(Romans 8:1–23). 

This chapter set before us is the great deliverance that is ours. Dr. J. Vernon Mc Gee has worked out for us a most detailed division of it but I want to bypass that and just attempt to lift out its message to me as I go along and I trust I will learn some new truth as I work through my thoughts as it has effected me over the past 25 years of my life.

I trust there is something here that might help you today if you are a discouraged Christian for I was very discouraged and in a desperate state when our Precious Saviour used Dr. Mc Gee to pick me up and bring me to a higher level in Christ Jesus and I learned that it is through the study of His Word that His Faith evidenced in our lives. The faith of Christ Jesus, His Word is that faith, is the admonition in our minds that keeps us close to Him, abiding in Him, and it is by our abiding in Him that we are made strong in Him, and able to face our enemy and allow His Word that is established in our lives enable us to stand firm in its truth with our full confidence in Him who died to save us and who lives in Glory to keep us saved. Our Lord Jesus is the Good Shepherd and He knows how to take care of His own sheep.

The purpose of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is to lift off the shackles from the human family so that all might come into the place of salvation, and it is also given to believers as the power that ill enable us, those who long to live for God.

Chapter 8 of Romans is one of the great chapters of the Bible. 

We could not select ten of the great chapters of the Bible and exclude the eighth of Romans. It is possible that we could leave out John 14, or even Romans 12, we might even leave out Hebrews 11, one of my very favorites, but we could never leave out Romans 8.

One of the great saints of the past wrote,

"If Holy Scripture were a ring and the epistle to the Romans its precious stone, chapter eight would be the sparkling point of the jewel."

Romans 8 is a lofty, wonderful chapter. It opens with "no condemnation," it closes with "no separation," and in between we have that most wonderful truth that 

"all things work together for good to those who love God."

We just simply cannot have it any better than that.

It just cannot be any more wonderful than that. 

Dr. Coy Maret, put it like this: 

"No condemnation, no frustration, and no separation."

So most of what we need is to be found in Romans 8.

Now it opens like this:

"There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:1).

The clause "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" does not appear here in our better manuscripts but it is explained and appears in verse 4. However, a declaration of the great truth that apostle Paul has given us up to this point is that "there is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus"  - and those who are in Christ do walk after the Spirit because the Spirit of God dwells in them  -  those who walk after the flesh are carnal -  and there is a great difference of opinion concerning carnal believers but as one very fine Presbyterian minister told me quite dogmatically many years ago that those who are carnal are not born-from-above and I today can say honestly that I do agree with him but there is great difference of opinion concerning carnal believers. I do believe that everything is in the word believe including true repentance for when we truly believe that the Lord Jesus is the very Christ of God  we see our sinful lives roll out before us. This is what happened to me when I was 35 and I have not ever forgotten that experience as I just wanted to die thinking of all the things I needed to put right and could not see any way possible to do them. I wrote many letters but I do not think I half covered all my wrong doings and all the hurt I had caused though my sinful, selfishness and ugly pride. I caught a glimpse of the way Christ saw me and it was too awful for words to describe. Christ Jesus is truly my Saviour today and I know for sure that there is entirely nothing good in me at all and my opinion has not ever changed. I know I am nothing without Christ.

Martin Luther discovered in this epistle to the Romans which he was reading and studying and it brought him to the place where he saw that no religious ceremony, no church, no thing he could do could ever bring him to God. The story has been found now to be accurate that Martin Luther went all the way to Rome, climbed up the Sancta Scala, trying to do something to make himself acceptable to God. And at that time the tremendous words came to him: "The just shall live by faith," and that it is not by the good works which we have done, but it is by "his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit" (Titus 3:5).

The declaration, therefore, that introduces Romans 8 is: 

"There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus."

Now that is what salvation is. Salvation means to be in Christ.

"For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ,  he is none of His" (Romans 8:6-9).

To be a Christian does not mean to belong to a church. 

It means to be inside Christ.

