Romans 8v1-17

Claim: Christians are not condemned but justified and made son’s of God: this is Christ’s work for us (the death of his flesh for ours) and so now Christ’s work in us is life in the Spirit not in the flesh).

Focus: We are justified by Christ on the cross and given new life in the Spirit that demands and helps our affections and actions towards God.

Function: To celebrate Christ for our justification and respond in relying on his work to continual slay the flesh and live by the Spirit (doing the things of God).

We have spent some time in Romans, thinking about the deserved judgement that faces humans becasue of our deliberate rejection of our Creator, despit Him having made his realitly known to us in creation and then His revealed word.

This WOrd of Godf, The law of God that he gave his people in the OT - was abel to bring life - for it showed us how to live rightly before our holy God.

But in reality, for us, becasye we are all unrighteous, we will all face an eetrnal punishment from God.

BUt, while God is holy and just in his wrath and righteous anger towards humnaity, God is also gracious and compassionate to despite our sinful human anture, loves us enough to also satisfy his wrath not on us, but on his own son - The Lord Jesus.

In Christ then, we are no longer under the law of God that condemns us to death becasue of our sinful nature.

We are now under the

We’ve considered how last week,

Teaching Romans, Volume 1: Unlocking Romans 1–8 for the Bible Teacher The Second Way: Life in the Spirit Leading to Resurrection (vv. 9–11)

So although we struggle now with the ‘body … dead because of sin’ we know that this same ‘mortal body’ will be raised at the end. (Similarly, in 6:5 Paul makes the point that because we are now ‘united with Jesus in a death like his’, we know that in the future ‘we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection’).

Teaching Romans, Volume 1: Unlocking Romans 1–8 for the Bible Teacher Conclusion (1): The Christian’s Obligation (vv. 12, 13)

Notice that (a) we have to ‘put to death the misdeeds of the body’ (we do not just ‘let go and let God’ do it for us), but that (b) we do not do this in our own strength (‘works of the law’) but ‘by the Spirit’. It is by the grace of God working in us that we put to death that old way of living. Notice also that we ‘put to death’ in the present continuous tense, indicating ongoing activity; this mortification of the old life cannot be done in one go, but needs a daily taking up of the cross and denial of self (