Preparing for Easter: Life in the Spirit
Today’s Reading: Romans 8:1-11
It is easy to read Romans 8 as a religious person and miss its challenge. There is a contrast set up between life lived “in the flesh” versus “in the spirit.” (The NIV goes a step further in translation by rendering flesh, “the sinful nature”). This is the difference between being motivated from our natural place (our gut or human reaction) and being motivated by something that is supernatural.
Now at first, this might sound like the distinction between good people and bad people. If we read Romans 8 and think “there are bad people who just react to their flesh and then there are good people like me,” we’ve missed the point.
There is a beautiful nugget of wisdom found in verse 3: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.” (ESV) The law here, refers to the commands of God which we try to live up to. The law is good! But you and I like to misuse it.
Last week someone spray painted a stop sign near my house. The law associated with that stop sign is good. Lots of kids walk home from school through that intersection. Stopping is good. But we are human. And every time someone makes a law, there is a part of our heart that wants to get around it, misuse it, or even feel self-righteous for obeying it.
One of the ways we misuse the law is by thinking: “I am a good person because I do XYZ.” Yet, what the law really tells us is that no one is good. And so here, though it appears religious, though we are still thinking about the law, we are actually operating out of our flesh – our natural place. The flesh wants you to use the law to compare yourself to others, to feel like you’ve earned God’s favor by being good enough. But that kind of thinking is deadly.
It was in view of all this that God sent Jesus, because he knew our propensity to misuse the law. Jesus came so that you and I can be set free from misusing the law (vs 2). What we learn through Jesus is that we are all desperately sinful. The law does not make us better than another person. In fact, our only hope for righteousness is the righteousness of Jesus. We see that in verse 4 of Romans Ch. 8. Jesus was the One who fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law. You and I cannot!
Let’s make that our hope and motivation today. We are not trying to earn our own righteousness. We’ll never be able to! But Jesus has already secured that for us. When you and I come to believe this, we will then be living according to the Spirit. And when wethink according to the Spirit, the result is beautiful. Read it in verse 6: “The mind controlled by the sinful nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.” May your day be filled with life and peace!
