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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Rescued From the Body of Death, #6
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)
If the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead is dwelling in us. This is a big if, and everything depends on it.
How do we know if the Spirit of God is dwelling in us? If the Spirit of God is dwelling in us we are bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If we are living in the appetites and passions of our flesh we are bringing forth the fruit of the flesh: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and the like.
We currently, in Evangelical preaching, are placing far too much emphasis on doctrinal belief. The emphasis is to be on our personality and behavior. If our personality is characterized by love, joy, and peace, and we are worshiping Jesus, then we have some assurance that the Spirit of God is dwelling in us.
But if our personality is characterized by sexual immorality, impurity, debauchery, covetousness, dabbling in the occult, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, then the Spirit of God is not living in us.
We can speak in tongues, go to church, "lead souls to Christ," sing in the choir, serve, give, talk about the Lord, prophesy, pray for the sick, and do everything else we equate with the Christian life. But if we are causing strife and division everywhere we go, if we are an immoral gossiper, given to anger, seeking preeminence, causing trouble when we do not get our own way, then we are not living in the Spirit of God. We are not a Christian. We are a child of Satan and are doing his works. There is no eternal life in us.
No one who hates his brother has eternal life in him.
Eternal life is not endless existence. Satan has endless existence. Eternal life is life lived in the Presence of God and Christ.
Back to our key verse, the verse that gives the answer to "Who will deliver 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)
Deliverance from the body of death depends on our living and growing in the Spirit of God, the resurrection Life that raised Jesus from the dead. If we "accept Christ" and then do not live in the Spirit we can forget about being rescued from the body of death.
If the Spirit is living in us the Spirit will give life to our mortal body.
When will this take place? When will the Spirit give life to our mortal body, thus rescuing us from the body of death?
The rescue will take place when the Lord appears. This deliverance is the resurrection from the dead, the resurrection that will take place in advance of the resurrection of the dead, which will occur at the end of the thousand-year Kingdom Age. The advance resurrection is the redemption of the body, of which Paul spoke.
To be continued.