In my youth, I found verses like these to be difficult:
“because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all those led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons.”
Romans 8:13–14, CSB
The difficulty arose from what I now know to be a misapplication of these verses.
Whether I was taught this explicitly, or if I merely inferred it on my own, my understanding was that I am responsible for putting to death the deeds of the body and to borrow the well-known phrase from Nike, I had to “just do it.”
The problem is that I find that I can’t do it. And I found that those around me can’t do it either. Without God’s help, putting the deeds of the body to death is impossible. We can at best produce the illusion of control.
This may be a bit of an oversimplification. Still, the problem with legalistic, religious societies is that to avoid the discomfort of having their sin confronted, they find ways of covering it up or outright justifying that sin.
Jesus often confronted the Pharisees for looking down on others while they justified their own bad behavior. And the ironic thing is that current-day Pharisees, do the same while looking down on the Biblical Pharisees.
My point is not to blame or condemn anyone; I think this tendency is due to a misunderstanding of how real spiritual growth takes place. The shame of all this is that I am now in my mid 60’s. I am finding that much of what I was taught about spiritual growth missed the whole point and misapplied Scripture by using it as a tool to attempt to beat people (including themselves) into obedience and conformity to their understanding of what “Christian” behavior looks like.
But, there is a better way that I am just beginning to understand.
You see, our Enemy, who is called the accuser of the brothers, is the one who wants to keep us operating under shame for our lack of progress in what we understand to be holy living. When we get angry and express it inappropriately, when we gossip under the guise of sharing prayer requests, when we treat “sinners” as second-class people to avoid, and when we pretend to have our act together even when we know we do not, we place ourselves under the power of that enemy.
The solution to this is a deeper application of the gospel, the good news. The good news tells us that we can’t save ourselves or produce anything of real value on our own. Paul reminds us of this is his letter to the Ephesians:
“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.”
Ephesians 2:8–9, CSB
Our spiritual progress is a gift from God, not something I can produce.
I can rest in that.
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