Romans 8:14-15 “The Key to It All”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁴For as many as are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God, ¹⁵for you did not receive again a spirit of slavery into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, in which we are crying, “Abba, Father!”

In v. 13, we read, “but if you, by the Spirit, are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” There I asked, what does that really mean – by the Spirit? In 13:14, we’ll be told to simply “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ.” In Eph. 4:22-24, we’re told to “Put off the old man and put on the new.” In Col. 3:5-12, we’re told to “Put to death, therefore, your members which are upon the earth…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, …” I could literally multiply verses where we are exhorted to actually make good choices as Christians, to choose between flesh and spirit, to change our lives, yet there is, in those passages, no mention of the Spirit. As I observed earlier, there is nowhere else in all the Bible where there is this much emphasis on the Spirit.

So why is this “by the Spirit” added here? We could all say, “Well, obviously, it has to be ‘by the Spirit,’” but does anyone really know what it means? I’m thinking we quite easily quote to ourselves, “Put off the old man and put on the new,” without necessarily any thought of the Spirit. We set about to be or do anything we find in the Bible, without necessarily acknowledging the Spirit. Yet, the passage says we must put to death the deeds of our bodies “by the Spirit.”  Why do we so easily leave Him out? And, if we’re being honest exegetes, we could ask the question, “Why does the Bible itself so seldom mention Him while giving us exhortations to change?”

I believe, based on this chapter, I see the answer to these questions. In a sense, it’s complicated (at least to my feeble brain), but I will try to record what I think I’m seeing. In v.15, the Holy Spirit causes us to cry, “Abba, Father!” That is a wonderful thing, but we need to take a step back and realize that in those two simple words is the key to it all. Jesus used those very words (Mk. 14:36). “Father,” of course, He used often. It (the word for “Father”) is recorded in Greek, but then He added “Abba,” which is Aramaic. Aramaic was the language of Babylon and, when the Jews returned to Palestine from the 70 years (two or three generations!) of Babylonian Captivity, Aramaic had become their native tongue, rather than Hebrew. There is a lot of debate about why even Jesus Himself mixed up the Greek and Aramaic here, but what everyone agrees is that the “Abba” is a much more tender, affectionate name, which some would suggest is closer to our “Daddy.”

One writer related something that made sense, even in our present context. He observed that it was almost universally true that people had slaves in their homes, and, just like in the American South, those slaves could often become intimate members of the family and dearly loved. What the writer related, however, was that there was one thing a slave must never do, and that was to refer to the father of the household as “Abba.” That name (our “Daddy”) was reserved for no one else but the children of the family.

With that thought in mind, read again, “for you did not receive again a spirit of slavery into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, in which we are crying, ‘Abba, Father!’” Ours, you see, is the children’s cry! As the text goes on to say, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are the children of God.” John exclaims, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!” (I Jn. 3:1). Here we go again. Real Christianity isn’t just about our little set of rules and traditions. Our Gospel isn’t just our tidy little answer for how to go to heaven. People may have largely made it into those very things, but that is not what God intends. No. Real Christianity is to enter into this intimate, affectionate, intensely personal relationship with the God of the universe, whom we now call, “Abba, Father!” We are children, not slaves. We are dearly loved. It’s that relationship itself that makes all the difference – but it is a spiritual relationship!

Just as Paul explains in Galatians, the miracle of the Cross is not simply that we are forgiven. To be born again isn’t just a matter of keeping a new set of rules. It is all about actually being made children of God. The slaves can’t know Him as “Daddy,” but we can! The Spirit God has placed within us isn’t there just to help us “keep the rules;” He is there as a Spirit of Adoption – to assure us we are in fact God’s children, that we are not groveling slaves, that we are free to enter fully into that loving Father/child relationship.

To miss the warmth of this relationship is, in a sense, to miss everything real salvation is all about. For too many people, I fear Jesus is just their ticket to heaven. “I got saved,” they say, and that’s about the end of it. “I went forward in an invitation,” someone else says, “and I went home and threw away all my alcohol and tobacco products!” And that’s the end of it. “I go to church,” they say. Perhaps they’re heavily involved at their church and everyone else observes “They really serve the Lord!” But in all of that, do any of them really know what it is to look the Lord in the eye and call Him “Abba, Father?” “Daddy?” As Jesus told busy Martha, “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.” Mary understood exactly what we’re saying here.

