Romans 8:11 holds out a staggering reality: the very Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now dwells in you, and because He dwells in you, God promises life even in your tired, failing, tempted body. This is not just a verse for funerals or Easter Sunday; it is a promise for every ordinary day in which you feel weak, worn, or stuck, and it invites you to live as if resurrection power really is pulsing inside your ribcage.

The Same Power, the Same Person

The Spirit who dwells in you is not an impersonal force; He is the very Spirit of the Father who raised the crucified Christ from the grave. Scripture says, “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). Paul also prays that we would know “the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe,” the same power “which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead” (Ephesians 1:19–20). That means the greatest display of God’s power in history is not just something you admire from a distance; the One who did it has come to live in you.

Think about what that says about your day. When you wake up feeling spiritually dull or emotionally flat, the Spirit in you has not lost one watt of resurrection strength. He has not grown tired of you. He is not a battery that runs low with use. He is the eternal, holy, living God, closer than your own breath. You can actually talk to Him: “Holy Spirit, You raised Jesus from the dead. You live in me. Show Your life in me today.” That simple, honest dependence turns doctrine into experience.

Life in a Dying Body

God does not promise to remove the “mortal” from your mortal body; He promises to give it life. We still age, still ache, still feel the pull of sinful desires. Yet in the middle of all that, the Spirit produces a real, tangible aliveness that this world cannot counterfeit. “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:13). The same power that rolled the stone away now empowers you to say “no” to sin and “yes” to obedience in the very body that used to be a slave to sin (Romans 6:11–13).

This is why your weakness does not disqualify you; it is actually the stage on which God loves to showcase His strength. “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Every time you choose to forgive, tell the truth, turn away from lust, or keep serving when you are exhausted, the life of Jesus is being revealed in your body (2 Corinthians 4:10–11). Your ordinary, frail humanity becomes a living billboard that says, “Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20).

Resurrection Hope for Ordinary Days

Romans 8:11 also points beyond today to the day when God will finish what He started. This mortal body will not always be subject to decay and death. “And God both raised the Lord and will raise us up by His power” (1 Corinthians 6:14). The Spirit in you now is God’s down payment, His guarantee that your future includes a real, physical resurrection in a glorified body (2 Corinthians 5:4–5). Your story does not end at the grave; it passes through the grave into glory, because Christ has already gone first.

But this future hope is meant to shape how you walk through the present. Knowing that death is not the end gives courage in suffering, purity in temptation, and steadiness in disappointment. You can say with Paul, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). Every step of faith, every hidden act of obedience, every tear shed in trust is lived in light of the day when the Spirit who dwells in you will raise you in glory. Your ordinary Tuesday is connected to that extraordinary future.

Father, thank You that the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead lives in me. By Your resurrection power, help me to put sin to death and walk in joyful obedience today.

IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE THINGS three degrees may be distinguished: the knowledge furnished by reason, by faith and by spiritual experience respectively.

These three degrees of knowledge correspond to the departments of the tabernacle in the ancient Levitical order: the outer court, the holy place and the holy of holies.

Far in, beyond the "second veil," was the holiest of all, having as its lone piece of furniture the Ark of the Covenant with the cherubim of glory shadowing the mercy seat. There between the outstretched wings dwelt in awesome splendor the fire of God's presence, the Shekmah. No light of nature reached that sacred place, only the pure radiance of Him who is light and in whom there is no darkness at all. To that solemn Presence no one could approach except the high priest once each year with blood of atonement.

Farther out, and separated by a heavy veil, was the holy place, a sacred place indeed but removed from the Presence and always accessible to the priests of Israel. Here also the light of sun and moon was excluded; light was furnished by the shining of the seven golden candlesticks.

The court of the priests was out farther still, a large enclosure in which were the brazen altar and the lavar. This was open to the sky and received the normal light of nature.

All was of God and all was divine, but the quality of the worshipper's knowledge became surer and more sublime as he moved in from the outer court toward the mercy seat and the Presence, where at last he was permitted to gaze upon the cherubim of glory and the deep burning Fire that glowed between their outstretched wings.

All this illustrates if it does not typify the three degrees of knowledge possible to a Christian. It is not proper that we should press every detail in an effort to find in the beautiful Old Testament picture more than is actually there; but the most cautious expositor could hardly object to our using the earthly and external to throw into relief the internal and the heavenly.

Nature is a great teacher and at her feet we may learn much that is good and ennobling. The Bible itself teaches this: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise." "Behold the fowls of the air." "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." Reason working on data furnished by observation of natural objects tells us a lot about God and spiritual things. This is too obvious to require proof. Everyone knows it.

