Archive for category: GAMEtime Sharing

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Romans 9:14-21.  Let’s go!

Romans 9:14-21 (NIV)
14  What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
15  For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16  It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
17  For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
18  Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19  One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?”
20  But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'”
21  Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

On verses 14-21:  If it is God who chooses in advance who will be saved and who won’t be, then how can God blame those of us who don’t believe in Him? When we looked yesterday at Romans 9:1-13 I shared with you one reason why we cannot accuse God of being unfair for choosing in advance to save some and not others. 

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Romans 8:31-39.  Let’s go!

Romans 8:31-35 (NIV)
31  What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32  He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
33  Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.
34  Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

On verses 31-35:  In this passage Paul uses 7 rhetorical questions to express how immense, full, overpowering and all-surpassing is the love God has for us, such that we really have nothing to worry about when it comes to our lives, and every reason to thank God.  All 7 questions are rhetorical, meaning that Paul asks them to make a point rather than to pose a real question.  Let’s look at the points Paul is making with each question:

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Romans 8:9-17.  Let’s go!

Romans 8:9 (NIV)
9  You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
 
On verse 9:  Here in Romans Paul uses the names “Spirit”, “Spirit of God”, “Spirit of Christ” and “His Spirit” interchangeably since they are all referring to the same thing, the Holy Spirit.  How do you know if you have the Holy Spirit?  You believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, that He rose again and is alive today, and you’ve trusted Jesus to be your Saviour.  If that’s you, then the Bible says that the Holy Spirit lives inside you (1 Corinthians 6:19; 2 Corinthians 5:5) and you have the Holy Spirit.
 

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Romans 7:14-25.  Let’s go!

Romans 7:14-25 (NIV)
14  We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.
15  I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
16  And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good.
17  As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.
18  I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
19  For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.
20  Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

On verses 14-25:  In describing his struggle with sin, is Paul talking about what his experience was like before he became a Christian or his experience even after he became a Christian?  While arguments can be made for both sides, I believe in the final analysis it is best to see Romans 7:14-25 as Paul sharing very candidly his own personal struggle with sin and temptation even after he became a Christian and all the way till the time he as an apostle was writing Romans.

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Romans 7:1-6.  Let’s go!

Romans 7:1-6 (NIV)
1  Do you not know, brothers–for I am speaking to men who know the law–that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives?
2  For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
3  So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
4  So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.
5  For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.
6  But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

On verses 1-6:  Before you received Jesus Christ into your life, you lived in a system which New Testament writers like Paul call “the law”.  Under the law, the only way you could have any hope of a relationship with God or a place in heaven was to live your life perfectly in accordance with God’s written code.