It means to be inside His own body.

The Lord Jesus Christ is calling out of this world those whom He has chosen to be His witnesses in this present world and those whom He has called He is one day going to come and receive unto Himself. They will meet him in the air and go to be with Him in glory then He will after a period of great tribulation return to this  earth to put down all evil and to establish His Kingdom on this earth. He will rule His Kingdom with a rod of iron. Christ Jesus is the Judge of all the earth and when He comes again, the day of His marvelous grace will end, and He will rule in perfect Righteousness for He is  Just for He is Truth and He will make known all truth and every lie, every covered sin, every false witness,   will be revealed and done away for He is the Justifier of them which believeth in Him for every person will give an account of their lives to Him and every single thing  concerning our lives will be made right in His Presence. 

Everything He does is right and He will 

put right every single thing concerning our lives that is wrong. We can be entirely sure of that fact and we need to be sure that we are not, as apostle John warns us  

"And now, little children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him" (1 John 2:28).

Theologians have been looking for over 2000 years now to find a word that would describe our salvation. They have come up with the words propitiation, repentance, substitution, atonement, redemption, and justification, but the interesting thing is that the Word of God has a very simple word, the little preposition in.

What does it mean to be saved?

It means to be in Christ.

That is exactly what justification is.

That is our position the moment we believe into Christ.

Let us look at the expression "justification by faith." 

What does it mean?

First,  there is the negative aspect. It means that I was a hell-doomed sinner and so by the way are you as well.

You may say, "Now do not talk to me like that!" 

Oh, no, friend, I’m not talking to you like that  -  

God is talking to you like that. 

He says,

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

You may think,

"Now don’t you try to tell me that I’m as bad as some of those bums down on skid row  -  thieves, winos and murderers." No, you are not. They are sinners. We will all agree to that when it’s the other fellow but sadly we have all come short of the glory of God  -  for God in His Word to us said we have - 

now maybe we have not sinned as much as those people in our jails, but we have for sure come short of the glory of God and may I say at this point that Pride is top of Gods list of terrible sins and it is the thing He hates most and it is the thing that got Satan cast out of heaven. We have nothing to be proud of, entirely nothing at all and the closer we get to know christ the more we become conscious of our sin, and the more of His meekness is produced by His spirit within us and sadly, very sadly today there are those who are actually proud that they are saved by grace, that is,  if that is at all possible for I do not believe a genuine born-again believer in christ can ever be proud every again. When we see ourselves as Christ sees us for we are yet in training for Christ is yet developing us and we have not as yet reached any lofty place that these folk who claim to be in Christ have reached,  yet every time they open their mouths,  ugly pride rears its ugly, very nasty head and there is entirely no humility in them whatsoever, many of them are even proud that they were the worst sinners in the world and there is no sorrow, godly sorrow in their hearts and lives for the terrible consequences of their sin that has now reached to the third generation. 

You and I stand before Holy, Righteous and Just God, as a sinner. Every person stands before Him as a sinner, even this very day for God's Word says that to him that knoweth to do good and does it not it is sin. 

When we come to God, we can only come in Christ Jesus for He is our righteousness and we cannot ever come offering Him anything for we have entirely nothing that  we can give God for giving us His One and Only True Son to die in our guilty room and stead on the awful tree of Calvary. It is not by works of righteousness that we are able to come to Him, we come through Christ alone and we come empty-handed, as sinners,  and we trust Christ as our Savior. We are saved by faith and we live by faith.

Now the positive side of justification. 

God not only subtracts our sin, He not only paid the penalty for our sin, 

but He places us in Christ, and He now looks at us in Christ Jesus.

We are completely saved in Christ or 

completely lost out of Christ Jesus. 

If we are indeed in Christ, because our faith is in Him, and we are trusting Him this day as our personal Saviour from our sin, God sees us in Him, and we are as much accepted by God as Christ is! 

We are accepted in the Beloved.

