of sin is death.”[11] Physically, our house—if we think of our bodies as a house—physically, our house is increasingly dilapidated—whether you like that or not. I’m not looking at anyone in particular, but I’m just telling you that we are increasingly dilapidated.

If we had nowhere else to go in the Bible than Ecclesiastes 12, we would be greatly helped, wouldn’t we?

Remember your Creator
 in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come[12]

—before you find yourself in the pharmacy going up aisles that you never, ever thought you would ever have to go up, when you find yourself asking, making inquiries: “Where do you have those shoulder things? Or the thing you put on your elbow?” And someone else says, “For the knee?” And “Do you have those expanding canes?” and so on. And you’re saying to yourself, “How in the world did we get like this?” Well, because the house is crumbling. Inadequate occlusion—not enough on the top to meet the few we’ve got left on the bottom. We can’t fall asleep, and yet we can wake up at the sound of birds.[13] It’s amazing what is happening to us! We are dilapidated.

And that’s what he’s saying: “Here’s the deal: Your dilapidated body—you need to understand that God, who raised Christ from the dead, will give life to your mortal bodies, so that we have a life that is distinct from the actual physical frame of our lives.” Right? Yes! “I came that you might have life, that you might have it in all of its fullness.”[14]

“Yeah, but what about my physical frame? What about the things that I’m dealing with? What about the things that are evident to me that I’m not going to last forever?” Talking about Spanish people: I’ve been doing all my best Spanish in the last day or so. And it goes like this: It goes, “Sergio García, Olazábal, Alcaraz, and buenos noches.” That’s the end of it. But because I was thinking about Spanish golfers, it reminded me of Seve Ballesteros. And, as you know, he died of a brain tumor. And toward the end of his life, he was honest enough in an interview with a golf magazine to reflect on what he was facing. This is what he said: “For everything in life, there is always a beginning and an end. This is the tough part, the most difficult thing, when you see that it’s coming: The end.”[15]

Now, this is not to be morbid. Again, Ecclesiastes: “Death is the destiny of every man; the living [must] take this to heart.”[16] “It is better to go to a funeral than to go to a pizza party.”[17] Because now we are framing our existence within the confines of what we know to be true. And without God and without hope in the world,[18] it is a tyranny. It is a disaster.

It is pushed back by the comedians, because there is no ability to face it. Woody Allen is the archetypal nihilist of the twentieth and twenty-first century. And he thinks he can laugh it off, but he can’t. “It’s not that I’m afraid to die,” he says. “It’s just that I don’t want to be there when it happens.”[19] Which is funny! But it’s not funny. And he goes on to say, you know, “I don’t want to live on in the minds of my friends. I want to live on in my apartment.”[20] Which makes perfect sense! It makes perfect sense.

Now, what is the difference that comes to us in Jesus? Well, it is the reality of life in the Holy Spirit. Death is ours because of sin, but “the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” And all of us must know this to one degree or another, either vicariously, in entering into the lives of others, or by being made aware of it in the experience of our own earthly pilgrimage. Indeed, those who face such things have often proved to be the greatest encouragement to those of us who have only wondered about such things.

Some years ago, I was speaking up in the northern part of California at a conference, and a lady came to me. I think I’d been doing 2 Corinthians 4—you know, “Outwardly we[’re] wasting away, [but] inwardly we[’re] being renewed day by day.”[21] And she came to me, and she told me that a friend of hers had told her of a situation where another friend was suffering through brain cancer and the treatments of brain cancer. He was hospitalized. And his Christian testimony was such that the night nurse on duty, leaving the report for the attending physician in the morning, wrote in the thing a critical comment: “Mr. X appears to be inappropriately joyful.” “Inappropriately joyful”! There’s no explanation for this, save life in the Spirit. That man was living in light of what Paul is telling us here in verse 11.

