Victorious
Week of July 8, 2012
Bible Verses: Romans
7:20-8:9
Lesson Focus: We can live victoriously over sin through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
We Face an Inner Battle: Romans
7:20-25.
[20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no
longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. [21] So I find it to be a law that when I want to
do right, evil lies close at hand. [22]
For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging
war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that
dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man
that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? [25] Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I
serve the law of sin. [ESV]
The thought of verse
17 is repeated in verse 20. Paul’s if
clause implies that the condition has been fulfilled. There is no doubt about
his doing what he does not want to do. Again, his no longer implies that formerly he had done this. But things being
what they are, it is the indwelling sin that brings about the evil action.
Paul’s will is not behind it. He is not saying that he is not responsible;
after all, it is his action. He is saying that he is no careless or audacious
sinner. His will is firmly in opposition to evil, and that is to be borne in
mind in assessing the situation. So
[21] leads us to the logical consequence. Paul sums up with a law which has caused some difference of
opinion. Most take it in the sense ‘principle’ or ‘rule’, but others think that
the law of Moses is meant. Either is possible, but it seems more likely that
Paul has in mind the law which he later calls the law of sin [23]. Throughout this passage Paul has in mind the
compulsion to do evil, and that will be his meaning also when he speaks of the law he has now found. His nature, so to
speak, obeys this law. I find puts
this as a discovery. It is not something that Paul lays down as his
presupposition, but a conclusion he has reached from a study of the facts. Paul
insists that he has the will to do good. But the trouble is that evil lies close at hand. He cannot
escape it. In verse 22 For
introduces an explanation. He is happy inwardly with the law of God. I delight is a stronger expression than
agree [16]. This rejoicing is in my inner being. This expression
elsewhere refers to the essential being of the believer, the inner life that
Christ has brought [2 Cor. 4:16; Eph. 3:16]. Paul is contrasting the real Paul,
the Paul who is known only in the deep recesses of the man, and who delights in
the law of God, with that other Paul who so readily does the sin of which the
real Paul does not approve. Only a regenerate person would delight in the law
of God. The real Paul rejoiced in God’s law. He recognized it for what it was
and rejoiced accordingly. But obeying it is another thing altogether, and to
that he now turns in verse 23. He sees another
law at work within him. This law should be seen as the same as the law of sin, for it is highly
unlikely that Paul thinks of two different hostile laws at work within his
being. Law will be used in the sense
of ‘principle’ or ‘rule of action’, though with the nuance that there is some
element of compulsion (he is made captive). This other law makes war against the law of my mind. The thought of
conflict is important. Paul is still fighting. He has not surrendered to the
powers of evil. The mind emphasizes
the intellectual side of the struggle. Paul is referring to the principle that
is operative in his rational nature. But the principle is not victorious. The law of sin refers to the way sin
works, but there is also the thought that it exercises sway or power over
Paul’s members which refers to his
body through which sin makes its suggestions. Paul’s deep emotion explodes in
the exclamation Wretched man that I am!
[24]. The more we advance spiritually the more clearly we see the high
standards God sets for His people and the more deeply we deplore the extent of
our shortcoming. Paul is expressing in forceful terms his dismay at what sin
does to him. It is, moreover, important that we understand this as applying to
the regenerate. It is all too easy to take our Christian status for granted. We
so readily remember our victories and gloss over our defeats. We slip into a
routine and refuse to allow ourselves to be disturbed by what we see as
occasional and minor slips. But a sensitive conscience and a genuine sorrow for
every sin are the prerequisites of spiritual depth. The apostle goes on to ask
who will deliver him from this body of
death. In the context it is better to understand body as referring to the physical body, which is characterized by
death. It is itself mortal, and it is that in which sin operates and so brings
death to us. The question in verse 24 appears to be a rhetorical one, with the
expected answer “Nobody can.” But Paul answers it with the joyful shout Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
Lord! The victory is God’s, and He gives it through Christ. It is Paul’s
consistent teaching that God in Christ has supplied all our needs and will
continue to do so. Clearly Paul’s words express gratitude for a present
deliverance, but it is likely that they also have eschatological significance.
The deliverance we have today is wonderful, but it is partial and incomplete.
It is but a first installment of greater things to come, and Paul looks forward
to that great day with his burst of thanksgiving. So then introduces a logical summary of what Paul has been saying.
