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Articles 2024-2026
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors–not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
While we once lived in bondage to the flesh and its desires, we now have been filled with the Spirit of God who in His very essence is holy. His presence brings not only the requirement that we live holy lives but also the power to do so. This is why we repent when we fail. The problem was not that God or His provision for us to follow Him was somehow insufficient. The problem was that we failed, we sinned.
At the root of our failure was that we did not put to death the body’s deeds by the power of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we did not know how to avail ourselves of His power. But as we all know, God’s salvation, offered to us in Christ is the only answer to what ails the human race. And we believers are learning to avail ourselves fully of His provision.
The Spirit’s power for overcoming the flesh is not only realized in our hearts by ourselves alone but also in our integrated relationships with other believers. His work on earth is not only to change individual lives but to form them together into a corporate body. As a result, there will be times when the Lord will require us to seek out the counsel of others. And if we harden our hearts and refuse His guidance through them, we then to some degree cut ourselves off from the Spirit’s power to put to death the deeds of our flesh.
In all of this process, God’s sons are those being led by His Spirit.
I used to think that those who gave prophetic words or words of knowledge or who had what appeared to be other ministerial success were the sons of God that Paul was referring to in the above verse. After all, God’s sons were those who were being led by His Spirit. But then I saw some of these very people get exposed for secretly living immoral lives. Clearly, they were not the examples that Paul was referring to.
In looking again at what he said, it seems clear that it is those specifically being led by the Spirit in putting to death the deeds of the body who in fact reveal true spiritual sonship. Here is Heaven’s priority.
For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”
The Spirit of adoption by whom God has taken us out of the world and placed us as sons into His family draws us to cry out and acknowledge Him as our Father. In the above verse, Paul used the term “Father” from two different languages – ABBA which was Aramaic and PATER which was Greek. So, to all those reading his letter, it simply did not matter if they were Aramaic speaking Jews or Greek speaking Gentiles, God was their dad. And His family is not based on ethnicity, social status, or gender (Galatians 3:28).
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
When one is born of the Spirit, a union takes place. But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him (1Corinthians 6:17). The Creator of the universe has come to dwell in us, in the depths of our inner person. And in taking up residence, He has confirmed in us that He is our dad and that we are His children.
and if children, then heirs–heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.
Our inheritance is God Himself. And we stand to co–inherit with Christ what has been promised to Him. If we suffer with Him.
How do we suffer with Him? If whatever thoughts, words, and actions of people that cause Him pain and grief do not also affect us, we must then cry out for Him to reveal His heart to us so that we might know Him more intimately. Whatever is breaking His heart must also affect us. Here is the route into the full knowledge/experience of His glory.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
As we come into increasing oneness with Christ, into increasing insight into what blesses Him and what grieves Him, we will also experience greater opposition from the enemy of our souls. The Lord Jesus and those submitting to God’s work of conforming them to His image are Satan’s greatest fear. But from increased rejection to even persecution, whatever the enemy throws at us cannot be compared to the growing revelation of the glory of God in and among us presently and then ultimately at His return.
For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.
Paul personifies the creation and speaks of it as having an eager intense anticipation of the revealing of those who are being led by the Spirit in putting to death the deeds of the flesh. While the full revelation of Christ, the Son of God will be sudden, dramatic, and earth shaking, the revelation of the many sons of God is slowly emerging across the earth and will be fully realized in amazing glory at His return. Oh, the coming glory of that day!
But Paul is challenging his readers to presently sow into that final day by submitting to the Spirit’s present war against fleshly lusts. The Church’s response to Him in His work of conforming us to His likeness is one element of God’s timetable for all to consider as we look toward that approaching final day of the Lord.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
Futility marks the present creation. No matter what unredeemed man does to fix himself and the world around him, he simply cannot escape the fallenness of his own nature. And while he has made many wonderful scientific and medical advances over the years, yet the ongoing threats of war, crime, and the rumors thereof continue to unravel the hopes of many all the while revealing the internal brokenness of those who have not bowed their knee to Heaven’s king.
And continuing Paul’s personification of the creation – when God subjected it to futility, His work was not dependent on its willingness. It simply had no vote in His decision. But the futility of the present age is not the end of the matter. He subjected it in hope. Here is the origin of the sense of destiny that lies in the heart of every person who is born of the Spirit.
And His promise remains. The creation will be freed from its enslavement to corruption. Because of Adam’s sin, the process of decay/entropy is everywhere. Buildings crumble, cars rust, and human bodies sag. But the beginning of the end of decay can be seen in the tomb of the last Adam (Acts 2:27). Because He was without sin, Christ’s body experienced no corruption and His tomb had no stench of death anywhere in it.
Here is why when we repented and through water and Spirit were plunged into Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, we began to participate in the One who had lived and died untainted by the corruptive effects of Adam’s sin. And through Him we became in some measure an expression of the new creation. The new heavens and the new earth have taken root in the souls of God’s people.
The beginning of the end of the fruit of Adam’s fall has come. Calvary introduced the expiration of sin’s dominance. And as believers, we have now tasted of the powers of the coming age (Hebrews 6:5). But oh, what a day it will be when all this process culminates in Christ’s glorious return.
For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.
Here is the full revelation of God’s sons that the creation is eagerly anticipating. It will take place on the day of the glorious revelation of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus. In that day, we will realize the complete manifestation of our adoption into God’s family as our physical bodies experience glorious redemption – the glory within our hearts exploding out into every cell of our physical being.
And while it is appropriate to speak about the coming end of this age, it is also fitting to speak about the present travails of this age as being the labor pains of the next one. We are not just at the end of something, we are in fact experiencing the beginning, the foretaste of the ages to come. And so, the sense of destiny in our hearts remains strong. Amen.
Donald Rumble – February 2025
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