Romans 8 still haunts us the with question, what will it look like to walk in the Spirit (today, this week, this year)? But would we be surprised to discover that we are already doing just that, that the Spirit is already having its way with our hearts, and in ways we often don’t recognize? How many of us feel that we’re not praying enough, that our prayer life is not what it ought to be? Is there some spiritual…

What a happy and blessed life belongs to those who do not follow the paths of wickedness and cynicism, but their delight is in God’s law, and they meditate on it day and night. Here is how the book of Psalms begins. Beatitude, an excited pronouncement of blessing, happiness, and good fortune for those who allow themselves to be rooted in a daily diet of scripture, contrasted with the emptiness of being rooted in nothing. These blessed, happy, fortunate ones…

Romans 8 hits us with some astonishingly good news, but also continues to haunt us with the question – what will it look like to walk in the Spirit? Not for the sake of “getting” the Spirit (that already happened (8:9); the Spirit is in us just as we are in the Spirit!), but for the sake of awakening us to what the Spirit is doing in and around us. Fortunately, in Romans 12, we find a robust answer to…

In Romans 8, Paul has established that the death and resurrection of Christ has freed the baptized, Christ-centered community to “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (8:4).” What does this look like? When the Spirit is truly in the driver’s seat, what does daily life look like? First and foremost, Paul defines life in the Spirit by what it is not. It is not life lived in the way of “flesh.” Flesh is the New…