It’s another reminder to us, incidentally, in passing, that as Christians, we do not believe simply in the immortality of the soul, but we believe in the resurrection of the body. That’s why I think it’s important that he actually refers to “your mortal bodies.” Because one of the marks of the unregenerate, the person who doesn’t know Jesus, is a sort of defiance in the face of mortality. And here, the identification of our mortal bodies shows that it is the same bodies that we as believers now possess that will be made alive in Christ in the resurrection.

As Christians, we do not believe simply in the immortality of the soul, but we believe in the resurrection of the body.

Now, you say, “How are you going to work all that out?” I can’t work it all out. I retreat to hymnody when I can’t work it out: the hymn that begins—written by Richard Baxter, the Puritan—“Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I [live or die].” (He means by that not “I don’t care if I live or die.” He means “That’s not my department. That’s your department. All the days of my life were written in his book before one of them came to be”—Psalm 139.[22]) So he says, “I don’t care. It’s not to my department whether I live or die.” And then, as the hymn goes on, he eventually gets to the point which I find a tremendous help. It goes like this:

My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim.
It is enough that Christ knows all
And I shall be with him.[23]

What else do you need to know? What else do you need to know? “Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God,” Jesus says to the disciples. “You believe also in me. I wouldn’t tell you that I’m going to prepare a place for you and trick you. And if I go and prepare a place, I will come again and receive you unto myself—the you, Peter; the you, John; the you, Sally; the you, Ruth.”[24] The you! This is Christianity. This is life in the Spirit: life now in a crumbling body and life then in the presence of Christ.

Ray Ortlund does a wonderful little piece on this that I made a note of. He says, “Everything … this sad life steals from us … God will restore.”[25] “There is not one ounce of you that will end up in the trashbin of the universe—except your sins, which you want to leave behind anyway.”[26] I found that pretty good.

The Responsibility of Life in the Spirit

Now, along with this—this reality—there comes results, and there comes responsibility. Verse 12: We have an obligation. “So then…” “What are you saying, Paul?” “Well, brothers and sisters, we’re debtors—debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” He repeats himself: “[’Cause] if you live according to the flesh you will [just] die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Remember, we described flesh yesterday as human nature corrupted, directed, and controlled by sin. But now we have an obligation… And people don’t like obligation, incidentally. In fact, there’s a four-letter word that is not very prevalent in contemporary Christianity, and it’s the word duty—what you call “dooty,” but it’s actually duty. And so, d-u-t-y. Duty.

“No, there’s not… Why are you talking to us about duty? I thought we were all free, and we could please ourselves and go where we want to go and do what we want to…” No, that’s just because you haven’t been reading your Bible. You were once controlled by the downward drag of sin. You are now being controlled by the liberating reality of the Spirit of Christ. And it is entirely incongruous to think that we would allow ourselves to continue in the things that we have been saved from by the work of redemption—incongruous to be slaves to the things from which the Holy Spirit has set us free!

And the issue is actually stated very clearly in verse 13: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” John Stott says, “There is a kind of life [that] leads to death, and there is a kind of death [that] leads to life.”[27]

Keep in mind that Paul is addressing believers. And the doctrine of the security of the believer does not eliminate the warnings of the Bible. Think Hebrews! “See to it,” the writer to the Hebrews says: “See to it … that [you do not have] a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.”[28]

Now, if you read that and say to yourself, “I wonder who that’s for,” you’ve immediately made a mistake. It’s for you! And it’s for me. Later on, he says, “We are not those who would shrink back and are destroyed, but we are those who continue and are saved”[29]—that the ground of our relationship, the ground of our salvation is in the work of Christ; the evidence that we are in Christ is in our continuance. It’s a “long obedience in the same direction.”[30] We daren’t mistake a false sense of security in sin from a true experience of salvation from sin. I find that quite helpful.

