Galatians 5:16-25

“It was for freedom that Christ set us free.” That’s incredible. We usually think that Christ died so that we get a ticket into heave, which is true, but Paul tells us that it’s a byproduct of our freedom. We are free from the trappings of the Law. That means we are just concerned with rule obeying and being good little boys and rules. The rules don’t apply to us. We are now FREE to just enjoy Jesus. We are free to have a relationship with Him, and to let Him change us through the power of the Holy Spirit, rather than us trying to just be better.

We can do two things with our freedom. We can indulge the flesh, our sinful nature, or we can walk in the spirit. Indulging the flesh leads to “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions ²¹and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like” What kinds of things lead to these?

The fruit of the Spirit is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” What kinds of things lead to these? Remember, true love, true joy, true peace… only come from the Holy Spirit. You can’t get there on your own.

The ultimate question is, if our freedom is given to us so that we may be free to walk in the spirit, what does walking in the spirit look like?

1 Corinthians 15:20-34

Paul says, for Christians, there is a life after we die an earthly death. In fact the afterlife is what makes what we do in this life so important. The problem with just doing whatever you want without a care in the world (the eat, drink and be merry philosophy). is that what you do now affects how you will experience the next life. Paul says, as surely as Christ rose from the dead, an historical verifiable fact, He is coming again to establish His kingdom on this world forever. Paul says, rather than doing whatever we want whenever we want, we should die daily to our sinful nature daily, in preparation for dying and being with Jesus. Let me put it this way. One day you are going to die. You’re temporary earthly bodies, along with your earthly desires are going to pass away, and you are going to be with Jesus. Therefore, you should metaphorically die to your earthly desires today and choose to spend your day with Jesus!

btw the bird in the picture is a Phoenix, a bird famous in near east mythology for resurrecting from ashes. It’s life is eternal like ours.

1 Corinthians 13:4-10

The way Paul describes love is WAY different than the way we normally understand love. Real love is radical. Usually we love things that are nice and pleasant that make us feel good. Paul tells us the truly loving something means being to suffer and make serious sacrifices for that thing. IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO LOVE SOMEONE OR SOMETHING THIS WAY. In fact it’s impossible to really understand the kind of love this side of heaven, because we are finite beings and sinners to boot! Christ sacrificial death on the cross is the purest example of love. It’s so amazing we know that angels, beings whom have been around for millions of years, can’t stop marveling at the deed. Wow, that is real love.

This week we read Romans 8:1-11. Theologically Romans 8 is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible!

We learned that condemnation is the opposite of salvation. Condemnation means punishment, pain and suffering. We also learned that “there is no condemnation” for Christians. Contrary to popular believe God is not in the sky trying to get you. Also, we learned that living in Christ changes the type of person you are from the inside out. Living in Christ turns doing what is right into habit.

The question we are left with is what does life in Christ look like to you? What do you think living in Christ means?

This week we read Romans 7: 14-25

we learned that Paul struggled with two different natures, light versus darkness.
Sometimes Paul was capable of doing good things because as a Christian Christ is in Him in the form of the Holy Spirit.
Yet, sometimes Paul did some pretty bad things too, because, like everyone, Paul was a sinner, a depraved human being. It’s really sad when we thing of what sin is. Human beings were made in the image of God, but because of sin we do these bad things and just mess up the world for ourselves, and everyone around us.

This week we read Romans 3:21-31

we learned:

• God is just. He punishes everyone that deserves it, and rewards everyone that deserves it, and cares for everyone equally.
• The word propitiation means “in place of.” Christ died as a propitiation for us as punishment for sin.
• People recieve salvation by faith not by works. This means, you don’t have to worry about ‘doing’ the right stuff to get to heaven. Jesus has already taken care of that for us. What we need to do is have faith in Jesus as our savior, i.e. believe that He has taken care of it for us.

DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo.

We learned that Paul wanted to go to Rome in order to bring the Gospel to the Roman people even if that meant going as a prisoner on death row.  This was probably because Paul knew how influential Rome was.

While Paul’s trip to Roman didn’t go they way he probably had envisioned it (after all he was a death row prisoner while there) it did go the way God intended it to go. The Gospel was proclaimed and people came to Christ.

However, just like now-a-days, not everyone believed, in fact most didn’t.  This is sad. Some people just aren’t ready for the good news.