Almost anytime it comes up in the Bible, there are lots of questions. I’m talking about the doctrine of election, the teaching about predestination. There are lots of questions about it, but the most important question is: How can I know if God picked me? Today, we’ll answer that question and look for evidence of our election. We’ll be looking at Romans 8:28-39.
Life after Easter #3 - Rethinking Life
We live in the days after Easter. That’s true for us historically. Jesus died and rose again on the third day over 2000 years ago. Hundreds of people saw him alive. All of them have fallen asleep. We live on the basis of their eyewitness testimony. We live in the days after Easter.
We also live in the days after Easter in another way. By our baptism, we, too, have been raised with Christ and have been seated with him in the heavenly places. We live after our own spiritual resurrection. We live after Easter and before eternity. And that presents us with tension, an after Easter and before a final Easter resurrection. It’s the already and not yet tension. We are already raised with Christ and we will later be raised again to eternal life. We are already perfect in Christ and not yet fully glorified. We are already redeemed, and yet we wait for the redemption of our bodies. We live between Easters.
Romans 8 means to help us maintain this tension. And this weekend, as we get into the second half of this great chapter, Paul is going to help us live in this tension by teaching us to rethink life. He’s going to help engage our minds and to think about what Easter means for our lives. He’s going to help us rethink life. We’re in Romans 8:18-30.
Life after Easter #2 - Easter Security
This is what Easter is all about: it is a detailing of the otherwise unbelievable love of God in the sacrifice of his own Son for the likes of us sinners. It is an unveiling of the incredible victory gained by Jesus over all our sins, even over death itself. God gave us his Son. His Son conquered the grave. His Spirit resurrected faith in our hearts. And we respond with overwhelming confidence! Come death, come angels or demons! Let the past haunt me and the present scare me, and the future terrifies me! It is all nothing; the love of God in Christ leaves me at peace and secure. In Romans 8, Paul shows us what life after Easter is like. More than that, he gives that post-Easter life to us.
This Sunday, we’ll be tackling Romans 8:12-17. And if there is one thing that Paul wants to give us there, it is Easter certainty. A life without doubts. A life without worries. A certain life. Life without the “if” in the middle (try spelling life without “if” sometime.).
Life after Easter #1 - Easter Consequences
We live after Easter. That is a fact. Jesus died and rose again, and we live after that fact. We also live after Easter in another way. We have had our own spiritual resurrection from death to life. We live after Easter in more ways than one. But we also live before the final resurrection. We live before Jesus returns to raise all the dead. We are in between resurrections. So, how do we live between resurrections? What is this after Easter life? Paul answers it for us. We begin a look at Romans chapter 8 today. We'll be looking at Romans 8:1-11.