Romans 8:17

Romans 8:17

I. First, the text tells us, No inheritance without sonship. In general terms, spiritual blessings can only be given to those who are in a certain spiritual condition. Always and necessarily the capacity or organ of reception precedes and determines the bestowment of blessings. The light falls everywhere, but only the eye drinks it in. There is no inheritance of heaven without sonship; because all the blessings of that future life are of a spiritual character.

II. No sonship without a spiritual birth. The Apostle John in that most wonderful preface to his Gospel, where all deepest truths concerning the eternal Being in Himself and in the solemn march of His progressive revelations to the world are set forth in language simple like the words of a child, inexhaustible like the voice of a god, draws a broad distinction between the relation to the manifestations of God, which every human soul by virtue of his humanity sustains, and that which some, by virtue of their faith, enter into. Every man is lighted by the true Light because he is a man. They who believe in His name receive from Him the prerogative to become the sons of God. Those who become sons are not co-extensive with those who are lighted by the Light, but consist of so many of that greater number as receive Him, and that such become sons by a Divine act, the communication of a spiritual life, whereby we are born of God.

III. No spiritual birth without Christ. Christ comes to make you and me live again as we never lived before; live possessors of God's love; live tenanted and ruled by a Divine Spirit; live with affections in our hearts which wenever could kindle there; live with purposes in our souls which wenever could put there. There is but one Being that can make a change in our position in regard to God, and there is but one Being that can make the change by which man shall become a new creature.

IV. No Christ without faith. Unless we are wedded to Jesus Christ by the simple act of trust in His mercy and His power, Christ is nothing to us. Christ is everything to him that trusts Him. Christ is nothing but a judge and a condemnation to him that trusts Him not.

A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,1st series, p. 68.

Romans 8:17

I. Sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him. This is not merely a text for people that are in affliction, but for all of us. It does not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but it contains a law for the whole of life. It is the inward strife and conflict in getting rid of evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorified together. On this high level and not on the lower one of the consideration that Christ will help us to bear outward infirmities and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all that Scripture teaching that says indeed, "Yes, our sufferings are His," but lays the foundation of it in this, "His sufferings are ours."

II. This community of suffering is a necessary preparation for the community of glory. God puts us to the school of sorrow, under that stern tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of suffering with Christ, that by the daily crucifixion of our own nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and changes, there may grow up in us a still nobler and purer and perfecter Divine life; and that we may so be made capable more capable, and capable of more of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name.

III. That inheritance is the necessary result of the suffering that has gone before. The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now. Trials have no meaning unless they are means to an end. The end is the inheritance; and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit's work here, are the earnest of the inheritance. The measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow tothe throne may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are onthe throne; for if so be that we are sons, we mustsuffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we mustbe glorified together.

A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,1st series, p. 82.

References: Romans 8:17. Homilist,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 48; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation,pp. 95, 103; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 135.Romans 8:18. H. Wace, Church of England Pulpit,vol. xiv., p. 49; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xvi., p. 221.Romans 8:18. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 27.