We will only comply with the conditions of eternal life if we have the right thoughts in our mind because thought generates action. If we are carnally minded, having minds influenced by the flesh, then we will not fulfil these conditions but will die; but if we are spiritually minded we shall live.
We might think we can reason matters out and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. But this would be a fatal error, for our natural thinking opposes God and displeases him.
The choice of doing right is entirely ours, but the consequences are definite. The benefits of being guided by God’s Spirit, as we are when we are led by his word in the Holy Scriptures, are numerous, and the apostle identifies some of them here. Firstly we become God’s children and secondly as children of God we also become his heirs, “heirs of God” and “joint-heirs with Christ”! How marvellous this is!
The disciples of Paul’s day had to endure severe persecution from their contemporaries, and many since have suffered extreme tribulation. All these were able to endure because they could look forward to a glorious future, as Paul declared. We can be sure that God is in control of our lives and we can be greatly encouraged by the knowledge that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose”.
God has made “exceeding great and precious promises by which we can become partakers of the divine nature”, 2 Peter 1:4Waiting for response for 2 Peter 1:4 live for ever, inherit the promised land, and reign with Christ in glory in the kingdom of God when all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Those that hope for these things are “waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God” when they “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God”.
God is working out his predetermined purpose which involves calling men and women to salvation, making them righteous like his Son, and finally glorifying them.
If we act to comply with God’s requirements and become related to him through belief and baptism, we will have Christ at God’s right hand to intercede for us, and no-one “shall separate us from the love of Christ” and nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”.
Verse 1
Waiting for response for Romans 8:1God will not condemn us but will give us eternal life if these two conditions apply to us: firstly, we are “in” Christ Jesus, i.e. we have believed and been baptized; and, secondly, we live our lives, not according to the impulses of the flesh, but according to the guidance of God’s Spirit in his word.