The second half of verse 25 is a summary of the preceding argument before going
on to the triumph of chapter 8. It sums up the tension, with all its real
anguish and also all its real hopefulness, in which the Christian never ceases
to be involved so long as he is living this present life. Notice that Paul does
not shrug off his responsibility; he does not say that his mind serves God
while his flesh serves sin. He uses the emphatic pronoun “I”. It is what he has
been saying all along. While there is that in him which approves God’s way
there is that in him also which follows the paths of sin.
The Spirit Helps Us Find
Victory: Romans 8:1-4.
[1] There is therefore now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus. [2] For
the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of
sin and death [3] For God has done what
the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, [4] in order that the righteous requirement of
the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but
according to the Spirit. [ESV]
The essential
contrast which Paul paints is between the weakness of the law and the power of
the Spirit. For over against indwelling sin, which is the reason the law is
unable to help us in our moral struggle [7:17,20], Paul now sets the indwelling
Spirit, who is both our liberator now from the law of sin and death [8:2] and
the guarantee of resurrection and eternal glory in the end [8:11,17,23]. Thus
the Christian life is essentially life in the Spirit, that is to say, a life
which is animated, sustained, directed and enriched by the Holy Spirit. Without
the Holy Spirit true Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, indeed
impossible. The first blessing of salvation is expressed in the words no condemnation, which are equivalent
to justification. In fact, the opening statements of Romans 5 and Romans 8
complement each other. Paul will almost immediately go on to explain that our
not being condemned is due to God’s action of condemning our sin in Christ [3].
In other words, our justification, together with its corresponding truth of no
condemnation, is securely grounded in what God has done for us in and through
Jesus Christ. The second privilege of salvation is expressed in the next
statement in verse 2. Thus a certain liberation joins no condemnation as the
two great blessings which are ours if we are in Christ Jesus. Moreover, these two blessings are linked by the
conjunction for (because),
indicating that our liberation is the basis of our justification. It is because
we have been liberated that no condemnation can overtake us. From what, then,
have we been set free? Paul replies: from
the law of sin and death. The context seems to demand that this is a
description of God’s law, the Torah. For a major emphasis of Romans 7 has been
on the relation between the law on the one hand and sin and death on the other.
True, Paul was at pains to stress that the law is not itself sinful, yet he
added that it reveals, provokes and condemns sin [7:7-9]. True again, he
stressed that the law does not become death to people; yet it had produced
death in him [7:13]. So, shocking as it may sound, God’s holy law could be
called the law of sin and death
because it occasioned both. In this case, to be liberated from the law of sin
and death through Christ is to be no longer under the law, that is, to give up
looking to the law for either justification or sanctification. The means of our
liberation Paul calls the law of the
Spirit of life [2]. At first sight it seems strange that law should
liberate us from law. The best alternative is to understand the law of the Spirit of life as
describing the gospel, just as Paul calls it elsewhere the ministry of the Spirit [2 Cor. 3:8]. This makes the best sense,
as it is certainly the gospel which has freed us from the law and its curse,
and the message of life in the Spirit from the slavery of sin and death. How
the gospel liberates us from the law is elaborated in verses 3-4. The first and
fundamental truth which Paul declares is that God has taken the initiative to
do what the law, weakened by the flesh,
could not do. The law could neither justify nor sanctify. Why not? Because
it was weakened by the sinful nature. That is, the law’s impotence is not
intrinsic. It is not in itself but in us, in our flesh, our fallen selfish nature. So then, what the sin-weakened
law could not do, God did. He made provision for both our justification and our
sanctification. First, He sent His Son, whose incarnation and atonement are
alluded to in verse 3, and then He gave us His spirit through whose indwelling
power we are enabled to fulfill the law’s requirement, which is mentioned in
verse 4 and expanded in the following paragraph. Thus God justifies us through
His Son and sanctifies us through His Spirit. The plan of salvation is
essentially Trinitarian. For God’s way of justification is not law but grace
(through the death of Christ), and His way of sanctification is not law but the
Spirit (through His indwelling). What God did Paul unfolds in five expressions.
