GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

No Longer Alone

One day a brother asked me to pray for him and hold him accountable for an area of sin in his life. He struggled with pornography. For years he had faltered when he looked at certain images in magazines, but his most recent feeding ground was the Internet. Here's what he described as his pattern of sin: he would log onto his computer late at night, search the Internet to find pictures that enticed him, and then he would feed on them. One man, all alone, sitting before a screen in the darkness, feeding on a sin that was poisoning him to death.

What would you say to this brother? How do you handle your besetting sins?

James Dobson draws a powerful metaphor for the day-to-day walk of the Christian life in his book Life on the Edge, on page 189: "For the purpose of illustration, think of yourself ... being required to walk alone down a long, dark corridor. Low wattage bulbs hang from the ceiling, casting eerie shadows on the walls. On either side of this hall are many large doors, each bearing a different inscription. They are called Alcohol, Marijuana, Hard Drugs, Pornography, Gambling ..." Like my brother sitting alone in front of the computer screen, so Dobson's Christian walks alone down the straight and narrow way, on either side of which are doors to the abyss.

One man alone in a chair facing his particular temptation ... one person walking alone down a dark hallway, facing many temptations. How often we find ourselves in their shoes, how often we give into the temptations, and how often we feel the pangs of guilt that we as Christians find ourselves doing these ugly things.

Think with me for a moment about the patterns of sin in your own life. Hopefully you are a Christian according to the Biblical definition we have been studying out of Rom. 8:9, that "... you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him." You know you are a Christian because you are certain that the Spirit of Christ lives in you by invitation of faith, yet you struggle with sin. Perhaps you struggle with the most overlooked but most devastating sin in Christian circles: gossip. You know when so-and-so calls on the phone, the conversation will invariably turn to the insidious, where the two of you will hold a mock trial and examine, judge, and condemn the character of someone at church who was not present to give a defense. Or perhaps your sin comes every time you open the door to the refrigerator, to get that one more tasty treat when you know it is not good for you. Maybe for you the sin comes in trying to control your life to the point that you know God in token only, doing the minimum daily requirements, so that He will be there if you need Him, but He will not be let in enough so that things get out of control. Or perhaps your sin is in being passive, not taking leadership when leadership is clearly needed. Whatever your pattern of sin and defeat is, I want you to envision yourself walking into that pattern once again this morning, because we are going to learn the way to break those patterns as we study together.

Now, in the case of my brother in a chair all alone facing his computer, in Dobson's dark hallway that the Christian walks down alone, trying to stay on the straight and narrow, and in the areas of our own sin struggles, we picture ourselves as being all alone. But my brother in that chair facing his computer was NOT ALONE; Dobson's Christian is NOT ALONE in that dark corridor; and you and I are NOT ALONE when facing our own sins and temptations. The passage we will study today is both mysterious and intensely practical: in this passage we can find the path to victory over sin and temptation by our union with the Holy Spirit of God, who indwells us and is with us every moment, so that we never face temptation alone. It is amazing how differently we handle sin when we know we are not alone, but indwelled by the power and presence of Holiness itself in the Holy Spirit of God. The Spirit is the key to the Christian life, as we have been saying in studying Romans chapter eight, and in this study we will discover how our indwelling Holy Spirit brings death to sin and life to us in the day-to-day walk of the Christian life.

The Plight of Man and the Power of God

The two verses we study today are sleepers. People don't speak about them very much, they are often taught in a cursory manner as quick application steps to the truths of vs. 1-11 or as an odd introduction to the glories of adoption addressed in vs. 14-17. But I feel strongly that these two verses deserve to be taught by themselves, highlighted, underscored, proclaimed with great volume ... because in them we see the very secret to the practical daily living of the Christian life. We find in them the power of God within the believer to address the plight of man struggling with sin and temptation.

Paul tells us in Rom. 8:12, 13: "So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh -- 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." Paul tells us that the moment-by-moment key to living the abundant life God has for us lies in our active choice of handing over our sin and temptation to our indwelling Spirit to kill it, that we may pass out of death in sin into resurrection life to God in the Spirit. This plague of sin, dealt with legally and officially at the cross of Christ, is now dealt with personally and constantly by the Holy Spirit, as long as we face it solidly with Him and actively hand over the sin to be killed by the Spirit. As with the cross, the death which God performs for us becomes the pathway to His life in us: Christ died for our sins to provide legal justification and the way to eternal life by faith; our indwelling Spirit takes the sin we hand over to Him, killing it, and by the intimate communion we have with the Spirit in the process, we share in the divine life. The genius of God is seen in this: that the very occasion of sin and temptation becomes the very opportunity for intimacy and communion with our indwelling Spirit of God, the One who kills the sin and shares His life with us.

