Obligation To Live? (Romans 8:12-13)
“Get to live” or “Got to live” – it’s critical to read
The meaning in the Greek, or else a roadmap we will need,
To find our way out of the swamp, the wrong approach we’ll take,
For obligation binds us up, a mess of life will make.Apostle Paul is quite complex, with clauses added in;
He has a way of doing life, perspective with a spin;
He started as a Jewish guy, then gung-ho for The Way
Of life he found in Jesus Christ – he then had much to say.He came to see that Jewish thought had value to the Greeks
And others in the ancient world where Greeks and Romans meet;
He traveled ’round and shared his thought as member of a team,
Who crossed their culture’s boundary-line, for Greek he’d also been.To me Paul an Apostle was – in boundary-crossing sense,
Who shared “God’s revelation to the Jews” where e’re he went;
Just like Isaiah said of old, “A light to nations be,
For others stumble in the dark, and long to live like thee”.For freedom is the point of all God’s Word since Adam’s day;
One road’s to death, the other life, each gets to choose the way
They want to live – more “cause-affect”, with destinations fixed;
But choice of road is up to us – we choose then take the trip.When roads are changed from death to life, no debt we owe to past;
The new road is the one we’re on, and life emerges fast;
We need not live as though we walk to destiny of death,
But rather dance the road of life, draw in its Spirit-breath.For some of us we came quite close to walking off a cliff –
Somehow, somewhere, some person warned us with a sign like this:
“If you continue down this road, you are about to die,
Repeated practice in your life misleads you – here is why –There’s more to life than what we see and draw on day to day;
God wants to help us live our lives, His Spirit guides our way;
When He is center of our lives, His power and resource flows
From Him through us to other folks, till all creation knows –The richness of a life in Him, poured out not taken in,
Where we are not like parasites, caught up in need to win;
There is no obligation here, but if we’re tired of strife,
We need to change the road we’re on, get on the road to life.navigation