No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions…perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life. 

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.Romans 8:5-6
I first wrote these meditations in the early months of the COVID pandemic when everyone was isolated at home, and it struck me how much I and other brothers and sisters needed to meditate deeply upon God’s word. Essentially, I was attempting to help my church and anyone else who would read these do precisely what Paul says Christians do in Romans 8:5 – setting our minds on the things of the Spirit. Even now, this reminds me of a famous sermon C.S. Lewis preached in Oxford in 1939, right at the outset of WW2 and during the German blitzkrieg where German bombs were continually dropping on England day and night. Lewis, asking what should students do in the midst of such turmoil, when the world was seemingly coming to an end, answered thus:
“The peculiar difficulty imposed on you by the war is another matter, and of it I would again repeat what I have been saying in one form or another ever since I started—do not let your nerves and emotions lead you into thinking your predicament more abnormal than it really is. Perhaps it may be useful to mention the three mental exercises which may serve as defenses against the three enemies which war raises up against the scholar.
The first enemy is excitement—the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defense is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable.
Favorable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.”
In essence, Lewis maintains that we should give our minds and effort to business as usual, as best we can. I think this is right in line with what Paul is getting at in Romans 8, verses 5-6. No matter the situation or context, no matter the “craziness” going on around us, the Christian is that person who sets themselves to still thinking about and focusing on the things of the Spirit. Are there distractions? Yes! There will always be distractions – some certainly greater than others. But perhaps it is our focus on God in the midst of distraction which is so necessary for our growth and faith and life. Isn’t this what Paul says in verse 6?
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The mere desire of wanting that which is not yours, and entertaining that desire with any delight and approval and yearning, is itself rebellion against God, even if you have not outwardly acted on that desire. You may not have made the choice to take any action at all in taking away your neighbor’s wife from him, but the thought, the desire, still condemns you before God’s holy law.

The Law, though written on tablets of stone, is still able to condemningly penetrate into the depths of our hearts, and the last Commandment leaves us all with our “mouths stopped”, as Paul argues (Romans 3:19), that in our own strength we are unable to love the Lord our God with all our heart. Which is the tenth commandment? The tenth commandment is, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:17).
To covet (in the Hebrew khamad) is to desire and in and of itself the word does not alone denote anything evil or wrong. The word is used for legitimate desires as it’s used in Psalm 19:10, “More to be desired are [God’s word] than gold, even much fine gold.”[1] What makes coveteous desire wrong is the object of that desire, namely, if it what you’re desiring does not belong to you because it already belongs to someone else. Hence the repeated emphasis of thy neighbor’s house, neighbor’s wife, neighbor’s ox, etc. This is the sin of envy. Seeing something or someone that belongs relationally or legally to someone else and wanting – desiring – that person or thing. And therein lies the penetrating depth of this commandment.
It’s not merely acting on the desire that’s sinful. It is the desire itself that is sinful. That is, the mere desire of wanting that which is not yours, and entertaining that desire with any delight and approval and yearning, is itself rebellion against God, even if you have not outwardly acted on that desire. You may not have made the choice to take any action at all in taking away your neighbor’s wife from him, but the thought, the desire, still condemns you before God’s holy law. Does not Jesus himself strike this same note when he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28)?
Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley are absolutely right when they say that “the desire for evil is evil and arises from a sinful heart.”[2] There’s much to ponder here, especially in our current climate where many folks, even from within the church, argue that desire – any desire at all – is not evil or wrong, but only acting on those desires. Not so, according to the tenth commandment.
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In heaven we will be finally free from sin and death. But now, even though sin and death surround us and are still a part of our who we are, now in Christ and by His Spirit, we can actually begin living life more and more in step with what heaven will be like! Praise God for such freedom and power.

