But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. Romans 8:9
One of the interesting and enjoyable things I recall from my high school geometry classes were the exercises in developing corollaries. A corollary is a statement that follows with little or no proof required from an already proven statement. Although it has been more than half a century ago, and my career path took me far away from ever using geometry theorems again, I can still recall how working out corollaries was much like a detective proving certain facts from the clues he found in a mystery case. There is a very powerful corollary that we can develop from the portion of our text today that states that ‘if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His’. The corollary is that if any man does have the Spirit of Christ, he is indeed one of His. And the context in Romans 8 proves that this corollary is true.
It is a sad fact that so many around us do not have the Spirit dwelling in them. This means they have no Guide and Protector in their daily lives, no ability – or any desire – to please God in any of their actions, no hope of eternal rest, and no shelter from the wrath of God. The opposite (the corollary) is true for those of us in whom dwells the Spirit of God: we have a Guide and Protector in our daily lives, an ability – and a desire – to please God in all of our actions, an assurance of an eternal rest, and everlasting shelter from the wrath of God. It is also a sad fact that – as our text declares – those without the Spirit of Christ do not belong to Him. But the opposite, the corollary, to that sad fact is the glorious truth that we belong forever to Christ.
Each Christian is one of His. A newly saved eleven-year-old girl is one of His. So is a seasoned evangelist or missionary. There is no difference in terms of Who we belong to, even though there are great differences in terms of knowledge of our God and our salvation, in terms of our experience in the faith, and in terms of our stability in the doctrines of the Scriptures. We are one of His, and this will be as true throughout the extent of eternity as it is today: ‘And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand’ – John 10:28.
You have the Spirit of Christ. You are one of His. Now, that is a wonderful corollary! -Jim MacIntosh