Paul boils all human life down to one simple statement: “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 8:13. And how do we know if we’re living according to our sinful nature or living according to the Spirit? By our obedience, or disobedience, to God’s law. It’s a simple formula: If we’re disobeying God’s law we die, but if we’re obeying it we live.
Unfortunately, we live in bodies that can’t, and don’t want to, obey God’s law (verse 7). Jesus dealt with that, however, by offering his own body as a sin offering which “condemned sin in sinful man.” And for what purpose? – “in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us (verses 3-4).” Jesus died so we could obey God’s law, because in obeying God’s law we would live.
Obeying God’s law, then, is a matter of life and death. And if we aren’t obeying God’s law we are nothing more than walking dead people. Like some awful living corpse in a horror movie, “your body is dead because of sin (verse 10).” It’s like living in the body of a zombie; it’s alive physically but that’s all. There’s no other life in it. It just staggers around in its trance-like state doing what all zombies do, with no control whatsoever over what it does. But that’s the dreadful picture Paul paints of human beings, too. Anyone controlled by his sinful nature is a zombie – alive physically, yes, but that’s all. There’s no other life in him. He’s just a living corpse.
Is there a cure? Yes, verse 11: “he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” The same power that gave life to Christ’s dead body will give life to our dead bodies, too. How? Through the Spirit, because the Spirit living in us helps us want to, and be able to, obey God’s law. Paul calls it “the Spirit of Christ (verse 9),” so it’s really Christ living in us, and “if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, BUT your spirit is alive because of righteousness (verse 10).” Now that we can be righteous and obey God’s law, this other part of us, our spirit, comes alive. It lay dormant and lifeless while we couldn’t obey God’s law (and didn’t want to), but the Spirit gives life to it, and that’s important because it’s this other part of us that’s the real us…
Filed under: The new way of the Spirit
