MONDAY March 11th
Romans 8:9–10
‘You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’
Well, Paul seeks to underline that if we have truly been born again, then not only are we now no longer under condemnation, but the Spirit of God dwell in us.
I mentioned when I started the devotions from this chapter, that it is a chapter that makes much mention of the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt that we cannot get away from the fact that everything to do with salvation, the new-birth and the new life that we have is drenched in or applied to us by the Holy Spirit.
Maybe we emphasise so much concerning God the Father and Jesus the Son that we tend to side-line the Holy Spirit as if for some reason he is not quite so important! But he is! I shared while speaking a little while back something of the ministry of the Holy Spirit in Scripture, he was there hovering over the face of the waters at the very beginning, he was continually working throughout the Old Testament, and we of course see how he was very evident in the formation of the Church on the day of Pentecost and with the Church throughout the book of Acts.
And he is very much active and involved in redemption, Jesus himself said that a man needs to born again by the Spirit, and although it was Jesus who procured our redemption, the Holy Spirit comes to regenerate us when we come by faith to Jesus, and after regenerating us, that is transforming us into new creations, he desires to be involved, active in our lives as the children of God! So much so that he wants to be in us, and to lead us, and to continue to ensure that each day we become more and more like Jesus.
Without the Spirit we would still be dead and in our sins, without the Spirit we would constantly stumble and fall, without the Holy Spirit we would be no different than we were in our fallen state, for as Paul says in verse 10 the Spirit is life because of righteousness. He works in us and through us all the benefits of the Cross of Christ.