Our fears are justified too. Name, for instance, just one problem threatening our survival that we’ve solved. War? Still happening. Disease? Still rampant. Famine? A child dies every 3 seconds from starvation. Pollution? If we stopped all carbon emissions tomorrow morning, it would still take a hundred years for the atmosphere to clean itself. Stretching the Earth’s resources beyond their limit? The oceans could be dead by 2050. Religious nutcases? They’re on a roll. Exploitation of the poor by the rich? Look what greedy bankers did to our global economy – and will do again as soon as they possibly can. Human nature? Hasn’t changed. It’s still the same self-centred, short-sighted, ambitious, arrogant, judgmental, anxious, God-resisting mess it’s always been.

No wonder we’re scared for our kids and grandchildren, because what’s the world going to be like for them if things keep going the way they are? And look how quickly our secure little world can descend into chaos or crumble into nothing. We live on a knife-edge, and we know it. And when people become really frightened, they stop at nothing to survive, and that’s scary too.

So when Paul writes in Romans 8:15, “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear,” that’s an amazing statement, because our experience on this planet is nothing but being slaves to fear. We live in fear of not having enough money, fear of cancer, fear of crime, fear for our children’s future, fear of wild weather, fear of what evil people are capable of, fear of being ripped off, and fear of getting old and dying. And, what’s more, we constantly and deliberately feed our fears, filling prime-time TV day and night with endless news of catastrophes, tragedies and predictions of doom. We are addicted to fear and ruled by it.

Is there an antidote for all this anxiety? Yes, verse 6, “The mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” There is a power that God provides that removes our fears. And how does this Spirit power work exactly? It removes the cause of our fear, which is, and always has been, our hostility to God, and replaces it with “the Spirit of sonship,” verse 15. And when it dawns on us that the greatest power in existence is in fact our Father and he loves us as his children, what on earth is there to be scared about – even in a world like ours?

The potential for pandemic exists if the Spanish flu virus mutates as it did in 1918, the high death rate being caused by a massive overreaction of the immune system, in particular among healthy people. And once it spreads human to human it is highly contagious and only by enforcing the strictest preventive measures worldwide can a flu like this be contained. Should the world be worried? Absolutely.

To add to our worries, God designed these viruses as part of our “bondage to decay,” Romans 8:21. We find ourselves stuck in a world, therefore, where the threat of killer flu is constant - ”not by its own choice,” take note, “but by the will of the one who subjected it,” verse 20. God made flu a built-in part of our creation, so if it doesn’t burst into pandemic proportions this year, it’s a ticking time bomb for the future. Do we have cause to be worried? Totally.

But why would God do such a thing to us? Paul answers that in verse 21 – it’s “in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” God created the world the way it is so we’d live in hope of something better. But we’d have to live in this world first. Why? To experience what life is like without his Spirit. Without his Spirit we have frustration (verse 20) and fear (verse 15). We live in constant worry of things that are killing us that we can’t solve. We experience our inability first, but only to make us hope for a solution – and accept that the solution can only come from God, because we are helpless (7:24-25).

The solution is his Spirit, because the Spirit is “life and peace,” Romans 8:6. The Spirit is the key, “because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” and sons of God “did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear,” verses 14-15. Once we receive the “Spirit of sonship,” verse 15, we are “brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God,” verse 21, and from that point on we begin to experience a life free of frustration and fear.

And it happens even when a killer flu threatens? Apparently so, because that’s what the Spirit’s for.

How nice. But where on this planet is life actually like that? There’s always something gumming up the works. Build your house on a hill, it’s exposed to hurricanes; build it on lowland, it’s vulnerable to floods. Throw in earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, ice storms and forest fires, plus accidents, pandemics and terrorism, and truth is – life’s an eggshell. It’s fragile.

It’s not an easy truth to accept. Adam and Eve didn’t accept it either, which made it very easy for the serpent to lie to them. “You won’t die,” he said, “you’ll be fine.” A worry-free life was an easy sell. It is today, too. Look at us: we shell out huge amounts of cash on insurance, warranties, home security, investments, pills and religion to worry-free ourselves. Safety and security are big business. Does any of it actually work, though? No. We do die. Everything isn’t fine. The serpent was lying.

So how on earth could Paul say in Philippians 4:6, “There’s no need to worry about anything,” when there are tons of things to worry about? Because, he replies, we can take all our troubles to God and in return God gives us peace, verse 7. But how does that work in real life, pray tell? What about a father who’s lost his entire business in an earthquake, or a mother who’s given birth to a deeply handicapped baby? How can they not be worried about the future? Let’s be practical.

But God’s no stranger to our world and the awful things that happen, because he lived this life himself. He saturated himself in our suffering and death, vividly felt its pain, and he too cried buckets of tears at the hopelessness of it all. But Jesus did one thing differently. He never viewed God negatively when bad things happened. He didn’t blame God for being distant, uninvolved and uncaring. He didn’t ditch God for help from other sources, like Adam and Eve did.

And why didn’t he? Because one day, as the ever-present Jesus, he’d be able to live his attitude to God in us, so we could trust God like he did. Result? We’d discover the same secret Paul discovered: “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation…I can do everything through him who gives me strength,” verses 12-13. Including not worry?! Seems so.

We suffer so that we can share Christ’s glory. But why do we need to suffer first? Because suffering is clearly the best preparation there is for glory. But how?

Well, first of all, what kind of suffering did God have in mind? According to Paul, it’s the same kind of suffering Jesus went through. So what kind of suffering did Jesus go through? He came “in the likeness of sinful man (verse 3).” He came to experience life as a human being up against the power of sin, but not just that, it was to be a “sin offering,” too, to “condemn sin in sinful man (verse 3).”

