Chapter 8 in Romans is Paul’s discussion about how to live once you have become a Christian. How do you know if you're a Christian? Well the first 4 verses of the chapter do a pretty good explanation. To paraphrase, if you believe that you can’t gain salvation through works and you deserve eternal death because of your sin, but you believe in Jesus Christ and his perfect sacrifice in his death on the cross for your sins, which saves you from death, then you are a Christian. So now what? How should your life be affected by this? Well there are many answers to these questions but in chapter 8 of Romans, Paul touches on 2 things we receive when we become a Christian, the Holy Spirit and sufferings.
Receiving the Holy Spirit (verses 5-16)
A lot of what Paul says in this section has to do with what I talked about last week. If you are a Christian and thus are living for God, the choices you make and the things you do will reflect that choice. Even if you choose badly, even if you sin, your actions with dealing with that sin will be different, they will be actions of repentance. In this section, Paul pushes heavily the fact that we as Christians literally have the Spirit of God inside us! That is truly mind-blowing. I think Christians, myself included, don't fully understand what this means or act on it. I think we kind of just pass that fact by. "Oh ya, thats cool, I totally believe the Spirit is in me". But if we truly believed, why don't we act on those beliefs. So often we sit back timidly and don't talk about our faith, don't share the gospel with others etc. I think that we need to understand that God has not only given us his Spirit to guide us in our daily lives, but also to help us follow his commands, including the command to share the gospel.
Receiving Suffering (verses 17-39)
" ...indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share his glory" (17)
The fact of the matter is, as Christians we will suffer and we will be persecuted. Jesus himself promised this. I think there are many people who claim to follow Christ, even "teachers" of the word, who teach that being a Christian means you will be healthy, you will have money, you will have a great life on this earth. Really? Our best life should be had now? On this broken, sinful earth? No! Paul in verse 18 says "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us". Our best life comes later! Our best life is heaven, which is an infinity times better than the best things of this earth. We are not called to have a good life on this earth, we are called to be different from the earth, we are called to suffer for the sake of Christ on this earth. If you are thinking to yourself "hmm, I wonder why I haven't been persecuted, maybe God has blessed me in that way". I would ask you, have you put yourself in a position where you would have the chance to be persecuted? Have you spoke openly about your faith, even when it is an unpopular viewpoint in a crowd? It is hard to do this! But take heart, verse 28 reads: "and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him". You see, no matter what junk we go through on this earth, God has our back. Read Romans 8:31-39 if you haven't already. How cool is that? Nothing can separate us from God, no matter what we go through in this life, we will never lose our salvation, we will never lose God's love for us.
I would challenge you this week to let the Spirit of God speak through you and put yourself in situations where you may suffer for Christ. Share Christ with others this week!!!
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