We are saved by grace through faith. And the reality of what he’s urging us to here is the very antithesis of a kind of mentality that I was exposed to as a young man in Scotland. And you may actually still be exposed to it, and I may be about to offend you as I point it out. And it goes along these lines: “Let go and let God.” It sounds, really, very spiritual, doesn’t it? “Well, this is not something I do. Let’s let go and let God.” But what Paul is actually saying here is not “Let go and let God” but is “Trust God and get going.” “Trust God and get going.” [31]

We daren’t mistake a false sense of security in sin from a true experience of salvation from sin.

I remember I spoke, again, at a conference a hundred years ago, where the archetypal guy of “Let go and let God” in the British Isles was the head of this operation. And the girl who sang the song before I spoke had this song. I don’t know what it was, but it was something like “Nothing for me to do, nothing for me to do. I have nothing to do, nothing to do.” And I was sitting—my fingernails were biting into my hands, because I was about to say the very reverse of what she was just singing about.

Do you understand this: that the Spirit of God works within us to enable us to do cheerfully and joyfully that which the Word of God tells us to do? That it’s a delightful duty! I mean, it’s like in married life: It is a privilege to serve one another. The rails are there. There’s no doubt about that. We’re not allowed to go beyond these boundaries, because God knows what’s best for us.

And so he says, “You do it. You keep your eyes to the front. You keep your gaze for your wife. Let her satisfy you all through the early days and into the middle days and then to the decrepitude days as they come. ’Cause frankly, you don’t look that good yourself.”

What he’s saying is what he said in chapter 6: that we are set free from sin to become slaves of righteousness.[32] Hence the hymn writer:

Make me a captive, Lord,
And then I shall be free.
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life’s alarms
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within thine arms,
And strong shall be my [stand].[33]

We’re not to sit around waiting for God to take care of things. It’s interesting: I’ve never had God turn the television off for me. I’ve never had God rip a novel out of my hands. I’ve never been propelled out of a cinema I should never have gone in in the first place. I don’t expect him to. He gave me his Word. He gave me his Spirit. Because when we trust and obey, we find that there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus.[34]

The Puritan says, “Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts.”[35] “Let not that man [make any pretension of making] progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lusts.” It’s such a graphic picture. That’s John Owen, incidentally.

Well, you say, “Well, what are you telling us here?” Well, I’m not trying to tell you anything. I’m just trying to observe that in Christ, our sinful inclinations have been dethroned, but they haven’t been destroyed. Right? Well, I hope you’re about to say “Right” to that, because if they have been destroyed in you, wait for me afterwards, ’cause I need to find out how that happened. They’ve been dethroned, but they haven’t been destroyed.

That’s why we have to deal with sin. That’s why we have to deal with sin! That’s why we’ve got to deal with it immediately. We’ve got to deal with it decisively. We’ve got to deal with it radically. We’ve got to deal with it consistently. And Jesus made that perfectly clear, didn’t he? He said, “You know, you could actually take one of your eyes out or chop one of your hands off. It would do you good, if that was going to be the difference between you entering the kingdom and continuing on your own way. If your hand causes you to sin,” he said, “why don’t you take it off? If your eye, pluck it out. And if you do this, you will live.” [36]

Now, all of this, in verse 14, is tied to the fact of the relationship that we enjoy. The responsibility is bound up in the reality of what has happened in being united with Christ, indwelt by the Spirit, and established on our way—14: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are [the] sons of God.”

Don’t think in terms of being “led by the Spirit of God” as receiving subjective guidance, but rather, think about being “led by the Spirit of God” in light of what he has just said in verse 13: “For if you live according to the flesh…” That’s how we’re led: by saying no to that and saying to this, to our sonship…

The conflict with the flesh, incidentally, is a sign of sonship. Every so often, when you’re a pastor, somebody comes to you greatly disturbed because they think they may have committed the unpardonable sin. And we’re able immediately to say to them, “The very fact that you showed up with the question allows me to tell you that you haven’t. Because if you had ever done such a thing, you wouldn’t give a care in the world. You wouldn’t be here to ask me about it. But the fact of the matter is, you recognize that”—as the Westminster Confession of Faith makes clear—the Christian is involved in “a continual and irreconcilable war”[37] against the world and the flesh and the devil. And the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is to bring us into conformity with God’s Word—is actually to conform us to the image of God’s Son.

