Imitating Jesus
The Supremacy of Jesus Christ
Romans 8:6-11
The Message
5-8 Those
who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring
their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real
life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in
them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a
dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious,
free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God.
Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more
about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is
doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!
For Reflection
Life
is full of paradoxes. It seems the more one focuses on one's self the
more difficult it is to discover one's real self. However, if one
focuses on that which is superordinate, or larger than one's self, one
finds one's self in it. I suppose the moral is, "Take care to invest
your self into those things which are worthy of your most valuable
asset, your soul. Investing in what is true, just and laden with
compassion always seems to be a most wise choice."
Pray
that
you find in your faith in God those things which are true, just and
compassionate and which lead to the realization of God's plan for you
and for His Kingdom.
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