BaptistWay Bible Series for October 21: It’s God’s life in you

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Posted: 10/12/07

BaptistWay Bible Series for October 21

It’s God’s life in you

• Romans 8:1-11

By Andrew Daugherty

Christ Church, Rockwall

In case you have not recognized it by now, the Apostle Paul is not a scrupulous storyteller. He is a systematic theologian. Unlike the storyboard of the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), Paul uses the threads of theological ideas rather than narrative details to stitch together a comprehensive commentary about how God sentenced sin to death by capital punishment. And not only was sin sentenced, sin was executed in this way: by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (v. 4).

If this sounds highly conceptual, it is. In fact, it’s hard to read the authentic letters of Paul and come to any other conclusion but that he is a highly conceptual thinker. At times, his theological sensibility sounds as though it is ascending to a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. Most of us don’t live quite that high in the sky, so it is helpful to bring Paul’s theology back down to the ground with the rest of us.

In the previous chapter, Paul did just that. Remember his personal confession: I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwells within me (7:15, 19). Paul confronts the conflict he battles between doing the good he wants to do but instead doing evil he does not want. For a perfectionist like Paul, you might imagine his inability to practice his faith with perfect precision must have made God’s work in Christ all the dearer to him.

Behind Paul’s sophisticated conceptual understanding was a man deeply in touch with his imperfections. As with most of us, Paul was not all bad. But neither was he all good. Remember also Paul’s earlier commentary in Romans that all people have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (3:23). Despite the good intentions of the law and the well-intended people who sought to practice the law, no person, no matter how good, could live up to the law’s demands, just as no person, no matter how bad, could be redeemed by the law’s demands.

So what is it exactly that the law could not do? What was its inevitable inadequacy? The law could not make any person free. As theologian Karl Barth has put well: “It could not pronounce the death-sentence over sin.” The law was weakened by the flesh (v. 3).

Paul draws parallels between living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit (v. 5). What the law wanted to do, it could not do, because it was subject to the limits and liabilities of the flesh.

Now, it is important to point out that “flesh” does not mean the physical nature of the human body, as if sexual sins were somehow the highest and worst in the pyramid of sin. By “flesh,” Paul means the current state of human affairs where rebellion and corruption and distortion of God’s truth reign. What God came to sentence to death was sin.

Sin in all its forms remains the destructive force at work in the world. To live according to the flesh is to live according to the rules of the corrupt system of the world; to live under the tyranny of a world where cash matters more than Christ and where waging war is considered easier than practicing peace. What God revealed in the Christ of the cross is that living according to the Spirit is an altogether different mindset and lifestyle.

Contrary to some atonement theories applied to Paul’s words in this passage, God did not condemn Jesus. God did not punish Jesus on behalf of all other human beings. Rather, God dealt with sin by condemning sin in the flesh of Jesus. And yet, questions arise: How could God condemn someone who was not guilty of sin? Why would sin be condemned in the flesh of Jesus?

As Messiah, Jesus was the representative of the Jewish people. To deal with sin by executing judgment in the person of Jesus was to deal with the sin that plagued his people once and for all. Therefore, to live according to the Spirit is to live as one whose very being is the place where God lives. The great reversal of the effects of sin has taken place in God’s action through the cross event in Jesus’ life. Likewise, the benefits of God’s action in Christ extend to those who now live according to the Spirit who dwells in them. In Christ, God sentences sin to death and commutes the life of Christ by raising Jesus from the dead.

The only totally perfect law that leads to life that really is life is the law of the Spirit. All other laws, however well-intended, are fundamentally weakened by the flesh.

When Jesus was hung up on a cross, it may have appeared to be the public execution of a political rebel. However, it was truly a divine indictment of all the corrupt systems of the world that keep human beings enslaved to a life lived according to the flesh, including unjust systems you and I take part in whether we realize it or not.

Some Christians—myself included—believe capital punishment is one such unjust system. In January 2003, Illinois Governor George Ryan told 156 inmates who were on death row that they no longer faced dying by lethal injection. I remember watching this historic moment on CNN that day. The governor said, “I’m going to sleep well tonight knowing I made the right decision.” A Republican pharmacist turned crusading criminal-justice reformer, Governor Ryan literally emptied Illinois’ death row in the name of what he described as a “manifest injustice.” Four death row inmates also were pardoned after determining they had been tortured into confessing crimes they did not commit.

What is more, a study found that the death sentences were given disproportionately to the poor and people from ethnic minorities, and these reports changed the governor’s mind. He confessed the system was flawed and if even one innocent man died because of it, it was worth calling the whole thing off.

Through Christ, God made a personal appearance to accomplish the work that could not be done by anyone else, not even by someone as erudite and spiritually experienced as Paul. Paul himself conceded this. He knew only one law can create the conditions that make for peace: To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (v. 6).

Human beings cannot add one single iota to the work God accomplished in Christ. Only God can make human beings righteous through the law of life. No human-made system can secure “the good life.” Besides, Christ did not come to help us attain the good life. Christ came to show us what makes for the life well-lived. And usually, how God defines it differs from how we define it. It’s the difference between living life according to the flesh and living life according to the Spirit. It’s the difference between making war and making peace. It’s the difference between life and death.

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