(Due to technical difficulties, we did not have an audio recording, here is the manuscript)
Good Morning, my name is Noah, I am one of the pastors here at Pillar. I’m honored to be with you this morning. This past Wednesday I had the opportunity to to speak at one of our partner churches, Valleydale Baptist, in Birmingham, AL during their VBS. We are their missions spotlight this year so they have been praying for us all week and they have been raising money for us to be able to have our STEAM camp in a few weeks. While I was there I was telling the kids about our church, who we are and what we do. I was telling the kids that we are in a military community, which means a lot of the people in our town and in our church serve or have served in the military. As I was talking to them I was explaining to the kids that the military protects our country and our freedoms, but one of the major sacrifices they make is that they move a lot and spend a lot of time away from their families. We did an open mic so the kids could ask any questions they wanted about the church or about the military. It was a really cool experience. One thing I want to share is that after I was finished speaking and I was starting to leave, the Missions pastor stopped me and told me that one of the kids had a special gift for the military people in our church. So he handed me this little Bible and told me that the kid asked if I could pass it along to one of our service members. Super sweet. So, if one of you guys who are on active duty wants to be the recipient of this gift from this young man, I’ve been instructed to pass along to you. If no one claims it, I am going to choose someone, either way I am not leaving here with it.
Well, this morning we are continuing our summer series titled “Who is God?” This is an impossible question to answer and we are not prideful enough to think that we can or will come up with the complete correct answer, but it is the most important question we could ask. How we answer the question “Who is God?” is the foundation of everything else in our life. How we live, what we care about, how we think or act, how we perceive the world around us. All these things are impacted by who we believe God is. As a church, we want to look to the Bible for our answer. God has graciously revealed a part of Himself to us in the Bible. So over the next few weeks we are going to look at who the Bible says God is. Again, even through the words of scripture, we are not going to be able to fully understand and completely define who God is. He cannot be put into a box like that. But over the summer, we are going to look at 10 aspects or characteristics of God that will help us have a better understanding or a more complete understanding of who God is. Last week we looked at Genesis 1 & 2 to see that God is our Creator, today we are going to look at Romans 8 to see how God is our Father, then over the next few weeks we will see that God is Just, God is our Savior, God is our Helper, God is Love, God is glorious, God is unchanging, God is our Defender, and God is Holy from all over the Bible. My prayer is that by the end of this series, you and I will have a better understanding of who God is. To help us, we’ve come up with an imperfect, working answer to the question “who is God?” So who is God? God is the holy, just, and gracious Creator, who is actively working for my good and His glory. He is worthy! Can we say that altogether?
Today we are going to be in Romans 8:12-17, and I so badly wish we had time to sit here and dig into this whole chapter. Sadly, we do not have the time, but we are going to focus on God’s role as our Father. Our statement of faith says this about God the Father, “God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all powerful, all knowing, all loving, and all wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.” This last sentence I believe really sets the table for the passage we are studying together this morning, “He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.” That is what we are going to see in this passage and throughout the Bible we see God being fatherly in His attitude toward all people. How God relates to us as Christians, is the same way good fathers relate to their child, with love, compassion, mercy, steadfastness, protection and provision. Disciplining us with the purpose of redemption and never forsaking or abandoning us. There is nothing we can do to outrun a Father’s love.
If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word… This is written by the Apostle Paul to the christians in Rome … READ Romans 8:12-17.
Here is the main thing I want you to walk away from this passage with, and what I believe this text is telling us about who God is, I believe that from this text, we should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father. We should have an unfailing confidence that God is a compassionate and Holy Father that loves us completely and securely and adopts us into His family and into closeness with Him. We should have complete assurance that GOD is our loving and perfect Father.