But there is knowledge beyond and above that furnished by observation; it is knowledge received by faith. "In religion faith plays the part by experience in the things of the world." Divine revelation through the inspired Scriptures offers data which lie altogether outside of and above the power of the mind to discover. The mind can make its deductions after it has received these data by faith, but it cannot find them by itself. No technique is known to man by which he can learn, for instance, that God in the beginning created the heaven and the earth or that there are three Persons in the Godhead; that God is love or that Christ died for sinners, or that He now sits at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. If we ever come to know these things it must be by receiving as true a body of doctrine which we have no way of verifying. This is the knowledge of faith.

There is yet a purer knowledge than this; it is knowledge by direct spiritual experience. About it there is an immediacy that places it beyond doubt. Since it was not acquired by reason operating on intellectual data, the possibility of error is eliminated. Through the indwelling Spirit the human spirit is brought into immediate contact with higher spiritual reality. It looks upon, tastes, feels and sees the powers of the world to come and has a conscious encounter with God invisible.

Let it be understood that such knowledge is experienced rather than acquired. It does not consist of findings about something; it is the thing itself. It is not a compound of religious truths. It is an element which cannot be separated into parts. One who enjoys this kind of knowledge is able to understand the exhortation in the Book of Job: "Acquaint now thyself with him, and be at peace." To such a man God is not a conclusion drawn from evidence nor is He the sum of what the Bible teaches about Him. He knows God in the last irreducible meaning of the word know. It may almost be said that God happened to him.

Maybe Christ said all this more simply in John 14:21: "I . . . will manifest myself to him." For what have we been laboring here but the sublimely simple New Testament teaching that the Triune God wills to dwell in the redeemed man's heart, constantly making His presence known? What on earth or in heaven above can be a greater beatitude?

God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." - Romans 5:8

"GOD commendeth His love." That is true and beautiful, but that is not all that the Apostle means. The idea of commendation is certainly in it, but there is also another idea which in order precedes the commendation - viz., that of confirmation, or establishing as a certainty. Now these two things are ordinarily separated. We first of all prove a fact, and then we press it upon people, or " commend " it to their feelings; but in regard of the love of God these two are one. You cannot prove God’s love as you can a mathematical problem, as a bare intellectual process. You must prove it by showing it in operation; and the confirmation of its existence which is derived from the witness of its energy is at once the demonstration of it to the understanding and the commending of it to the heart and the feelings.

So, says Paul, God in one and the same act establishes the certainty of His love, for our understanding, and presses it upon our hearts and consciences. " He commends His love towards us." It must be kept in mind that Paul was writing to Roman Christians, a good many years after the death of Jesus Christ - to men and women that had never seen Christ, and whom Christ had never seen in the flesh. And to these people he says, " Christ died for us." You Roman believers that never heard about Him till long after His Crucifixion - He died for you. And God, not commended, but " commendeth, His love towards us " in that death - which, put into other words, is this: the Cross of Jesus Christ is for all the world, for every age, the standing and ever-present demonstration of the boundless love of God, God not merely "commends," but "proves," His love by Christ’s death. It is the one evidence which makes that often doubted fact certain. By it alone is it possible to hold the conviction that, in spite of all that seems to contradict the belief, God is Love.

If this be the summing-up of all religion, a practical conclusion follows. When we feel ourselves defective in the glow and operative driving power of love to God, what is the right thing to do? When a man is cold he will not warm himself by putting a clinical thermometer into his mouth, and taking his temperature, will he? Let him go into the sunshine and he will be warmed up. You can pound ice in a mortar, and except for the little heat generated by the impact of the pestle, it will keep ice still. But float the iceberg down into the tropics, and what has become of it? It has all run down into sweet warm water, and mingled with the warm ocean that has dissolved it. So do not think about yourself and your own loveless heart so much, but think about God, and the infinite welling up of love in His heart to you, a great deal more. " We love Him because He first loved us." Therefore, to love Him more, we must feel more that He does love us.

Then let me say, too, that if we love Him, it will be the motive power and spring of all manner of obediences and glad services. It is the mother-tincture, so to speak, which you can color, and to which you can add in various ways, and produce variously tinted and tasted and perfumed commixtures. Love lies at the foundation of all Christian goodness. It will lead to the subjugation of the will. And that is the thing that is most of all needed to make a man righteous and pure. So St. Augustine’s paradox, rightly understood, is a magnificent truth, " Love! and do what you will." For then you will be sure to will what God wills, and you ought.