Recently we’ve fed on God’s amazing promise that we can be liberated from all – all! – negative behaviours (Rom 6:14). We’ve seen that everything builds on the dramatic thing God did within us when we were, as Jesus thought-provokingly puts it, `born again`. But now: given that, what do Romans 6>8 tell us about what we do to forward that transformation?
How shall we answer this question? One way is simply to reread these chapters, and list the practical `instructions’ Paul gives us. And as we do, we notice how few there actually are: maybe as few as three. Because, as we’ve seen, the crucial thing is what God has done!
Paul’s first actual instruction comes in 6:11: `Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God!’`(NIV as usual). That is: Absorb the vision of what changed at new birth as the fundamental reality of your life (faith in what God’s Word says is crucial here, just as it was when we were born again; see two posts back); develop a deep awareness that you really are dead, and therefore finished with an entire old way of living! (Lord, these are what I want. Please help me.)
Second instruction: practise a mindset that consciously, continually, yields itself to God. What Paul calls us to here is the practice of absolute, all-embracing surrender: `Do not let sin reign in your mortal body… Do not offer the parts of your body to sin… but rather offer yourselves to God…offer the parts of your body to Him’ (6:13). That second command comes immediately before the clear promise in 6:14 that sin will not have mastery over us, implying that it is basic to our victory. This makes sense: isn’t it the case that, before we succumb to temptation – unbelief, some kinds of depression, lust, anything of the kind – there often seems to be an element of yielding? Instead, we can take a moment to deliberately yield ourselves to God. And when we’ve `offered ourselves’ consciously to God, surrender to sin will be less likely in the minutes that follow! (As a student I was much struck by a tract advocating the discipline of consciously giving ourselves to God, five or six times each day. These verses imply that this isn’t a bad idea.) When Paul returns to this theme later in Romans, he will start from the same point: `I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices’ (12:1). (So Lord, I do. I pause at this moment to give myself afresh, my body, mind, emotions, and spirit, to You.)
Here then are the first two practical steps; and we find that Paul devotes the second half of ch6 to deepening our grasp of this conscious `offering’. The way he now rephrases his instruction gives a sense of our deliberately submitting to discipline: `Offer the parts of your body in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness’ (v19). It’s not surprising. In any skill, from judo to playing the saxophone, a period of submission to constructive disciplines is essential; only thus can we reach that freedom which instinctively `does the right thing’. Holiness, Paul wants us to know, involves that same deliberate commitment to progress. (Lord: please do not stop stirring up in me that desire!) This conscious longing for holiness is crucial; we may not be as holy as we would like to be, says Tozer, but we are certainly as holy as we truly want to be.
But that’s not the end. If we stopped here, we wouldn’t have progressed much beyond seeing the need for our own effort, the `old way of the written code’ (7:6). And then we might well end up trapped in the frustrations portrayed in 7:14-25: `I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law’ – so far so good – `but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.’ We can’t handle this in our own strength. `After beginning with the Spirit’, we can’t expect to `attain our goal by human effort’, say Paul in Gal 3:3; we will still `live by faith’, or not at all. In every area of spiritual life it’s the same: we must constantly be looking, not to our own efforts to do God’s will, but to `Him that is able to keep you from falling`! Murray M’Cheyne once said he took ten looks at Christ for every look he took at himself, and that’s surely very valuable advice; so we can confess any sins we’re aware of but then concentrate on Christ, instead of perhaps being spiritual hypochondriacs like the devil would wish us to be! (Neil Anderson notes in his excellent The Bondage Breaker that 7:24 says `What a wretched man I am`, but condemning ourselves like that because we’re focused on our own unsuccessful efforts misses the whole point; because `there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!` (8:1)).
So now we see again the point of chapter 7, Paul’s long discussion of the value of the `law’ of God. The `law’ is basic to our transformation, he says, but that is just because it forces us to grasp our profound need for God’s deliverance. The most helpful expositions I’ve encountered of this were again by Leif Andersen from KFS, the Danish IFES student movement. Leif pointed out how bizarre are the things Paul says about the law, which till then I’d ignored as inexplicable. Our `sinful passions’ are actually `aroused by the law’ (v5), says Paul; sin `deceived me, seizing the opportunity provided by the commandment’ (v8).
What is this about? Well, we may already have seen its meaning in evangelism. The need for forgiveness may not be where our witness starts; but, in the end, our friends aren’t ready for Christ till they have seen that need. (`A culture that has no awareness of sin will surely be indifferent to the gospel, seeing it as “medicine” that it doesn’t need`, says Jeff Lucas in his fine book Grace Choices. `Grace only makes sense when we understand that grace is needed… Conviction is not a miserly swipe from a killjoy God, but a call from a loving Father… a hint from heaven that we are more than animals.`) But people are so very lost that they can’t see that need. How then are their eyes to be opened to their profound `bentness’, their deep need for forgiveness? Perhaps by experiencing how God’s law reveals the sin in us – or even `arouses’ it! Forbidden fruit, we know, is often attractive precisely because it is forbidden (`naughty but nice’); and that shows us that our nature doesn’t just sin by accident. Rather it contains something so dark, so at enmity with God, that God’s forbidding something can actually become an `opportunity’, a reason to do it. So we desperately need deliverance.
