Living Well - Romans

We should all have an identifiable spiritual lineage as part of a functional spiritual family.

As Paul says, "hello" to those in Rome, he describes them through the lens of who they are in Christ and in the ministry. This is instructive for us to see one another rightly. We too are to greet one another with a "Holy Kiss."

This section of Romans 5 describes to us the God of Hope. He is our God and we have a very different hope than the world. Hope for the believer is confidence in what we know to be true about our future (from the Word of God). "Hope" for the non-believer is anxious contemplation about what they do not know about their future. As Paul begins to conclude the book of Romans he encourages us to live an abundant spiritual life and disciple others. He then gives us his example of going and preaching in places where the gospel had not been preached according to scripture. In the Living Well class we are endeavoring to do the same with our evangelistic Bible studies.

Awake to Spiritual Reality

Actually you are God's gift to the church. Check out this short explanation of Rom 12:3-8 that was taught in LWC before we broke up into groups for Discovery Bible Method.

Paul reviews the doctrines he has covered with 4 questions, meant to establish the believers in God's love and provision, and prevent a stagnant walk.

To walk after the flesh is to be carnally minded. This leads to frustration and ultimately death. People who walk after the flesh are not necessarily trying to do evil things, however, they have confidence in themselves , that is, in their ability and performance to achieve what they want to. To walk after the Spirit is to be spiritually minded. It leads to life and peace. To walk in the Spirit, we must have no confidence in the flesh, but rather a willingness to trust God to be in control of our lives.

Romans 7 is not about dealing with sin--that was in Romans 6. Romans 7 deals with our service to God, particularly, it addresses our natural tendency to try to serve God in the flesh. The keys to understand this critical chapter include: 1. Romans 7 is not about dealing with sin. 2. We cannot successfully serve God in the flesh. 3. The issue is not trying to do good, or not to do evil, it is, "Who is in control of your life?" Either you are in control (flesh) or God is in control (Stay tuned for Romans 8!)

Having covered knowing and reckoning last week, this week's topic is Yielding to God out of Romans 6:12-14. This teaching is something with which all Christians should be familiar. Our victory in the Christian life is dependent on who is in control of our lives, not how hard we try, or how gifted we are.

When the Lord reigns His people rejoice. Lift up the gates to your lives and let the King of Glory in! Romans 5 tells us that there is much more to our Christian lives than just our salvation. The Lord Omnipotent can deal with your addictions, hurts, diagnoses, etc. But He must reign as Lord. Sin and death reigned (past tense), but now that reign is over. Let God's people joy in Him!

To be a child of Abraham is to be a child of Faith. So we trust God for the miraculous, the unexplained, the supernatural, as we put our trust in Him.

Paul has a question and answer session in this carefully worded section of Romans 3 preempting some weak objections to the truths he had presented in chapters 1 and 2.

Mankind is without excuse because we see others do things that we know are wrong. Then we go and do the same things.

We see several important things in the first 15 verses of Romans. Among them are: The identity of a servant must come before the mentality of a called one. Also, Paul the apostle to the Gentiles introduces the gospel to all. This is an ushering in of the church age as we know it. Also, we have a mutual faith. This means that how we live out our faith matters to each other. Getting together matters, How you are doing impacts me, and our interactions in the faith matter. We need each other.