Think of it! Our God has taken that which plagues us daily and He has turned it into a catalyst of communion with Him! It is the logic of Gen. 3:15 played out in our own hearts every single day on this earth: how God turns death into life, using the evil thing to drive us into His arms. Oh the unspeakable glory of God's wisdom in these oft-overlooked verses!! May God open our eyes to the opportunities in front of us as we study Rom. 8:12, 13.

This reminds me of a Jewish folktale. Once a rabbi decided to test the honesty of his disciples, so he posed to them a question. "What would you do if you were walking along and found a purse full of money lying in the road?" he asked. "I'd return it to its owner," one disciple replied. "Hmm," the rabbi mused to himself, scratching his beard. "His answer comes so quickly, I must wonder if he really means it." Another disciple said, "I'd keep the money if nobody saw me find it." The rabbi narrowed his eyes, thinking to himself, "He has a frank tongue, but a wicked heart." A third disciple chimed in, saying, "Well, Rabbi, to be honest, I believe I'd be tempted to keep it. So I would pray to God that He give me the strength to resist such temptation and do the right thing." The rabbi's face brightened, and he said to himself, "Aha! Here is the man I would trust." The trustworthy man is the one who chose not to face his temptation alone, but immediately referred the problem to God in all humble honesty. May we so refer our temptation to our indwelling Holy Spirit, that His holiness might become our holiness.

Under Obligation -- Not to the Flesh, to the Spirit

Having proved that the Christian by definition is "in the Spirit," because the Spirit is in him, Paul now calls us to live by the Spirit. Being identified with Christ by the Spirit and having the Spirit inside us with all the resources of deity resident and available 24-hours-a-day, Paul calls us to live like who we are. We are now to live holy lives by the Holy Spirit.

In fact, when Paul thinks of believers in his NT writings, he most often refers to us as hagioi. Did you know you were part of the hagioi? That Greek name sounds terrible, but it means something wonderful: it means "holy ones." Paul never once in all his epistles refers to us as Christian or Christians. But he calls us "holy ones" 38 times in his letters. He calls us holy ones because we are to be holy, set apart for the gospel of God, just like Paul himself.

Stuart Briscoe has this to say about our calling as Christians: "We now have to be what we have become. If that sounds complicated, let me remind you what happens when a man marries a woman. The moment the minister pronounces the couple "man and wife," the man is a husband. He has been set apart to husbandry! But he doesn't know much about it, so he has to start learning to be what he has become. He has the rest of his married life to learn and grow in this regard. The same is true of the Christian life! This all sounds very intimidating, but remember that in order for us to live this way, God gives us 'His Spirit, the Holy One.' He imparts new desires, teaches us new things, and empowers us to live differently. And the word for that is holiness." (The Family Book of Christian Values, pg. 218). Thus, now that we are in the Spirit, we are called to be holy ones, in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Verse 12 and the first part of verse 13 tell us that we have to be what we have become, as a stark contrast to how we used to live in the flesh: "So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh -- for if you living according to the flesh, you must die."

What is he saying here? What obligation is he speaking of? And what is the flesh? The best way to understand Rom. 8:12 is to go back and review Paul's description of our lives when we were "in the flesh," i.e. identified with the flesh, back in Rom. 7:5: "For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death." In the study of that verse, we defined "the flesh" this way: the flesh is our human self-effort apart from God. It is thus aligned with the false self-sufficiency and self-centeredness of sin.

Our flesh is thus our humanity all alone, on its own, without God. Being in the flesh means stubbornly telling God "I DON'T NEED YOU," thus trying to do everything in our lives through human self-effort apart from God. We worked hard, we lost sleep at nights, we did this, we did that. But all that self-effort produced nothing but spiritual death. The voice of the flesh yells defiantly, "I CAN DO IT." Not Christ, but I. That is pure flesh: human self-effort, all alone, on its own, rebelling against God and any admission of need for God.

What Paul is saying here in Rom. 8:12, 13a is that we have NO obligation to that way of life any longer. There is no glory to rugged individualism. Now that we are indwelled by the Spirit of God and have the divine power and presence inside us and available to us 24-hours-a-day, it would be sheer lunacy to try to live by the flesh, to live by our self-effort all alone, on our own, apart from God. That old way of doing things has passed away: we have died to it in Christ and now live in Christ by the Spirit. We owe nothing to the flesh.