So we’re back to Spirit business again! Jesus did not save us so we could make a few external changes, so we could do a better job of keeping the rules, so we could call ourselves “Christians,” as if that is something better than Buddhists or Hindus or Muslims or such. Jesus saved us that we might enter into this intensely personal relationship with God as our “Abba.” The change is in our heart of hearts. Everything is different now precisely because God is our Father and we His dearly loved children. Everything about our Christianity grows out of that relationship. This is precisely why, “They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” It is NOT external. It is Spirit/spirit business.

All the way back to our question from the last chapter, herein is why Paul says, “If you, by the Spirit, do put to death the deeds of the body…” In contrast to the legalistic frustration of Romans chapter 7, we have entered into the “No condemnation” world of Chapter 8. The changes we would make as Christians, the spiritual growth, arises not out of grinding effort, but out of the warmth of this wonderful family relationship we now enjoy. Paul wants to make it clear here that we don’t just determine to “put to death the deeds of the body.” It is by the Spirit. It is first and foremost to be an outgrowth of this intimate relationship that is ours. That is precisely why what God wants us to become, Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” It is the fruit – the external evidence – of something going on inside of us. That is also why our choice is between the “works” of the flesh and the “fruit” of the Spirit. “Works” is the best the flesh can come up with. What we get is something eternally better – we get fruit, the love and joy and peace that well up from the love relationship going on within us.

This too is why He says in v.14, “for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God.” How do we know we or someone else is “led by the Spirit of God?” Is it not because we see in their lives the fruit of the Spirit? Is that not the family resemblance of those who are from God’s family? Real born-again people will be changed, will value righteousness, will strive to “put to death the deeds of the body,” but it is all fruit, where the indwelling Spirit is the root.

Once again, this Gospel isn’t leading to license. Yes, it is leading us into righteousness. But it leads us by the hand. It doesn’t drive us with a whip. God would have us look out into life from the warmth of His big fatherly lap, and do what we do because we love Him.

May your life and mine truly be a Spirit/spirit business!

Romans 8:12-13 “Life and Death”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹²Consequently, then, brothers, we are not being debtors to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, ¹³for if you are living according to flesh, you are about to be dying, but if you are, by the Spirit, putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.

I have been studying through to verse 17, but there are so many thoughts I want to record, I’m going to pause and focus on just vv.12,13. I think, in a way, that is dangerous to do with Romans Chapter 8, to focus in on just two verses, because there is so much truth packed in this one chapter, it would be easy to take any given verse out of context and end up proposing ideas that the larger context simply won’t support. However, since I’ve been studying the larger context, I’ll trust I won’t be myopic.

The chapter has already highlighted this matter of life and death, but then that has been a recurring theme all the way back to 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.” In the middle of all of that, we have the familiar Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord,” followed by Romans chapter 7 and the “Who shall save me from this body of death?” (v.24).

The answer, of course, is “Thanks be to God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v.25), after which we have the wonderful promise in 8:1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” That is a glorious truth we could spend hours just savoring, but at some point it leaves us asking the question, “How shall we then live?” As a human being living here on planet earth, I have to live. I must go out and interact with my world. Like Mary, I can spend hours just sitting at Jesus’ feet enraptured by His every word, but sooner or later I do have to stand up and get about my business. So, the question is still there, “How shall we then live?”

I’d like to inject here how important this is. Romans is the great book of the Gospel. God would have us to know that “the just shall live by faith,” and that, in fact, there is “no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” The Gospel itself, salvation in Christ apart from the works of the law, has been very clearly presented and defended. However, the book of Romans itself constantly returns to the theme of Christian living. It constantly asks and answers this question, “How shall we then live?” Theologically speaking, for the Lord, Justification always leads to Sanctification. People who don’t study malign the Gospel in the book of Romans, charging that the idea of salvation by faith alone leads to licentiousness. However, look again at the text and it is there for anyone to see, there is actually more emphasis on sanctification (Christian living) than on how the Gospel saved us to begin with. What I’d like to suggest is that we err greatly thinking the Gospel is only about how to be saved. The Gospel is a message from God that spans the totality of our human existence. In fact, as we’ll learn later in this chapter, it reaches out to encompass the entire created universe! The Gospel is not just “how to be saved.” It is Reality.

Reality, of course, is the universe in which we all exist, and what does the Gospel tell us? It tells us there is life and there is death. It says, “See, I set before you this day life and death. Choose life!” Now, the next thing to consider here in Romans 8 is the question, “What do we mean by life and death?” The passage says, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die.” Some people want to say, “See there, even if you’re a Christian, if you live by the flesh, you’ll end up losing your salvation!” In other words, the only “death” they see here is eternal death, the Second Death. However, I would suggest that is an example of the myopia I am determined to avoid.