We have as much right in heaven as Christ has  -  or we would have no right there at all because we have no right in and of ourselves. But in Christ we are accepted. As apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian believers, we are 

"accepted in the Beloved" (Ephesians 1:6).

Hallelujah!

Bless our Lord Jesus forever and ever!

The poor lost sinner, the moment he trusts Christ is as  much saved as he will be a billion years from today.

There is no judgment for sin to those who are in Christ. 

If we are in Him, God sees us in Him, and He accepts us because of Christ. 

Christ’s righteousness is our righteousness. 

This is the great truth that gripped Martin Luther  -  the tremendous truth of justification by faith. And it shook the shackles off a darkened Europe. The Dark Ages rolled back like a flood, and the light of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ broke over Europe. 

How to be righteous in God’s sight has worried many men down through the ages. 

When Paul came to Christ, he wrote to the Philippians:

"And be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Philippians 3:9).

This is the righteousness of God which comes to us by faith. This righteousness  is available to us today. If we have Christ, we are in Him, and there is no condemnation.

Apostle Paul here was talking from experience because he was the man who had fallen flat on his face as a Christian. In Romans 7 he tells of this experience. He made such a blunder of everything and failed miserably. 

He goes on to talk about that:

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2).

Here he mentions the Spirit for the first time. 

We know that back in Romans 5 he mentions eight wonderful results of our justification by faith, one of which is that we have the Holy Spirit, but he does not mention the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer until he gets to Romans 8. 

The reason he mentions it here is that this is the way of Christian living. 

There is something that Paul discovered in Romans 7, and it is this:

Even after he was converted, he could not live the Christian life in his own strength.

We cannot live the Christian life in our own strength.

How many well meaning folk told me that I could live the life but I could not. I soon found that out.

The Christian life is the Holy Spirit working through the believer, producing the life of Christ and what He wants.

And anything that the Holy Spirit does not produce is of the flesh. It is no good at all, and it is not Christian living. 

Christian living is the work of the Spirit.

There is no good in the old nature.

Apostle Paul found that out and he said,

"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing… " (Romans 7:18).

He found out there was no power in the new nature and he cried out 

"Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" 

In other words,

"I find that I can’t do the things that I want to do. I’m a newborn Christian, and I want to live for God, but I can’t do it!" 

That is exactly what had God said.

He said we could not and Paul found that to be true, 

and I think everybody else has found it to be true as well. We ought to just recognize it and realize it instead of trying to set our own goal. We like set goals four ourselves about things we want to do.  We want to be a good salesman and dedicate everything we have to God. But maybe God  wants us to do something else. I do know this: The best way is not what you or I want, but it is what the Holy Spirit wants and what our Lord Jesus Christ wants in our lives. 

That is the Christian life - and not some goal we have set for ourselves.

Now the apostle Paul explains:

"For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Romans 8:3–4).

Here the Spirit is mentioned again. 

In the first 7 chapters of Romans the Holy Spirit has been mentioned only 1 time, but in the 8th chapter of Romans  the Holy Spirit is mentioned 19 times.

Obviously he is putting great emphasis on the Spirit. 

Notice that he says, 

"What the law could not do because of the weakness of the flesh.…" 

Here we have a wonderful truth.

Dr. W. L. Pettingill used to tell this little story:

It meant so much to me, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

He told the story of a good housewife who got a roast ready one day and put it in the oven to bake. Then she got busy doing other things. Later the phone rang  -  it was one of her neighbors who had just heard the latest gossip, so she sat down to listen. It developed into a long conversation, and all of a sudden she smelled something burning. She said, "I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to hang up. I smell my roast burning. I’ll call you back later." So she hung up the telephone, rushed into the kitchen, opened the oven, and there was the roast  -  overdone and burning. She rushed to get a fork, reached down with it, and attempted to lift up the roast to get it out of the oven, but it wouldn’t come  -  the fork went right through the meat; it just wouldn’t hold. As I said, she was a good housewife, so she went and got the spatula, put the spatula down under it and a spoon on top. Then she lifted up the roast. What the fork could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, the spatula was able to do. There was nothing wrong with the fork, but there was something wrong with the flesh  - overcooked. It wouldn’t hold. So she had to use another method.