So it makes sense, I think, that the same grace which reconciles us to God also antagonizes us to the Evil One. That’s why often people, when they become new Christians, they say, “But I thought everything would be plain sailing, and it seems like everything is worse than it ever was before! It was actually much easier being a pagan than it was trying to follow Jesus.” Well, that’s because you just got involved in a battle. He never paid much attention to you before. You were on his team. But you’ve been transferred out of that kingdom. You’re living in a whole new place. You have a whole new captain of your salvation. Welcome to the war!

And if you’re worried about this, look at verse 15: “You did[n’t] receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you[’ve] received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” Paul is reminding them of what has happened to them in their conversion. They didn’t fall into a spirit of enslavement but into the reality of adoption. Galatians 4, he says the same thing: “Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”[38]

This is not servile fear—the fear of punishment that makes us question whether we belong. It is the filial fear that makes us wonder that we do belong. That’s the wonder:

My God has chosen me,
Though one of naught,
To sit beside my King
In heaven’s court.[39]

Again, the hymn writer.

The fear of God is not servile fear—the fear of punishment that makes us question whether we belong. It is the filial fear that makes us wonder that we do belong.

Now, some of you are very familiar with adoption, and so I want to explore the metaphor. It makes perfect sense, even by observation if not by experience: adopted into God’s family to bear his name, to inherit what he has promised, to enjoy his affection, and to reproduce his character. That’s what he’s doing.

When you give your daughters away in marriage, as the fellow from California used to say, it’s like giving your prize Stradivarius to a gorilla.[40] And I’ve had two occasions in my life to do that. And the inevitable question that comes when you essentially adopt your son-in-law is “What shall I call you?” And I said, “Well, I’d like you to call me Dad, ’cause I love you. And I would far rather you look to me in that way than you call me Alistair—and certainly not by my middle name!” But it would be utter presumption if I got out of my car in Chagrin, and an unknown person walking down the street, a young fellow, shouted out, “Hey, Dad!” There would be no reason to turn around except to look for the person he was addressing. It would be presumption without a relationship. But given the relationship, there need be no hesitation. No hesitation.

Abba is the Aramaic word, you will recall, that Jesus used in prayer. And he taught his disciples to do the same: “When you pray, say…”[41] And the intimacy that is conveyed in the reality of that relationship may reveal itself as much in heartache as it reveals in happiness.

And I’ll just end here. I think I immediately got this wrong by a song that went “Abba Father, let me be yours and yours alone. [Let] my [life] forever be…”[42] Something along the line. It was a very lovely song, and I sang it a lot. And so I thought of it as immediately a declaration of devotion—that it was, you know, you could call him Father or whatever, but when you called him Abba, you must be really, you know, engaged.

And then I realized there are times in our lives when we don’t even know how to pray, and all we can say is “Abba…” It’s not so much an expression of devotion as it is a cry from the heart of a life redeemed to acknowledge that to be united with Christ, to be filled with the Spirit, to be encompassed by those who love us in the gospel is a privilege beyond privileges.

And so we end by being able to look out on one another and say, “What a funny bunch of people God has chosen to adopt!” I mean, look at you. Look at me. I mean, the average group, the average church is not made out of people that you like. The average church is made up of people who are our natural enemies. It’s not a group of people you would normally want to go on vacation with.[43] I know that, because my congregation wouldn’t come on a vacation with me. I don’t want to go with them either. It’s the problem… I’ve mentioned many songwriters. It’s Bill Gaither’s problem, isn’t it? It’s the “I’m so glad [that you’re] part of the family of God,”[44] you know? No, I’m not! No, no. This is how I want to sing it: “I’m surprised that you’re part of the family of God”—that God adopted you into his family. Can you believe it?

