Jesus & Paul, Part 8

Loving the Christ-life!

All Things Are Of God

By Tammy Lacock

“Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began.” (Romans 16:25 KJV)

This week, Warren Litzman dissects Romans 16:25, a mostly overlooked but loaded verse from the Apostle Paul that is for believers today.

Paul tells us in Romans 16:25 only God has the power to establish us according to his gospel. Only God has the power to reveal to us, help us understand, and to live Paul’s gospel, a gospel God kept secret since the beginning of the world, and now has been revealed only to Paul.

Warren explains that only through our circumstances and situations of life will God’s plan for us—to understand and live Paul’s gospel—become manifest. Paul’s gospel, the mystery kept hidden, is that by Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, we are saved from the bondage of sin and law. When Christ died, our old lives died, too. And when He arose, we arose to a new life in Him. By Christ’s death, God poured out His grace upon us by uprooting our sin-nature, the corruptible seed of Satan, and exchanging it with Christ’s nature, the incorruptible seed. To anyone who believes, this is literally what happened within us by the cross. We’re born again and now bona fide children of God by this unconditional act of love. God’s seed, Christ, in us is total and complete. The very situations and circumstances in our lives provide the environment and nourishment we need to now bring forth His fruit.

And now, only God, not religion or churchianity, establishes us in our new life in Christ by these circumstances and situations. He is not separate from these events but very much alive and well, working through these to bring us into closer relationship with Him through His Son now living in us. In Christ, God is now intimately intertwined in our choices so that we can finally live who He created us to be.