What kind of life are we cultivating? What kind of church are we growing? You can look at this question in two ways. What are we currently growing? And what do we want to be growing?
I can’t actually answer this question for you, but I do want to examine our passage in such a way that gives us the tools to answer this question ourselves.
In our passage today, Paul gives us portrait of what spirit led community looks like and then warns us of the threats that can kill that type of community.
So, what does spirit-led community look like?
Many Christians struggle to know what God is thinking and where God is leading us. But I want to show you today that we can know where he’s leading us. God wants us to know what he’s thinking.
Our big idea today is that God is leading us into a lifestyle. He’s leading us away from sinfulness and into Christlikeness. We’ll see this in one of the most helpful passages I’ve ever seen in the Bible.
We never outgrow the need to face our fears. If anything, there’s more to be afraid of as we get older. Most of us have to deal with social pressures and temptations. Some of us wrestle with guilt, or we have bad habits we can’t overcome. And all these challenges can take away our freedom. They can prevent us from becoming everything that God made us to be. But the Bible tells us that we’re meant to be free.
Today I want to talk about the greatest kind of freedom in the world, which is freedom from sin. A lot of people are not very interested in freedom from sin. We all need it, because sin breaks our relationships with people and with God. But if we can find freedom from sin, we can have healthy relationships with people and healthy relationships with God. We can live forever with him. Our sense of freedom will spill over into every part of our lives. That’s why I think freedom from sin is the most important freedom in the world.
So, my big question today is: how can we enjoy the freedom that God intends for us? My big idea today is that we need to commit to a precise understanding of the gospel, which is the good news of Jesus. A precise understanding of the good news will help us to be properly inclusive and properly exclusive. I want to show you that there’s freedom in being properly inclusive and properly exclusive.