Journey through the Book of Romans

Paul declares our Sonship through the Holy Spirit Part 2

Romans 8:15 For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.” NKJV

Paul has declared every true child of God to be indwelt by God the Holy Spirit. He brings us into liberty, freedom, and deliverance from sin’s enslaving grip, grasp, and grappling hold upon our hearts that caused us nothing but misery when the consequences of our sins were made visible in our lives. Our Lord Jesus told the first disciples that God the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth sent to dwell with them and be in them to lead and guide them into all truth (John 16:13). All of us before we received our Lord Jesus Christ and was made alive from spiritual death by Him lived in slavery to sin constantly without relief being under the control of another spirit as Paul said here, Ephesians 2:2-3 “In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” NKJV

This was our past before Christ, but now our present and for all eternity we have received God the Holy Spirit and He is our eternal signed legally binding adoption papers making each one of us sons and daughters pouring into our hearts this truth and reality and causing our hearts to cry out to our Heavenly Father “Daddy, Daddy” just as a little 4 or 5 year old would do when their Father turns that key into the door and comes into his home. This crying out is a longing placed in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Since we are His child we can rest in His care for us in every aspect of our lives as we sojourn and pilgrimage on the earth as the aliens and strangers we now our to this world system by reason of our Heavenly adoption because our true citizenship and home is in Heaven even though we still live down here. Not only are we secure in our earthly needs being met by our Heavenly Father our eternity is secure and that truth and reality removes the fear of and takes the sting out of the reality of our physical death because we know we belong to our Heavenly Father by what our Lord Jesus Christ did in His death and resurrection from the dead and by the Holy Spirit living in us empowering us to will and do according to the Father’s good pleasure (John 8:34-36 & Hebrews 2:14-15).

Galatians 4:6-7 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. NKJV

2 Timothy 1:7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. NKJV

Romans 8:16 “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” NKJV

One day we were dead in our trespasses and sins not thinking, caring, or wanting to know God as our Father only the desire to gratify our sinful hearts. Then we were awakened from the dead as Paul affirms what is in itself a mysterious truth that cannot easily be explained, but all of us who have been made children of God by being given grace and faith by our Lord Jesus Christ qualifying us to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38-39) now know this yearning, and longing, and desire to talk to our Father in Heaven, to pour out the inner most recesses of our hearts to Him, and hear His Words to us as we open the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The Spirit of God testifies to us and in us that we now belong to God the Father because we have believed in or trusted in our Lord Jesus Christ (1 John 5:10-11). It is the regeneration and new birth done by God the Holy Spirit that makes us children of God and this is what He testifies to us and in us which immediately manifest or bears His fruit (Galatians 5:22-23).

1 Corinthians 2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. NKJV

2 Corinthians 1:21-22 Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. NKJV

Ephesians 1:13-14 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory. NKJV

Romans 8:17 “And if children, then heirs --- heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” NKJV

To be an heir with our Lord Jesus Christ is to tread the same path as He did while upon this earth as the God-Man (1 John 2:6). Our new birth is what makes us children of God and nothing else but that for we do not look to anything except the Holy Spirit’s testimony to our hearts that He has recreated us and made us new creatures enabling us to cry out with a loud voice “Daddy” Father and thereby making us heirs of all that belongs to Him through our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord was hated while He walked the earth and so will we His children be treated likewise. It was our Lord Jesus who said these words, Luke 6:26 Woe to you when all men speak well of you, For so did their fathers to the false prophets. NKJV and also these words, John 15:18-21 “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me.” NKJV

Our Lord Jesus said those who truly know Him and love Him and walk in the light and truth of His Word with a passionate love for Him and a desire to live godly in a world that desires to live ungodly will know and share in His sufferings as we testify that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only way and only truth and the only life that leads to Heaven and eternal life in Heaven. When we debunk every other spirituality and religion and so called faith we will have the forces of hell come against us, but we have victory always through our Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to the words our Lord Jesus spoke to the Apostle Paul when Paul was converted or born again as Paul testified or bore witness of these words of glorious truth before king Agrippa as Paul was headed to Rome where he would later be executed by beheading, Acts 26:17-18 So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’ NKJV Our Lord Jesus was and is the first-born Man from the dead living eternally in a glorified body and so will all of His sons and daughters likewise inherit a glorified body like His. This new glorified body is the first of our inheritance along with being partakers of all that is in Heaven and all the Universes that our Heavenly Father has created and He owns and operates from His Throne (Philippians 3:20-21).  

Philippians 1:27-30 Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me. NKJV

“The spirit of prayer is the fruit and token of the Spirit of adoption.” John Newton

“When we have accepted Jesus Christ, we have become akin to the Father; having become real children of God, we then have the spirit of sonship by which we can come into His presence and make known our wants in a familiar way.” A. C. Dixon

“If you are to enter into heaven, you must be a child of God adopted into His family by way of regeneration and new birth. For no earthly Mother having given birth to her child receives another Mother’s child into her care, how then are so many deceived into thinking they will go to heaven to live with the Father whom they are not related and do not even know.” Clifford D. Tate, Sr.

If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...

Sincerely in Christ,

                       

Clifford D. Tate, Sr.

Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…