Read Chapter 8
Let’s continue our lessons on spiritual formation or spiritual growth using the Letter to the Romans as our guide.
Paul now turns to living in the Spirit of God. If we have gone through the stages of awareness of our capability for sin into faith in God and into understanding of God’s grace provided through Jesus’ death and resurrection, then we need to know how to live in this new life. That will more or less be the theme of the rest of the letter.
He begins with a little recap of the last chapter (understanding that he didn’t right in chapters, but a careful reader can begin to see his outline), “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death”
Paul was so thoroughly taught in the law of the Pharisees, that he just cannot escape that thought. He tries here to incorporate a word known to the Jewish followers in Rome, and probably known to the Gentile, as well. Law. But he tries to redefine law from rigid rules to life in the Spirit. We must be careful not to get caught up in deciphering his unfortunate wordplay.
Let’s consider the Spirit some more.
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”
I love a word that comes to us from making a pot of tea—infusion. As a contemplative, that word has experiential meaning for me. But even if you aren’t particularly contemplative, the feeling of a new Spirit residing in you should happen. It will give life to your mortal body, as Paul says. In another letter, Paul tried to define this more completely as the “fruit of the Spirit”—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Who wouldn’t want to have those qualities in their life? These are also visible to anyone you meet.
Further, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.” Let’s pause a moment and consider our weaknesses. Perhaps we have deep feelings of emotions such as grief, despair, anxiety, worry (once my favorite), and the like.
Paul offers a reason for hope, “…for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Having built a formidable argument about God’s power and God’s grace, he asks the rhetorical question, “If God is for us, who is against us?”
And he concludes these thoughts with the bold declaration:
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Faith Venture 
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