Thursday Romans 8:31-39

Our promise is heaven.

Click here for an online Bible. Romans 8:31-39

“What shall we say in response to this?” Response to what? To the concept that the Holy Spirit is within us helping us to follow God. That God is molding us to be like Christ.

“If God is for us, who can be against us.” Satan may be against us. The world may be against us. The demons may be against us. The corruption of life with sickness and pain may be against us. But God is for us, so all of those others don’t matter.

We are being molded to be like Christ and we see what happened with Him. He served God faithfully then was taken to heaven to be with the Father. We have the same promise.

Christ is now in heaven pleading our case with the Father. Satan accuses us, but the Holy Spirit prays for us and God the Son pleads our case to God the Father. Our promise is eternity with God in heaven.

But for now, we are in the world. Paul quotes Psalm 44:22, “For your sake, we are being slaughtered like sheep.” The Psalmist was crying out to God. We are being slaughtered for you! where are you? Paul says that we still face physical opposition and may face death, but we can do that because we can stand on the promises of God.

None of those things that oppose us can separate us from God, because it is God who holds us to Himself. We do not maintain our salvation with God based on what we do. God saved us by grace and nothing can undo that salvation.

Even in the face of opposition, we are more than conquerors. What are we conquering? We are overcoming the opposition to follow Christ. The world wants to trip us up. But, we can follow God because it is God who empowers us to follow Him, so we conquer the opposition.

This makes me think of spiritual warfare. The purpose of spiritual warfare is to distract us and dissuade of from following God. We defeat spiritual warfare by following God.