Study Desk

For what I do, I do not recognize as my own action. What I desire to do is not what I do, but what I am averse to is what I do.

For I know that in me, that is, in my lower self, nothing good has its home; for while the will to do right is present with me, the power to carry it out is not.

For what I do is not the good thing that I desire to do; but the evil thing that I desire not to do, is what I constantly do.

I find therefore the law of my nature to be that when I desire to do what is right, evil is lying in ambush for me.

For in my inmost self all my sympathy is with the Law of God;

for the Spirit's Law-- telling of Life in Christ Jesus--has set me free from the Law that deals only with sin and death.

For what was impossible to the Law--powerless as it was because it acted through frail humanity--God effected. Sending His own Son in a body like that of sinful human nature and as a sacrifice for sin, He pronounced sentence upon sin in human nature;

in order that in our case the requirements of the Law might be fully met. For our lives are regulated not by our earthly, but by our spiritual natures.

For if men are controlled by their earthly natures, they give their minds to earthly things. If they are controlled by their spiritual natures, they give their minds to spiritual things.

Because for the mind to be given up to earthly things means death; but for it to be given up to spiritual things means Life and peace.

For if you so live, death is near; but if, through being under the sway of the spirit, you are putting your old bodily habits to death, you will live.

For those who are led by God's Spirit are, all of them, God's sons.

You have not for the second time acquired the consciousness of being--a consciousness which fills you with terror. But you have acquired a deep inward conviction of having been adopted as sons--a conviction which prompts us to cry aloud, "Abba! our Father!"

For all creation, gazing eagerly as if with outstretched neck, is waiting and longing to see the manifestation of the sons of God.

For the Creation fell into subjection to failure and unreality (not of its own choice, but by the will of Him who so subjected it).

For we know that the whole of Creation is groaning together in the pains of childbirth until this hour.

And more than that, we ourselves, though we possess the Spirit as a foretaste and pledge of the glorious future, yet we ourselves inwardly sigh, as we wait and long for open recognition as sons through the deliverance of our bodies.

It is *in hope* that we have been saved. But an object of hope is such no longer when it is present to view; for when a man has a thing before his eyes, how can he be said to hope for it?

But if we hope for something which we do not see, then we eagerly and patiently wait for it.

In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness; for we do not know what prayers to offer nor in what way to offer them. But the Spirit Himself pleads for us in yearnings that can find no words,