Van-guard (văn’gärd), noun: “The foremost or leading position in a trend or movement.”
the journey forward... exploring the emerging church... navigating spiritual formation... seeking to transform the world... ...through Christ
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Van-guard (văn’gärd), noun: “The foremost or leading position in a trend or movement.” the journey forward... exploring the emerging church... navigating spiritual formation... seeking to transform the world... ...through Christ |
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Free
to Really Live! Romans
8:9-13 "You,
however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the
Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he
does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of
sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him
who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the
dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in
you. Therefore,
brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live
according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die;
but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live." Imagine
yourself as a slave in the pre-Civil war south. Your parents were slaves, you
grew up knowing nothing other than slavery. You depend on your Master, as cruel
as he is, for food and clothing and shelter—knowing that your hardship is
unjust, knowing that you should be freed from the chains, but not knowing how or
when it could ever happen. And not able to imagine what life would be like if
you were ever indeed free. The hard work of picking cotton and hauling manure
has become normal for you and your race. It’s the only life you’ve ever
known. But
then the war commences. And at the cost of thousands of lives, you are freed.
Abraham Lincoln delivers on New Years Day of 1863 the Emancipation Proclamation.
Laws are passed, freedom is assured. But it costs Lincoln his life. The
word spreads throughout the South—we are freed! You no longer need to live
under the mastery of your owner. But all you have ever known is the old age of
slavery. And everyone around you is in the same perplexing mode—both black and
white. How do we live on this side of the War that freed the slaves? What does
that look like? How can we change things so that we can allow all to live in
freedom? We know that we are in a new age of freedom, but all we know how to do
is live in the age of slavery. So, out of habit, we go back to life as we have
always known it. Sounds
unlikely? That is exactly what happened in the South. Shelby Foote, in his
excellent history on the Civil War, quotes an Alabama slave in 1864 reflecting
on the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln. “I
don’t know nothing ‘bout Abraham Lincoln, ‘cep they say he sot us free.
And I don’t know nothing ‘bout that neither.” What
a shame. Now,
here is your spiritual reality: There was a spiritual war to free you from your
slavery. It was fought by Jesus Christ on your behalf. It cost him his life,
which he gladly gave for your freedom. The battle on the cross between good and
evil was won by the good—and the slaves were set free. Three years before the
cross, Jesus announced his Emancipation Proclamation: “The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has appointed me to preach Good News to
the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the
blind will see, that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors, and
that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.” (Luke 4:18-19) On
the cross, the captives were indeed emancipated. We entered into a new age of
freedom from the wrath and ravages of sin. We entered a new age of grace and
righteousness—not from our own strength (or lack thereof), but in the power of
the Holy Spirit. We entered a new age of life instead of death—spiritual life,
resurrection life. We
entered a new life of freedom and life and an assured future with God is
heaven…but many of us are like that slave, living as if were are still
obligated to live in the old age of slavery. All we have ever known is life as a
slave, and so we revert back to that passed time of bondage in our practical,
day-to-day life. This
passage proclaims to us—both to our heads and to our hearts—that we are
FREE! We are in a new age of LIFE and an ASSURED FUTURE and we need not live
life as if we are still in slavery. 1.
The Believer’s New Position (Romans 8:9) "However,
you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells
in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to
Him." (NASB) In
verses 5 through 8, we read about those who are controlled by the “flesh,”
or the “sinful nature.” That is, people who have not yet trusted Jesus
Christ for salvation. Verse 9 makes a contrast: “HOWEVER, You are
different…” He
is speaking to the Roman Christians who received this letter (the Epistle to the
Romans), and by extension to you and to me, if we are believers in Jesus Christ.