What makes this verse difficult is that Paul never explicitly tells us what we are under obligation to! It is in the text implicitly, by inference. Based on the contrast he has been drawing consistently throughout the chapter from Rom. 8:4-11, we know that the opposite of the flesh is the Spirit. If we are NOT under obligation to the flesh, to live according to the old "do it yourself" way of the flesh, then we are under obligation to the Spirit!! Our lives are not our own, they have been bought with a terrible price, the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He purchased us to die to sin and the deeds of the flesh on the cross with Him, that we might with Him be raised to newness of life in the Spirit. Thus, we are now to live every day by the Spirit, in newness of life, not in the oldness of the old "do it yourself" way of the flesh.

So, we are under obligation to the Spirit, to live in harmony and communion with Him. That all sounds great, and everyone in this room wants to live and walk by the Spirit. But the problem of sin and temptation remains, facing us every day in a multitude of ways. We are no longer alone ... but how do we now live in constant communion with the Spirit, especially when temptation comes?

Ruthlessness with Sin: Handing Sin Over to the Spirit to Kill It

Paul tells us the path out of death in the flesh to life in the Spirit in the last half of vs. 13: "but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Simply put, we have to be ruthlessly active about sin in our lives. We cannot toy with sin, we cannot face sin alone, indulge in it, and try to hide from the Spirit like Jonah tried to hide from God in the boat bound for Tarshish. As Jonah was hiding in the hold of that boat, so our God lives in the hold of our boat, knowing and seeing all, and being available for all help and comfort when we invite Him to step into the situation.

Paul tells us here in this verse that YOU ARE NO LONGER ALONE!!! Don't face sin all alone, on your own, letting it have its way with you! Refer it immediately to your indwelling Master, who will kill it. The verb here is extremely strong. Paul is telling us here to call out the hooded Royal Executioner of our fleshly deeds, with his sharp sword, to confront our flesh immediately, and cut off its head. Execute it summarily. Give it no 'last words'. Kill it. This verb could not be more forceful.

Thus, when we see ourselves starting to act in the flesh alone apart from God, thinking about things in isolation apart from God, going through our day on our own apart from God, and we realize before we know it we are grossly in sin and running amuck, it is time to call upon the HOLY Spirit within us to come and kill the deeds of our flesh. He is H-O-L-Y, and thus diametrically opposed to our fleshly tendencies toward sin, and He is powerful enough to oppose our sin within, engaging in the struggle we enter into when we try to overpower sin through our own strength. The beauty of this is when we call out to Him, this IMMEDIATELY breaks the logic of the flesh, which is alone apart from God; when we call out to the Spirit of God, we have re-engaged with our indwelling God and thus allow Him in His power to kill the fleshly tendency we are following.

In thinking more deeply of this thundering verb, "put to death," I realized that most of us as 20th century Christians rarely consider this truth. I remember several years ago taking a night class on Rom. 1-8 taught by John Stott, and he emphasized these two verses very strongly. I remember his very British highlighting of the issue of "mortification" in vs. 13, and how crucial "mortification" is for the Christian. At that class, several of us from PBC were reflecting on the first generation of men who started that church. We compared the first generation with the significantly weaker second generation leadership, and we boiled down the difference between the generations to be this: the first generation was ruthless in dealing with its sin, while the second was lackadaisical about sin. In fact, the chief difference between our current day flashy Christianity and the authentic Christianity of past generations is just this: they were ruthless with their sin, and we are not.

Yet to "put to death" our sin is clearly a key aspect of our everyday Christian experience through our internal communion with the Holy Spirit. The problem we face is that our mind set has been operating for such a long time apart from God, and is thus the mind set of the flesh, that we are not only used to thinking about life apart from God, we rather like it. Having to think about our life in communion with the Spirit of God does nothing to streamline the efficiency of our thoughts, in fact it slows us down. Having to pray before acting just gets in our way. Thus, the whole reason we don't even think of "putting to death" our fleshly deeds is that we are used to the flesh, we like the flesh, the flesh is more efficient (in the short term only!), and we are too comfortable doing things alone, on our own apart from God.

The real starting place in beginning to view the flesh with murderous intent is to ask the HOLY Spirit to open our eyes to how selfish, how destructive, how obnoxious, how wasteful, how ultimately inefficient our flesh really is. The first step in wanting the flesh to die is to come to hate the flesh and its correlative sin as much as the HOLY Spirit within us hates it. Thus, the first place we can start in being faithful to vs. 13 is to humbly ask the Spirit within us to make us see our flesh very clearly, to hate our flesh, to see how destructive and selfish our flesh is, and then to hand it over to Him so that He can execute it and cut off its head!!