And how did he condemn sin? By being the first person ever to “not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit (verse 4).” This was the suffering Jesus experienced. It was the constant battle in his mind between the Spirit controlling his thoughts or typical human nature. It was a battle all right because “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires (verse 5).” It was either one or the other, and for Jesus it could only be setting his mind on what the Spirit desires, never human nature.

And that’s the same suffering God wants us to go through for us to share the same glory Jesus has. Why? Because “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace (verse 6).” We need to learn where life truly is. It’s in the Spirit. And to help us learn that God put us in human bodies ”subjected to frustration (verse 20)” in a world in “bondage to decay (verse 21)” and “groaning as in the pains of childbirth (verse 22),” in the hope that we’d realize how helpless we are and look to the Spirit, just as Jesus did, to control our lives instead.

God lets his children suffer, therefore, in the hope that we will turn to the liberating power of the Spirit to help us in our weakness (verse 26), so that we too can learn where life truly is.

     That’s enlightening because it tells me we’re either under the influence of the “Spirit of sonship” or the “spirit of fear,” there’s no in between; it’s either one or the other. And the reality of that faces me as I get older. We live in mortal bodies, verse 11, the signs of which become more obvious as we age, and it dawns on us that what’s knocking us about health-wise at the moment could kill us. It makes death real.

     And when death becomes real, it’s scary. And when you get scared of death it can take over your entire being. It’s the only thing you can think of. We’ve witnessed that with the latest threat of a pandemic. People panic. The preservation of their lives becomes all-consuming, and they go to extreme measures to protect themselves. They become slaves to their fear, acting more like hunted animals in their behaviour, with their nerves on edge and eyes always on the alert for danger.

     But we live in mortal bodies that can easily die. That’s the reality we all face, so it’s not surprising we get scared when our lives are threatened, and unless someone can come up with an antidote, we’ll always be at the mercy of our fears. Well, there is an antidote, says Paul – it’s the “Spirit of sonship.” Receive that Spirit and never again will we be slaves to fear.

     So, what does the Spirit of sonship do in our heads instead? Verse 16, ”The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” The Spirit somehow connects up with our brain cells and lifts us into another dimension. He cuts through the fog of fear enveloping us and helps us see God, but see God in the most amazing way – as our Father. The God who has power over everything looks upon us humans as his kids. 

     When death threatens, then, the Spirit counteracts our fears with the realization that we don’t in fact belong to these bodies of death we’re encased in, we belong to God. Whatever suffering he lets us experience in this life, therefore, is under his total and loving supervision. It fits his purpose exactly. But what possible purpose could he have in us suffering?… 

On the one hand there are those who panic, who on hearing of a swine flu outbreak write alarming columns in newspapers about potential pandemic, or close schools and ban the import of pork based on a few people getting sick, or feed their fears by reading and watching every last detail and statistic on the flu’s spread.

On the other hand, there are those “in the know” who tell us to calm down, there’s nothing to be afraid of, we’ve got the know-how to stop things getting out of hand, and scientific fact proves this latest outbreak is out-of-season and therefore short-lived and no more dangerous than any other typical flu. Yes, they say, people are dying but multiple thousands die every year from flu, so let’s not make this another “Cry, wolf!” situation denying the tourist and farming industries billions of dollars unnecessarily.

There are two clear and opposite reactions, which on the surface appear to be a clear split between the fearful and the non-fearful, but in reality both groups are panicking. One group is stirred by raw fear when faced with potential death, but the other group is fearful, too – they’re fearful of those who are fearful, because we all know what happens if fear takes hold. It hits the economy. People baton down hatches, stay home, stop buying, and that creates panic in those responsible for keeping the economy functioning. Both reactions, therefore, are stirred by fear.

But that’s the world we live in. We are never far away from a crisis, and we all know by now it’s only a matter of time before the next financial meltdown happens, or the next killer disease sprouts. And since crisis always creates fear, we live on a knife edge all the time. Fear is a constant pandemic; it never goes away.

Paul did tell us this would happen, though, that there’s a “spirit” in this world that makes us “slaves to fear (Romans 8:15).” Politicians are well aware of it, too. They know how easily scared we are and how pervasive and damaging fear is, so they talk soothingly of signs that the flu and the global meltdown are bottoming out, that things are on the “up and up” and the crisis will be all over soon. But anyone with his eyes open can see what they’re doing. They must stop fear taking hold. It’s a pity, therefore, that they don’t turn to Paul’s solution to fear. Which is? “Receiving the Spirit of sonship (verse 15).” Imagine a politician talking about that!

Human life is amazing. Every waking second we make choices, and every one of those choices sets a course in motion – maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. Would things have turned out better, for instance, if I’d turned left instead of right? I might have noticed a great deal on a car in someone’s driveway, perhaps, or bumped into someone who decided to come to church following our conversation.

So, do fate and coincidence decide these things, or does God direct our every step, leading whatever choice we make to his foregone conclusion? Or is everything based on my choices, and I, therefore, decide my destiny and my “reward in Heaven?”

I was beginning to drive myself crackers trying to figure all this out, when I thought of Colossians 3:3 – “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Fortunately, Christ has my life and destiny tucked away with him. And “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory,” verse 4, so whatever Christ is doing with my life, which is all his now anyway, it’s clearly going to be something grand when he appears. My life is completely safe in his hands.

Does it make any difference, then, what choices I make each day?

Yes, it does, Paul says, in verse 1. ”Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts (and minds verse 2) on things above…not on earthly things.” So there is something I choose to do to make life better. It’s to realize Christ is now my life, not fate, luck or coincidence. He’s bringing my life to the best point possible. I’m not left wondering, then, if turning left or right will make better or worse things happen to me, or whether the good or bad things that happen each day are decided by God, coincidence or fate. All I need do is trust Christ, and keep my mind on him.