The Devotional - R025

The Devotional

Comment:

If you have ever been on the ocean or beach and watched a sunset or sunrise, then you have seen the beauty and revealing work of our All Powerful Creator. Religions, cults and atheists fail to comprehend the thought of God as the Savior/Creator, instead these dead end religions and cults are avenues of a god of confusion and disorder. The atheist is intelligently simple minded (a fool) when he or she thinks of God; even as King David says in Psalm 14:1. I like what the Psalmist says in Psalm 94:8-11 – Understand you senseless (religions) among the people; and you fools (atheists), when will you be wise? God who has planted (formed) the ear, shall HE not hear? God who formed the eye, shall HE not see? The person who instructs (disciplines) the nations (gentiles); shall God not correct, he who teaches man knowledge? The LORD knows the thoughts of mankind, that his thoughts are futile (useless or vain).

Challenge: Romans 7:1-6

Here in our overview of Romans 6 and 7 we are observing a series of eleven questions that the apostle Paul is asking his readers. Yes the epistle is addressed to the Roman people of Paul’s day (Jews and Gentiles living in Rome) yet the epistle belongs to the New Testament Church of Jesus Christ. So today if you go to church and if you are a Jew or Gentile, which you are one or the other, obedience to Word of God is not optional for the child of God, it is mandatory! Yet and again, if you do not know the answers to the apostle’s questions; you do not know Jesus as you ought and your victory over the bondages of sin is not complete.

Romans 6 Questions (1) - What shall we say then? (2) Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? (3) Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death. (4) What then? (5) Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? (6) Do you know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness. (7) What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? Romans 7 Questions (8) – Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion (authority) over a man as long as he lives? (9) What shall we say then? (10) Is the law sin? 

Emphatically the apostle Paul uses a response that covers his initial questions of “What then” with the words “Certainly not” and all of his follow up questions of “do you not know” are designed at “well you should know” and if you do not, here it is again. WHY? Why does the apostle cross examine like the scribe (lawyer), one’s personal life who seeks to stand by faith in Thee Holy and Righteous God of the universe and Savior of the world?

Romans 7:13-25 – question (11) – Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. 

For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. (So we must continually see that faith in God is not based on our ability to help God out by working to be good through the law, but according to His grace gift in the Person of Jesus, to abide in His Righteousness through faith in Christ.)