LIFE IN THE SPIRIT - ROMANS 8

 

This chapter is one of the most comforting and inspirational chapters in the Bible. It is the conclusion of Paul’s argument concerning justification by faith. It also show us the Christian life is one lived under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

No Condemnation

8:1-4a

There are no sweeter words than those in verse 1: there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 

Again we see those words “in Christ”. Those who are in Christ are those who believe in him and have committed themselves to follow him. The apostle John said: “whoever believes in him is not condemned”. (John 3:18) 

There are two types of people in the world: those who are in Christ and those who are not, who are in the flesh. 

Those who are not in Christ are condemned, meaning they face the judgment of God against sinners. The apostle John put it this way: “…whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the holy Son of God”. 

Revelation 20:15 puts it more graphically: “And if anyone’s name was not written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” This is speaking of the final judgment. 

The reason we are not condemned is that God did what the law and our weak flesh could not do. He sent his Son, who took on human nature (“flesh”), and received the Father’s condemnation of our sin in his flesh. He received physical death. And he did this to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. 

Jesus fulfilled the law by obeying it completely. He lived without sin. (Hebrews 4:15) Yet, he took the penalty for sin on our behalf. Those who believe in Jesus receive the benefit of this. We are set free from the law of sin and death to live in the “law” of the Holy Spirit. (2) 

Not only are we free from condemnation, we have been delivered from our slavery to sin. We are free from the law of sin and death. (2) As Paul said in 7:25, Jesus delivered us from the body of death. We see this in that we, as believers, have the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of Life. (2)

Life In The Spirit

8:4b-6

Now that we are in Christ (4b), we live by the Holy Spirit and set our minds on the things of the Spirit. Those things bring life and peace in contrast to the things of the flesh bring death. (5-6)

We know from Chapter 7 that there is a struggle involved. The flesh is still present. So, we need to set our minds on spiritual, heavenly things, not the things of the flesh. (Colossians 3:1-3)

Life In The Flesh

8:7-8

Paul here gives a startlingly blunt assessment of the non-believer, those whose minds are set on the flesh (controlled by the sinful nature). 

Those people are: 

1. hostile to God; 
2. not submitting to God’s law and unable to do so; and 
3. cannot please God. (8) 

Without the work of the Holy Spirit, men and women do not seek God and do not obey him. As Jesus said: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…”. (John 6:44)  

We Have The Holy Spirit

8:9-12

Paul made a clear statement that believers, those who are “in Christ” have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. If you are in Christ, you have the Spirit. If you are not in Christ, you do not have the Spirit. 

John 14:17 also says this: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

If you have the Spirit as one who is in Christ, your body will still die as a result of Adam’s sin and your own, but your spirit will live forever. The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, and he will also give life to our mortal bodies at the resurrection. (11) He is the guarantee of this and seals us in Christ until that time. (Ephesians 1:14) 

Takeaways

Rejoice that you have been set free from slavery to sin.

Set your minds on the things of God, not on things of flesh.

Remember your hope and encouragement: you will be with Christ forever.  

THE STRUGGLE WITH SIN - ROMANS 7

 We Died To The Law

7:1-6

Chapter 6 made the point that those who are in Christ are identified with him in his death so that we died to the law. These verses continue that thought. I would have included them in chapter 6 for that reason.

In these verses, Paul first asks a question, then gives an illustration of the answer.  The question is: “Do you not know that the law is only binding on a person as long as the person lives?”. (1) 

By “law”, Paul means the Mosaic law. 

Paul answers the question with an illustration. The illustration is of a married woman, bound to her husband by the law, meaning the law of Moses. The law provided that a wife is bound to her husband as long as her husband lives. (You shall not commit adultery - Exodus 20:14; Leviticus 18:20)

But, when the husband dies, the wife is released from the law of marriage and may have another husband. Paul’s point is that where a death occurs, it releases people from obligations under the law. Paul then applies this to believers, saying we died to the law in union with Christ’s death. We were “married” to the law, but were released from that bond when we died in Christ. 