Now just as there was nothing wrong with the fork, there is nothing

wrong with the Mosaic Law. When we say that we are not under the Law, we do not mean that the Law is not good. 

It is good. It is God’s Law.

But it cannot save us. 

It is like that fork. It reached down to us, and it came right through.

I don’t know about you, but it could not lift me up. 

Has it lifted you up dear reader? 

May I say to you that what the fork (the Law) could not do, God has sent His Holy Spirit to do. And the Holy Spirit in us can lift us up and enable us to live for God. 

That is what God is saying in this verse. 

The law could not do it because of the weakness of the flesh; now there is a new method, a new process,

that process is by the Holy Spirit.

"For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit" (Romans 8:5).

That word mind means "to obey."

Apostle Paul uses this same word, 

"They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh (that is, they obey the things of the flesh); but they that are after the Spirit, (mind, obey) the things of the Spirit."

"For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither, indeed, can be" (Romans 8:6–7).

The carnal mind is enmity against God. 

Man in his natural state is an enemy toward God. 

Our old nature is in rebellion against God. 

Have you ever felt like this. 

One day while you were enjoying the comfort of your home, God wanted you to perform some service for Him, but you did not do it. That is the weakness of the flesh. You could have gone and done it if you wanted to but the flesh did not want to go and do it.

We have that old nature and every child of God has that old nature. Now if we live by that nature, everything we produce is just dead works. 

It won’t amount to anything as far as 

God is concerned. 

We cannot live for God if our motivation comes from the old nature. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

You see my dear reader we all have two natures.

 To be carnally minded is death, because the carnal mind is an enemy against God. 

To be spiritually minded  -  that is life and it is the way of peace.

Also the interesting thing is that the carnal mind is not subject to the Law of God, nor can it be. 

Our old nature is an enemy against God, and it will always be that, for it cannot ever be subject to the Law of God. 

God never has had an arrangement to save the old nature. God does not intend to save the old nature at all.

About this old nature that we have and all of us have it, we were born with it, and we would be surprised how limited that old nature is. I do not know about you, but when I was born into this world, I was born ignorant. I did not even know a from b, nor did I know anything about manners at all. I was in darkness. I was born into this world helpless, and all I could do was cry. That is all I could do without being taught! I had to be taught everything else. That is my old nature.

We come into this world very handicapped, don’t we? 

We have to do something with that old nature as far as education is concerned. 

Our old nature has to be educated and also it should be taught manners. They are something that we ought to have today. We need to teach little Willie to take off his cap when he goes into the classroom. We need to teach him to say, "Thank you," and "No, thank you" for the second piece of cake  -  even then, chances are, he will ask for more cake. Children need to be taught to be gracious, to be considerate of others, and to be respectful. All of those things have to be  taught to us. They are something we have to learn; we are not born that way.

This old nature that we were born with is against God.

It will blaspheme, and turn its back on God and deny  Him in a minute. 

I have got a nature right now that if 

it were not for His marvelous grace

would deny Him in the next moment 

but I have found God's grace sufficient. 

We had better realize that we have it.

God has no arrangement to salvage the old nature.

God says it will finally die, but we will not lose it till we die physically.

God has no program to restore old natures.

This is the reason He has given us a new nature, His nature that is  obedient to God. 

But it needs empowering  -  it needs the Holy Spirit. 

So apostle Paul says here:

"So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:8).

I dont know how much good you do  -  that is, what your neighbors call good - but regardless of what it is, if it is not of the Spirit it cannot be pleasing to God. 