“For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” – Romans 8:2
As we move from the great declaration of verse 1, that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” we now begin to see in verse 2 the reason, or the grounds, for why Paul can say this. We know Paul is giving us the reason because he begins verse 2 with that little, but very important word, for. It’s a word connecting verse 1 to verse 2 and it indicates to us why verse 1 is true. So, when Paul tells us that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, we can ask the question why and see the answer in verse 2: Because the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus.
Reading verse 1 and verse 2 together like this we see immediately an important emphasis in the way Paul repeats (in both verses) the phrase “in Christ Jesus”. Do you see that? Here again is that crucial doctrine so important in Paul’s thinking and so essential to our understanding of the Gospel, namely, that our spiritual union in Christ is alone the grounds for our justification, sanctification, and unending peace with God. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it, “There is nothing more foolish than the notion that you can be ‘in Christ’ at one moment; then when you sin you are ‘out of’ Christ, then when you repent you are ‘in Christ’ again! … The very idea is ludicrous! No, if you are in Him, you are in Him for ever, you are in Him for all eternity. It is God who has put you ‘in Him’, and no one and nothing can take you out – neither hell, nor Satan, nor any other power. If you are in, you are in. It is absolute.”[1]
That is not only very encouraging, friends, but it is ultimately freeing. And that’s exactly the point Paul makes in verse 2. “The law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Now, when we read Paul’s use of the word law in this passage it is probably best to understand that word as meaning “power,” or “binding authority” or “motivating principle.”  So, a good reading of this text is how New Testament scholar, Douglas Moo, renders it as “the binding authority (or power) of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the binding power of sin and death.”[2]  In other words, when we are in Christ, and Christ is in us (by His Spirit), there is a new power at work, a power and authority which frees us from that old power of sin, sin which led to death and condemnation.
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In Christ we have absolute certainty that our salvation is secure, no matter what condemnation thunders forth from God’s law. And as we move verse by verse through this chapter we will climb higher and higher into the heavenly air of our union with Christ, seeing all the ways in which that union will blossom forth in our daily walk here and now. 

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” – Romans 8:1
Few lines of Holy Scripture have been used more by God to encourage assurance and comfort in my own heart. In my own Bible, the page on which Romans 8 appears is a page well worn, smudged from the constant wear of my hands turning to it and my finger running along verse 1 as I have read it over and over and over again. This verse stands out as one of the Apostle Paul’s great indicatives, those statements of fact on which a believer is supposed to rest. It isn’t calling us to do anything, there’s no command to follow, it just is. It’s a declaration of good news given to believers. But what is it saying?
It comes right at the end of Paul’s description, in Romans 7, of what is characteristic of the Christian life, namely, our constant struggle against sin. The Christian believer, born again by God and given a new heart with new desires, now delights in the law of God, even in his inner being, says Paul. And yet Paul can also say, “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” His answer? Jesus Christ!
And so, he declares with exultant, doxological joy that even though his own thoughts at times condemns him because of the still virulent sin which rages within, he can rest assured, that God does not condemn him. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it, “a Christian is a person who has been taken entirely outside the realm of any possible or conceivable condemnation. The Christian has finished with the realm of condemnation; he has been taken right out of it; he has nothing more to do with it… Had you realized that?”[1]
The word condemnation is itself a legal term. It’s what a judge declares when the court finds a defendant guilty of some crime. And so, the act of condemning is the final verdict, it is the law’s fiat giving official status to the guilty party: “Condemned!” Any criminal brought before a judge fears this verdict; infinitely so before the Infinite Judge of all creation! As Octavius Winslow writes, “To that court every individual is cited. Before that bar each one must be arraigned. Conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity (Ps. 51:5 KJV), man enters the world under arrest – an indicted criminal, a rebel manacled, and doomed to die.”[2]
What our world today does not realize, and many in the church have seem to have forgotten, is that all unbelievers right now stand condemned under God’s righteous wrath. Twice in John chapter 3 do we see this stirring truth where John tells us that “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (vs. 18) and “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (vs. 36).
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Being poor in spirit is being someone who knows that you have nothing, spiritually, to offer and therefore you stand completely dependent upon God—upon his grace, his mercy, his provision, and effort. Being poor in spirit is accepting that you are spiritually needy.