When I was 10 years old my family started the adoption process to adopt my sister, Betchina aka Bebe, from Haiti… She was 4 when we started this process and we were told that it would take about 2 years, well after her paperwork was held for ransome a number of times and the whole adoption process restarted 3 or 4 times, several corrupted government workers making my parents jump through hoop after hoop, and 9 long years later, 13 year old Bebe was finally able to come join the rest of our family in March 2020. If you remember the state of the world at the time, everything was shutting down due to Covid. So, my dad flew to Haiti by himself in an attempt to get her home before all air travel stopped. To make a long story short, by the time my dad got to Betchina and they made an escape attempt, the public airlines had stopped all flights. My dad had been waiting 9 long years for his family to be all together, and he was determined that he was going to get himself and Bebe back home no matter what. So they would go to the airport everyday and beg and plead to get on a plane to America, and were denied day after day. Well one day my dad decided he was not taking no for an answer anymore so he and Bebe went to the airport and when they got there the lady at the desk, just like the days before denied them access. I wish Bebe was here to tell this story because it is much funnier coming from her, but according to Betchina when they lady denied them access to get on the plane home my dad started yelling and making a big scene and yelled at the lady “you see this girl I’m standing here with, she’s my daughter and we’ve been adopting her for 9 years and I am not getting on this plane without her and I am bringing her home today whether you like it or not” Now, I tell you this story not to give you new travel advice, I’m pretty sure if you tried that on your next flight you’d end up in jail. But I tell you this story to illustrate that a Father’s love for their child is an incredibly powerful and special type of love. One time when my sister told that story after my dad had passed, she said something to the effect that the moment with dad in the airport and him yelling at the lady was the moment that really confirmed in my sister’s heart and mind that she was a daughter of a father who loved her. Our earthly fathers are still sinful and fail us. Some of us in this room today have really great fathers, and some of us have bad fathers. This passage shows us that no matter who our earthly father is or what he has done, that we have a perfect and loving Father in God. A Father full of compassion, mercy, grace, and steadfastness. You and I should have complete assurance that GOD is our loving and perfect Father.
Let’s look at V.12-13 “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 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.”
This passage opens with “so then, brothers” meaning that what Paul is about to say is true because of what he just said. Because of that, this is now true. Paul is making an argument, a case, that builds off itself. So for us today to understand why V.12-17 are important, we need to look at V.1-11. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” The point is that we’ve been set free from the law of sin and death through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The punishment our sin requires belongs to Jesus, and the reward Jesus is set to receive belongs to us now as well. He bears our sinfulness and we bear His sonship. This so then is building off the truth we see in V.2-4, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.(We have been made free from sin through Jesus) For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law (The debt, the payment we are required to make because of our sinfulness) might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Those who belong to Christ, who have been made new creations through the Gospel, who have been made spiritually alive by the Holy Spirit have had our sin paid for by Christ Jesus. The debt our sin required is paid in full by Jesus.
Back to V.12, so then brothers, because of the Gospel, because Jesus paid the punishment we were supposed to, we are debtors. We are someone who has a debt, who owes another. But look what Paul says, “not to the flesh,” we do not owe the flesh. We are not debtors to our sinful nature. We do not owe the sinful flesh anything, it has only cursed us and made us unworthy to be with God. The flesh, the sinfulness that has corrupted our hearts from the first moment we were created has only brought us pain, suffering, and separation from God our Father so we owe it nothing. It has made us enemies of God, it holds us in slavery.
Paul continues by saying “to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die,” We do not owe our sinful flesh our lives, meaning that because Jesus has set us free we do not have to please the sinful desires that formulate in our hearts. Paul says right here at the beginning of V.13, “if you live according to the flesh you will die,” This does not mean we will die a physical death, V.10 tells us that all will die a physical death. Living according to the flesh means that we practice, partake, and participate in the sinfulness of the world and the end result of that way of life is eternal, spiritual, death; total separation from God.
Look real quick at V.7-8 “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” The flesh goes against God and we are enemies of God. So, if we live according to the flesh, meaning that if the worldly and sinful failing and fleading desires of our sin are more important to us than God is, then we will spend eternity apart from Him. If we live for success, money, power, glory, family, relationships, praise of others, whatever our heart desires, if those things sit on the throne of our lives then we are headed towards death. Without the Gospel, without God, we are in a state of lostness and complete separation from God. The result of that is that we live for the flesh.
Look at the 2nd half of V.13 “but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Why must we put to death the deeds of the body? Because they lead to death, if we do not kill them, they will kill us. We do not have the strength, power, or wisdom to overcome the deeds of the flesh. The flesh has a death grip on us, we are in so much debt to sin that we are never getting out of it on our own. But, praise the Lord, because God our loving and perfect Father leads us by the Holy Spirit to defeat the flesh. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has made way for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and lead us into victory over our sinful flesh. We are too entangled with sin and weak to defeat the flesh on our, but by God’s grace, through His divine empowerment we are empowered and strengthened to put to death the deeds of the body. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead, is the power that gives you the strength to death the deeds of the body. God creates a new heart in us and we are reborn.