We see, then, how `the commandment is good’ (v12); the `brutality of the law comes from God’s compassionate heart’, as Leif argues – it’s God’s way to show us our urgent need for Christ’s forgiveness and rescue. (5:20 makes the same point; see also Gal 3:24.) A deep awareness of this will lead to conversion that lasts. Indeed, Leif continues, encountering this law, seeing how very much we needed forgiveness, will increase our subsequent love for Jesus. `He who has been forgiven little loves little’, as Christ told us (Luke 7:47). (This is also why revealing the realities of God’s wrath, even though to the world they are `ugly`, matters so much.) It’s as we grasp the enormity of what Christ had to do for us – as we grasp the seriousness of sin, grasp the full force and effect of the `law’ God revealed in the old testament – that adoration wells up in our hearts. (Hence, incidentally, the value of studying Exodus, Numbers, Jeremiah or Ezekiel. I have sat in a UCCF staff conference and watched staff both male and female turned to tears of worship as they saw the cross more clearly, through hearing Ezekiel’s words expounded on sin and judgment.)
So now, Paul announces joyously, we are finished with that law’s enormous penalty; only Christ could have rescued us – and He has done so forever (Rom 7:4). We see this in evangelism; but this same experience of our need is fundamental if we want this `rescue’ to extend throughout our personality. We are busy people… and we can act as if we can get by without grappling with our need of supernatural power for transformation. We have to be helped to face reality; there is something deeply, stubbornly ugly in us, that we cannot master alone. `I do not understand what I do’, says Paul here at some length. `For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do… I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – that is what I keep on doing’ (vv15,18,19). (Lord, please help me to face up to this…)
When we have finally grasped this, we will be ready for chapter 8. We are born again, yes; but for salvation to spread within us, we need God as much as ever! This is why those ongoing acts of surrender in ch6 were not just to the fulfilment of abstract external commands. Rather, first, we `offer ourselves to God‘ (6:13), to a deepening internal relationship with Him – devoted surrender to the Person who has come to live in us, and who alone can now move us onward. Without this, transformation will grind to a halt.
So now we can read on into ch.8. And we’ll probably be struck by its repeated emphasis on `the Spirit… the Spirit… the Spirit’ – replacing that frustrated `I… I… I’ that recurs, helplessly, throughout ch.7. Victory over sin – changing all that lurid purple wallpaper in the house that Christ has purchased! – comes through active faith in the Spirit’s power, not my own. `Therefore, my dear friends`, wrote Paul to the Philippians, `…continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose` (2:12-13). And this was the wonderful promise in Ezekiel, so very close to what we’re seeing in Romans: `I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you, and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws` (36:26-27). Each time I face a spiritual challenge, says Nee, instead of trying to deal with it myself, I very actively `look to Him to do in me what He requires of me.`
So maximizing this is what underlies Paul’s third vital instruction for us in these chapters: `Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation… not to the sinful nature, to live according to it… but… by the Spirit put to death the misdeeds of the body‘ (8:12-13). As Nee says, the Spirit is not a mere force or influence, but (astonishingly) a living Person, no less than the Eternal God!; a Person we can grieve (Eph 4:31)(!); a relationship we must build and protect… What we are called to learn is the vital art of `living according to the Spirit’, the Spirit’s agenda, and not `according to the sinful nature’ (8:4-5), being `led` (ie governed) by Him (8:14). As Paul says elsewhere: `Live by the Spirit, and’ – then – `you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature… The one who sows to please the Spirit, will from the Spirit reap eternal life’ (Gal 5:16, 6:8). (Lord, thankyou: please help me learn, and long, to `please the Spirit’ in my whole life…)
And this will guarantee us victory. Paul knew, as ch7 demonstrates, the ongoing difficulty of holiness. But he is clear, and goes on to declare, that, if we are believers at all, we are destined (8:29), overall, to end up in an existence that can finally be described as `controlled by the Spirit’ (8:9,14). That is why he is sure (6:14) that sin will not ultimately master us. Scripture is plain that genuine new life will be accompanied by the Spirit’s fruit. (This is `Sin shall not be your master’ again, but phrased the positive way round.) Those who are forgiven, Jesus taught, are those who, ultimately, take steps to forgive others (Matthew 6:15); those who go to heaven will be those who lived lives marked overall by practical social concern for the least of their brothers (Matthew 25). `We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death’ (1 John 3:14). Luther phrased it precisely: We are justified by faith alone, but faith is never alone. Real new birth brings with it real internal change!
So indeed there are steps we must deliberately take, choices for holiness we must consciously battle for (Paul’s words in 8:13, `Brothers… if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die’ leave no doubt of their seriousness.) But each of us `born of the Spirit` (John 3:8) has received, `built in’, both the wisdom to make right choices, and the power to follow them through. Our task, then, is to learn, more and more, to `live by the Spirit’; and eventual triumph will be guaranteed…
PS Surely we want to know more about this, since it’s evidently so fundamental to our liberation. Don’t we find Paul’s answer when he returns to his more personal theme in chapter 12? (That’s after two joyous digressions, one about the enormous glory the Spirit is leading us into (8:15-39), and the second on the unfailing wisdom of God’s Word and strategy in bringing us all there, particularly Israel (a digression especially important for the concerns of his Jewish readers, as was 7:7ff )(in chs 9-11).) In 12:1-2 Paul comes back to the issue of how we live, presenting us with a vital choice of lifestyle; and it seems to develop ch.8’s challenge to live by the Spirit, not the flesh. More about chs 12 and 13 next week…