Being released from our marriage to the law, we are not bound by it, and are free to be bound, or married, to Christ.  We make a transition from the covenant family defined by the law to the covenant family defined by grace in Christ.

Paul makes this point repeatedly in his writings, though using different analogies. He speaks of transition from old man to new man, from natural man to spiritual man, from slave to sin to slave to Christ, from old way to new way. 

Before we were in Christ, we lived in the flesh, married to the law, and found that the law aroused our sinful passions, producing fruit that leads to death. (5)

In contrast, as children are the fruit of a marriage, our marriage to Christ bears fruit in holy living and good works. We no longer serve in the old way of the written code, which is the Mosaic Law, but in a new way of living in the Spirit. (6)

Is The Law Then Sinful?

7:7-12

The next question Paul anticipated was “is the law sin (sinful)?”. Paul emphatically said “no”. The law is not sin and it is not evil. 

Paul then goes into an explanation that appears personal. He repeatedly uses the words “I” and “me”. So, there is debate about his meaning. Is he referring only to his personal struggles, or is this representative of all believers? It appears to be personal. 

Before he knew the law, Paul was not aware what sin is and how bad it is. He used the example of covetousness. The law said do not covet (10th commandment). It gave a list of things you were not to covet. To covet is to desire something you are not supposed to have, what is forbidden.

For example, Adam and Eve coveted the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God had forbidden them to eat it. (Genesis 2:17) But they desired it for its beauty, its expected taste, and its result of making one wise. (Genesis 3:6) So, they knowingly rebelled against God. They sinned. 

Likewise, sin used the commandment to stir Paul to covet all kinds of things. (8) It’s like the cartoon that shows a man standing under a sign that says “don’t run with scissors”. He turns to his wife and says: “I don’t know why, but I have this incredible urge to run with scissors!”. 

The law promised life for obedience. But no one, even the great apostle Paul, can completely obey the law. Death is the consequence. Paul said “I died”. (9)

Like Paul, we are sinful. But the law is holy, righteous, and good. The law is God’s word and commandment. Since God is holy, righteous, and good, his word is also.

Paul’s Struggle

7:13-20

The next question Paul anticipates is: did the law bring death? Again he forcibly answers no. 

The law did not produce sin, it revealed it. Likewise, the law did not bring death, sin did. (13) This was because the law revealed what sin was and how bad it was (beyond measure). 

The law is spiritual, but Paul is of flesh and sinful. He agrees that the law is good (16), but yet cannot obey it. He does not do what he wants, which is to obey the law. Rather he does what is sinful even though he hates it. 

Paul had a sinful nature. Sin dwelt in him. (17) He kept on doing what was sinful because of this sinful nature, even when he did not want to. 

Paul recognized his sinful nature. He said nothing good dwells in him, in his flesh. (18) Many people say that men and women are inherently good. That is not the testimony of the Bible. 

Paul clearly saw this in himself. He knew the law of God was good and wanted to obey it, but found that sin help him captive, waging war against his desire to do good. (23) And he saw he could do nothing about it himself.  

This conflict between sin and the desire to do good tortured Paul. He called himself wretched. He needed deliverance. 

The good news is, there is one who could deliver him. That one is Jesus. He is the only one who can do so.

So, is this chapter about Paul personally? Or is it about Paul as a representative of all men and women? The answer is yes. Paul experienced what he wrote. And, all men and women are captives of their sinful natures until Jesus comes and delivers them. 

SLAVES TO SIN OR SLAVES TO GOD - ROMANS 6

 Grace Is Not An Excuse To Sin

6:1-2

Having established that we are justified by grace, and that grace abounded when sin increased under the law, Paul anticipated the next question: If that is true, should believers continue to sin so that grace can abound even more? To continue in sin is to live a life of habitual sin. 

