Romans 8:12-25 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Romans 8:12-25

• Romans 8:12-17
• 12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, 13 because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba Father!” 16 The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, 17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
• Romans 8:12-13
• 12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, 13 because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
  • What does it mean that we have an obligation?
    • The word “obligation” is a banking term referring to something owed to another person. Paul says we don’t owe our old lives one red cent.  Our obligation is to the Spirit,  We owe to the  Lord to  live a  holy life.
  • Does the fact that we have been redeemed and received the gift of the Holy Spirit guarantee our holy living?
    • This makes it possible…but it is not automatic nor is it even inevitable. Grace doesn’t make us robots. We are still free will creatures it is up to us.
• Romans 8:14-17
• 14 For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, “Abba Father!” 16 The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, 17 and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
  • Paul then draws on the idea of Roman adoption that we miss some meaning if we don’t understand the full context.
  • The father’s power over his family was absolute. In relation to his father, a Roman son never came of age
    • No matter how old he was, he was under the father’s power, in the absolute possession and understanding of the absolute control of his father
    • Obviously, this made adoption into another family very difficult and a serious step
    • In adoption, a person had to pass from one father to another
  • There were four main consequences of an adoption in this era
    • The adopted person lost all rights in his old family and gained all the rights of a legitimate son in his new family
      • In the most binding legal way, he got a new father
    • It followed that he became heir to his new father’s estate
      • Even if other sons were born afterwards, it did not affect his rights. He was co-heir with them, and no one could deny him that right
    • In law, the old life of the adopted person was completely wiped out
      • For instance, all debts were cancelled. He was regarded as a new person entering into a new life  in which the past had no part
    • In the eyes of the law, he was absolutely the son of his new father
      • Emperor Claudius adopted Nero so that Nero could succeed him. Nero, to solidify power, wanted to marry Claudius’s daughter, Octavia. But in the eyes of the law, even though they were not blood relatives, they were considered fully brother and sister. So, before he could marry Octavia, the Senate had to pass a new law allowing the marriage.
  • Another image from adoption
    • The adoption ceremony was carried out in the presence of seven witnesses
      • So if the adoptive father died and there was some dispute about the right of the adopted son to inherit, one or more of the witnesses stepped forward and swore that the adoption was genuine. Thus the right of the adopted person was guaranteed
    • Paul is saying that the Holy Spirit is the witness to our adoption into the family of God
  • It was Paul’s picture that when people became Christians they entered into the very family of God. They did nothing to deserve it; God, the great Father, in his amazing love and mercy, has taken lost, helpless, poverty-stricken, debt-laden sinners and adopted them into His own family, so that the debts are cancelled and the glory inherited
• Romans 8:18-23
• 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. 23 Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
  • After speaking of the glory of adoption into the family of God, Paul now comes back to the troubled state of this present world
    • He sees all nature waiting for the glory that shall be. At the moment, creation is in bondage to decay
    • The world is one where beauty fades and loveliness decays; it’s a dying world; but  it is waiting for its liberation from all this, and the coming of the state of glory
  • What Jewish thought is Paul drawing on here in this passage?
    • The idea that time is divided into two sections
      • This present age and the age to come.
        • This present age is wholly bad, subject to sin, death, and decay
        • Some day, there will come the day of the Lord. That will be a day of judgment when the world will be shaken to its foundations; but out of it there will come a new world
    • The dream of the renewed world was dear to the Jews. Paul knew that; and here he endows creation with consciousness
      • He thinks of nature longing for the day when sin’s dominion would be broken, dash and decay would be gone, and God’s glory would come
        • He says that the state of nature was even worse than the human state. Human beings sinned deliberately; but it was involuntarily that nature was subjected to the consequences of sin
        • Unwittingly, nature was involved in the consequences of human sin
        • So Paul sees nature waiting for liberation form the death and decay that human sin had brought into the world
      • It is even more true for us
        • In the experience of the Holy Spirit, men and women had a foretaste, a first installment of the glory that shall be; no they long with all their hearts for the full realization of what adoption into the family of God means. 
        • The final adoption will be the redemption of their bodies. In the state of glory, Paul did not think of people as disembodied spirits
        • In this world, every individual is a body and a spirit; and in the world of glory, the total person will be saved
        • But the body will no longer be the victim of decay and the instrument of sin; it will be a spiritual body fit for the life of a spiritual person
• Romans 8:24-25
• 24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.
  • The blazing truth that lit life for Paul was that the human situation is not hopeless
  • Earlier, in verse 19, he used a word translated as eagerly waits
    • It describes the stance of a person who scans the horizon with head thrust forward eagerly searching the distance for the first signs of the dawn breaking
    • To Paul, life was not a weary, defeated waiting; it was a vivd expectation Christians are involved in the human situation. Within, they must battle with their own evil human nature; without, they must live in a world of death and decay
      • Nonetheless, Christians do not live only in the world; they also live in Christ
      • They do not see only the world, they look beyond it to God
      • They do not see only the consequences of human sin; they see the power of God’s mercy and love
      • Therefore the keynote of the Christ life is always hope and never despair. Christians wait not for death but for life