The Point of Living

A long-time Bible student, writing of Romans, had this to say: “There is within ourselves, beyond the realm of our conscious knowledge, a divine life, the child of God’s Spirit, under His loving care, working in stillness, ever unwearied, never exhausted, to gain control of our whole being, and transform us into the image of God.”[1]  As the church and as members of the body, we have the Spirit.  It may be that we aren’t aware of the Spirit’s active presence within us.  Neither are we often aware of our lifeblood, coursing through our veins, feeding us, strengthening us, enabling us for labor.  Jesus promised the gift of the Spirit, our Helper, Teacher, our Guide—our power of sanctification.  What’s that?  Becoming the people God wants.  Through the Spirit, God is at work in us, maybe still too often despite ourselves—there’s a lot of being to get under control, that can still get a bit out of control.  God will have His victory, in us.  At Pentecost, victory came to stay.  The victory-gift arrives each time someone receives Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.  The gift doesn’t go away.  The one to whom the gift is given may go AWOL, for long stretches.  We say you that are weary, come home.

Hearing Paul in the verses I just read, I feel as if I’m hearing a challenge, some exhortation to renew relationship with the gift and the giver.  A revival?  He concludes his first thought this way: “if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.  And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” (8:9).  The one with the Spirit of Christ belongs to Christ.  The one without the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Christ: “Depart from me” (Mt 25:41).  He will “tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me’” (Mt 7:23).  There may be those with the Spirit of Christ who, as yet, are unaware of it.  Might we offer a wakeup call?

Does the Spirit live in me?  How do I know?  Now, the Spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit, certainly.  The Spirit of Christ is also Christ’s life: that way of living that reflects Christ’s values, his teaching, his way.  We’re all working on that, and we can do so, and want to do so, only because we have the Spirit.  The Spirit is with us to renew our will and empower us for vital, fruitful discipleship.  God will have His victory in us.  It is the Spirit who keeps us longing for Jesus, eager for Christ, trembling yet eager: Come, Lord Jesus!

Christ’s way is God’s way.  “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God” (Gal 2:20).  The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of faith.  Jesus Christ, in the likeness of human flesh, accomplished all he accomplished because of faith—that strong, vital bond between God and man.  Faith is the lifeline.  Jesus came to us as God; he came to us as man.  He came to show us the power of faith.  Does the Spirit live in me?  Ask another question: do I have faith?  If you can answer yes, the Spirit lives in you.  No Spirit, no faith.  No faith, no Spirit.  And faith even as much as a mustard seed can accomplish what is beyond us in our own strength and wisdom because the Spirit with us is the Spirit of God.

Faith is not first, or even at all, an intellectual assent to certain propositions.  Accepting there must be a Creator is not at all the same as desiring this God, loving this God.  Faith is the Spirit-enabled Amen to Jesus Christ.  Faith—trust is like a synonym, but not as rich—faith is expressed, all imperfectly, if sincerely, through obedience—trusting God above all, every moment, in every trial.

Even while rejoicing that the Spirit is living in him and in every believer, Paul has also spent agonized paragraphs and chapters up to here wrestling with the ongoing problem of sin; we each wrestle with it, sometimes more, sometimes less.  We’ve walked with Paul, wrestled alongside him, along our long journey.  Sin is just giddy whenever it can get any of us to question whether we really have faith, whether we really have the Spirit.  Our stumbling, bumbling manner of walking with Jesus can lead to doubt: “If I’m still doing these things, even desiring these things . . . maybe I’m not really saved!”

Habitual sin is likely the worst, most corrosive: the habit of untruth; the habit of slander; the habit of unhealthy pride; the habit of unchecked lust; the habit of envy.  We can know the light, want the light, and still walk in some darknesses that feel hard to escape, all the harder when we really try.  Death feeds upon doubt.  Jesus never said have more faith.  Jesus always said have faith, not as a footnote to your existence but as the anchor of your life.  It isn’t more faith any of us needs, it’s faith itself, only faith, just faith: Christ’s Spirit-gift for us, Christ alive in us, with us.  However much faith each of us has been given—and it may even be the case that God has apportioned faith to each of us differently—yet, however much He has given, it is enough—like the manna God faithfully gave, fulfilling His promise, showering His lovingkindness upon His people: “Everyone had [. . .] just as much as they needed” (Ex 16:18).

But I need more!  Why?  Because I’m afraid.  When we’re afraid, we seek the supposed security of more.  More will save us.  More makes us safe.  I thought it was God.  What does God tell Paul, in response to that messenger of Satan?  “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9).  Faith even as much as a mustard seed is enough to see us over and through challenges and difficulties that seem mountainous to us.  No mountain is larger than God.  God calls to us from the mountain, saying “Come up.”  Rise.

Now, why do we have the Spirit?  We may have figured out by now why we have Jesus—so that our sins could be forgiven, so that the doorway to God could be opened to us.  So that we could see with clarity and certainty that there is a God who loves us.  That’s why Jesus.  Why the Spirit?  Because we could have nothing to do with Christ if not for the Spirit.  It is the Spirit by whom we desire Christ, love Christ, by whom we understand the Word of God and know it matters; by whom we begin to live better in line with God’s Word—though never, God knows!, perfectly, in this life.  The Spirit handles our inherited, entrenched disobedience: wanting our own way, telling ourselves it’s really God’s way, after all.  The church in every age has always been required to wrestle with the ingrained habit of remaking God our way.  The Spirit remakes us, God’s way.  That’s sanctification.

