Romans 8:14,15 - Abba Father

What is this new life based upon? There are three essential tenets here in Romans:

1. Through the sacrificial death of Jesus we are justified, the slate is clean.
2. We live by walking in step with the Spirit, who renews our lives.
3. We live in relationship with God as sons of the living God.

Paul now introduces this third element. We are children of God. Literally the Greek says sons of God. In using the word sons Paul is not being sexist. for elsewhere he says there is neither male nor female in Christ. What he means is that we are all first class children of God. It was the sons who received the inheritance.

Living by Law and out of our own strength makes us slaves and means we live out of fear. We live out of fear of getting things wrong, knowing that we could fail at any moment. We were not saved so that we could be slaves to fear. It is a tragedy that the church has so often ended up making people slaves to fear. If a teaching or a way of life is making you a slave to fear, then that is cause to question that teaching or way of living. 

The Holy Spirit is the spirit of sonship. We have been adopted into God's family. Jesus spoke a lot about His Father and our Father. He referred to Himself as a Son. He did this not just because it was who He was, but also because it was what we would become. Sonship is to be a defining characteristic of our relationship with God.

We cry "Abba Father". We need to remember that these are the words Jesus used when praying to His Father in Gethsemane, so we should dispel any notion of sonship and fatherhood that is limited to a "nice" relationship with our "heavenly dad". Such a concept of sonship is far too shallow. The sonship the Bible talks about enables us to cope with the darkest times of life, and enables us to do the most difficult things that God call us to do.