It has been over a year since we breached Jesus’ words in Mark 9:49. This mystery of Godliness reveals within us the continuing purging of our sinful clay bodies with God’s righteous decree that “everyone will be salted with fire.” This is our Lord’s way of taking us deeper and deeper into His grace and agape love! We are justified by faith and disciplined by His grace because, for one thing, we are being prepared for an eternal weight of glory!!!

It’s been 50 plus years since we had a US military “draft.” In those days a “boot camp” was more common to everyday language. It was the first 16 weeks of military duty where a young male learned to be a soldier within the compulsory two-year stint. We had to learn discipline, obedience, wearing a uniform and a backpack! Our identity as a soldier required a new kind of mom called a Sargent!

We just completed a discussion on Romans 8 where Paul discloses identity and the character of a person who is “Born-Again.” What does it mean to be Born-Again? Well, one of many meanings is receiving a spiritual “power of discernment.”

The agape love of Christ pervades the entire scripture both Old Testament and New. “The love of Christ” is indispensable not only to divine doctrine and our faith, not only to Romans 8, but to us personally. We are in Christ Jesus; He is our very essence; we are rooted in Jesus’ love. The grace of the Holy Spirit is even now equipping us in His agape love, so that, we may glorify the Father through His Son Jesus.

Paul completed his Romans doctrinal statement on justification by faith with verse 30! He lays out how we have obtained access into God’s grace, in which we now stand, by faith, with admittance into His very own glory. We are to consider ourselves dead to sin, alive in Jesus Himself, because sin has no more dominion over us. We are in the Spirit and not in the flesh because Christ Jesus, in fact, dwells in us. He predestined us; He called us; He justified us; He glorified us!

Each time we sit down to consider Romans 8 we are whisked into God’s agape love. The Holy Spirit is revealing God’s own challenge for our Faith to flourish in Him.

The Holy Spirit carries us into the core, where we sense the pith of our Father God reaching down into our created dust to share Himself through the image of His resurrected Son, Jesus … into us! Forming together, both flesh and blood, into which He has beathed, not just life, but His own Life a second time; it is His glory exciting our palate. Taste and see!