To understand Romans, or any book of the Bible, we must, from Ephesians 1, first spiritually see God standing alone in His blackest tomorrow, hearing laughter, singing, crying, weeping; seeing sunshine, rain, flowers, trees, animals, birds, mountains, rivers, anger, robbery, murder, slavery, a creation of angels and people, some loving and obeying Him, and some despising and mocking Him; changing their gender, and then God sees Him, loving all creation enough to come teach us His ways, take whip-strips for our healing, and be nailed to a rugged cross for our sins against Him, and He rejoiced with great pleasure, for all who would live for Him on earth and throughout eternity. God saw every detail of everything while alone in His tomorrow.
Healing, health, salvation, eternal life, God’s judgmental wrath for sin; eternity in the lake of fire, did not happen at Calvary, it happened when God saw everything from beginning to ending—past, present, future—God saw it as one scene, when He saw dependable men and women writing what He saw and said, while standing alone in His tomorrow; thus, God wrote every minute detail of each person’s life in our personal book, of Psalm 139:13-16, and wrote the names of all who would believe, obey, and serve Him in the Book of Life of Psalm 119:89 and Revelation 20:11-15, so what is written in our personal books or in the Book of Life will not change, be added to or erased; the writings are eternal, and we will be judged by what is written in our personal book, and whose names not written in the Book of Life will go to the lake of fire.
Now Romans 6:1-14 makes understandable sense of how God could see all humanity baptized into Jesus’s death, burial, resurrection, and see all humanity crucified with Jesus and resurrected with the risen Christ, to destroy the body of sin, so sin would not dominate us who live for God, but God also saw all who would refuse to know, believe, love, and obey Him in the lake of fire.
And we can understand God seeing Romans 6:15-23, where the Christians go from slaves of sin to slaves of God, in the righteousness of Christ Jesus, because God provided a way in Him, for us to stop sinning and become alive in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, so now Christians are no longer slaves of sin but slaves of righteousness (being fully right with God) for holiness. When we were slaves of sin, we were not slaves of righteousness, but now in Christ Jesus, after becoming ashamed and utterly disgusted with our sins, separating us from God and leading to death, but in total desperation, we asked Christ Jesus to take out of us every desire for sin, and fill us with God’s fullness, so we constantly experience Ephesians 3:14-21, for we despise what sin in any form does to us.
Therefore, knowing God saw and wrote every minute detail of our life in our personal book, from which He will judge us by what is written there, we now desire only to believe, obey, praise, thank, worship, and commit our desires and will to Him, so He can live His life through us, as Galatians 2:20 reveals.
Since God foresaw every minute detail of our disobedient sinful life and was joyful excited to take the whip-stripes for our healing and health and be nailed to a rugged cross to remove our sins, then joyfully excited are we who believe His word, obey His word, and live exclusively for Him, trusting everything to His plan and will, without any desire to ever have our way again.
Jim Nabors