First came the sending his own Son,
which expresses the Father’s sacrificial love in sending his own Son. Secondly, the sending of the divine Son involved His
becoming incarnate, a human being, which is expressed by the words in the likeness of sinful flesh. That
is, the Son came neither in the likeness of flesh, only seeming to be human,
for His humanity was real; nor in sinful flesh, assuming a fallen nature, for
His humanity was sinless, but in the likeness of sinful flesh, because His
humanity was both real and sinless simultaneously. Thirdly, God sent His Son for sin or to be a sin offering. Here
the reference is specifically to the sacrificial nature of His death or to the
atonement. Fourthly, God condemned sin
in the flesh, that is, in the flesh or humanity of Jesus, real and sinless,
although made sin with our sins [2 Cor. 5:21]. God judged our sins in the
sinless humanity of His Son, who bore them in our place. The law condemns sin,
in the sense of expressing disapproval of it, but when God condemned sin in His
Son, His judgment fell upon it in Him. For those who are in Christ there is no
divine condemnation, since the condemnation they deserve has already been fully
borne for them by Him. Fifthly, Paul clarifies the ultimate reason God sent His
own Son and condemned our sin in Him. It was in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled
in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit [4].
The phrase walk … according to the
Spirit directs our attention to law-abiding Christian behavior as the
ultimate purpose of God’s action through Christ. In this case the righteous requirement of the law
refers to the commandments of the moral law viewed as a whole, which God wants
to be fulfilled or obeyed in His people. Moreover, the law can be fulfilled
only in those who walk according to the Spirit and not the flesh. The flesh
renders the law impotent, the Spirit empowers us to obey it. This is not
perfectionism; it is simply to say that obedience is a necessary and possible
aspect of Christian discipleship. Although the law cannot secure this
obedience, the Spirit can. Verse 4 is of great importance for our understanding
of Christian holiness. First, holiness is the ultimate purpose of the
incarnation and the atonement. The end God had in view when sending His Son was
not our justification only, through freedom from the condemnation of the law,
but also our holiness, through obedience to the commandments of the law.
Secondly, holiness consists in fulfilling the just requirement of the law. The
moral law has not been abolished for us; it is to be fulfilled in us. Although
law-obedience is not the ground of our justification, it is the fruit of it and
the very meaning of sanctification. Holiness is Christlikeness which is
fulfilling the righteousness of the law. Thirdly, holiness is the work of the
Holy Spirit. Romans 7 insists that we cannot keep the law because of our
indwelling flesh; Romans 8:4 insists that we can and must because of the
indwelling Spirit. Looking back over the whole passage which runs from 7:1-8:4,
the continuing place of the law in the Christian life should be clear. Our
freedom from the law (proclaimed for instance in 7:4,6 and 8:2) is not freedom
to disobey it. On the contrary the law-obedience of the people of God is so
important to God that He sent His Son to die for us and His Spirit to live in
us, in order to secure it. Holiness is the fruit of Trinitarian grace, of the
Father sending His Son into the world and His Spirit into our hearts.
The Spirit Lives Within Us: Romans
8:5-9.
[5] For those who live according to the flesh set
their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the
Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. [6] For to set the mind on the flesh is death,
but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. [7] For the mind that is set on the flesh is
hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. [8] Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
[9] You, however, are not in the flesh
but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does
not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. [ESV]
In verses 5-8 Paul
develops the antithesis between flesh and Spirit. Paul’s purpose is to explain
why obedience to the law is possible only to those who walk according to the
Spirit. By flesh Paul means the whole of our humanness viewed as corrupt and
unredeemed; our fallen, egocentric human nature. By Spirit in this passage Paul
means not the higher aspect of our humanness viewed as spiritual, but rather
the personal Holy Spirit Himself who now not only regenerates but also indwells
the people of God. This tension between flesh and Spirit is reminiscent of
Galatians 6:16-26, where they are in irreconcilable conflict with each other.
Here Paul concentrates on the mind or mindset of those who are characterized by
either flesh or Spirit. First, our mindset expresses our basic nature as
Christians or non-Christians. In verse 5 Paul describes two different types of
mindsets or two different objects on which we set out minds: the flesh or the
Spirit. In both cases, a person’s nature determines their mindset. Since the
flesh is our twisted human nature, its desires are all those things which
pander to our ungodly self-centeredness. Since the Spirit is the Holy Spirit
Himself, His desires are all those things which please Him, who loves above all
else to glorify Christ, that is, to show Christ to us and form Christ in us.
