Month: February 2005

Romans 8
Life Through the Spirit
1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2. because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4. in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
5. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7. the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
9. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.
12. Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14. because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17. Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Sometimes the one who condemns us the most is ourselves. The law that has been laid down in our hearts (good or bad) by our upbringing and experiences plays a huge part in how we view and accept our own behaviors. In this case the “law” is what condemns us, and makes our lives intolerable.
Through the recovery process we begin to realize that God has a better plan. A plan that is full of grace and truth. The truth is that if a picture is crooked in your living room, you aren’t really bad and condemned. To the obsessive-compulsive person, this is intolerable. The “law” in his heart condemns such things, and he must set it straight. His life is unbearable until he can change this flaw.
The laws that live in our hearts and govern our view of ourselves and the world around us is what can make our lives unbearable and drive us to the behavior that we really want to be rid of in our lives. Jesus’ passion for us made it possible for us to experience NO CONDEMNATION! He has paid the price so we no longer have to. Accepting this gift, and internalizing it toward our feelings of self-condemnation is a broad step toward recovery.

Are you still condemning yourself?

Have you accepted God’s gift of freedom from condemnation?

Can you still hear the voices from your childhood that tries to condemn you?

Romans 7
An Illustration From Marriage
1. Do you not know, brothers for I am speaking to men who know the law that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? 2. For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. 3. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
4. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. 5. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. 6. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.
Struggling With Sin
7. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” 8. But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. 9. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. 10. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.
11. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. 12. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. 13. Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14. We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do this I keep on doing. 20. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23. but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25. Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

God’s plan for us is to live happy, balanced lives. There are a lot of things that we should and shouldn’t do in order to live our lives according to God’s perfect design. This world is not perfect, and certainly we ourselves are not perfect.
The laws that govern our lives point out just how imperfect we really are. If we are honest, we realize that we have hated, lied, envied, lusted, and done many other things that are contrary to God’s perfect plan for us. These rules are good rules to live by. It’s just that our bent for selfishness just can’t handle them.
The answer to this dilemma is very easy, yet becomes difficult the more we try to calculate it. We must die. But if we die, we no longer exist. God sent a substitution for us to die, so since the high price has been paid, we are no longer subject to the guilt and shame associated with being a breaker of the law.
The example that God has set for grace and forgiveness should be a model for us in our lives. We need to forgive as God has forgiven us. We need to be able to pray without fear “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.
Do your feel forgiven?

Have you forgiven others?

Are you still striving to live within the law?

DEAD TO OLD HABITS – ALIVE TO NEW LIFE

Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1. What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2. By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3. Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin 7. because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Slaves to Righteousness
15. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16. Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17. But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19. I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we have finally found ourselves in a place where we can only admit our own powerlessness, and then begin to rely on a power greater than ourselves in order to muster enough sanity to make it through our daily life, we come to a place where we know that we must begin to take charge of our own domain and start saying NO to the temptations to feed our habits and addictions. At this point, the part of us that believed that sin was a necessary part or our lives dies and once dead, it’s power over us is broken.
At this point, part of us can relate to Christ’s death, and resurrection as we die to an old way of life and begin a completely new way of life. The desires of our hurts, habits and hang ups are behind us, and in front of us is a true desire to live life differently from here on out.
There still exists grace for those days where we are weak, but overall, our life has taken a different path, and there begins to have meaning and feeling where once there was but sadness and death.
How’s that for a paradox? We spent our lives doing what we thought would make us feel full, good and right, and it only left us feeling empty, guilty and shameful in the end. Then we die to these habits and behaviors only to then find a new life that is full, and brings peace and happiness that we had never known before!
One of the advantages of taking a fearless inventory, and then sharing it with another person is that the power of those things to influence your life has lost it’s potency. This is like how Christ’s death actually makes death powerless over him from that point on. Once we face our fears, we find that they have much less power that we attributed to them.

What things in your life have become powerless since they have died through your confession?

REJOICE IN SUFFERING – POWER IN POWERLESSNESS

Romans 5
Peace and Joy
1. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2. through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4. perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
6. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
9. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10. For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! 11. Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Death Through Adam, Life Through Christ
12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned 13. for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. 14. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16. Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. 19. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Being at peace with God is the best place to be in this life. Many seek it in many ways, but few truly achieve it. This is because peace with God can only be obtained through suffering. Most of the major religions of the world teach this. Only Christianity takes this concept one more step and teaches that we can have peace with God through Christ’s suffering. Imagine that! We no longer have to suffer, because Christ has done enough suffering for us.
But the fact remains that in life there is much suffering. If this were not the case, there would be no need for recovery. Paul asks that we take a step back from our suffering and realize the true value that is built into the suffering. Suffering builds patience, character, and ultimately hope. Hope is that light at the end of the tunnel that lets us know that the trip through the dark tunnel will be worth it. I can relate to this. Not too long ago, I hiked through a tunnel at the Snoqualmie Summit in Washington State. We tried to hike with our flashlights off, and just concentrated on the light at the end of the tunnel to get us through. It was quite an experience.
God’s grace is free to all who will admit they are powerless, and that they need the gift of Christ’s Passion to obtain peace with God.

What is the cause of most of your suffering this past week?

Do you see that you have learned more patience through your past suffering?

When you look up, can you see the light at the end of the tunnel?

Have you accepted Christ’s suffering in order to obtain peace with God?