He says to us: “You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit!” Remember from
a few weeks ago, our definition for flesh: The term represents everything that
is “this-worldly” in us—all our selfishness and weakness mixed with all of
our best intentions to do what is right in our own strength. The “flesh” is
what we can accomplish as natural people. It is our old nature—what the NIV
translates as the sinful nature, as opposed to our new nature, the spiritual
nature. I
prefer the New American Standard Bible’s translation of this verse, however,
because it is simpler and more concisely what the original Greek language meant:
If you are a believer, “you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.” In
order to understand this passage, we have to think in terms of historical time.
Just as the slaves in the old South entered a new age of freedom after the Civil
War, believers entered a new age of freedom after the Cross of Christ. You
are not in that old age of flesh, but in the new age of Spirit. This is
salvation-history language. In this new age of the Spirit, all believers are
indwelt with the very Spirit of God! There is no other kind of Christian except
a Spirit-indwelt Christian. If
you have trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, a transformation occurs, in which
you are made spiritual alive through the very Spirit of God coming into you and
doing supernatural things to you! Don’t
believe it? Think you’re too carnal or sinful for that to be true? Nobody in
the history of the church was more carnal as Christians than the ancient
Corinthian Church—they lived lustfully, they were selfish, they were spiteful
toward one another. And to those sinful, messed-up Christians, Paul wrote: “Don’t
you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in
you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16) For
those who live on this side of the cross, on which the war for the freedom of
the slaves was fought and won by Jesus Christ, and for those who place their
trust in that—“you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.” In fact, as
the verse continues, “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does
not belong to Him.” There is no such thing as a Christian without the Holy
Spirit! This
is good news for the person struggling in his or her faith—you need to know
that the war has been fought, and you now live in the new age of the Spirit!
Sure, you are still subject to physical sickness and death. Sure, you still have
to constantly fight that old flesh and your enemy the devil as they tempt you
into sin. But that is not the end of the story! You are not a slave to the
flesh; you are not helpless against the devil. You
are on this side of the cross! “Through
Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and
death.” (Romans 8:2) “Thank
God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart
the new teaching God has given you. Now you are free from sin, your old master,
and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness.” (Romans
6:17-18) 2.
The Believer’s New Life (Romans 8:10) Allow
me, once again, to have issues with the NIV’s translation. Here is how the
NLT’s footnote renders verse 10, which makes better sense of the verse: “Since
Christ lives within you, even though your body will die because of sin, the
Spirit will bring you eternal life because you have been made right with God.” Actually,
the old King James Version is hard to beat: “And
if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life
because of righteousness.” The
NIV (and the NASB) sees the Greek word pneuma (Spirit) as our spirit.
There are times when pneuma can refer to the human spirit, but in Romans 8, pneuma
is most often used to refer to the Holy Spirit (except for one time)…as it
does in the next verse which further explains this verse. So, let’s keep it
Spirit with a capital “S.” which makes sense, doesn’t it? If
I am a Christian, my body, or that part of me that is still subject to sin will
actually physically die because of the curse of sin. But in spite of that, I
find spiritual LIFE because the power of the Spirit! Look at the parallel
contrast: The
body
The Spirit Is
dead
Is life Because
of sin
Because of righteousness My
body can only bring about death because of my sin. But
the Holy Spirit brings me life because of a righteousness that is not innate
within me but brought to me by God himself when he indwells me with his Holy
Spirit! By
faith, I am declared righteous (that’s called “justification” in
theological terms), and the righteousness of Christ is given to me. “Where
sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in
death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans
5:20-21) Ahhh!
Life! Righteousness! Eternal Life! These are among the promises that are given
to those who place their faith in Jesus Christ! Also included is a sure future: 3.
