The Living Bible (357 page)

Romans
8

So there is now no condemnation awaiting those who belong to Christ Jesus.
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 For the power of the life-giving Spirit—and this power is mine through Christ Jesus—has freed me from the vicious circle of sin and death.
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 We aren’t saved from sin’s grasp by knowing the commandments of God because we can’t and don’t keep them, but God put into effect a different plan to save us. He sent his own Son in a human body like ours—except that ours are sinful—and destroyed sin’s control over us by giving himself as a sacrifice for our sins.
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 So now we can obey God’s laws if we follow after the Holy Spirit and no longer obey the old evil nature within us.

    
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 Those who let themselves be controlled by their lower natures live only to please themselves, but those who follow after the Holy Spirit find themselves doing those things that please God.
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 Following after the Holy Spirit leads to life and peace, but following after the old nature leads to death
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 because the old sinful nature within us is against God. It never did obey God’s laws and it never will.
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 That’s why those who are still under the control of their old sinful selves, bent on following their old evil desires, can never please God.

    
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 But you are not like that. You are controlled by your new nature if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ living in him, he is not a Christian at all.)
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 Yet, even though Christ lives within you, your body will die because of sin; but your spirit will live, for Christ has pardoned it.
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 And if the Spirit of God, who raised up Jesus from the dead, lives in you, he will make your dying bodies live again after you die, by means of this same Holy Spirit living within you.

    
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 So, dear brothers, you have no obligations whatever to your old sinful nature to do what it begs you to do.
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 For if you keep on following it you are lost and will perish, but if through the power of the Holy Spirit you crush it and its evil deeds, you shall live.
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 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

    
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 And so we should not be like cringing, fearful slaves, but we should behave like God’s very own children, adopted into the bosom of his family, and calling to him, “Father, Father.”
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 For his Holy Spirit speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we really are God’s children.
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 And since we are his children, we will share his treasures—for all God gives to his Son Jesus is now ours too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

    
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 Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will give us later.
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 For all creation is waiting patiently and hopefully for that future day
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when God will resurrect his children.
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 For on that day thorns and thistles, sin, death, and decay
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—the things that overcame the world against its will at God’s command—will all disappear, and the world around us will share in the glorious freedom from sin which God’s children enjoy.

    
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 For we know that even the things of nature, like animals and plants, suffer in sickness and death as they await this great event.
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 And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children, including the new bodies he has promised us—bodies that will never be sick again and will never die.

    
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 We are saved by trusting. And trusting means looking forward to getting something we don’t yet have—for a man who already has something doesn’t need to hope and trust that he will get it.
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 But if we must keep trusting God for something that hasn’t happened yet, it teaches us to wait patiently and confidently.

    
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 And in the same way—by our faith
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—the Holy Spirit helps us with our daily problems and in our praying. For we don’t even know what we should pray for nor how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit prays for us with such feeling that it cannot be expressed in words.
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 And the Father who knows all hearts knows, of course, what the Spirit is saying as he pleads for us in harmony with God’s own will.
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 And we know that all that happens to us is working for our good if we love God and are fitting into his plans.

    
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 For from the very beginning God decided that those who came to him—and all along he knew who would—should become like his Son, so that his Son would be the First, with many brothers.
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 And having chosen us, he called us to come to him; and when we came, he declared us “not guilty,” filled us with Christ’s goodness, gave us right standing with himself, and promised us his glory.

    
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 What can we ever say to such wonderful things as these? If God is on our side, who can ever be against us?
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 Since he did not spare even his own Son for us but gave him up for us all, won’t he also surely give us everything else?

    
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 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? Will God? No! He is the one who has forgiven us and given us right standing with himself.

    
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 Who then will condemn us? Will Christ?
No!
For he is the one who died for us and came back to life again for us and is sitting at the place of highest honor next to God, pleading for us there in heaven.

    
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 Who then can ever keep Christ’s love from us? When we have trouble or calamity, when we are hunted down or destroyed, is it because he doesn’t love us anymore? And if we are hungry or penniless or in danger or threatened with death, has God deserted us?

