Romans 8:12-17--Heirs with Christ

Romans 8:12-17
English Standard Version

Heirs with Christ​
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!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

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We are now moving onto the next logical topic in Paul's argument...though we will come back to the topic of sin, death, and the curse of the Law as Paul's arguments are circular in nature.  Now Paul is going to move onto an accounting argument about how our sin is a debt that we owe to God.  Not only do we have a debt that is impossible to be paid, but we are bankrupt and have no currency with which to pay off our sin debt with.  see Matthew 18:21-35 as we are all the servant of the King who owe a debt such as 10,000 talents (each talent was roughly one year's wages).  If you go and look at my blog for this passage in Matthew, I believe I priced it all out in how many years it would take him to pay off such a debt--it was multiple lifetimes so that not even his children or his grandchildren would have been able to pay off his debt for him, plus he was in no position to stop incurring debt.

The wages of sin is death as we've talked about before.  That's all that we're going to receive in eternity, and our sin usually hastens our death in the here and now and makes our lives more miserable in the here and now because we are in rebellion against God and that torments us, but also because we experience the consequences of sin that God has set up for our correction and reproof.

If we are led by the Holy Spirit and are sons of God by adoption then we are no longer to be slaves to sin, but are to be slaves to righteousness.  We should emulate our Father and people should be able to see that we are His adopted children.  Even though we don't look like Him, we talk like Him, act like Him and show that we love Him in all that we say and do.  Jesus is the only Son of God that is natural born and bears the exact image and likeness of His Father, but all of us should be identifiable as sons of God by the way in which we conduct ourselves.

How do we know that we are legitimate children of God?  The Holy Spirt assures us of our salvation and confirms us through the changes that He makes within us.  Conviction of sin and His chastisement and correction are primary ways in which we know that we are His children and that He loves us.  For those He loves, He disciplines and corrects.  Undisciplined children are illegitimate children (see Hebrews 12:3-17).  God will not let His children remain in sin nor let their sin go unpunished as His goal is make them into the image of His Son.

Paul then makes an interesting point that we might miss since we are not part of the Roman empire or Roman citizens.  Every adopted child was an equal heir with the natural-born children of the father, and the law prevented any adopted child from being disinherited.  Special treatment for one's own flesh and blood could not be exercised when it came to inheritance, in fact the law seemed to give preferential treatment to adopted children if anything since natural-born sons could be disinherited, but adopted sons could not.  So then, we are co-heirs with Jesus receiving an "equal share" in eternal life and the blessings that He secured through His death and resurrection.  He is the only Son of God but God the Father will look on us and see His Son whose image we are made in the likeness of and will not withhold any good thing from us that He would not withhold from the Son.  So then, we should expect to suffer like Him if we also expect to receive His inheritance and be glorified like Him....a different kind of glory, but a glory nonetheless.