The Believer’s Sure Future (Romans 8:11) “But
if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised
Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His
Spirit who dwells in you.” The
Holy Spirit of the God who raised Jesus Christ from the grave dwells in
believers. And that means a wonderful thing for us—we are assured of the very
same thing! Our physical bodies are deteriorating—some of us faster than
others. And all but one person who has ever lived has died. It is your fate as
well, unless Jesus returns before that day. Those of us who are relatively young
don’t think about it much, but we are all mortal, we all, every one of us,
will die. But
the promise to you, if you are a believer, is that your mortal body will be
resurrected in the future! “The
body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in
dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power;
it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body...” (1
Corinthians 15:42-44) Here’s
the incredible promise: If you’re like me, you often are disappointed with the
spiritual and physical limitations of our current situation. But, as the New
Living Translation puts it, “Our bodies now disappoint us, but when they
are raised, they will be full of glory. They are weak now, but when they are
raised, they will be full of power.” (1 Cor 15:43). That
is what awaits us. And it is sure. 4.
The Believer’s Obligation (Romans 8:12-13) Okay.
Here is the “So What?” of this passage. In the previous verses, we are told
that there are two natures—the “flesh” and the “Spirit.” And that
there are two epochs of time—the Age of the Flesh and the Age of the Spirit.
In the history of what God has accomplished through Jesus Christ, we now live in
the Age of the Spirit—if we believe in what Jesus did for us in dying for our
sins on the cross. He puts us on this side of the dividing line in salvation
history: the side of the Spirit—which results in eternal life.
“Eternal Life” is both a quality and a quantity of life. It is a
quality of life that begins at conversion, a life of relationship with God that
finds its fulfillment when we are resurrected to be with God for all eternity. Now
verse 12 says, “Therefore…” Here,
then, is what this all means for us in our day-to-day life in the here and now. “Therefore,
brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live
according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die;
but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will
live.” (Romans 8:12-13) We
have an obligation. But this is not to the old nature, the flesh, to live in the
life before when we were in slavery. We are not tied down to living in
“this-worldliness”—we do not have to live merely in our selfishness and
weakness. We are not obligated to live merely by our best intentions to do what
is right in our own strength. We
are not under that Master anymore. Even though we still live in our bodies and
in the “realm of the flesh,” and even though everyone around us live are
enslaved to the flesh, we no longer belong to that prior age. We
now live in the age of freedom, the age of the Spirit. But like that freed slave
who might, out of habit, obey his old Master even after being officially
released from bondage, so we Christians far too often still listen to and heed
the commands of our old Master, the flesh. But
we have an obligation to live in accordance with who we really are! A Christian
does not purposely live as if he still lived back when he was a slave to sin! No,
we purpose to live in the position that God has placed us! Just
like it took years to free the slaves in reality by giving African-Americans
full rights and freedoms, it may take a lifetime for you to realize all the
rights and freedoms you have in Christ (and sadly, we still have not eradicated
the injustices of racial inequality in this country). But to simply relinquish
your life to the old way of slavery is to be like an ex-slave in the freed
South…affirming that it may be true “theoretically” but not practically. The
onus of responsibility is placed on you to live in the freedom that Christ paid
his life to give you! You must choose to put to death that old fleshly life. But
here is the good news: Without the Spirit, you could not do so…but with the
Spirit, you can experience more and more freedom. Just as life for black men and
women are much better in 2003 than it was in 1950, and will be better in 2050
than it is today, you will experience further and further growth in spiritual
life. How? Through
living openly in a community of faith that encourages you to grow (that is what
this church is supposed to be!) Through
a commitment to being different from the pattern of the world of flesh around
you, having a desire to allow God to transform you through allowing him to renew
the way you think about life, about priorities, about spiritual realities
instead of fleshly stuff (that’s what Romans 12:1-2 talks about). Through
shifting your mind and heart away from the things of this world and toward
heavenly realities (that’s what Colossians 3 talks about). And
through fighting for the freedom that is yours. Even though the Civil War had
been fought, and even though the Constitution was amended to create equality for
all men and women in the United States, it was not that simple was it? Those who
have been in bondage in the past had to (and still have to!) fight for that
freedom, for the world will always be hostile towards freedom. You
have been set free, but the world, the flesh, and the devil will not want you to
realize that freedom. Fight! Don’t take it lying down! Put on the full armor
of God and battle for your freedom!
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