“THE
BOOK OF ROMANS” Part 6 of 8
Chapters
6,7,8 = Subduing the flesh
Ch. 6 –
Daily
struggle with sin
We are to be servants of
righteousness
So Paul raises the
question that some might ask. “Well, if we can have God’s grace for
sinning,
why not have more of God’s grace by committing more sin?” His answer?
Of course
not!
As
Christians, we
have been …baptised into his death (Rom
6:3) by the Holy Ghost and are … buried
with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from
the dead
by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of
life. (Rom 6:4).
Paul goes
on to say that Christ … died unto
sin once: but in that he (the
Christian) liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon
ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Jesus
Christ our Lord. (Rom 6:10-11)
In this
chapter, Paul
outlines what our daily behaviour should be. We were servants
of sin but now we are to be servants of righteousness.
There is the struggle between the two
natures that Christians have – the inner man is spiritual, but being
born
again, is also trapped in a body of flesh and sin. This teaches us that
while
being utterly freed from the power of sin, we cannot be lazy, idle and
secure
in this knowledge.
We now
have genuine
freedom from sin. We have a choice. This choice and liberty we now
have, does
not abolish the law, but supplies us with the things that the law
demands –
willingness and love to fulfil the law as Paul outlines it (1Cor 11:1).
The
liberty that a Christian has is not a flesh liberty to indulge the
flesh. As
all Christians find, when we have true liberty, we must practice true
discipline on ourselves.
Ch. 7 – Dead to the demands
of the law
The law is holy
Our
natures of flesh are evil
In
this chapter, Paul uses the example of a
woman who becomes free from her marriage as a result of her husband
dying. When
a husband dies his wife becomes free to marry another. So here is man’s
problem. In an unsaved state, our old man/nature gets very angry with
what the
law demands because it can’t fulfil it. Now, it’s not that the law is
evil, far
from it, as it is holy just and good (Rom7:12). The problem is that
man’s
nature is evil.
Instead of
having God’s solution to sin, man
changes the laws to accommodate his sinful nature. “God’s laws are out
of date,
man is evolving, we are becoming more modern, more rational, more
loving and
more accepting of others.”
Like a
fisherman that throws out bait into
the water to attract the fish, God ‘throws’ out his laws to attract the
sin. No
bait – no fish, no law – no sin.
How could
Christ fulfil the demands of the
law that produces nothing but sin in man’s flesh?
Here is an
explanation: There was a movie not
so long ago called “Ghostbusters” where three men had a machine that
could
attract, trap and destroy all the evil ghosts. Similarly, Christ is
‘the
machine’ whereby in the flesh he could fulfil/‘defeat’ the law by not
sinning.
So he does
this on our behalf. Like a
gladiator in a ring fighting for the release of condemned prisoners
(should he
lose they die). He kills the opposing foe. They shout “We have won!
We’ve won!”
just as if they had delivered the death blows themselves. Like children
whose
father is rich, they proclaim “We are rich! We are rich!”
**** ****
Harley Hitchcock
www.
AustralianBibleMinistries
.com