There’s a bright thread of connection between the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the way the sermon on the mount begins. The tree stood as a perpetual sign for Adam and Eve to rely upon and walk submitted under God’s word. God declared all that was good or not good and they, as His creatures and image bearers were to trust Him. Of course, that didn’t pan out and we’ve all, since Adam, placed more weight on our own perspectives and words than we have in God and His word. Utterly foolish. William Henley’s Invictus declares that we’ve become the “captain of our own fate”, when in reality we’ve become conquered (victa) by own fallen self-reliance. Utterly foolish because the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God and a true fear of God is essentially a radical reliance upon Him.
Our world today, like Cain and Lamech before us, is intoxicated in self-reliance and self-sufficiency. We pronounce blessings upon the rich and able, the well-to-do and confident, for theirs is the power of influence and the world’s applause. But Jesus, picking up a rather well-defined Biblical theme, starts off his famous sermon with a still more ancient promise – “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). The idea of being poor, that is, materially destitute, is not a foreign concept. We understand poverty. And poor people are, more often than not, quite dependent upon others for any well-being. A beggar begs because he needs help from someone who has more than him. John Stott recognizes that within the Scriptures “gradually, because the needy had no refuge but God, poverty came to have spiritual overtones and to be identified with humble dependence on God.”[1]  Hence Psalm 34:5-6, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.”[2]
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What the ant teaches us is that diligence and productivity are fit for a wise and flourishing life. Man was made to work and to work hard. Adam, even before his fall, was created and called by God to work, to tend to and “keep the Garden” (Genesis 2:15). 

Solomon, in wanting his son to pursue and know wisdom, instructs him to “consider the ant” (Proverbs 6:6). The command is to observe and learn the ways of this small but impressive creature. What impressive wisdom does the ant teach us? Diligent. Hard. work. In short, the ant is productive. And this is one essential feature to wise living. “Go to the ant, O Sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6). In considering and watching the work-ethic of the ant, the man who is a sluggard can learn and grow in wisdom; he has a model on which to follow. This is natural theology at its best!
As John Kitchen writes in his excellent commentary on Proverbs, “such reflection will yield a new work ethic which prioritizes self-motivation, industry, diligence and planning. Embracing such a work will cause one to ‘be wise.’ Wisdom is not some esoteric, other-worldly rhetoric. Wisdom is practical success in the real world. Hard work lies in its path.”[1]
What wisdom can we learn from the ant on being diligent and productive? Well first, the ant is self-motivated. She does not need a manager or boss or task-master to get her to work, she is able to do the work of her own accord. As verse 7 and 8 tells us, “without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer.” Here is a creature who gets to the work without being told to; the ant is disciplined and self-controlled.
Ryan McGraw, in his helpful little booklet How Should I Manage Time writes, “We can redeem the time only if we enjoy the work that God has given us to do each day. Ecclesiastes 3:22 says, ‘Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better, than that a man should rejoice in his own work; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?’ Enjoying our work is a gift from God… We must learn to enjoy our work even when our work is not enjoyable”[2] There is wisdom in learning to enjoy our work. Perhaps that begins with asking God to help you do that and fervently praying to make you more like the ant in being self-motivated. Ask God to help you work hard. Is this not something of what Moses requested when he prayed to “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17)?
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Even though the nations rage and plot in vain and the kings and rulers of the earth set themselves against the King of kings, even still “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision” (Psalm 2:4). Our King is laughing at all the geo-political hubbub emerging from our current zeitgeist. As citizens of Christ’s Heavenly Kingdom, let’s laugh with him.

