Walking in the Spirit
Romans 8 turns from talking about the life of the Jewish people and Paul's experiences under that to his experiences as a Christian with the Holy Spirit and Christ helping him live as he ought to live.
Romans 8:1-11 describes what the life of every Christian should be at all times. To clarify, Paul in verse one specifies what it takes to meet the standards of Christianity. He proclaims that after you are a Christian, you have no further condemnation by Satan that is valid as long as you do not walk after the flesh, but walk in the path the Holy Spirit leads you down. Letting the Holy Spirit have control in Paul's acts, speech, thought, direction, and avocation guaranteed that he was living a life that was free of the flesh and that he wasn't breaking the laws of God.
And that is really the simple key to living as a Christian. Let the Holy Spirit guide your life. The Holy Spirit will never lead you amiss. He will always attempt to move you closer to God's will for your life. If you ever doubt whether the prompting you are feeling is from the Holy Spirit or just your own mind or other influence, dig into the Bible. Is the prompting you are hearing lining up with the guidance from the Bible? If it isn't, then it's very likely you aren't hearing from the Holy Spirit.
I'd also suggest that you pray extensively about what you think you are hearing from God. Judgment is reserved to God, so if you are of the opinion that you should go cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war, as William Shakespeare penned in Julius Caesar, then you probably aren't really doing God's will. Even Christ, when presented with the woman taken in adultery who should have clearly been stoned under their laws, along with the man who the religious leaders didn't choose to involve, was simply told by Christ to go and sin no more.
If you still aren't sure, consult a Christian that you trust. Talk with them about what you're feeling. Called to the mission field? Awesome. It is ripe for harvest. But have you been able to witness to your neighbors? If you can't do that, then you need to pray some more.
But getting back to this section, we need to follow the Spirit's leading in our lives. For me, that was writing this page instead of finishing the book I started earlier in the day. What it means for you is for the Spirit to tell you. But the key thing is that you need to seek the Baptism in the Holy Spirit - that anointing of the Spirit that is beyond the influence the Spirit has just because you have become a Christian. God wants to give you power to live and walk in Christ, and that power comes from the Baptism in the Spirit which is separate from the work of the Spirit that brings you to Christ in the first place.
Walking in the Spirit is what helps to ensure your final destination. Being carnally minded leads to eventual death, even sometimes for the Christian. Jesus death on the cross provided the victory over eternal death, and His pouring out the Holy Spirit on the believers gave the Early Church and many Christians up to and including Christians today the power to live for Him.
Ultimately, those who have a carnal mind end up at enmity with God. If you are letting your flesh take control instead of the Spirit, literally making Jesus the Lord of your life and not just your Savior, you will have a rocky path as a Christian and will not be a good witness due to the failures in your life. That isn't to say you might not end up saved. God's grace is His to administer, and just like people who have manic-depressive cycles, you might be in a spiritual state when you die or the rapture happens instead of a fleshly state. But that is no way to live your life.
Christ came to prove that it was possible to live a life free of sin. He commanded us to be perfect (Matthew 5:48) so He has great expectations for us. We won't reach that level without the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. That is certain. This section ends with the promise that the same Holy Spirit that in Jesus and raised him from the dead would be the same spirit that will quicken our mortal bodies one day. The Holy Spirit wants to dwell in us and give us the strength to walk out the path that God has planned for our life, as well as to show us that plan.
Promises of Life in the Spirit
Paul continues in Romans 8:12-16, discussing what it means to accept Christ as Savior. Once we accept Christ as Savior, we have the power of God available to us so we can live without the bondage of being a debtor to the flesh. Christ has crucified flesh on the cross. He has given us the power to be free. All we have to do is to choose to walk in that freedom and He and the Holy Spirit will help us to do just that. We probably can't do it on our own, even once saved. But with God's help, we can.
Paul makes the promise that living after the flesh, either as a non-Christian or a Christian will ultimately end in disaster. For a non-Christian, that is obvious. But even for a Christian, it is very likely. As I mentioned above, God wants us to live the life He wants for us. Every time we let the flesh take over, we have voluntarily stepped outside His will, protection, and care. If He has a particular purpose for us, as He did for the Jewish people in the Old Testament, He may choose to save us from ourselves in the end, but we put ourselves outside of His protection for a time of our choosing.
How many people of Israel died because they chose sin? How many battles were lost because the people chose sin? The northern tribes were taken into captivity by the Assyrians, and the southern tribes quite a bit later by the Babylonians. You'd have thought that what happened to the northern tribes would have been sufficient warning, but as the generation passed who saw that happen, the later generations didn't learn from history - or from their time under their own ungodly kings in their history. How like them we are today.
We need to realize the special place that we have as Christians. By accepting the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and His blood for our sins, and being baptized with the Holy Spirit, we become sons of God. We don't have to fear the bondage of the flesh because we have been set free. His Spirit will witness with our spirit that we are sons of God.
