The Cosmic Spirit

11th Sermon in the Series: The Holy Spirit

12 September 2010 - Dr. Timothy Keller

Romans 8 15:27

¹⁵For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. ¹⁷Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

• When we lose our relationship to God, we experience bondage to other things and are not free to be what God originally had in mind for us.
• Transformation of our Body as described in Phillipians 3:21

²⁰But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,²¹who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

• Things are always falling apart in this world except for the Holy Spirit
• First Fruit - Taste of what's to come.
• What we know about the future determines how we process the present.