I would suggest rather, we need to step back and see the big picture of life and death in the Bible. Starting in Genesis chapter 1, God gave us life. That life wasn’t just the fact that Adam became “a living soul,” just the simple fact he was “alive.” No. “Life” includes everything – the fact that we are alive and breathing, then all the joys and pleasures of living in this beautiful world, of mountain vistas and glorious sunsets, of all the love and joy and peace, of knowing God, and then the certain future of eternal life. When “sin entered the world, and death through sin,” in a sense, we lost all of that. God had warned Adam, “In the day you eat thereof, you shall surely die.” I have pointed out before, what He told him was literally, “in dying you shall die.” The “death” of which the Lord warned Adam wasn’t just an immediate execution, a physical death. No, in a sense it was much worse than that. It was a living death, or should I say a dying death.

Adam and his entire race after him were doomed to live out their human lives dying. And so, here we are today. We are living that same dying. For the first 30 or so years of our life, our growing typically outpaces our dying, giving us all our delusions of immortality. However, soon after that, we find we need bifocals, then the aches and pains and all the afflictions of age make it all too obvious, we are dying. And eventually we will. It is shocking to me to watch the old movies from say the 1930’s and 1940’s, to see all those young, healthy, beautiful people, then realize since then they’ve grown old and ugly and died of old age – but then, that’s exactly what the Lord warned Adam would happen.

The dying of aging is bad enough, but it is of course much worse than that. Then there is the living death of a life robbed of love and joy and peace. Gal. 5:19-21 tells us, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, immorality, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like…” and Titus 3:3 reminds us, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another." That is all the death of living as sinners.

All of that said, I have no problem understanding what the Lord means here in Romans 8:12,13, when He warns us, “If you live after the flesh, you will die.” Just as in Galatians 5, He would warn us that, though I may be born-again, and though I may have been adopted eternally into His family, though there is now for me no condemnation, yet to whatever extent I let myself return to eat at the hog trough of sin, I will experience that horrible world of death, life “in the flesh.” It isn’t necessary. I don’t belong there, but, even as a believer, I’m still faced with the choice that I can give in to my flesh.

So, though I’ve been saved by faith through the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, yet I am still faced with this question, “How shall we then live?” Even as a Christian, I don’t want to live dying. I can’t stop the process of aging or the fact that I and those I love must die physically, but I now have the choice before me to fight the living death of sin. What He calls us to do, instead of dying, is to “by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body.” Then, He says, you shall live. And may we say again, this is still the Gospel. It’s not just about being saved. It’s about living.

As I’ve been studying, I’ve been puzzling over what exactly it means to “by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body.” What does that really mean? Is it something different than what I’ve been trying to do my whole Christian life? Am I sure that is what I’m doing? Later on in Romans, Paul will express it as, “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (13:14). That is perhaps more familiar, but, obviously it isn’t anything different. But what is it?

I believe the larger text of Romans chapter 8 answers these questions. We’ll just have to keep studying!

This is no idle curiosity. It’s life and death. The Bible says, “Choose life.” Lord, help us all to clearly understand exactly what You mean, and to do it.

We want to live!

 

Romans 8:5-11 “More Spirit Business”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁵For those being according to flesh mind the things of the flesh, but those according to the Spirit the things of the Spirit, ⁶for the mind of the flesh [is] death, but the mind of the Spirit [is] life and peace, ⁷because the mind of the flesh [is] an enemy into God, for it is not being obedient to the law of God, for it is not even able, ⁸but the one being in flesh is not being able to please God, ⁹but you (pl.) are not in flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God is dwelling in you (pl.), but if someone is not having the Spirit of Christ, that person is not His, ¹⁰but, if Christ is in you (pl.), the body is dead because of sin but the spirit is alive because of righteousness, ¹¹but if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus out of dead ones is dwelling in you (pl.), the One who raised Christ out of dead ones will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit dwelling in you (pl.).

After studying this passage for some time, I believe it is far more profound than I have ever realized before. It is easy to read these words and then either 1) find them almost cliché (thinking, “Of course I know that!”), or 2) being threatened by the “ifs,” and perhaps secretly glad to just read on. Instead, I believe these words ought to blast like a cannon through our natural thoughts and lead us into those thoughts of God which He describes when He says, “For, as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My thoughts above your thoughts and My ways above your ways” (Isa. 55:9).

What do I mean? We humans seem to automatically assume any discussion about God or religion comes down to a basic question of whether or not you keep the laws. Good people try to keep the Ten Commandments and bad people don’t. Good Christians keep the Law, but others don’t. If you want God to like you, you have to follow the rules. God loves people who keep the Law and everyone else is in big trouble. That’s what a relationship with God is all about – being a good rule-keeper. And it’s not just Christians. Basically, that’s what every religion in the world is about; they just each have their own variety of rules to keep.

