We come to the final lesson in Needham's book that asked the question, "Christian, do you know who you are?" I hope you can see more clearly now what the new birth has made of you and more importantly, what you struggle with when you sin and more importantly, how to live to more effectively conquer that foe.
This is a review of Birthright by David Needham with study questions added to turn them into lessons. These lessons are part of a wider study on Sanctification by Faith which has as its goal the fulfillment of Gal 5:16
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
I’ve set these studies in a specific order so that all may easily build on the foundation of Christ with the finest materials - gold, silver, and precious stones (1 Cor 3:10-13). God has gifted the Church with amazing evangelists, pastors, and teachers to help us in this building project (Eph 4:11-16). I invite you to study along with me. You can see an overview of the complete Sanctification by Faith study here. To go to the start of the current lesson (Birthright) click here.
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thess 5:23
(3) Romans 8:1–17
The Holy Spirit is one’s enabler to fulfill God’s moral absolutes in life now while still in an unredeemed body. (See also Galatians 3:1–3; 5:16–25.)
As one reads straight through chapter 7 into chapter 8, the brilliance, freedom, and joy of the latter is impossible to miss. Yes, our ultimate deliverance awaits the redemption of our bodies; but “life and peace” are ours now.
Here, as in Romans 6, Paul’s reference to our being “in Christ” (Rom 8:1) has been understood by some as teaching nothing beyond the truth of justification.[1] According to this view, Christ has fulfilled righteousness for us, having also condemned sin. Therefore, though our status from God’s judicial perspective is fully acceptable, we are intrinsically unchanged and essentially sinful.*
*Footnote Representative of this view, the McGraths write, “Sin and righteousness thus coexist; we remain sinners inwardly, but we are righteous extrinsically in the sight of God.… From our own perspective we are sinners; but in the perspective of God, we are righteous.” This is followed by quoting Martin Luther, “Now the saints are always aware of their sin and seek righteousness from God in accordance with his mercy. And for this reason, they are regarded as righteous by God. Thus in their own eyes (and in reality!) they are sinners—but in the eyes of God they are righteous, because he reckons them as such on account of their confession of their sin. In reality they are sinners; but they are righteous by the imputation of a merciful God. They are unknowingly righteous, and knowingly sinners. They are sinners in fact, but righteous in hope.” (Joanna McGrath and Alister McGrath, The Dilemma of Self-Esteem [Wheaton: Good News Pub., 1992], 98–99.) |
Once again this view must be rejected in light of the positive descriptions declaring we are no longer “in the flesh” (Rom 8:9) because “Christ is in you” (Rom 8:10). We are indeed more than justified.
Perhaps the most striking difference we encounter moving from chapter 7 to 8 is found in the occurrences of the word law. Chapter 7 ends with the paradox of being in one’s flesh, an active and productive “slave to the law of sin,” while at the same time in one’s inmost mind, a completely ineffective slave to the law of God (Rom 7:25, cf. 21–23).
Romans 7:25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
Romans 7:21-23 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. 22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
Chapter 8 declares it is not merely possible to be set free from this “law of sin,” rather, “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death” (Rom 8:2, italics mine). Yet if people assume they are still in bondage, they will behave in light of this illusion and fail to use the resources that freedom from the law of sin brings. The result of this failure will be much the same as the “death” Paul described in Romans 7:9–11, cf. Rom 8:6, 13.*
*Footnote Though this “death” may include ultimate “eternal separation from God,” (cf. Murray, Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1:293–94), I believe it is possible to limit its meaning to “death” as understood in Rom 7:9–11, 13, 24. See also chapter 8, note 6. |
Romans 7:9-11 I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died; 10 and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; 11 for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
Romans 8:6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
Romans 8:13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
When we hear the word law, our first thought is that it tells us what we can or cannot do. I suggest a more comprehensive understanding of this word as illustrated by the “law of gravity” or the “law of centrifugal force.” Understood this way, law is simply the way something works, unless some other law intervenes. God’s moral law is, first of all, an expression of the way “he works.” This law is nothing short of absolute perfection and is seen in all descriptions of God in the Bible. God’s moral law for human beings (expressed in many of the commandments in the Bible) is actually a description of the way human beings “work” if they are to relate properly to such a God. Only then are they able to fulfill the reason for which God made them.
But in Genesis 3:1–19, God allowed another law to come into force—the law of sin (Romans 7:22–23). It overrode the initial way human beings were meant to operate in the paradise of Eden. Because of this, following the Fall, God revealed his law through Moses to show his covenant people how they were “to work” if they were to be right with God in a world in which this alien “law of sin” was also in operation. Happily, it included a temporary means of gaining forgiveness.
Of course this was before the cross, the resurrection, and the coming of the Spirit. Only in the New Covenant age—our times!—has God brought about our being set free from this “law of sin and death.” Yet to appreciate our freedom requires an active dependence upon the Spirit’s enablement in putting “to death the deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13) as we operate under the new and higher “law of the Spirit of life” (Rom 8:2).
Therefore, for us as regenerated children of God, “to live” is more than being aware that our deepest desires are in harmony with the law of God (Rom 7:22). It is also more than simply the Spirit dispensing the power to help us do what God’s moral law requires. Authentic living requires the actual fulfillment of those desires in our behavior by the Spirit’s reproducing in us the actual extension of the life of Jesus. In light of this, Rom 8:10 needs special comment.