If you ever pray, it is the Spirit, whether you are satisfied with your prayers or not, though we still may pray to receive what our hearts covet in this life.  The Spirit works upon us in our praying, still and ever shaping us according to God’s purpose for us.  If you ever open your Bible, it is the Spirit, whether anything there one time or another particularly grabs your mind or heart or not.  Whenever you come and gather with the brothers and sisters, it is the Spirit.  If you ever sense the fullness and blessedness of life, it is the Spirit.  If ever you sense that deep, lonely, beautiful ache for the One over you, above, it is the Spirit.

Paul has been laboring through this part of Romans to remind his hearers that life in Christ looks like something.  It does not look like life after the world’s standards and values, with a slick, sugary Jesus glaze.  There is living according to the flesh.  There is life in the Spirit.  We feel the two, contending in us.  It can feel as if the flesh nearly always has the upper hand, yet none is higher than God.  So, Paul reminds us, so that we would be reminded and remind one another: “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit” (8:9).  Living faith testifies this is so, testifies to the privilege, joy, and worthiness of such living.  Christ claimed us by the Spirit; we have found it impossible to say No to Christ.  There are those, even those claiming belief, who say No to Christ.  The apostles each confronted this sorrow.

Jesus promises you and me life.  Well, the only life with which we are very familiar is this life.  I suppose almost all of us have had some thoughts about our eventual exit from this familiar life.  Some want to go peaceful and quiet, like in their sleep.  Others want to go out active, engaged.  Still others can barely begin to brush up against the necessity and reality of their eventual death: it’s so fearful to them, even if their death won’t be physically painful.  For these, all beyond is a vast, dark silence.  But it isn’t.  Jesus returned, risen, bright, to assure us we need not fear, because he has been there, and now he is over all, guiding us to his side, into his open arms.  Faith faces down death.  God is stronger.  And if we never had the sense of God, all these words would be idiotic.  But we have sensed God, because the Spirit is with us, now.

Beloved, these bodies of ours, redeemed as they are, will die.  We must die.  We die because of sin, the sin that remains.  Death is the final act of sin.  Those now in Christ do not die as punishment from God; it is God who saves us from the finality of death that many still dread.  Others are embracing the finality of death with resigned defeat, if they can only have what they’ve been told is a dignified exit.  Dignity—the root of the word has to do with rank, worth, honor, and the sense of self-importance—what others owe me because I am, after all, me.  But who wants to be undignified?  Who wants to be weak and helpless?  And when he lifted us, how did our Rock of Ages find us?  We just sang about the old, old story we love to hear; we sang how Jesus came to us when we were weak and helpless. Or did we forget that part?  I can do all things, how?  And, apart from God, as Jesus himself tells us, what can we do?  Dignity, what is that, in this culture?  Strong, able, dependent upon none—dignity in this culture is self, exalted.

Five percent of deaths in Canada—not a negligible number—are the result of physician-assisted suicide.  Over one year, assisted-suicide deaths in the Netherlands rose by ten percent, a significant jump.  What’s the point of living?  Critics will speak of religion as a contrivance to deny the finality of death—living a lie, living for a lie: “you die, but then you live”—ha ha.  Others look at religion as a way to live life—what a moral life in this world looks like.  Let us, though, speak of faith as the way to know God who is the point of living.  I am not the point of my life; God is the point of living.

God does not choose to rescue us from the experience of death, however the experience and process finally come to each of us.  He chooses to save us from the eternal consequences of our sin, to save us from estrangement, by being reconciled to us.  So, yes, while the “body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness” (8:10).  But can’t we just skip the death part?  Did Jesus?  Jesus brings freedom from the finality of death by dying and being raised again through the power and glory of the Father.  And, in Christ, we shall be, also, as Paul has reminded us in Chapter Six of Romans.  The Father is Righteousness.  And, in Christ, we shall be, finally, perfectly, also—vital relationship, fullness of life, always.

The Spirit “gives life because of righteousness” (8:10).  Whose?  My righteousness?  The only righteousness there is, beloved, is the righteousness of God.  God gives us the blessing of His righteousness in Jesus Christ, righteous for us.  Our faith is Christ’s faith, our righteousness Christ’s righteousness, and the life we now live, we live in Christ.  Christ, alive, lives believers to God, here and hereafter.  Paul is plain: “if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you” (8:11).  Because of our earnest labors on behalf of God?  No.  Because of the purity of our lives?  No.  Because of our beautifully proper political values, perfectly loathing the right people?  No.  Because we never once cussed?  No.  Because we always gave our tithe?  No.  God gives life, resurrection life, to these mortal bodies that will and must die—He will raise us to be with the Lord forever, “because of His Spirit who lives in [us]” (8:11).  God is the point of living.  God will have the glory.  The Spirit is the glory of God, the strength and wisdom of God.  By faith in Christ, the Spirit lives in us, to raise the sons of earth, to give us second birth.  What a friend for sinners!  Jesus, the name above all names.  How sweet the name of Jesus sounds.  Oh, there’s something about that name.  Bless his holy name.

[1] Henry H. Halley.  Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary.  Chicago: Henry H. Halley, 1955.  526.