He made us his own. And when we cry out to him, “Abba!” he knows the tone of our voice, he knows the circumstances of our lives, he knows the longings of our hearts, and he has the entire thing under control. Because there’s no condemnation to us.[45] And when we get there, before we get off, there is no separation for us either,[46] because of the wonder of the grace of God about which we’ve just been singing.

Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you that it is fixed in the heavens.[47] Thank you that it is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path.[48] We pray that you will help us as we ponder these things, as we seek to exhort and encourage one another, as we make our earthly journey towards our heavenly home in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one who changes our earthly bodies to be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things—even death—to himself.[49] And we pray humbly in Christ’s name. Amen.

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[1] See 1 Peter 5:7.

[2] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[3] Romans 8:1, 8 (ESV). See also Romans 8:5.

[4] Norman John Clayton, “Now I Belong to Jesus” (1938).

[5] Anna Hudson, “Dear Savior, Thou Art Mine.”

[6] Henry Scrougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man, ed. and abridged by Robin Taylor, The Crossway Short Classics Series (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022).

[7] Ephesians 5:8 (NIV).

[8] John 8:12 (NIV).

[9] See Colossians 1:13.

[10] 1 Corinthians 15:22 (ESV).

[11] Romans 6:23 (ESV).

[12] Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NIV).

[13] See Ecclesiastes 12:4.

[14] John 10:10 (paraphrased).

[15] Seve Ballesteros, quoted in Mark Reynolds, “Seve Ballesteros: How I Saw the End Coming,” Express, July 10, 2010, https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/186070/Seve-Ballesteros-How-I-saw-the-end-coming.

[16] Ecclesiastes 7:2 (NIV 1984).

[17] Ecclesiastes 7:2 (paraphrased).

[18] See Ephesians 2:12.

[19] Woody Allen, Without Feathers (New York: Random House, 1975), 99. Paraphrased.

[20] Woody Allen on Woody Allen: In Conversation with Stig Björkman, interview with Stig Björkman (New York: Grove, 1995), 105. Paraphrased.

[21] 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NIV).

[22] See Psalm 139:16.

[23] Richard Baxter, “Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care” (1681).

[24] John 14:1–3 (paraphrased).

[25] Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., Supernatural Living for Natural People: Studies in Romans 8 (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus, 2001), 64.

[26] Ortlund, 62.

[27] John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, rev. ed., The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 221.

[28] Hebrews 3:12 (NIV).

[29] Hebrews 10:39 (paraphrased).

[30] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 107, quoted in Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2000), 17.

[31] J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1984), 157.

[32] See Romans 6:18.

[33] George Matheson, “Make Me a Captive, Lord” (1890).

[34] John Henry Sammis, “Trust and Obey” (1887).

[35] Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers […], in The Works of John Owen, D.D., ed. William H. Goold (London: Johnstone and Hunter, 1851), 6:14.

[36] Matthew 5:29–30; Mark 9:42–43 (paraphrased). See also Luke 10:28.

[37] The Westminster Confession of Faith 13.2.

[38] Galatians 4:6 (ESV).

[39] Emmanuel T. Sibomana, trans. Rosemary Guillebaud, “O How the Grace of God Amazes Me” (1946).

[40] Charles R. Swindoll, The Owner’s Manual for Christians: The Essential Guide for a God-Honoring Life (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 19.

[41] Luke 11:2 (ESV).

[42] Dave Bilbrough, “Abba Father” (1977).

[43] Christopher Ash, Teaching Romans, vol. 2, Unlocking Romans 9–16 for the Bible Teacher (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2009), 163.

[44] Gloria Gaither and William J. Gaither, “The Family of God” (1970).

[45] See Romans 8:1.

[46] See Romans 8:35–39.

[47] See Psalm 119:89.

[48] See Psalm 119:105.

[49] The Book of Common Prayer.