Recent Sermons
Weekly Devotion
Rom. 8:12-15
12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
Paul begins this section of Rom. 8:12-15 with an assertion: Christians are debtors, but not to the flesh. In other words, they no longer owe or are obliged to the flesh’s tyranny and mastery because the Holy Spirit has them free. Therefore, based on how this passage starts, the reader may expect Paul to complete the analogy: believers are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (Rom. 8:12), but to the Spirit, to live according to the Spirit. But notice that Paul never goes there. Instead, the apostle transitions from believers as debtors to believers as adopted children of God.
This transition, from finance to family, is a powerful one, for a debtor obeys out of obligation, but a son obeys through his identity and instinct. That's why, in Rom. 8:15, Paul states that as adopted children of God, Christians cry, "Abba!" This is not a command, something Paul wants the church to do. Rather, the cry is instinctive, like a baby.
For instance, have you wondered why in almost every language, the baby-words for mom and dad are so simple: mama, dada, papa, baba, etc.? It is because these words are the easiest phonetic sounds for infants to produce. These sounds, technically labials (m, p, b), are instinctive because they occur during natural babbling, which adults subsequently reinforce with attention. And in the same way, by the transformative power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, believers are renewed to depend on God and in times of need, cry out to him. As J.I. Packer once wrote, “If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.”