This, by the way, was the theology of the Russian monk Rasputin (pictured above). 

Paul answered that question with a forceful “no”. The reason is those who died to sin cannot live in it. Justified people have died to sin. We used to be dead in sin, but now we are dead to sin. 

To explain, Paul used the image of baptism.

Baptized Into Christ

6:3-14

When believers come to Christ in faith, they become “in Christ”. Paul says we are “baptized” into Christ. (3) We are immersed into Christ. 

As a result, we are baptized into his death. They are immersed in and identified with his death. 

Baptism is a portrayal of this, a symbol showing the believer buried with Christ, then raised as Christ was. Our symbolic death shows we have died to sin and our symbolic raising shows we are raised to walk in newness of life. We even say this as we baptize believers. 

Even though we say it, though, some people ignore it. They think salvation is just a get out of hell card. They receive their card by saying some words and filling out a card. Then they have done the deal and they are done with it. Nothing further is involved.

Paul, however, speaks of a change in the believer. He or she walks in “newness of life”. They live in a new way. Paul speaks elsewhere of the believer becoming a new creation. (2 Corinthians 5:17) And if the believer becomes something new, it means something old has been put away. Paul said it “passed away”. 

That putting away is a sort of resurrection. We are united with Christ, not only in death, but also in a resurrection like his. (5) Our old self, the lost and sinful self, was crucified with Christ. (6) This brings the old body of sin to nothing. We are no long enslaved by sin. We are set free from sin. (7)

Christ’s resurrection showed death did not have dominion over him. (9) He lives and he lives to God. Those who are in union with Christ should also consider themselves dead to sin and alive to God. (11) 

That being the case, we do not present our bodies and minds to unrighteousness behavior. Instead we present ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness. (13) Receiving grace did not present the opportunity to live in sin. Rather, grace freed us from sin so that we can live to bring glory to God through our righteous behavior. 

You can present yourself to sin in many ways.  It can be by watching or reading pornography, by hanging out with people who live to sin, or dwelling on things other people have and coveting them. 

Or, you can present yourself to God in righteousness by committing yourself to live for Christ, then by reading your Bible or works by spiritual writers, by associating with those who seek to live holy lives, and by serving others. 

The Analogy of Slavery

6:15-22

In this passage, Paul returns to the question should we sin because we are under grace and not law. The answer is still no. But, this time, Paul uses the analogy to slavery. A slave is one who obeys his or her master. You are a slave of the one you obey. (16)

There are only two alternatives. You can obey sin. That is one alternative. You give in to all temptations. I once heard a radio show where the host conversed with a young woman who took drugs regularly even though they were causing her harm. When the host spoke of this concept of freedom from the slavery of sin, she was incredulous and asked “you mean I don’t have to do what I want to do?”. 

Paul said sin leads to death. (16) He was speaking of the failure to obtain eternal life in Christ. But in so many people, we see the results of their sin killing them. Their physical health declines. Their mental health is affected. And their spiritual health is destroyed.

The second alternative is that you can submit yourself to obedience to God which leads to righteousness. (16) Righteousness then leads to sanctification. (19) 

Thankfully, God transforms the believer from slave to sin to one who becomes obedient from the heart to God’s word as they hear it taught. God’s word, including the law, tells us what God’s standards are. 

Believers begin to obey that teaching. That fulfills a promise of God, who said: 

“I will put my law within them and I will write it upon their hearts. (Jeremiah 31:33) 

And who also said: 

“I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.” (Ezekiel 36:27) 

As we progress in sanctification, we become slaves to righteousness in that we seek to obey God’s commands. He has empowered us to do this. As we obey, we progress in sanctification which ends in eternal life. (22)

Verse 23 is well known and often memorized. It summarizes the thought of chapter 6. The wages of sin, what you earn, is death. It has lead to physical death and will lead to spiritual death. 

In contrast to what we earn, what we receive as a gift of God for believing in his Son is eternal life in the Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.