The powerful theme of God’s saving and transforming grace, which sweeps through Romans like a rushing mighty wind, has sometimes led readers to suppose that we humans remain passive throughout the story of salvation. Romans 8 has often been read in that way: we are assured of salvation, the spirit enables us to live in God’s way, and God will see us through any intermediate suffering. But that misses out the vital middle stage – that those who are declared to be in the right, to be God’s people, are the renewed humans, the people God had in mind when creating his image-bearing creatures in the
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