“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.”
There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus! The Son of God, Jesus Christ, came into our created flesh so that we could enter into God’s Spiritual kingdom of righteousness and truth. We were created with bones and flesh and re-born In Christ Jesus, so that, we might live in His eternal life, in the eternal kingdom of God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus ... glorifying Him while still in our flesh!
How can we even know how deep it was for our Abba Father God to send His holy righteous Son into our debouched earthly culture of selfishness and flesh! For what? Our finite, shallow fellowship?!
This gives us some sense about God’s unfathomable “agape” Love in and for each one of us. We don’t have capacity to grasp the gigantic separation between created finite humanity and the omnipotent, glorious person of our Holy Heavenly Father God. He still is loving us from within His αγαπη (agape) Love while we struggle with flesh issues. His grace contains His Love even during our fleshly struggles which will lead us even deeper into Him.
For humans to depart from our degenerate humanity into His divine eternal realm of love and purity, where absolute truth reigns as ethos, is indeed miraculous. It seems unreal to have a place where we do not have to contend with aggression and the ugly treachery of unregenerate mortality.
But at the same time, it should burden our hearts for the human souls around us who are still being cheated in the darkness of deception. People all around us are completely outside the Spirit’s ministry while within the hearts of “born-again” believers are people in Christ Jesus who can grow in grace. We are living in a world of both darkness and light. This is the very heavy issue Paul is addressing in Romans 5 thru 8. His focus is for us, the “born-again” believer, to understand what it means to live “in Christ Jesus” while wearing our individual jar of clay.
To “live” means to let our light so shine among men, so that, we glorify our Father God in heaven! It means putting to death the fleshly things of the world; it means learning the dimensions of our faith and God’s inexhaustible grace!
Romans 8 concludes Paul’s argument about separation of regenerated saints from those who lay Spiritually dead in their flesh. It is like separating darkness with Jesus’ glorious light dwelling within our own fleshly bodies of clay. But we must learn to let His light in the dark corners of our soul while at the same time shine through us into the worldly darkness of sin around us.
Darkness and Light are two visible opposites portraying to our finite minds discernment about two identifiable spiritual voices we hear in our jars of clay, one is temporal and one is eternal. The darkness of sin invades our minds with self-priorities, enticing self-satisfying pleasures, while on the other hand, God’s agape love draws our born-again Spiritual person into Himself. In Christ Jesus, God brings joy and peace into our eternal soul through redemption and regeneration. His Light separates the darkness, so that, we, through grace, can make visible His Light into our needy, temporal, corrupt environment as well as our own soul.
Paul has stipulated for us in verses 9 thru 11 the genuineness and authenticity of our present Life in Christ Jesus. Redemption restores life, not in our dead flesh, but rather, creates new within our fleshly containers; we are in Christ Jesus who is sitting at the right hand of the Father, we, who are now alive in His Spirit, in the Father, with wisdom are guided by His grace. We are eternally covered by the blood of the lamb, sustained by the almighty hand of God by our indwelling Holy Spirit while we are walking around wearing hostile flesh in this judged dominion.
Paul lays bare his argument in 9 thru 11 and now provides his application. This is the common technic Paul employs throughout his writings. “Therefore” is his connection from a principle or doctrine into to an application. In other words, we are not in the flesh but rather in the Spirit, so that, we are equipped to be “overcomers” and “put to death the deeds of the body” (flesh) .. if we want to!
To illustrate these two principles, the darkness of the world vs. “the law of the Spirit of life” in Christ Jesus, we are referring our attention to two paperbacks. One is the story of a North Korean teenage girl, Yeonmi Parks, who both in ignorance and oppression suffered human indignities unknown in our “enlightened” American freedom. The second is the story of Elijah written by a gifted man with deep Spiritual insight, A.W. Pink.
These two examples of human “want to” (Yeonmi and Elijah) might challenge us to live in grace, instead of fear, in faith, instead of reason.
What we are dealing with is our identity as a person “in Christ Jesus”. The realization that we are no longer living in flesh, but rather, a Spiritually alive justified persona living in a worldly, fleshly container that is spiritually dead! But we, now Spiritually (born again in Christ Jesus) equipped with the resurrection power of Jesus, are being called to put to death the things of the flesh while equipping ourselves with the mind of Christ, so that, we will glorify God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit while living on earth in this flesh.
This process is effective in two simultaneous worlds. One is our own eternal reality, the other is this world of darkness. The world of darkness is watching who we are and what we are doing while, at the same time, we are growing in grace and knowledge of Jesus while maturing in His eternal kingdom.
Because we are now living in Christ Jesus, we are not our own, we have been bought with a price, our whole identity is transformed. This is Paul’s point, we are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit, when Jesus is living inside of our body of flesh.
The flesh is spiritually dead but is worldly alive. We are living in this hostile container of fleshly clay. The flesh is constantly waring against the Spirit, within us, but in Christ Jesus we have God’s constant grace, His constant caring love, His mercy is faithfully instructing us in grace about the difference between darkness and light. There are many subtilties and we are limited only by our personal understanding and choices. Know Him, and the power of His resurrection!
This is dramatically illustrated in the story by Yeonmi Parks. We hope we all will profit by her story illustrating the power and impact of the world within which we find ourselves. But the story of Elijah demonstrates, on the other hand, the power of God within us including our own temporal vulnerability to step out from our faith. We are impacted both by growth while at the same time handicapped by our own limited learning! It is the choices we make; God is merciful but also just and righteous! We are accountable for what we do with His grace while wearing our flesh. Do we consume His grace or defer to our fleshly, foolish “wisdom?”
We are in a war! A Spiritual war!
We see in the story of Elijah, the power of God manifested when it is man’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) to wait and seek God. But in the same story we see man’s frailty when shifting to man’s fear because “self” can still replace faith.
We are not dead but living in flesh because we have been created new in Jesus, the old is gone and new has already come. Christ Jesus is alive within us; Jesus’ divine life is active within us; we have no reason to maintain a relationship with our own old flesh but rather bring it under subjection to who we now are in Jesus. What benefit do we reap from fellowship with the flesh! What benefit is there for us, in Christ Jesus, to compromise with flesh and maintain a healthy communion with the world in which we live, work and have our being, “but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.”
“We encourage you to pick up copies of these two books as a mirror to reflect upon the darkness we might find in the corners of our soul. ”