Context -- If we approach Romans 8 from the standpoint of
Pentecost Sunday, we are invited to view the work of the Spirit in the life of
Christ’s followers. This section is entitled, for instance, in the NRSV as "Life
in the Spirit."
No Condemnation -- Our inability to maintain a relationship based on
works leads us to the great and liberating piece in Romans 8: "There is therefore now
no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Spirit within us -- On the other side of our passage, Paul moves us to
the telos-the End-toward which all creation is awaits on tiptoes in eager expectation. The
Spirit’s role in this blessed future of the people of God is the Spirit within us and
creation is somehow part of the yearning and part of the hope we have for what lies ahead
of us.
Ignatius of Antioch (160 AC) saw the Spirit described as a rope that
lifted humanity from earth to heaven.
The theme of Christian assurance-the
Spirit’s witness with the human spirit of being an adopted child of God-was a central
concern for John Wesley’s theology. He would have scored a high "N" for
intuition on the Myers-Briggs Personality Test! For Wesley was "intuitionist in some
ways," borrow from Methodist historian, Albert Outler. Wesley wants both a subjective
and objective testimony of assurance.
But what is that testimony of God’s Spirit? How does he ‘bear witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God’? . . . the testimony of the Spirit is an
inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly ‘witnesses to my
spirit that I am a child of God’; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given himself
for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.
The "evidence" of kinship with God or better, the inward conviction that we
belong to God, "is a new attitude to God, and that attitude finds expression in words
which indicate the peculiar intimacy of our relationship.
• The patriarchal society which is the backdrop of Paul’s writing would have
understood well the issues of kinship and adoption into the family. Those who are led by
the Spirit have gone well beyond formal membership in an ecclesiastical body to claim a
standing of kinship with God and as such, equal heirs among God’s family.
What does it mean to have the
Spirit enable us to cry "Abba! Father!" Is Paul teaching that there is an
internal "yes" or "witness" that Christians sometime sense in the
interior room of their soul?