    
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 No, for the Scriptures tell us that for his sake we must be ready to face death at every moment of the day—we are like sheep awaiting slaughter;
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 but despite all this, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us enough to die for us.
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 For I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from his love. Death can’t, and life can’t. The angels won’t, and all the powers of hell itself cannot keep God’s love away. Our fears for today, our worries about tomorrow,
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 or where we are—high above the sky, or in the deepest ocean—nothing will ever be able to separate us from the love of God demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Christ when he died for us.

Romans
9

O Israel, my people! O my Jewish brothers! How I long for you to come to Christ. My heart is heavy within me, and I grieve bitterly day and night because of you. Christ knows and the Holy Spirit knows that it is no mere pretense when I say that I would be willing to be forever damned if that would save you.
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 God has given you so much, but still you will not listen to him. He took you as his own special, chosen people and led you along with a bright cloud of glory and told you how very much he wanted to bless you. He gave you his rules for daily life so you would know what he wanted you to do. He let you worship him and gave you mighty promises.
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 Great men of God were your fathers, and Christ himself was one of you, a Jew so far as his human nature is concerned, he who now rules over all things. Praise God forever!

    
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 Well then, has God failed to fulfill his promises to the Jews? No! For these promises are only to those who are truly Jews.
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And not everyone born into a Jewish family is truly a Jew!
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 Just the fact that they come from Abraham doesn’t make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say that the promises apply only to Abraham’s son Isaac and Isaac’s descendants, though Abraham had other children too.
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 This means that not all of Abraham’s children are children of God, but only those who believe the promise of salvation which he made to Abraham.

    
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 For God had promised, “Next year I will give you and Sarah a son.”
^10-13
 And years later, when this son Isaac was grown up and married and Rebecca his wife was about to bear him twin children, God told her that Esau, the child born first, would be a servant to Jacob, his twin brother. In the words of the Scripture, “I chose to bless Jacob but not Esau.” And God said this before the children were even born, before they had done anything either good or bad. This proves that God was doing what he had decided from the beginning; it was not because of what the children did but because of what God wanted and chose.

    
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 Was God being unfair? Of course not.
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 For God had said to Moses, “If I want to be kind to someone, I will. And I will take pity on anyone I want to.”
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 And so God’s blessings are not given just because someone decides to have them or works hard to get them. They are given because God takes pity on those he wants to.

    
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 Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was an example of this fact. For God told him he had given him the kingdom of Egypt for the very purpose of displaying the awesome power of God against him, so that all the world would hear about God’s glorious name.
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 So you see, God is kind to some just because he wants to be, and he makes some refuse to listen.

    
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 Well then, why does God blame them for not listening? Haven’t they done what he made them do?

    
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 No, don’t say that. Who are you to criticize God? Should the thing made say to the one who made it, “Why have you made me like this?”
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 When a man makes a jar out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar beautiful, to be used for holding flowers, and another to throw garbage into?
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 Does not God have a perfect right to show his fury and power against those who are fit only for destruction, those he has been patient with for all this time?
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 And he has a right to take others such as ourselves, who have been made for pouring the riches of his glory into, whether we are Jews or Gentiles, and to be kind to us so that everyone can see how very great his glory is.

    
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 Remember what the prophecy of Hosea says? There God says that he will find other children for himself (who are not from his Jewish family) and will love them, though no one had ever loved them before.
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 And the heathen, of whom it once was said, “You are not my people,” shall be called “sons of the Living God.”
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 Isaiah the prophet cried out concerning the Jews that though there would be millions
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of them, only a small number would ever be saved.
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 “For the Lord will execute his sentence upon the earth, quickly ending his dealings, justly cutting them short.”
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 And Isaiah says in another place that except for God’s mercy all the Jews would be destroyed—all of them—just as everyone in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah perished.
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 Well then, what shall we say about these things? Just this, that God has given the Gentiles the opportunity to be acquitted by faith, even though they had not been really seeking God.
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 But the Jews, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping his laws, never succeeded.
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 Why not? Because they were trying to be saved by keeping the law and being good instead of by depending on faith. They have stumbled over the great stumbling stone.
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 God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said, “I have put a Rock in the path of the Jews, and many will stumble over him (Jesus). Those who believe in him will never be disappointed.”
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