Romans part VII
Notes
Transcript
In chapter 6 we talked about how Christ has set us free from sin so that we might become slaves to righteousness. Our life is not our own but we have been purchased by God to live in freedom with Him glorifying and loving God and loving others. Our sin brought death but Christ has brought life. To summarize Paul in that chapter I would simplify it as, stop sinning and live in freedom.
Today we will see that freedom is complex and the process of sanctification in our life can be a war zone. An old, dead theologian named John Owen once said, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you”. That quote in many ways sets the tone for us tonight. Our old self that is of the flesh and our new self born again in the Spirit are at war with each other, but grace leads us to victory in Jesus.
Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
To help the Romans understand the weight of the law on their lives Paul uses an example of marriage. I think it is important to point out something about his example. It might be easy for someone to look at this and say, well why is it that only the woman is at fault in divorce? That question really has nothing to do with what Paul is teaching here. I think the reason he is using female pronouns here is to connect all of us in the church to the metaphor. The church is the bride of Christ. And so we as the church put ourselves in this metaphor. In marriage two people are bound before God to each other. It is a decision to take seriously and one that is designed to last a lifetime. In the example Paul tells of a woman who leaves her husband to be with another man. But she is bound to the law. She cannot be with the other man until the first husband dies otherwise she would be seen as an adulterer. Paul connects this to us in that we have been married to sin in our flesh. We are condemned under the law and have made ourselves one with sin. We cannot have two husbands. Either we are married to our sin or we are married to Christ. The thing is that in order to be married to Christ we must be dead to sin. Just as the woman’s husband must die before she can be remarried, in our conversion, as we believe in Christ and are transformed by grace, the old self, our flesh is put to death inside us so that we might be buried with Christ in death and be raised to walk with Him in a new life as His bride.
Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
In our flesh, the law produced within us acts of obedience. The fruit of our life under the law was death. But now we have been joined to another. We are dead to sin and the law and made alive to grace in Christ. We are joined with Christ so that we might produce fruit for God and not death. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. The presence of God that led Israel through the wilderness in a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, that resided in the holy of holies where priests could only enter once a year, this sacred and lofty presence that fills the throne room of heaven and causes the earth to shake now lives in us. The creator and the sustainer of the universe makes His home with us. People under grace are free to do whatever they want, but people bound to Christ will use their freedom to glorify Christ in everything they do.
Carrying on this metaphor of a marriage, our relationship to sin was abusive. Sin hurts us. It takes advantage of us. It manipulates us. We had no freedom in sin and no way of escape by law. But I have died to that relationship and I’m with someone new now. Now I stay as far away from sin as I can and I try to help other people get out of that relationship too. And when I slip back into those old ways I remind myself how sin hurt me and how I have everything I need in Jesus. I’m not bound to sin anymore. I don’t have to play its games or let it influence me. I can rest in the arms of my Savior who died to set me free. Even when I am unfaithful, God remains faithful to me and the things He has promised He will see through.
As we labor through this idea of sanctification (The process of being made more like Jesus day by day) we are working towards glory. There is hope at the end of this process. We labor and strive towards righteousness. We fight our sin with everything inside us. We press on and run the race because God is cheering us on and calling us to something greater. I am already free of the eternal consequence of my sin thanks to the work of Christ. That is my justification. But I also want to avoid the consequence sin has in my relationships, in how I see other people, in how I love and care for others, how I worship and obey God, and how I live today. This is what sanctification does. It refines me and prunes those lingering sinful behaviors. It chisels away what is ugly and shapes me into something beautiful that honors God and testifies His goodness to the people around me.
So how do we reconcile the role God’s law has in our condemnation? Is the law to blame for our wrongdoing? How can something good and given by God cause so much death?
What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
The law is not sin. Instead it acts like a mirror showing us the sin inside us. It teaches us what sin is and as a result our flesh uses that knowledge as grounds for more rebellion. The Law of God is holy because it is a reflection of His character that is holy. As we look to God’s holiness we are reminded of just how much we fall short.
Draw the graph of God’s holiness and our sin
In many ways you could say that God’s law is proved holy by our flesh’s desire to rebel against it at every turn. Sin hates what is good. The law shows us what it takes to live a holy life. These two things are opposites of each other and so the law wakes us up to the sin that is active in our life.
Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
It was not the Law that produced death in us but the sin that was already at work within us. The Law reveals our condition and points to our need for a Savior. The Law of God shows us that we have no hope of fulfilling what it requires. We cannot achieve holiness. Sinful people have the same hope of being holy as dead people have of being alive. The Law points to Jesus. He did what we could not. He lived a sinless life. He was obedient to every word of the law. I was sinful beyond measure. I was of the flesh sold under sin. But Jesus took my place on the cross and payed the penalty of my sin so that I could have new life with Him in the Spirit. Where sin was beyond measure grace has extended all the more. I am forgiven and free not because of the law that convicted me but by grace that Jesus offers to us freely by faith.
Paul breaks down this dichotomy between the flesh and the Spirit throughout the rest of the chapter. I think it is important to point out that Paul is not saying that everything physical is bad and everything spiritual is good. He isn’t telling us that the physical world we see around us is evil and that we need to be super spiritual or fall into mysticism. Jesus was physical. He ate real food and lived in human flesh. The physical isn’t evil because that would make God who created the physical world a sinner. Our eternities won’t be spiritual but physical. We will be given new bodies and live in a new heaven and a new earth. The physical world isn’t evil. Likewise, being super spiritual doesn’t make you holy. By this I mean being obsessed with angels or trying to have some kind of secret knowledge about spiritual things.
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance.
This idea of flesh vs. Spirit isn’t about physical and spiritual but is about the old self and the new which are made up by both the physical and the spiritual. We are called to honor God in our heart and with our actions. Godliness is of value to us physically and spiritually. Godliness isn’t just for eternity but is valuable for today too. This idea of spiritualism was super popular in the first and second century and is popular today. People turn from the truth of God’s word in exchange for tarot cards and horoscopes to secret knowledge and superstitions. Jude the brother of Jesus speaks to this problem.
Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire. Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.
Angels neglecting their role spiritually left heaven to indulge in physical sin just as humans rebelled against God at Sodom and Gomorrah by going after strange flesh. Likewise you have these humans who focus on spiritualism and mysticism and in doing so defile the flesh, reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. Well what is the solution? If we don’t want to be too physical minded or too spiritual minded what should we focus on?
Later on in the chapter, Jude warns us that there will be people that claim to speak for God and are put together and attractive in the things they say but they are devoid of the Spirit. Avoid people who flatter others for selfish gain, who claim to be spiritual and claim to have authority but are following after ungodly lusts. Rather than being too concerned about the physical or too concerned about the spiritual, Jude calls us to live in the Holy Spirit focused on following Jesus.
Paul’s distinction between flesh and Spirit focuses on how we live our life. It’s about our sanctification. Are we being made more and more like Jesus every day. Is the Spirit working in us to produce fruits of the Spirit or are we living in unrepentant sin serving our old self in the flesh? It’s not about are we physical or spiritual its about are we walking in step with our new self and who God is calling us to be.
For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Paul explains his experience as a born again believer. He is made new. He has been set free, but he still struggles with his old nature. He still struggles with sin. He desires to live in the Spirit and live in the new self but there is still part of his old self that he struggles with. Sanctification is a process. Paul is telling the Romans that he isn’t perfect. He wants to be. He wants to live a sinless life that honors God perfectly but he is still living in a broken world and still has a broken body. Spiritually he is forgiven and made new but physically he still struggles with temptation and old sins. He desires to do what is right in his heart but doesn’t always do what is right in his actions.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
The hope that Paul holds on to is that even though he struggles with his sin there will be a day when he stands before God when his sin will be done away with forever. When the process of sanctification makes way for glorification. Even though he still sins Paul is passionate about working out his faith so that over time the practice of his life looks more and more like Jesus. He doesn’t have it in him to be perfect but he does have the Holy Spirit as a seal of his eternity and as a helper guiding him in life. You and I will never be perfect but we have been set free from our sin. As we grow in wisdom and obedience we too will begin to look more and more like Jesus because of the Holy Spirit working inside us to make us holy. In chapter 6 and 7 Paul is encouraging us to put to death our old self and live in the new. Live in freedom and follow the Holy Spirit’s call in your life. If tonight you feel worn out because of your war against the sin in your life, if you feel frustrated that you just can’t shake that sin but you really want to honor God with your life here is some encouragement Paul has for you from the next chapter.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Sanctification is a process and is a lot of hard work, but the forgiveness is free. God’s grace is big enough for all our sins past, present, and future. We are free from sin although we still struggle with it. One day when we die or when Christ returns He will make all things new.