You may be called upon to be the mayor of your town and even be given a silver cup. They may say you are an outstanding citizen of your community, that you are a good neighbor and you exemplify everything your community stands for. They may even go so far as to say that since you are a church member you are their idea of a Christian. But, dear reader if what we are producing in our lives is just the works of the flesh rather than the fruit of the Spirit, none of that is pleasing to God.

Everything we do has to be of the Spirit of God working in our lives. 

Therefore, we cannot ever boast of anything that we do because if there is any good, it is of the Spirit of God,

it is not of us at all. 

If we boast it, it is not lovely at all.

"But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His" (Rom. 8:9).

The mark of a genuine child of God is the Spirit.

"  ... if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness" (Romans 8:10).

When did it die?

That was over two thousand years ago when Christ died for sin.

"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:11).

The moment we truly place our trust in Christ as our Savior from our sin, the Spirit is given to us.

The Spirit of God, the third Person of the Godhead, comes to dwell in our hearts and lives.

We may feel unworthy of that but we are not. God used three chapters in the epistle to the Romans to tell all of us that we are not worthy of it. He does not give the Holy Spirit because we are worthy; He does it because of His grace. 

He doesn’t go into a community and say, "I’m looking for the outstanding people here that I might indwell them." Not at all. He looks for the lost sinner, the one who knows he is a sinner and will trust Him. When one does that, the Spirit of God dwells in that person’s heart and life.

Now we are told in verses 12 and 13:

"Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.…"

The natural man owes it to his flesh to satisfy it. He  fulfills the lusts thereof and rationalizes his dishonesty.

Satisfying the old nature has plunged our nation into the grossest immorality! Sexual child abuse is rampant. 

But God says that believers are not "debtors to the flesh."

The flesh is a rascal. And we do not owe it anything.

"… But if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

You shall live as sons.

Paul is not talking about salvation; he is talking about Christian living. 

We live as sons of God if we walk in the Spirit and we

put to death the doings of the body. 

I get so tired of these well meaning folk  who are always talking about having crucified the flesh. I ask you, can one crucify the flesh? Every time I do, it gets up and lives again. I have tried to beat it to death, but that does not do any good. And that is not the way it is to be done at all. 

We are to put to death the deeds or doings of the body and that means that we are to condemn them and deal with the things in our hearts and lives that are wrong.

Now notice this wonderful statement:

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God" (Romans 8:14).

If we are led by the Spirit of God, we are a son of God. 

The Lord Jesus gave the same picture when He said,

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (John 10:27). 

Our Lord Jesus Christ leads His own sheep and they are obedient to Him because they love Him and they entrust entirely their very lives to Him. 

This is a picture is of an Oriental shepherd and his flock of sheep.

Perhaps a half dozen shepherds leave their flocks for the night in one fold. In the morning their sheep are all mixed up. One shepherd goes up over the hill there and calls his sheep. All of the sheep that know him come out of the fold and follow him. 

And this verse says, 

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God,"   -  speaks of the same thing. 

That is the real test for us today. 

Are we being led by the Spirit of God today? 

Are we perhaps one of His sheep that has wandered away, perhaps following the wrong shepherd?

"For as many as are led by by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15).

That word Abba was carried over from the Aramaic rather than being translated. The translators handled it that way and I have heard preachers say that the scholars did not know how to translate it. Of course they knew how to translate it. If you look it up, you will find it is an Aramaic word, and those who are acquainted with Aramaic will tell you what it means. However, it was such an intimate word, such a personal word, they felt that they would be irreverent, almost blasphemous, if they translated it literally. 

The Holy Spirit within us cries up to the Father, and the word He uses is Abba, simply meaning "my daddy." It is a very intimate word.

Dear reader, the Spirit of God cries out from the heart of a believer to God the Father, especially in times of trouble.

When we are going through a struggle, when it looks very dark to us, when we have been misunderstood, or when our friends have turned on us, it is at those times when the Spirit of God will bear witness with our spirit that we are a son of God, and the Spirit just cries out, "Abba, Father."

