Section 5
serving the Lord as slaves and having no freedom to do things according to ourselves. Therefore, toward God we must not be slothful. We must burn in our spirit and serve Him as a slave.
TOWARD OURSELVES
In Romans 12 we also see four aspects of a normal life toward ourselves: rejoicing in hope, enduring in tribulation, persevering in prayer (v. 12), and abhorring and conquering what is evil and cleaving to what is good (vv. 9, 21).
We Christians should be a rejoicing people because we always have the enjoyment of the Lord. If we enjoy the Lord in His riches, we will not only be joyful inwardly, but we will be re joicing outwardly. Even in times of trouble we should and can rejoice in hope. We are not peo ple who are without God and without Christ, having no hope (Eph. 2:12). We have God and we have Christ. So, regardless of the situation, we have hope and we can rejoice in hope.
We Christians must also be able to endure tribulation. We must be an enduring people. By rejoicing in hope we can endure any kind of trib ulation. Romans 5:3 says that we can exult in tribulation. We not only endure, but also exult in tribulation.