There is little doubt that the importance of Romans 6-8 is to be found in what Christ did as Saviour. Within these chapters, one sees Christ opening the way to intimate fellowship with God by the Spirit; and bringing believers into sonship through the infilling of the Holy Spirit. This receiving of the Spirit places one into sonship through adoption (Rom 8:15). The ultimate evidence of this “sonship” is the believer’s use of the Son’s own address to the Father in prayer, Abba. Through this crying out, the believer not only gives voice to his or her consciousness of belonging to God as His child, but also to having a status comparable to that of Jesus Himself. In ascribing to Christians indwelt by the Spirit the use of this same term in addressing God, Paul shows that Christians have a special relationship to God that is similar to Christ’s own relationship to the Father.

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