The problem with the Evangelical teaching and preaching of today is that verses are taken out of context and employed as axioms from which doctrine is deduced. These are often referred to as "proof texts." Paul did not write "proof texts." He wrote letters, just as you and I do. How would you like someone to take one of your letters, isolate a sentence, and then use it as a "proof text" deducing your intention from it?

If you want to understand any given verse of the Epistles, read the entire Epistle and try to get the sense of it. Then interpret the verse. If you do this you will discover many contemporary Evangelical doctrines are suspect at best.

No, we are not automatically in the Spirit of God just because at some point in time we made a point of professing faith in Christ. But we could be in the Spirit if this is what we desire above all else. And we can be if we will look always to Jesus, bringing every decision to Him to obtain His wisdom and power.

Looking always to Jesus for assistance in every area of life, great and small, is a giant step toward rescue from the body of death.

But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10—NIV)

Now here is something to consider. Our physical body is spiritually dead because of the sin nature that dwells in it. It is cut off from the Life of God.

We have to make our body serve God. We have to make it our slave. Its whole nature is contrary to God's law. We are dragging around a body of death. How are we to be rescued from it?

But our spiritual nature, our inward nature is alive because the righteousness of the Law of Moses has been ascribed to it. Also Christ has been conceived in our inward nature. For these two reasons our inward spiritual nature is righteous, and eternal life always follows righteousness.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:22—NIV)

Freedom from the guilt and the compulsion of sin, plus slavery to God and to righteousness, leads to holiness. The result of such righteousness and holiness is eternal life. The gift of God to us is freedom from sin and the ability to become a slave of God. This leads to holiness. Eternal life is the result.

This is why our inward nature is alive with the Life of God.

We see, then, that we have eternal life on the inside but death on the outside.

We have arrived now at the answer to the question, "Who will rescue me from the body of death?"

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:11—NIV)

To be continued.