Sunday Lesson Notes
April 20, 2025
READ ROMANS 8:5-8
- What does it mean to live by the Flesh?
- Living in a way to please our physical needs, urges and desires
- Usually living unrestrained and without intention and unwilling to seek out God’s desires
- What does it mean to live by the Spirit?
- We are living based on the direction we receive from God’s Holy Spirit that lives inside of us
- We receive the Gift of God’s Holy Spirit at Baptism and when we set our minds to follow the direction of the Holy Spirit we are able to make decisions based on how God wants us to live
- Living by the Spirit takes work, perseverance and a community that will help encourage us to keep our minds on God’s Spirit.
- When we set our minds on following God’s Spirit, we live a life of peace; but when our minds are set on meeting the desires of our flesh, this leads to death and an inability to submit to God’s laws. Those who live by the flesh cannot please God and cannot have peace.
READ ROMANS 8: 9-12
- How are we able to live in the realm of the Holy Spirit?
- We are able to live in the realm of the Holy Spirit because He lives inside of us since our baptism. We are no longer under the rules of the evil spirits of the world, but under the rules of God’s Spirit
- People that aren’t Christians are unable to live like Christ because they do not have the Holy Spirit. We belong to Christ because he placed his Holy Spirit in us.
- We need to understand that if someone does not claim to be a Chrisitian, we cannot hold them to the standard of living a Holy Spirit- led life in Christ.
- Also, someone can be a disciple- a learner or student of Christianity, but not a baptized Chrisitian, who has the Holy Spirit living in them.
- Sin leads to death. Our physical bodies will eventually die, but our spiritual, renewed bodies will be resurrected upon Christ’s return.
- Our obligation as Christians is to live by the Holy Spirit and to put to death the misdeeds of the flesh.
READ ROMANS 8:14-17
- As Christians we do not have to live in fear because we know God’s ways in our lives
- We will share in Jesus’s sufferings if we live a Christian life but we will also share in his glory in the end. We gain wisdom from suffering and going through trials. Jesus spent 30 years learning scriptures and working as a carpenter before he started his ministry and was therefore prepared to live the life God wanted him to live while on earth.
- What is this glory we are waiting to participate in?
- Creation will be restored
- Renewed Humans, A New Heaven and A New Earth will be revealed
- The Day to Day struggles to set our minds on things above and to fight against the flesh leads to being with God in Glory at the end of time.