2 Corinthians 7:1 - Why in the fear of God, because we have the Judgment Seat of Christ to which all those sealed in Christ will be present. This is every believer’s responsibility, we should conduct ourselves in a manner conducive to the job that God’s given us. It is our ambassadorship of the message of reconciliation, how am I to conduct myself given my ambassadorship?
Ephesians 4:1 - Your calling has not changed, it cannot change, so conduct yourselves in accordance with your calling. We are called to peace, this is how believers are to relate to other believers, but walk worthy of the vocation that belongs to you, because God has freely given it to you. How can those who have been justified freely, sanctified in Christ, how should those people be conducting themselves?
Colossians 3:14 - Agape is action love. There is a difference between upon and addition to, because when you put on love, you have simply taken all the seven states of mind listed in Colossians 3:12-13, and you have put movement to the attitude. Agape is the functional life of underlying attitude. Paul is saying I have given you the attitude, now let’s put feet to the attitude, grace attitude in action.
God never intended subjective feelings to be a replacement for objective truth, that is why he’s given us his Word. Only when inner peace lines up with the written Word of God Rightly Divided are we headed in the proper direction. Philippians 4:6-7, so when it comes to the peace department, God does NOT lead independently of the Word. So, we not only have peace with God, we can enjoy the peace of God, who shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ in every circumstance that we face.
Romans 6:16 - If sin leads to death, obedience would lead to life is what we would conclude, but that is not what Paul said. Paul did not use life in opposition to death. Is it possible for a believer to sin and have those sins lead to death? Yes! We know that an unbeliever’s sin leads to death, so the universal principle that sin leads to death is true.
How then can a believer die? They can die physically, death can come in many different ways. If you decided every morning to drink a fifth of whiskey, what are you going to do to your body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.
Galatians 6:8 - We can take this as a general principle. Life, in the physical sense, comes from making proper choices. Death, in a physical sense, can come from making improper choices in our lives. If we continue in a sinful lifestyle, and we continue not bringing the flesh into subjection, we can count on that lifestyle to take a toll on us.
Choices have consequences. The choices we make with serving self have an effect on others which will affect us. Death can take place in so many ways, it could be emotional, it can be relational. We do not need to start pointing at particular sins, but if we are a slave to sin, whatever sin we are serving, the sin that has us in bondage will exact its toll on our flesh.
You did not free yourself from sin, God did that in response to Christ’s faithfulness and your faith in Christ faithful sacrifice to have resolved God’s justice where your sins are concerned. You became a servant to the righteousness that is already yours, but some of us servants do not do a very good job of serving, do we?
Romans 8:1 - There is THEREFORE NOW, the Now pointing back to the reality of our justification and our sanctification. Based on justification and sanctification, Paul often uses that word “therefore” which means he is ready to draw a conclusion. Paul took us through justification through faith, telling us how God has dealt with that problem of sin. And, then he took us through sanctification, the issue with sanctification is not about sin, but about perfection; God perfected us, made us as equally righteous as God himself.
Now, Paul draws it all together, based upon the fact that you are already sanctified, already IN Christ, there is now no condemnation for you. If God sees you IN Christ and he sees you as being complete in your identity with Christ, totally identified with Jesus Christ in every aspect of Christ’s life and relationship with the Father, to condemn you who are IN Christ, would be the same thing as to condemn Jesus Christ. Colossians 2:10
There are those who say the final portion of Romans 8:1 where it says, “who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit” should not be there at all. However, the thought of not walking after the flesh, but after the spirit does indeed appear down in Verse 4 and is in the manuscript of the Majority text, so that idea is a valid idea. So, rather than ignoring them altogether, why not just explain them.
Walking after the flesh is not talking about committing sins, but with placing one’s confidence in the capacity of their flesh to provide righteousness through performance. Rather than having Christ’s righteousness freely imputed to their account, the person who is walking after the flesh is the person laboring under the false notion that they can earn their righteousness through their performance. They are laboring under the false notion that there is capacity in their flesh to be right before God, that is precisely what Israel was doing.
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