So, let's now return to my dear brother struggling with temptation while sitting in front of his computer. His default mode in the flesh, doing what came naturally, was to log on, search for pictures on the Internet, and look at them. When he came to me, the first thing I wanted to tell him was that HE WAS NOT ALONE sitting there in front of that screen. The Holy Spirit was there with him. Now I could have guilted him and slapped his hand by saying, "Look what ugliness you are showing to your Christ!" ... but that would not help him. Guilt only buries us further under the load of sin, isolating us from the help that resides inside us. The point is simply this: he was not one man all alone. He is one man, in whom the HOLY Spirit of God dwells. His God was with him, right there, present and powerful. When we face our sin in relationship with Him, our indwelling Holy Spirit crushes it and we are free in Him to move on. Thus, sitting down in the chair and acknowledging the presence of the Spirit in him in conversational prayer, then asking the Spirit to erase the notion of searching the Internet for pictures, he could log-on, do the business he needed to do, and log-off, all the while communing with the Spirit. By referring the temptation to the holy power of the Spirit, he could walk through the temptation in a clean and holy way, without sin, in deep intimacy with the Spirit. Thus, the very pattern of sin now becomes an opportunity for oneness with the indwelling Spirit of God. Far from staying away from the computer, he could log on as an act of worship and praise given to a very present and powerful God.

What about that journey down the long, dark corridor Dobson envisioned? Suddenly the journey is not a lonely walk of isolation into the darkness while others seem to be partying behind the doors along the way. Rather, the walk becomes an adventure of intimacy with the Spirit. You walk no longer alone, but with a constant Companion. He will walk with you, past each door, and when you are tempted to open a door that particularly entices you, you can turn your gaze on Him and ask Him to handle the doorknob, and focus your mind on the journey ahead with Him.

What about the sin we each face? When your friend calls and you know gossip is going to be the chief mode of conversation, make the conversation a three-way rather than two-way discussion. Let her prattle on while you speak to the Spirit, preparing to hand over the conversation to Him to put the gossip to death. Which usually means not playing the game. Not speaking about the absent person. Not engaging in the conversation. Politely ending the phone call and getting back to work. By the Spirit, there will be many ways of cutting off that death-dealing behavior. Whatever you do, don't do it alone, apart from Him.

Or when you are tempted to go to the refrigerator, ask the Spirit to redirect you somewhere else. Perhaps it is better to take a walk outside with Him. Perhaps it is better to grab a book and spend some quiet minutes reading. Perhaps it is better to ask Him what kindness you can perform for your spouse or children, to make their lives easier. Whatever you do, don't do it alone, do it with Him.

Or when you are tempted to try to control everything in your life out of fear of the unexpected, you can ask Him to take over the controls, trusting Him to never leave you nor forsake you. Our control is a cage we force Christ into, and our roles become reversed. We become like the master, letting Christ out on Sunday morning and stuffing Him back into the cage as we race out of the parking lot on the way to the cafeteria to beat the rush. But this is still living all alone, without recognizing and embracing the union with Christ available to us all the time by the Spirit. Rather than controlling Him and trying to be His master, as if we could, we must give that sinful urge to the Spirit that He may gently loosen our grip and hold our hands through the unexpected twists and turns of life.

Or if you find yourself to be a man needing to take leadership in some or several areas of your life and you continue to be passive, you have the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the greatest leader ever, living inside you right now. Admit your deep fears and inadequacies, come to Him, learn from Him in the intimacy of His yoke made to order for just the two of you, and let Him lead in and through you. HIS leadership IS leadership, and it will be true leadership through you.

The key to victory in all this is remembering we are no longer alone, as the words of the famous old hymn Never Alone tell us:

I've seen the lightning flashing,
and heard the thunder roll,
I've felt sins breakers dashing,
trying to conquer my soul;
I've heard the voice of Jesus,
telling me still to fight on,
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone.

No, never alone, No never alone,
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone,
No, never alone, No never alone,
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone.

I am always moved by the example of Brother Lawrence, as depicted in the booklet entitled The Practice of the Presence of God. He was a man who lived much of his life in profound communion with the Spirit of God, a man who knew he was never alone. Here is how Brother Lawrence handled his sin when he became aware of it: "Brother Lawrence was aware of his sins and was not at all surprised by them. 'That is my nature,' he would say, 'the only thing I know how to do.' He simply confessed his sins to God, without pleading with Him or making excuses. After this, he was able to peacefully resume his regular activity of love and adoration. If Brother Lawrence didn't sin, he thanked God for it, because only God's grace could keep him from sinning." Brother Lawrence had a very accurate view of his sin: it happened all too naturally for him, but he didn't handle it alone, or hide from God out of shame, he simply brought the sin before God for forgiveness, and went on, thanking God for His grace. I love the genius of God at work in this: even the occasion of his sin deepened his rich fellowship with his indwelling Christ, as he brought the sin to the Spirit.

