Romans (Program #40) – Abiding in Christ by Minding the Spirit

We don’t have a method, we don’t have a technique – we have an all-inclusive Person. If our eyes would be open, we would be exhilarated with the liberty this would bring into our spiritual life. We wouldn’t be praying for this or that – we would just love, enjoy, receive and experience Christ as everything. It’s wonderful!

For centuries Christians have struggled to comprehend the Biblical correct understanding of the Trinity. But today we are going to discover that beyond it’s theological importance, the Trinity is vital to our being able to experience the God of our salvation.  Once again today, we’re in the the very critical eighth chapter of Romans. more…

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Romans (Program #39) – Life and Death in Romans Five through Eight

The book of Romans chapter 8:10 says “…if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness”. Two parts of the tripartite man are mentioned here with two conditions – the body is dead, the spirit is life.

Our life study today is one of those that presents the Bible in such a marvelous fashion that it has definitely the effect of strengthening our faith in God’s word. The Bible has such a consistent thought and revelation once we have the keys to open it up. We’ll see in this current message how that our natural way of trying to understand the word of God by the principle of right and wrong doesn’t work. Today we are going to see two keys given that really show us the way to get into the Bible in a living way so that it supplies us with life.

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Romans (Program #38) – Law in Romans Seven and Eight

Romans chapters 7 and 8 are the most crucial chapters to every Christian in understanding how to live a vital Christian life.

Paul was speaking frankly concerning his experience, what he was doing, what he could do and what he couldn’t do. If ever there was a man that could be good, that was equipped to be good, to fulfill the law and be obedient, this would have been Paul. Yet he met with such experience that he ended up crying “What wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from … this death?” (Romans 7:24) Many many believers identify with that – we feel that we have tried, that we’ve worked, we’ve tried plan A and then we heard plan B. We go from plan to plan, thinking that something is going to finally make this Christian life vital and real to all of us. And, some things help in a little bit and the it seems like somehow the things get shorted out and sometimes disastrously so and yet many times we get up and start again.  more…

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Romans (Program #37) – Being Freed from Death (2)

We need to call it by its right name – it’s death.  God in His organic salvation has a way of deliverance from it, a way to overcome it – in Christ as our resurrection life.

Today in chapter 8, we’re going to find out about being freed from sin and death.  What is the death that we are being freed from?

Romans 8 is a chapter of experience and the death here is not the physical death to which we are subjected in the old creation.  When we are talking about being free from death, we are not talking about some kind of miraculous cure for our mortality or some premature deliverance from the power of death in a physical way.  Death in Romans 8 is a terrifying and powerful spiritual source and force that has its source in Satan, the origin of death. more…

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Romans (Program #36) – Being Freed from Death (1)

We sinners are not sinners only because we commit some sin. Through the fall of Adam, we all were constituted sinners by being born in sin.

We’re somewhere at the midpoint in our study of Romans. I think it’d be helpful if we reviewed briefly and summarized the central focus of this book that has been dubbed, as we mentioned before, “The Gospel of God”.  This book of Romans is called “The Gospel of God” because it gives us the full gospel including the judicial redemption by Christ’s death and the organic salvation in His resurrection life. The focus of the revelation of this book is that God is making sons out of sinners to form the Body of Christ to express Christ. In this book, we have seen also that God is expressed in the Son, Jesus Christ, and further that the Son is expressed in a Body. We have seen and we will see further that the Body is expressed in the local churches.

That’s “The gospel of God” and Romans, as we’ve indicated, has also been called the fifth gospel.

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Romans (Program #35) – Being Freed from Sin, the Law and the Flesh

Our destiny is not merely to go from hell to heaven.  Our destiny is God’s heart desire which is to make us sinners into sons of God, to be constituted the Body of Christ for His glorious expression in this universe.

Many of us know what it is to struggle against sin and the flesh.  And many also know the struggle of never living up to the standard that we or others set for us.  All three requires the freeing of the spirit recorded in Romans chapter 8.  This is our focus of the life-study of the Bible today.

Once again today we look at the tremendous revelation that God is busy making sinners into sons.  Sometimes you hear the word “adopted” inserted into this portion regarding our being the sons of God.   To be a son of God, you need the life of God. The word “adopted” doesn’t do justice simply because of our understanding of “adopted”. more…

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Romans (Program #34) – The Basic Points in Chapters 5-8

The Lord is with our spirit, so this wonderful. If we’re going to contact God, we need to exercise our spirit. God is Spirit, those who worship Him must worship Him in their spirit so that we can live and walk according to the Spirit who is mingled with our spirit.

If you’ve ever had the experience of making a resolution to be better, or to try harder, or promising never to do something again and then failing miserably, you will want to stay tuned for today’s Life-Study of Romans with Witness Lee.

We’re going to revisit Romans 5 to 8. In these chapters, we’ll see something wonderful concerning how we can experience and enjoy Christ. In today’s message we’re going to hear Witness Lee talk about the Spirit as it’s mentioned in chapter eight. In reading these verses, it seems almost impossible to tell whether the reference is made to the divine Spirit or the human spirit. What’s the relationship between these two and is it important for us to make a distinction? more…

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Romans (Program #33) – The Consummation of the Gospel

In God’s salvation, He does not just wash us from our sins, forgive us and make us clean, but He imparts His very life into us.  He does this in order to make us His sons.  So sonship or being sons of God is a matter of receiving the life of God.

God’s plan or eternal purpose cannot be realized without genuine sons of God that are match to Him in righteousness, holiness and glory.  But all He has to work with is just sinner like you and me.  How can He accomplish such a lofty goal?

We have a favor theme of Romans as our focus today and that is God is making sons out of sinners.  This seems out of comprehension to most of us.  But what does it mean really to make such a statement?

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Romans (Program #32) – A Closing Word

The book of Romans in its final three verses concludes with a beautiful offering of praise to God. Theologians have dubbed it a doxology; though it might aptly be called a melody, a melody of praise that we can fully enter into. It’s the peak of the gospel of God as presented in Romans.

This message begins with a concise overview of the entire book. The perspective is that of the revelation of God’s entire economy revealed in the New Testament. And the feeling is that in our experience and practice, we should have a book of Romans with sixteen chapters, that is with all of the stations or all of the sections, and not just part.  We appreciate the fact that when the reformation began, God used a segment of the book of Romans to recover a tremendous truth – that of justification by grace, through faith.  This is the first major station in the book of Romans.  The station or section of justification.  The importance of this can hardly be over-emphasized…

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Romans (Program #31) – The Consummation of the Gospel

Today we come to the conclusion of the gospel of God in the book of Romans. The book of Romans, perhaps the most doctrinally complete book in the New Testament, has a surprising and non-doctrinal conclusion concerning what God wants for every believer.

The gospel of God refers to the entire speaking of the book of Romans. Here in the book of Romans, Paul gives perhaps the most complete doctrinal portrait of the gospel in its fullness than in any other book that he has written. Romans begins with man in condemnation and then shows us how God takes him through the steps of justification, sanctification, glorification, selection, and transformation – a panorama of God’s organic salvation. Now we come to the conclusion of the gospel, and this conclusion is surprisingly non-doctrinal, after the marvelous picture that Paul painted in the process of that salvation. The goal of that salvation is given in a very experiential way that is surprising to the readers of the rest of the book.

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