It is clear from Romans 5:5-8 NIV that the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts. According to The Discovery Bible, the word “pour” can literally mean to gush all over, to shed abroad, or to spill into implying that the Holy Spirit’s role is to gush the love of God into our hearts, to pour it in, and spill it all over us. Additionally, the word "poured" was written in the “Greek Perfect” tense, teaching us to see the ongoing result of a completed action, which means that the experience of the Holy Spirit pouring the love of Jesus into our hearts is an ongoing one in the life of the believer. As the Holy Spirit gushes God’s love into our hearts, we find ourselves exclaiming and extolling the glories of Christ's love, or we find ourselves at times unable to contain His love in our hearts. It may come out in tears of gratitude, or songs of worship or words of unknown meaning heard and felt in the heart, or expressions of heartfelt service.
This work of the Holy Spirit also puts us into the biblical narrative, where we now feel as though we are in the story. We are the blind men to whom Jesus gave sight, the woman healed from years of bleeding, the young child raised from the dead, and the lepers He restored to cleanness. We are the disciples who betrayed and denied Him, the crowd who mocked Him at the cross, the soldiers who pierced Him, and the thief who died with Him.
And most importantly, we were truly in Him when He died and when He rose. The Holy Spirit has shown us ourselves on the cross with Jesus, so that we can say like Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.” And the Holy Spirit has shown us that we rose with Jesus, and that He lives in us now so that we can say with Paul, "Christ lives in me!"
Most important to this teaching of the intimate and personal nature of the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts is to learn how to receive this kind of work. For surely, we all want to experience God's love to the full, and so, we must discover how to get it.
Question 3. How does Romans 5:5-8 NIV show us the connection between the Holy Spirit’s work and the message of the cross?
Log in / create an account to enroll or continue where you left off.
I really love Wende's response to the above question, it is right on:
"God's love was demonstrated to me when Jesus, his son was crucified to pay for my sins making a way for me to live in restored relationship with God. This is the legal and practical side of things that I choose to accept as true by faith. This is just the first half of the story that lays the ground work. The other half is The Holy Spirit working in my heart to make it real to me, not just a story or facts, but a relationship that transforms me."
From Romans 5:5-8 NIV, it should be abundantly clear that the Holy Spirit pours the love of God into our hearts by showing us the cross of Christ. Let’s see how He does this:
The Holy Spirit reveals to us in the Word that we are helpless in sin, weak and unable to change, powerless to fix ourselves (Romans 5:5 NIV). Romans 5:6 NIV connects powerlessness with ungodliness. We have no strength to resist temptation; our flesh is weak and prone to sin, which weakens us further. The result is that we live in a fallen down condition, run over by our appetites, powerless to defend ourselves, unholy and ungodly.
But then something incredible happens: the Holy Spirit begins to bring before our eyes the scenes of the cross. He shows us that Jesus was “crucified in weakness” (2 Corinthians 13:4) to give us the power of the Holy Spirit. There Jesus is, hanging on a cross, so weak He can hardly breathe, having been nailed there by the men He had created. He has taken our place, assumed our weakness, died in the powerlessness of our human condition.
And what is this scene of Calvary doing for us? The answer to that question is found in Romans 5:8 NIV, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Yes, the cross is the demonstration of God’s love.
Question 4. How is the Holy Spirit’s work in Romans 5:5 NIV connected to Christ's work on the cross in Romans 5:8 NIV?
Log in / create an account to enroll or continue where you left off.