Now to set the mind on the desires of the flesh or Spirit is to make them the
absorbing objects of thought, interest, affection and purpose. It is a question
of what preoccupies us, of the ambitions which drive us and the concerns which
engross us, of how we spend our time and our energies, of what we concentrate
on and give ourselves up to. All this is determined by who we are, whether we
are still in the flesh or are now by new birth in the Spirit. Secondly, our
mindset has eternal consequences [6]. The mindset of flesh-dominated people is
already one of spiritual death and leads inevitably to eternal death, for it
alienates them from God and renders fellowship with Him impossible in either
this world or the next. The mindset of Spirit-dominated people, however,
entails life and peace. On the one hand they are alive to God [6:11], alert to spiritual realities, and thirsty for
God like nomads in the desert [Ps. 63:1], like deer panting for streams [Ps.
42:1]. On the other hand, they have peace with God [5:1], peace with their
neighbor [12:15], and peace within, enjoying an inner integration or harmony.
We would surely pursue holiness, with greater eagerness if we were convinced
that it is the way of life and peace. Thirdly, our mindset concerns our
fundamental attitude to God [7]. The reason the mind of the flesh is death is
that it is hostile to God,
cherishing a deep-seated animosity against Him. It is antagonistic to His name,
kingdom and will, to His day, His people and His word, to His Son, His Spirit
and His glory. In particular, Paul singles out His moral standards. In contrast
to the regenerate, who delight in God’s law [7:22], the unregenerate mind does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it
cannot, which explains why those who live according to the flesh cannot
fulfill the law’s righteous requirement [4]. Finally, those who are controlled
by the sinful nature, cannot please God
[8]. They cannot please Him because they cannot submit to His law, whereas, it
is implied, those who are in the Spirit set themselves to please Him in
everything. To sum up, here are two categories of people (the unregenerate who
are in the flesh and the regenerate who are in the Spirit), who have two
perspectives or mindsets (the mind of the flesh and the mind of the Spirit),
which lead to two patterns of conduct (living according to the flesh or the
Spirit), and result in two spiritual states (death or life, enmity or peace).
Thus our mind, where we set it and how we occupy it, plays a key role in both
our present conduct and our final destiny. In verse 9 Paul applies to his
readers personally the truths he has so far been expounding in general terms.
Having been writing in the third person plural, he now shifts to the second
person and addresses his readers directly. You are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Verse 9
is of great importance in relation to our doctrine of the Holy Spirit for at
least two reasons. First, it teaches that the hallmark of the authentic believer
is the possession of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Indwelling sin
[7:17,20] is the lot of all the children of Adam; the privilege of the children
of God is to have the indwelling Spirit to fight and subdue indwelling sin.
Secondly, verse 9 teaches that several different expressions are synonyms. The
Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Christ, and to have the Spirit of
Christ in us is to have Christ in us [10]. This is not to confuse the persons
of the Trinity by identifying the Father with the Son or the Son with the
Spirit. It is rather to emphasize that, although they are eternally distinct in
their personal modes of being, they also share the same divine essence and
will. In consequence, they are inseparable. What the Father does He does
through the Son, and what the Son does He does through the Spirit. Indeed,
wherever each is, there are the others also.
Questions for
Discussion:
1. What is indwelling sin?
What are your indwelling sins (those areas of temptation that you are particularly
susceptible to that you need to be on guard against)? Jesus instructed Peter in
Matthew 26:41 to watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
If you do not already follow this instruction, make it part of your daily walk
with Jesus to watch and pray that you do not give in to the temptations of your
indwelling sins.
2. Why does Paul call God’s
law the law of sin and death? How is God’s law weakened by the flesh?
How do we walk according to the Spirit instead of according to the
flesh?
3. In 8:3-4, list the five
expressions Paul uses to describe God’s saving activity. What does John Stott
mean by: “law-obedience is not the ground of our justification, it is the fruit
of it”?
4. According to 8:1-9, what
is the only way to overcome indwelling sin. Why does Paul emphasize the
importance of the mind in living according to the Spirit? How can we set our
minds on the things of the Spirit?
References:
The Epistle to
the Romans, Leon Morris,
Eerdmans.
Romans, John Stott, Inter Varsity.