Study Desk

I use this example from everyday life because you need help in understanding spiritual truths. In the past you offered the parts of your body to be slaves to your immoral and sinful thoughts. The result was that you lived only for sin. In the same way, you must now offer yourselves to be slaves to what is right. Then you will live only for God.

But now you are free from sin. You have become slaves of God, and the result is that you live only for God. This will bring you eternal life.

and I died spiritually. The command was meant to bring life, but for me it brought death.

I thank God for his salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord! So in my mind I am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful self I am a slave to the law of sin.

The law was without power because it was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do: He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that everyone else uses for sin. God sent him to be an offering to pay for sin. So God used a human life to destroy sin.

If we are God's children, we will get the blessings God has for his people. He will give us all that he has given Christ. But we must suffer like Christ suffered. Then we will be able to share his glory.

Everything that God made is waiting with excitement for the time when he will show the world who his children are. The whole world wants very much for that to happen.

Not only the world, but we also have been waiting with pain inside us. We have the Spirit as the first part of God's promise. So we are waiting for God to finish making us his own children. I mean we are waiting for our bodies to be made free.

We were saved to have this hope. If we can see what we are waiting for, that is not really hope. People don't hope for something they already have.

But we are hoping for something we don't have yet, and we are waiting for it patiently.

Also, the Spirit helps us. We are very weak, but the Spirit helps us with our weakness. We don't know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself speaks to God for us. He begs God for us, speaking to him with feelings too deep for words.

God already knows our deepest thoughts. And he understands what the Spirit is saying, because the Spirit speaks for his people in the way that agrees with what God wants.

We know that in everything God works for the good of those who love him. These are the people God chose, because that was his plan.

God planned for them to be like his Son. He chose them and made them right with him. And after he made them right, he gave them his glory.

So what should we say about this? If God is for us, no one can stand against us. And God is with us.

He even let his own Son suffer for us. God gave his Son for all of us. So now with Jesus, God will surely give us all things.

Who can say that God's people are guilty? No one! Christ Jesus died for us, but that is not all. He was also raised from death. And now he is at God's right side, speaking to him for us.

As the Scriptures say, "For you we are in danger of death all the time. People think we are worth no more than sheep to be killed."

But in all these troubles we have complete victory through God, who has shown his love for us.

for my own people. They are my brothers and sisters, my earthly family. I wish I could help them. I would even have a curse on me and cut myself off from Christ if that would help them.