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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
July 5, 2024
Reading: Romans 8:14-17
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
Paul might have been an incomparable apostle; but he certainly wasn’t a good marketing guy. Here’s a great idea for church growth: Christian faith is your opportunity to suffer for God. Come join us!
In this short excerpt from Romans my eyes get stuck on the term “provided”. Its equivalent might be “insofar as.” Are we required to endure torment as a mark of our faith (many would say yes)? Is God’s grace dependent on our first experiencing hardship or pain? (This can be a very tempting and effective ploy.)
To what degree, however, did Paul mean to be prescriptive in writing these words? I ask this often when reading Biblical texts. Did Paul intend these verses to apply universally to all Christians across all time? Or was he speaking only to the church to whom his letter was addressed – within that limited, circumstantial scope? If the latter, can we read these sentences differently, as being primarily descriptive of the specific context of the church in Paul’s time? Was he, in point of fact, telling this particular church community, which was already suffering, how they could carry on?
I am most inclined, Christianly speaking, to err on the side of freedom rather than obligation. Paul was not stating that the faithful ought to suffer, or that they ought to try to suffer as Jesus did, or that their role was to be like Jesus in his passion so that their reward would be great in heaven. They, and we, are already heirs of grace. Staying true to this provides all the faithful, following the example of the church in Rome, the freedom not to be overwhelmed by suffering if it comes. For death itself has been swallowed up in victory.
The freedom of the Gospel allowed Paul to say that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.” It’s a magnificent progression that never loses a sense of the possible and the good. And this freedom is the fundamental message of the church.
Prayer
Keep our eyes open, O God, to the beauty that is always present, and blind us not to the ugliness which always threatens to spoil it. May we be continually prepared to see the goodness in humanity, and at the same time not be unmindful of the evil into which we so easily slip. We ask these things in remembrance of him who had the eyes to see both the goodness and the meanness in us.
Theodore Parker Ferris: Give Us Grace
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