How does this help us have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father? I pray that you can see the threads of Fatherly love that is all throughout the Gospel. Our Father saw us under the law of sin and death, too weak and sinful to break free. He saw that our flesh was hostile to Himself and that we could not please Him. We were rebellious and wicked towards God, but instead of abandoning us, seeking revenge on us, destroying us, He had compassion on us. Our Father is not scared off by our sin or rebellion. By yet “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” He did that as a loving Father to redeem us back to himself so we are no longer separated from Him and He is glorified. If God our Father does all that for us, sending Jesus to bear the full weight of our sin and rebellion so we can have the full reward of intimacy with God, then we can have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father.
Look at V.14, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.”
Did you get that? All. no matter who you are. If you are socially outcast, unlovable by those around you, needy, unwanted, rich, poor, weak, strong, male, female, old, young, if you are led by the Spirit of God then you are a Son of God. Adoption into God’s family is for anyone who is led by the Spirit, there is no partiality in God’s family. If the Holy Spirit has made you alive in Christ and leads you to put to death the deeds of the body, you are brought into the family of God. If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a child of God. Meaning that God is our Father and we are His children, we belong to God. He is our protector, providor, and sustainer. He loves us far greater than we love Him, He has compassion on us, He is merciful, He is faithful and trustworthy, He is present, He is all-knowing. Just like our memory verse, Exodus 34:6-7, says, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
What does it mean to be a son of God? Everyone is a child of someone else, and every parent has failed their child. Some parents have failed their child in really traumatic, damaging, harmful ways. Some of you have experienced the effects of the brokenness of sin through the people who were supposed to care for you. As children we have to depend on our parents, and our parents are flawed and imperfect, so our dependence on them only goes so far.
This one time my mom and I were coming home from an international trip, we had spent a week in Haiti visiting Bebe about 2 years into our adoption journey. My dad was supposed to pick us up from the airport and take us home. We’d had a long trip and a long travel day, I think it was about 13 hours of travel time. So we get off the plane around 11pm and go get out bags and dad texts us, Hey I’m outside ready for pick up, so we go outside and he is nowhere to be found. So my mom calls and says “Clint, where are you?” He said “I’m right outside the door” and then my mom said “we don’t see you” and after a long pause I heard “what airport are you at?” Come to find out my dad had gone to the wrong airport and he had gone to the wrong airport, one that was over an hour away from the one we were at. We depended on my dad and he failed us. As all human parents do. Our dependence on them can only go so far, good parents and bad parents both have their limits. However, God is not limited by the flesh or by sin, He is the perfect Father. God is a Father that is loving, kind, compassionate, merciful, He is our comforter, our protector, our provider, our help in time of need, our stainer. He never abandons us, He never fails us. We should have complete assurance that GOD is our loving and perfect Father and will never fail us.
Look at V.15, this just amplifies our assurance that GOD is our loving and perfect Father. “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!”
Do you see the amazing, Fatherly love God has for us? God does not give us a spirit of slavery, but of adoption. We are not slaves to God, but we are sons and daughters of God. The Most High. The God that Psalm 8 says “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place” The one that hung the stars in the sky has looked upon you in your helplessness and sinfulness and said “That is my child, and I am their Father.”
Paul says we do not receive the spirit of slavery. Which expresses this wonderful truth about God’s Fatherly characteristic in relation to us. That God did not make us His robots or His slaves. We do not serve God as slaves and He does not treat us as slaves. God’s attitude and actions towards us are not evilly authoritarian, violent, dehumanizing, fear-driven, manipulative, indifferent to our suffering. God does not give us a spirit of slavery. Remember what our statement of faith says, “He is fatherly in His attitude toward all men.” This goes back to V.12, “we are debtors” We are not debtors to the flesh, but to the Spirit of God. Because He saved us, made us new, and adopted us. We are indebted to God, but we are not indebted to Him like a slave is indebted to their master.
