Romans 8:14,15 - You did not receive a spirit of slavery

8:14

“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God”. Living by the flesh leads to slavery, being led by the Spirit is part of being a son of God. There is a whole world of difference between living by the flesh and living by the Spirit, the two could not be more different.

8:15

We did not receive the Spirit of slavery. You read the chapters 7 and 8 as if they are talking about “not sinning” in the sense of our slavery to overt sinfulness. I.e. the things we generally think of as sinful, such as the works of the flesh listed in Gal 5:19-21. Or, as I tend to take it, as talking about living out of our own strength as opposed to living by the Spirit. I very much think this latter angle is the more likely. If we look at the gospel as God setting out demands and then leaving us to meet these demands by our own strength then we are no better off than we were without the gospel. For we would still be slaves to sin. If we live by the flesh then we cannot please God and we cannot be free from sin. And so often we fall into effectively calling on people to live by the flesh, by their own strength. Just think of the way we seek to encourage people to be more evangelistic. Most approaches use a combination of trying to make people feel guilty, and teaching them techniques or methods. And, if we are honest, this has not yielded much fruit. But we were not called to slavery, we have received “the spirit of adoption by whom we cry “Abba Father”. There is such a difference. By the way, sometimes we talk about “Abba Father” as if it means “Daddy”. Its meaning is much deeper than that. Jesus cried out “Abba Father” once (Mark 14:36) and that was in the Garden of Gethsemane. “Abba Father” speaks of an incredibly deep relationship with God, one which enables us to do whatever He calls us to do.