I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Romans 8-10

I often quote from verse 31 in chapter 8 to give hope and confidence to my fellow believers: “If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” Recently, someone responded, “Yes, but that is a big if.”  So, in order to address that “If” I am going to start at the end of today’s passage and work back, because there are many promises in today’s passage which rely on us knowing that God is for us.

In chapter 10, Paul tells us, “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ”  This really sums up the two things which we must do, we must accept that Jesus is our Lord and we must openly declare that this is the case.  Which answers the question raised by the “If”.  How can we know that God is on our side? By openly declaring that Jesus is Lord and believing in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead.  If we do that then we are on God’s side which means that God is for us.

From there we can go back to the beginning of this passage and see what more is needed with confidence that such is attainable.  Back at the beginning Paul told us that we must not allow our sinful natures to control our minds because doing so leads to death.  That is easier said than done, but Paul provides us with the answer to that as well.  We must instead allow the Spirit of God which lives within us to control our minds instead of our sinful nature.  In fact, if we have the Spirit of God living within us, we will be controlled by the Spirit.  And the Spirit of God lives within us if we do what I referenced in the previous paragraph.  Actually, Paul addresses one of the arguments made by our society to justify sin, “I have these inborn desires that I have to carry out.”  Paul tells us that, no, we do not have to carry out those sinful inborn desires.  We have no obligation  to carry out the urges which our sinful nature pushes us towards.  Paul further tells us that, while we can willingly walk away from the benefits of serving God, nothing can force us away from God’s love.  Even our walking away from God will not separate us from God’s love, even though He will not force us to experience the joy which serving Him will provide us.

 

So, we can have confidence that God stands with us.  Part of that confidence is the knowledge that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.  This does not mean that we can choose how things will work out.  Perhaps we have been chosen by God to experience suffering similar to that which Christ experienced.  We will find that if we allow the Spirit to control our minds that the joy we experience will overcome, and outweigh, any suffering which might come our way from following God’s will.  More importantly, who are we to demand an explanation from God as to why He made us the way that we are.  This applies not just to the issue of suffering, but to many of the social issues which we see around us today.  My heart breaks for those who have become convinced that God got it wrong when He made them as they are; those who seek to change the way which God has made them.