Back in the time Paul was writing this, slavery was not thought of in the same unjust, racially motivated way that our 21st century America thinks about slavery. Slavery in the time of Paul would happen for a variety of reasons, one of the main reasons people were enslaved is because they were too poor to provide for themselves so they’d sell themselves into slavery for work. They’d work as a servant for a master, but they were seen as property not people. What Paul is trying to point out to the Roman church is the fact that God is all-powerful. That God could have decided to make us His slaves to do His will. God could have, in His complete and unmatched power, force us into a spirit of slavery. Not caring about who we are, how we are, or about us at all. He could have used us to complete His plans and purposes like we use our Robot vacuums or ChatGPT. Those things do what we say, when we say it, and how we want it done. If they don’t we throw them out and replace them without a second thought. God could have related to us that way. He has the power, the authority and maybe even the reason to. We are sinful and rebellious. The text says we are hostile to God V.7. If God related to us in a spirit of slavery, when we experience God we would experience terror, horror, fright, trepidation, loathing, disgust. We would be fearful of God. Now, the Bible does talk about “Fearing the Lord” but it is two different types of fear, the Biblical fear of God is awe, reverence, humility, and submission to God’s greatness, holiness, and authority. In the spirit of slavery, we’d experience God in a terrifying, horrifying, and frightful way. We’d be like a child terrified of their father.
Praise the Lord, V.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!”
This Spirit of adoption points to the type of Father God is, He is not a Father that instills fear in His children, making them fearful or scared to come to Him, but the type of Father God is, is a Father that is loving, kind, compassionate, merciful, so His children come to Him and cry out to their comforter, their protector, their provider, their help in time of need, their stainer. We experience His great love, compassion, mercy, slowness to anger, steadfastness and faithfulness. We do not need to be afraid of God, but we should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father.
Our adoption into the family of God means that the previous relationship we had with our flesh is cut off. V.2, we were under the law of sin and death, we were apart of the broken family of sin, but we have been set free in Christ Jesus and God has chosen to give us new life and bring us into His family, and in the family of God, look at V.6, there is life and peace because we are God’s and nothing is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord v.39.
Really quick, look back at V.12, we are debtors, but we are not debtors to the flesh, but rather to the Spirit. We are indebted to the Spirit of God, but not as slaves so we have no reason to fear, but we are indebted as Sons. Meaning we have complete and total freedom because we have security in God as our loving and perfect Father. No matter what we have done, who we are, how far away we are from God, God is a perfect and loving Father. Our sinful hearts do not change God’s fatherly love, but God’s fatherly love changes our sinful hearts.
Are you starting to get the picture of the type of Father God is? A loving and perfect Father that will never abandon you. Turn with me to Luke 15:16, this is Jesus’s parable of the Prodigal Son, this son had told the Father to give him his inheritance, basically telling the dad he hates him and wishes he was dead, and when the father gave him his inheritance the son ran off to a far off country and squandered his property in reckless living. The son wasted his inheritance for the passions of the flesh and was left with nothing, look at V.16 to pick up the story… “And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.” And he arose and came to his father.” So this son is going to beg to enter the father’s house as a servant, a slave, because he sinned, rebelled, and brought all sorts of shame on the father. Sounds just like us right? This is us with God, we are sinful and deserving of separation from God. But, here is the type of Father God is… V.20 “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” The Father sees his son from far off, the son that caused so much pain, so much shame, so much heartbreak. The response of the Father is not hate, not disgust, not wrath, not retaliation, not animosity, not loathing, not hostility, not vengeance, or even punishment, but the Father responds with compassion. This Father runs to his child and receives him as His son. Not as a slave, but as a son. That is us and praise the Lord that is God our Father.
We should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father because God pursues us as sons and daughters, not as slaves. And we can cry out to Him. V.15, “whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” “Abba” is the Aramaic word for Father, it is a kind, loving, affectionate, endearing term. A lot of people liken it to our version of a child calling their father “daddy.” It is a term that represents relational closeness. Through the Gospel, we are brought into such a close relationship with God as our Father, that we can cry out to Him without any reservation, or fear or worry that He will fail us. God is a trustworthy Father. We can go to Him and He will be there for us, we can take all of our anxieties, fears, sufferings, hurts, disappointments, and come to our Father and He will never turn us away. Like a good Father does, we have full access to God. Nothing we do will ever make God say that we are too far gone, that we are too sinful, that we are out of reach for God’s grace and mercy. We should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father.