Look again at this passage. Is that the issue this passage presents? Please read it in your own Bible, then ask yourself, “What is this passage teaching us is the essential question? What is it that makes the difference whether I have a relationship with God or not?” Is worship a matter of whether or not we do a good job of keeping whatever is our group’s set of rules? What does it say?

The real question comes down to this business of flesh vs. the Spirit. Do you or do you not have the Spirit of God living in you? If you do not, then you are “in the flesh” and, as it says in vv. 6-8, “The mind of the flesh is death…the mind of the flesh is enmity with God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.” If that is true of someone, what is the solution? They need the Holy Spirit. The solution is not that they need to be better rule-keepers.

I think what this all comes down to is that this business of “religion” or, more specifically, of knowing God is spiritual business. It is not the external, observable business of exactly what rules you keep and how well you keep them. I would even suggest that, in itself, is a religion of the flesh, even if it calls itself Christianity and is the true religion of entire church groups. No. Jesus didn’t say it for nothing: “God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth…the Father seeks such to worship Him.”

“They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

A relationship with God is something infinitely deeper than our petty rule-keeping. It is something that goes on first of all inside of us, in our hearts, and there we must confront the truth of who we really are and who God is to us. “If anyone does not have the Spirit of God, he is none of His” (v.9). Then do we or don’t we?

I will wander so far as to say we also have to apply these things to those around us who claim to be Christians. It is not our place to judge other people, but Jesus was the one who said, “By their fruits you shall know them.” I can’t say how many million times over the years I have known and dealt with people whom I was supposed to believe were Christians, yet there was absolutely nothing spiritual or Christlike about them. They may have been champion rule-keepers but there was nothing of the spirit of Christ about them.

That has been very confusing and very discouraging to me. However, I believe Romans 8 would free us from that confusion and discouragement. It tells us that no matter what great rule-keepers they are, no matter how high they may have risen (even to be pastors and missionaries and deacons and Sunday School teachers), if they don’t have the spirit of Christ about them, “they are none of His.” Those who are truly born-again are those who “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (v.4). When someone’s walk possesses nothing of the fruit of the Spirit, the real truth is, “they are none of His.” I can still love them. I don’t need to be judgmental or critical. I just don’t have to be telling myself, “They just need to grow.” No. They need to be saved. For real. They need the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and that hasn’t happened yet. Yet.

All of this so far, I would suggest, is utterly profound and would transform Christianity overnight if we all actually believed and recognized it. However, going back to the passage, I think there is far more to be gleaned.

Given everything I’ve observed so far, it would be nice if we could simply conclude that people “in the flesh” are the unsaved and those “with the Spirit” are the saved. It would be nice if, the minute I received the Spirit, I could be done with sin, done with the flesh. Positionally it is true – if I am in Christ, I am indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, the 3^rd Person of the Trinity. Positionally, that is true. The problem is that practically I still have the battle to fight. My flesh is still quite alive. As Paul says in Galatians, “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish” (5:17). Paul has just, in Romans 7, related the struggle he himself faced, “O wretched man that I am!”

So, even those who have definitely received Christ, who have embraced a very real and personal relationship with God, though they are literally “in the Spirit,” yet the Spirit/flesh battle goes on. The battle goes on but, and this is so important to recognize, I must aggressively refuse to reduce it all once again to a question of rule-keeping. My salvation was first and foremost a spiritual business, an inward change in my heart of hearts. The changes it wrought in the externals of my life, in my behaviors and attitudes, were very real, but they grew out of those inward, spiritual changes. It was Spirit business. Now, as I would live my life, I must see that it is still Spirit business. What matters most is still not what goes on externally, but what is going on inside of me. It still needs to be “spirit and truth.”

I can’t help but remember once again Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to His teaching. Her busy sister Martha was put out that Mary didn’t join her in her busy-ness, but Jesus told her, “Mary has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken from her.” What was going on? Mary understood what really mattered, and I believe we can say without a doubt, when Mary finally did stand up and get back to whatever it was she needed to do, she would never be the same. She was changed from the inside out.  She tended to the Spirit business and we can all be quite sure the fruit of the Spirit blossomed in her life.

As Paul relates in v.11, “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who dwells in you.” As we read back in v.2, “…through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” It is the Spirit’s business to give life and that is exactly what He does do for you and me. In Him, we can rise above our flesh, above our sins, and above the death that is sin’s portion.

But we must realize – it is Spirit business.