From the very opening pages of Scripture we see God’s sovereign rule over mankind in an authoritative and governmental way. He gives his law to Adam that he is not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Adam and Eve do eat of that tree they are depicted as being in rebellion.[1] This is political language through and through. And this rebellion isn’t limited to a vertical warfare, man solely against God; it becomes horizontal—man against man. An unnatural law of sorts has commenced: hating God and hating your neighbor as other than yourself. This is exactly what we see in Genesis 4 with the killing of Abel by Cain and the emergence of depraved societies and power-hungry Cities of Man, Lamech being its most infamous tyrant.[2]
It is out of this dark setting wherein we see God graciously institute government—human government—to mitigate against this hellish proclivity in men to kill fellow image bearers. In Genesis 9 God gave Noah, and hence humanity, the power of the sword, but not a sword grounded in the unnatural law of rebellion and murder but a sword grounded in the God given natural law of life and protection. It is, as Paul will later expound in Romans 13, a ministerial power of coercion to keep men from killing men, a sword handed down from heaven to protect against the swords of fallen men.[3]
“From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image. And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.” (Genesis 9:5-7)[4]
The obvious must still be stated: That throughout this history, no matter the evil, no matter the depravity, and no matter the unnatural lawlessness, God is still sovereign, bringing good out of evil. Indeed, that is arguably the “melodic line” of the book of Genesis: What God made good, man corrupted with evil and yet God promised to not only bring good out of evil (Gen 3:15) but ultimately does (Gen 50:20; Rev. 12:13-13:4).[5]
It was from a similar dark setting and scenario that led Augustine to also write his famous City of God. In fact, as Greg Forster rightly argues, “the overarching purpose of The City of God is to vindicate the Christian conception of the good by showing that the world is superintended by God, who is good and is guiding everything that happens in history for good purposes; thus any concept of “the good” is empty if it does not ultimately point to God. The introduction to one modern edition comments that “the great lesson of The City of God is that out of all things comes good.” This echoes Paul’s comment to the Romans that “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28).”[6]
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Praying biblically saturated prayers takes work, concentration, and a keen attentiveness to what God has said. And let the obvious be stated: praying biblically saturated prayers means being someone who is himself saturated in the Bible. It means opening up and reading the Bible, daily meditating upon its life-giving and life-changing truths.

In First Kings 8 we see King Solomon lead in corporate prayer and what stands out about his prayer is that it is Solomon pleading for what the Lord has already promised. He uses language like “keep for your servant David my father what you have promised” (verse 25) and “let your word be confirmed, which you have spoken” (verse 26). This is what the Puritans referred to as “pleading the promises”, a way of praying which brought the person praying closest to the will of God.
To be sure, this ought to be the habit and heart of every Christian’s prayer life, pleading the promises of God and praying according to God’s will. 1 John 5:14-15 tells us, “that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” What does it mean to pray according to God’s will? It means to pray according to the intentions of God’s heart. Of course, there is God’s secret will of decree that we can’t always know. Nonetheless we do have God’s revealed will, his word – be it His promises, His character, His warnings, or His threats. Here then is a solid epistemological ground from which we can boldly approach the throne of grace.
Archibald Alexander (1772-1851) makes the staggering but obvious point that although God, “is everywhere present, yet he is invisible… the great Architect is concealed. As far as reason can lead us, we seem to be shut out from all intercourse with our Maker; and whether prayer is permitted would remain for ever doubtful, were it not for divine revelation.”[1] In other words, how foolish it would be to presume to know the will of God if he had never spoken and yet still offer up prayers with the expectation of divine approval! No wise man would dare come before a king and make a request unaware of whether or not the king was sympathetic to such a plea. “Righteous lips are the delight of a king, and he loves him who speaks what is right” (Proverbs 16:13).
And yet we do know that our God is ever attentive to his children’s requests, but we only know this because he has spoken; we only know this because of his word. Johannes G. Vos (1903-1983), in his excellent commentary on The Westminster Larger Catechism, says there is only one way to know how to pray in a God glorifying way, “and that is by studying the Bible, which is the revealed will of God.”
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