One of the questions that some of us might be asking right now is, how can I be sure I am a child of God? How can I have complete assurance that God has adopted me? The text answers that question and brings us complete assurance, V.16. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God”
The Holy Spirit, God Himself, brings evidence, validity, confidence to our spirits, our souls, our person, that we belong to God as His children. We know we can cry out to God, Abba, Father because the Holy Spirit has made us alive in Christ and is proof of our adoption to God. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, fully divine. It is the perfect character and Spirit of Jesus living inside the hearts of every Christian. He seals the believer unto the day of final redemption. His presence in the Christian is the guarantee that God will bring the believer into the fullness of the stature of Christ. Meaning that when the Holy Spirit, God’s Spirit, lives inside of you, that is the seal of adoption, the confirmation of salvation. It is like our last name changing, it is proof that you belong to this family. The Holy Spirit bearing witness or dwelling within you is complete and total assurance that you are a child of God and God is your loving Father.
Paul is saying, if we have the Holy Spirit, then we are children of God. What does it mean for us to be children of God? V.17, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God 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.”
If we are children of God, then we are heirs, someone who is set to receive an inheritance. We are going to inherit God and His glory. We are“heirs of God” meaning that as children of God, we are going to inherit God, we will receive closeness with our Father. But Paul also says, “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” We are co-heir with Jesus. How? Because Jesus Christ bore the punishment reserved for you and I. Our sinfulness required a death to satisfy the debt, a debt we cannot afford to pay. So Jesus, left the throne room of heaven, was born of man, lived a sinless life and died a sinner’s death. Jesus, the one and only Son of God paid our debt so that we could receive His inheritance of closeness with God and God’s glory. Because of the Gospel, Jesus’s death and resurrection, we are set to inherit God with Jesus Christ. The reward Jesus is set to receive, we also get to receive, which is closeness with our Father and that we will be glorified with Christ Jesus. Look at V.29, the Children of God will be conformed to the image of His Son. We will be transformed into the image of Jesus, the likeness and character of Jesus. Jesus became like us, man, so that we could become like Him, radiating the glory of God.
Paul says “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” What is this suffering that Paul is talking about? I thought once we are children of God we won’t suffer anymore? I think V.22-23 brings some clarity to this suffering Paul is talking about.
Our suffering is the suffering of this present time. The complete and total brokenness of this world. Through the Holy Spirit making us alive and making us new creations being transformed into the image of God, through our adoption, we are given a clearer picture of the true nature and reality of the sinful and broken world around us. The sufferings that we will endure are the effects of sin in the world and the more we are transformed into the image of Christ, the louder our groaning will get, because we will see the truer version of this brokenness. The text says that “we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly.” The more we are transformed into the image of Jesus, the more we reflect the character of Christ, the more we will groan and suffer because of this world. The sin around us will break our heart more and more. A marker of spiritual maturity, is how broken hearted are you over the sin of this world? One day, when I had been a Christian for about 3 years, I was riding in the car with a pastor friend of mine and we got on the topic of abortion. I knew that a child in the womb has moral status as an image bearer of God and that God is the only just giver and taker of life. I knew that in my head, but my heart did not break at the sin in our world. The brother I was with however, was visibly upset and heartbroken over the issue of abortion. At the time, he had been walking with the Lord for more than 20 years, growing more and more into the image of the Father. His suffering and groaning over the sin in the world was much greater than mine.
We do not suffer without purpose however, “we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.” We become perfect image bearers of God and full children of God, experiencing closeness with God. Fully reflecting God and His glory so that He is given all the praise, honor and glory He rightly deserves and we fulfill the purpose we were created for by giving glory to God. We should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father because even though we suffer in this life, we will receive glory. 1 Peter 5:4 says “when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.” When our Father brings us home for good and our adoption is complete, we will receive glory because we will belong to our Father fully, perfectly, completely, eternally. The sufferings of this world will completely fade away in comparison to the glory we will receive. Look at V.18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
If you are not a child of God, God has sent His own Son to pay the debt you could not. Jesus paid our sin debt with His own blood so that you could be made right with God, no longer separated from Him but adopted into His family forever. Jesus received the punishment reserved for us and we will receive the reward with Christ. “Why should I gain from His reward, I cannot give an answer, But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom”The text says “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Ask yourself the question this morning, am I a child of God? If the answer is no, you can be adopted into the family of God through Jesus. The Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. You will be a child of God and if you are a child of God, then you should have complete assurance that God is our loving and perfect Father.