pronounced over us the verdict of “innocent” that can never be reversed.

not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. 7Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children.

The Spirit’s presence in our lives inevitably produces fruit pleasing to God. Thus, we are secure. But the Spirit does not do his work apart from our response. I like the careful balance Paul achieves in verse 13: “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body” (italics added). Paul puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders: You n

sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.

Your God Is Too Small, the title of the popular book by J. B. Phillips some years ago, is a criticism that might be rightly made to many Christians and many churches. Out of pride in ourselves and our achievements and a culturally influenced belief in ourselves as “masters of our fate,” we have a hard time giving God his due.

God created the world, pronounced it good, and entrusted its care to human beings. True, God gave human beings the right to use its resources for our good. But in making us “rulers” (Gen. 1:26) of the created world, he does not give us the right to do anything we want with it. Rather, we are appointed as stewards of creation.

righteousness is to respond in faith to the gospel as it is preached.

their zeal is not based on knowledge.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.