Thinking again of Martin Luther  -  my, how that fellow stood up against the hierarchy of his day! He is the man who said, "One with God is a majority." 

How could he stand against so many? 

The Spirit of God was bearing witness with his spirit that he was indeed a  true son of God. 

That is the mark of a real child of God.

In that dark hour, Martin Luther tells us that he just cried out to God.

Have you had that experience my dear reader? 

In my own life I have felt that God has never seemed so close to me as at such a time like this.

"For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but you have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."

O how most wonderful that is!

And it is true, so very true! 

Perhaps you have not had a very trying experience, but sometimes God will allow us have trials so that we will turn from placing our confidence in man. We will just look up to our Father and cry out to Him,

"Oh, my Father, my intimate, personal Father!" 

And God is interested in us for He sees us and He knows us and He understands us.

Then we are told:

"And if children, then heirs  -  heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ  -  if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together" (Romans 8:17)

Somebody is apt to get some wrong ideas at this juncture. They may say, 

"If we are children of God like this, indwelt by the Spirit of God, we can do anything we want to do." 

No, we certainly cannot.

We are still in a frail human body. 

Many of us have bodies that are handicapped. 

Many of God’s children are set aside for physical reasons, and it is not God’s will for them to be healed. 

Because just listen to this passage:

"For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).

One of these days we shall get to Glory and we shall look back on this scene down here  -  on the struggle that seemed so difficult, on the suffering that we went through and many of us have suffered in a way that no one else knows about. Perhaps we have gone through the very fire. But when we look back on it, dear reader, we can be sure that we will say, "Oh, it was nothing  compared to what Christ Jesus had reserved for me."

"For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19).

Why is it that we are suffering down here?

Well, we are waiting, God is working out His plan and program. He has not finished it yet, and that is the reason it is going as it is.

Not only did the curse of sin come upon man in Adam’s disobedience, but the physical world came under the curse also.

"For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly but by reason of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Romans 8:20–22).

The creation is not delivered yet. 

All of it is travailing in pain until now.

Nature sings in a minor key. 

The wind blowing through the pine trees on a mountainside or the breaking of the surf on some lonely shore both emit the same sob. 

The frightened cry of some wounded animal pierces the night air.

All about us is death and decay both in the animal and plant world.

We are waiting today,  waiting for that time.

"And not only they, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23).

It has not come yet, but we are waiting for it.

When Christ comes, we are going to get rid of these feeble, infirm bodies that actually are a handicap to us. 

We are going to get new bodies. 

In the meantime we groan in these old bodies, waiting for the day when our redemption will be complete.

Between now and that glorious day, God has made every arrangement to keep those who are His own. 

Thank God, all Praise to Him that we are indwelt by His Spirit, and we have been given a new nature. 

God wants us to live for Him.

When we go out on our own, asserting our own wills, trying in our own strength to live the Christian life  -  

what happens? 

We fall right down flat on our faces! 

We make a failure of it all.

 Even if you and I do produce something in the flesh which men may applaud, it is no good to God at all. It is of the flesh. 

Only that which the Holy Spirit produces in our lives can He accept.

And that ought to be our prayer and our concern. Whatever we produce ought not to be the works of the flesh  -  not this backslapping, parading kind of Christianity  -  but a deep, abiding faith in our Lord Jesus Christ which brings us to the place where we are dependent upon Him, where we look to Him and rest upon Him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
"Come unto Me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one,
lay down Thy head upon My breast!"
I came to Jesus as I was,
Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,
And He has made me glad.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
"Behold, I freely give
The living water— thirsty one,
Stoop down, and drink, and live!"
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream:
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him.

I heard the voice of Jesus say,
"I am this dark world's Light;
Look unto Me, thy morn shall rise,
And all thy day be bright!"
I looked to Jesus, and I found
In Him my Star, my Sun;
And in that Light of life I'll walk
Till trav'ling days are done.

Hallelujah!

Amen!

THIS PAGE UPDATED: 19-5-2010