Hope for Eternity
And that carries with it great things. Paul declares that being a son has benefits. Sons can be heirs of their Father, and joint-heirs with Christ. Romans 8:17-28 talks a bit about the eternity to which we look forward. Paul is a realist. He knows personally that the Christian walk is not always smooth. It is thought Romans was the sixth of Paul's letters to be written, from Corinth. In his ministry, Paul had suffered many things at the hands of Jew and Gentile alike. But Paul rejoiced in his sufferings because he knew that he was doing what Christ wanted him to do.
In verses 17 and 18, Paul explains that there was no comparison in his mind between the sufferings he was experiencing for the cause of Christ and the eternal rewards that would eventually be revealed in us. And for what it's worth, I'm of the opinion that rewards in heaven that count will be much different than what many on earth think are important. Revelation 4:10-11 declares that even the twenty four elders throw their crowns at God's feet as He the only one who is worthy.
All that we have done will be judged and either burned up as worthless hay and stubble or considered precious jewels (1 Corinthians 3:1-15) The things that are precious jewels are those we have led to Christ, either directly or indirectly. Maybe we have never witnessed. I'm bad at that. But maybe we support our church as we should financially and support missionaries in the field. I hope we support both by prayer. There are many ways that everyone can contribute, and it is important that each do what the Spirit directs them to do.
Eventually, each person will be delivered to a final destination. Paul's hope is that all who receive or hear about his letter will choose Christ, and ultimately be delivered from the bondage of sin and eternal death to glorious liberty as a child of God.
Predestination
In Romans 8:29-30, Paul talks a bit about a subject that causes a lot of confusion: Predestination. In short, predestination implies that the end result is known about something and there is nothing that we can do to change that end result.
I like to think of it this way. I believe that God has the ability to see however far ahead or back in time He chooses. Thus, He can examine any life He is interested in, and by looking ahead, see what the end result of all the free will choices that person will make in their life will be.
For example, since I mentioned reading above, God could have, if He was interested, which I don't think that He really was, looked ahead to see if I finished this section tonight or put it off till later in the week. It was my free will choice to write or to read. But God has the ability to look ahead and see when this page gets published to know whether I listened and did it this weekend or didn't listen and put if off until tomorrow or the next day. His knowledge didn't mean that He was going to force me to make a particular choice. It just meant that He could see the final outcome if He so chose.
I think that that is all that this passage is saying. For any individual, God can see what the final outcome of their life will be and what impact their life will have on others based on all of their accumulated freewill decisions. His plan is that all choose Him. But He doesn't force that choice on us. All will eventually have to acknowledge Him and bow their knee, but on earth, they have the choice to accept Christ or not, and to live for Him or not, and to follow the leading of the Spirit in that walk or try to do it on their own.
He put the plan in place to call, justify, and glorify any who would choose Him. Making more out of these scriptures than that is wrong in my opinion.
Victory Over Present Troubles
In Romans 8:31-39, Paul declares the advantages of a Spirit filled Christian life. Jesus paid the price for our Salvation. If we are living after the Spirit and not after the flesh, then our lives should be blameless among men. No condemnation should validly be presented, just as no condemnation was validly present when Jesus was put on trial before the Roman authorities. They declared they could find no fault in Him.
Death couldn't stop Christ, and now that He is risen and had taken up His divine attributes once again, Paul acknowledges that Jesus is making intercession for us. There is nothing that man can do that will separate a Christian who is following the direction of the Spirit to the best of their ability from Christ's love.
No matter what happens to us, that love is secure, even if we end up dying for the cause of Christ. God gave of Himself to show us the way to live and to die for us. No other God that Satan has dreamed up has ever had those attributes. A God who loves His creation like that is never going to stop loving it. He'll love it to the very end.
And for the record, even after the rapture, He'll love it enough to send angels through the sky telling every one the gospel message in their own language so that all can know the path to salvation even though the anti-Christ and his forces will be trying to actively stamp out Christianity and institute false worship. He'll make sure that the people of earth hear the warning to not take the mark of the beast, whatever that turns out to be.
Does all this mean that we won't have troubles? No. Sadly, we are promised troubles, and the more successful we become in winning souls to Christ, the more I think Satan fights us. But nothing will keep God from loving His creation, and particularly those who are doing His will.
The world may look at us as sheep. But, just like the nation of Israel, when the sheep are led by God, nothing can stand in their way. We need to pray that every Christian church gets on God's bandwagon, and starts being directed by the Holy Spirit. We need to pray for those denominations who believe the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was something that only happened 2,000 years ago. It is still very real today.
We need to pray for faith, both in fruit and gift, to trust in Him. And we all need to pray for more of the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit to be manifest in our lives and in the Christian church today. There is too much Christianity that I think God is not pleased with out there today. We need to work on the fruits particularly: Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, and Temperance. If you aren't seeing that from the pulpit, you need to pray about what God wants you to do - work for change from within - or move on to a church that is trying to emulate Christ.
But whatever it is that we see and decide we should do individually to bring our churches back to emulating Christ's life, know that as we are trying to do so, God's love remains true and sound as long as we are walking in His path for us. And to be clear, His love for the world hasn't changed either. He still wants all to come to know Him and accept Christ as Savior.