But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive [life] because of righteousness (Rom 8:10, NIV, cf. NASB).
In light of my earlier comments regarding body and flesh in chapter 5, I believe Paul’s point in Romans 8:10 is essentially the same as his declaration in
Galatians 5:24, “Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Both express a crucial truth: as regenerated people, our flesh, our bodies, especially their passions and desires, are dead to us as being where life is to be found. This is true whether or not we realize it.
Both passages describe entities that are nevertheless very much alive. Unless one reads into Romans 8:10 that our bodies are dead in the sense that physical death awaits us all or that the “principle of death” is present in all of us,[2] it seems more reasonable to make a direct connection between “the body is dead” and “this body of death” (Rom 7:24). The thought is: There are no “righteous” resources in my flesh, my body. Therefore it is truly dead as being the facilitator of the life God expects me to live. Of course, before I was born again, my flesh—my body—was where “life” was. It was nowhere else.
I believe Galatians 5:24 expresses the identical truth. A Christian’s flesh is, in one sense, very much alive, otherwise we would not be warned against gratifying the desires of the flesh or told our flesh is in opposition to the Spirit (Galatians 5:16–17). Yet it is most certainly also dead as being a facilitator of the life God expects me to live. I believe it is with the same thought that later (Galatians 6:14) Paul stated, “the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” The world is truly dead to me as being where life is, even as I am dead to the world in this same sense.*
*Footnote I believe it misses the point to press the thought that since according to Paul we have crucified the flesh, rather than God doing it, we have apparently done such a poor job of it we must continue to do it, therefore making this passage parallel with Rom 8:13. Romans 8:13 for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (See Stott, The Cross of Christ, 279.) Later, in contrast to the text, he states, “According to verse 24 [Gal. 5] we are to ‘crucify’ the flesh, with its evil passions and desires” (p. 348). (This one negative comment in no way suggests my lack of appreciation of this book as among the best ever written on the cross of Christ.) Another inadequate approach conveys the thought that “the believer in Christ has already repented of his former way of life to the degree of actually having executed the old nature,” yet “as in actual crucifixion, life lingers even though the criminal has been nailed to the cross.” (James Montgomery Boice, “Galatians,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 10 [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1976], 500.) |
In joyous contrast, Paul adds, “the spirit is alive [life] because of righteousness” (Romans 8:10, NASB, cf. NIV). Though we should be less than dogmatic as to whether Paul was referring to the human spirit or to the Holy Spirit or to both,* his statement finds a direct parallel in Jesus’ words in John 6:63, “It is the spirit [or Spirit] that gives life; the flesh is useless.
*Footnote The NRSV renders “spirit” as “Spirit.” For supporting arguments for “Spirit,” see Murray, Epistle to the Romans, 289–90, including his footnote referring to Sanday and Hedlam who argued for “spirit.” Fee assumes the possibility in some passages of a dual meaning, hence “S/spirit.” (Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1987], 204–5.) Vine finds several references to the human spirit in Rom 8. (W. E. Vine, The Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1965], 114–16.) See endnote 24. |
The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” What words?
“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.… Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so whoever eats me will live because of me” (John 6:51, 56–57).
Standing on the edge of mystery, we reach out to grasp the wonder of possessing Jesus’ life because of the righteousness of his accomplished work. We, as spirit (John 3:6; cf. Romans 8:16), by the Spirit live because Christ “is our life” (Colossians 3:4), even as he lived by the Spirit because the Father was his life.
(4) Romans 8:18–39
Future bodily resurrection is the ultimate life answer both to present suffering and to the necessity of putting “to death the deeds of the body.”
Though the majesty of this closing section deserves major attention, I believe the truth conveyed may be grasped without extended comment. I prefer rather to pause once again, on the edge of mystery, as we read Paul’s climactic words:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified (Romans 8:29–30).
Though Paul wrote earlier of future glory (Rom 8:17, 21), to whatever degree God’s New Covenant people are conforming to “the image of his Son,” to that degree the glorification is already in process. Perhaps, in part, this is the reason Paul chose to write “he also glorified” rather than “he will glorify,” though the past tense serves to underscore the absolute certainty of future glorification.
Without question, the glorification began in that moment of new birth, a new creation. As Norman Douty writes, “As regeneration is glorification in the bud, so glorification is regeneration in the flower.”*
*Footnote Norman F. Douty, Union With Christ (Swengel, Penn.: Reiner Publications, 1973), 183. Regarding Col. 1:17, “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Bruce states, “The fact that here and now, as members of his body, they have his risen life within them, offers them a stable basis for confidence that they will share in the fullness of glory yet to be displayed, on the day of ‘the revealing of the sons of God’ (Rom 8:19).” (F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon and to the Ephesians [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1984], 86.) |
It continues as God progressively “facets” his precious spiritual diamonds. As his workmanship “we are being transformed into the same image [the glory of the Lord] from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18; cf. Colossians 3:10) even as he “predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Romans 8:29). Already “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” is to be found in these “clay jars” (2 Corinthians 4:5–7).
Yet with overflowing joy, we still dream of “the ages to come” when God will show us “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7). The best is yet to come!
Questions & Notes
Click on the "Birthright" tag below to see all the posts in this series. To go to the start of this series click here.