Summary of passage: Faith upholds the law.
Questions:
11) We can only be righteous if we are cleansed of our sins. Jesus cleanses us of our sins so that we can live in Spirit. For all of this to occur, we have to believe Jesus died for us. Simple faith.
12) One word: Sin. Sin occurs. That’s what goes wrong. God is holy. He cannot abide sin. Thus, we cannot be saved if we spit in His face and continue to purposely sin.
13) Personal Question. My answer: He prods me when I’m on the wrong path until I turn. And then He keeps prodding and adjusting my radius. He is doing this now. I know because I’m restless again. When I get restless, it’s God saying “Um, yeah, you are not quite there yet.”
We all have free will to obey or not. This is a gift from God as well. If we wear His armor, we will persist and obey. If we turn from Him, we will Fall.
Conclusions: Notice how all of these questions refer to other passages. I’ve been in a pretty pessimistic mood this week if you couldn’t tell by my answers.
End Notes: Paul will explore this more in Romans 4 (next week) but the law predicted the saving grace of faith and Jesus. Jesus establishes the law.
Antinomianism (Greek for “anti” against and nomos “law”) was a word coined by Martin Luther during the Reformation when people questioned salvation. It means those who think they don’t have to obey the Law if they have Jesus. God’s grace discounts moral effort. Like I explained before, God cannot abide sin. Purposely sinning goes against everything God says. A new life in Christ means death to old evil desires (Galatians 5:24).
BSF referenced Romans 8:31, one of my favorite all-time verses. Here’s Chris Tomlin’s song (again, one of my favorites) that uses this verse repeatedly. Enjoy!
Conclusions to Lesson 6: So we covered a whopping 5 verses. But we read a ton more out of the Bible than just these. Next week we pick up the pace. As much as I don’t really enjoy these slower lessons, it does allow the verses to sink in, for those of us who are drowning in “busy” work to catch up, and to explore more in depth what God is telling each of us.
