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!