"But if The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through The Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." [Rom 8:11-13]
In Hebrews we are reminded of the faith of Sarah, which was much like Abraham’s, of which Paul comments, saying,
“And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what He had promised, He as able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness.” [Rom 4:19-22]
And as it relates to Sarah, Hebrews reminds us,
“Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sea which is by the sea shore innumerable.” [Heb 11:11-12]
Though “Abraham and Sarah were old and well stricken in age; and it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women,” [Gen 18:11] yes, and though Abraham was ”an hundred years old[.] And…Sarah [was] ninety years old,” [Gen 17:17] yet both Abraham and Sarah, according to the scriptures, believed God. Both Abraham and Sarah’s bodies were, as it says in Hebrews, “good as dead.” They were old and their bodies were past the time of children; it was not possible, according to the flesh, for them to produce life. Ah, but we give God glory: for though “it ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women,” yet it did not cease to be with God! For Christ is “He that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.” [Rev 3:7] As Jeremiah praises, “Ah Lord GOD! Behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” [Jer 32:17] Yes, and so, God Almighty, the giver of the promise and of all good gifts, the One of whom it is written, “He maketh the barren woman to keep house,” [Psa 113:9] opened the womb of Sarah and gave Abraham vitality, though their bodies were “as good as dead.”
May we take great encouragement from this account; for just as Sarah’s body was good as dead, unable to produce life, so too were we as unbelievers. We were “dead in trespasses and sin,” [Eph 2:1] unable to produce any life; for though we were living in the sense of animation, we were as the women described in Paul’s letter to Timothy, “but she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth;” [1 Tim 5:6] for we were those who “walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air…fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind,” [Eph 2:2, 3] having “given [ourselves] over unto unrestrained living.” [Eph 4:19] Yes, we were like Sarah: unable to produce life. For Jesus says, “because I live, ye shall live also,” [Jn 14:19] implying what John wrote, “he that hath not The Son of God hath not life;” [1 Jn 5:12] and again, “if one died for all, then were all dead;” [2 Cor 5:14] and once more, “we have passed from death unto life.” [1 Jn 3:14] But though we were dead in sins, without any true life because we did not have Christ in our hearts, yet as Ephesians triumphantly proclaims,
“But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath made us alive together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).” [Eph 2:4-5]
Just as Sarah was dead in her body, but was given, through faith, the ability to produce life, so too it is with us. For though we inhabit bodies which were formerly dead in sin, unable to produce Jesus’ life – the fruit of The Holy Spirit – yet now, because of Jesus and His Spirit, we have been granted the ability to produce life. These wretched bodies, of which Paul yearned for deliverance, saying, “who shall deliver me from the body of this death,” [Rom 7:24] have been, as The Holy Spirit also says through Paul, “annulled.” [Rom 6:6] And because of this fact, which thing is opened unto us through Jesus and His resurrection, (for through His resurrection we receive The Holy Spirit [Jn 7:37-39]), we can now use our bodies to live unto righteousness instead of sin, thus producing the life of Jesus Christ; as it is written,
“Therefore we 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. For if we have become united with [Him] in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection…Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him…Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.” [Rom 6:4-5, 8, 12-13]
It is an awesome responsibility and blessing to be able to produce the very life of The Messiah. Indeed, it reveals to us the power and grace of Jesus Christ. It shows us the exceeding, magnificent grace, which could transform a lowly sinner into a prince in God’s kingdom: into one who practices righteousness and is loved dearly by He with whom he used to be at enmity. And as often as we take up our cross with joy as Jesus showed us, [Heb 12:2, Mt 16:24] and put to death the deeds of the body, The Spirit who dwells in us will of a truth display Jesus’ life and glory through our bodies: those very bodies He has chosen to inhabit. For again, Romans states,
“But if The Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also give life to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” [Rom 8:11]
And seeing that we have this great promise, let us take advantage of it! In fact, we must! For Paul goes on, writing to Rome and to us,
“Therefore, brethren, we are continually being debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through The Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” [Rom 8:12-13]
To be a debtor means, to be “one who is under obligation to do something.” [Webster] We thus, because we have Jesus’ Spriit – because we are “an habitation of God through The Spirit.” [Eph 2:22] – are obligated: obligated not to be directed and led of our fleshly passions, but instead to be directed and led by and submitted to The Holy Spirit, to Jesus, and as a result to be “[putting] to death the deeds of the body,” so that as it says in our passage for today and also in Corinthians, “the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” [2 Cor 4:11] We are in debt to produce the life of Jesus Christ, that those around us might be blessed thereby, and God might enjoy that fruit for which He saved us. As it says of the Groom’s fruit, “I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste,” [Songs 2:3] may it also be said of our fruit. Not because we have done anything, or are anything, but because we are connected to Christ, The Root and The Branch. If we have been “[partaking] of the root and fatness of the olive tree,” [Rom 11:17] of Christ, then our fruit shall be as His, sweet and lovely. And in this word, “put to death the deeds of the body, [so that] ye shall live,” we see implied that even the least of Jesus’ fruit is better than any deed of the flesh. Jesus’ life is so much better as to always be preferred, and because we have the power through The Spirit to produce it, if we put to death the flesh, we must. Jesus holds the power to transform the vilest sinner into the brightest saint; to recreate a dead dog on the doorstep of hell, into an eagle, on course to heaven’s gate. The Lord Jesus’ grace and power know no limits, which could give us such life, which could use even the lowliest body, the lowliest person. Let us recognize this great gift, and our God’s great power and submit to Him.
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