From Death to Life: By the Spirit, "You Will Live..."

But perhaps the most exciting words in these two verses are the last three words, at the end of vs. 13: "... you will live." By giving over the temptation and sin to the Spirit, you will live. How does this work?

This happens "by the Spirit." We live, breathe and have our being in and by the Spirit. He is our life. As we commune with Him, handing over our sin for Him to execute summarily, then we live.

But more specifically, the main way we live is by total availability to His life lived out in us. Each day we arise like the sun to a day of resurrection life, full of His provision, full of His life, full of His Spirit. Paul spoke in Rom. 6:13 and 19 about presenting ourselves available to God, and Paul will begin his third section of this epistle in Rom. 12:1, 2 with his famous imagery of presenting ourselves on the altar to God as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to Him. This is the way we live: by handing over our sin and temptation to the Spirit that He may kill it, and by making ourselves totally available to Him by the Holy Spirit.

The point of this discussion is that no life comes from ourselves, all alone, on our own. That is not life, that is death by isolation. Sin and the flesh keep us isolated and set apart in an evil, unhealthy sense. But God wants us to be "set apart," i.e. holy, not in isolation, but in profound communion with His Spirit. God has given life to us by His Spirit living in us. We are never alone any longer. There is no other life but the life of Christ in us by the Spirit. He is our life. In communion with Him, we have life at its richest: a life of intimacy and constant companionship, a life of real adventure, a life of uncertain circumstances but certain loyal love.

I came across a wonderful poem this week that captures this shift from death by isolation to life with Christ in the Spirit. It is entitled The Road of Life, written by an unknown author:

At first, I saw God as my observer,
my judge,
keeping track of the things I did wrong,
so as to know whether I merited heaven
or hell when I die.
He was out there sort of like a president,
I recognized His picture when I saw it,
But I really didn't know Him.

But later on when I met Christ,
it seemed as though life were rather like a bike ride,
but it was a tandem bike,
and I noticed that Christ
was in the back helping me pedal.

I don't know just when it was
that He suggested we change places,
but life has not been the same since.

When I had control, I knew the way.
It was rather boring, but predictable ...
It was the shortest distance between two points.

But when He took the lead,
He knew the delightful long cuts,
up mountains, and through rocky places
at breakneck speeds,
it was all I could do to hang on!
Even though it looked like madness,
He said, 'Pedal!'

I worried and was anxious and asked,
'Where are you taking me?'
He laughed and didn't answer,
and I started to learn to trust.

I forgot my boring life
and entered into the adventure.
And when I'd say, 'I'm scared,'
He'd lean back and touch my hand.

He took me to people with gifts that I needed,
gifts of healing, acceptance and joy.
They gave me gifts to take on my journey,
my Lord's and mine.

And we were off again.
He said, 'Give the gifts away; they're extra baggage,
too much weight.'
So I did, to the people we met,
and I found that in giving I received,
and still our burden was light.

I did not trust Him, at first,
in control of my life.
I thought He'd wreck it;
but He knows bike secrets,
knows how to make it bend to take sharp corners,
knows how to jump to clear high rocks,
knows how to fly to shorten scary passages.

And I am learning to shut up and pedal
in the strangest places,
and I'm beginning to enjoy the view
and the cool breeze on my face
with my delightful companion, Jesus Christ.

And when I'm sure I just can't do anymore,
He just smiles and says ... 'Pedal!'

That is life together with Jesus Christ inside, life in the Spirit!! It is not a solo bike trip. It is a union, two in one, going forward according to an adventure He alone determines and knows. It is not controlled as we would control it, but it is under His control. It is not tame, because He is untame. It is not easy, but it is unspeakably joyful. It is love, joy, peace and life with Him inside, by the Spirit.

Conclusion: No Longer Alone ... Always with Him

The essence of these two verses is that we no longer face sin and temptation alone, in fact, we never are alone again. The image of the man alone in the darkness facing his computer screen is not a true image. If that man is indwelled by the Spirit, the Spirit is with him and in him, available to him to get his business done without sinning in the process, making the online session an act of worship and intimacy with his indwelling Christ. Along the same line, the long dark corridor full of doors of temptation is not a hallway we must walk alone. We never walk anywhere alone if we have the Spirit indwelling us. He is with us and in us, so wherever we journey, we commune with Him.

May our lives be more like the bike rider, riding the tandem bicycle behind the master of the race, Jesus Christ. It will be an unpredictable ride, but the views are glorious, and the destination is out of this world. And all the while He is there, right ahead of you, leading all the way ... all the way home.

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