Romans 8 Part 3 (Erin and Kathryn)

by ctarter · Published November 19, 2013 · Updated March 17, 2016

Romans 8

Identity Project

Nov. 19, 2013

Teachers: Erin and Katherine

Erin:

Flesh is gross: Just the other week, a brother of mine was injured. He tried to fix his injury on his own, but it only got worse in the process. That’s like our flesh and God: When we try to fix our flesh on our own, things only get messier. We are going to learn how to deal with this and let God deal with our new construction.

Romans talks about this battle between the spirit and the flesh. Last week, we taught about ways to grow the spirit with the Word of God and how that enhances our lives. Other things we talked about were prayer and focusing on grace, not going by the law. Yet all these things leave out something — they leave out the flesh. We learned about growing the spirit, but the way you deal with the flesh is a lot different. You don’t deal with flesh the same way you deal with spirit. The spirit you can grow inside you, but the flesh must die. Whether your mind is on the spirit or on the flesh, it’s not like it’s no big deal. Either side, if you’re in the flesh or in the spirit, both are persuasive.

Romans 8:6-7 — For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,

Romans 8:9 — However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

Wouldn’t it suck, not being able to please your own father? Being hostile toward God is not somewhere you want to be! In the first part of the verse, it says that if you put your mind on spirit, there is a life of peace.

So how do you do that, especially when your flesh is raging, wild and you want your own way? We want our way often and cannot get our minds off of ourselves. How can we move on from that? If we deal with it in the right way, dealing with our flesh is actually a means of growth, even if it means breaking. It hurts, but it draws you closer to God.

Means of Growth: These are things that apply to Christians — for the people who have Christ inside of them. Think about a seed: If you plant a garden without any seeds, only dirt, you can water that dirt all day long and nothing will grow unless you put seeds in the dirt. It is the same way when you have a life with Christ or not: You cannot grow spiritually by these means of growth unless you have Christ living inside you. If you do not have Christ in you or have not accepted his free gift of grace, you can pray all you want, read the Bible all you want or fellowship day and night, but nothing will grow without that initial step.

Starting a relationship with Christ is almost too easy.

Revelations 3:20 (NLT) — Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.

The NLT Bible says in this verse that we can “share in a meal” with God as friends if we let him into our lives. Christ is knocking on our hearts, willing to come into our lives; however, it is our decision to welcome him in. We can say yes or no. Imagine someone is knocking on your door for a couple hours: You can either welcome the person into your home or you can leave the person outside, knocking. And how do we let Jesus in? Through prayer. It’s just one conversation with him, and if your heart is open, he will come in.

Romans 8:11 — But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

This verse says Christ dwells in you after you accept his gift of grace.

John 15:4 — Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.

Not only is Christ in us, but we are in Him when we accept Christ. We, as believers, are put in Him. This is permanent once we make that decision. Our sins our gone, we are friends with God. It’s great. But why don’t we view ourselves that way? Even after letting Christ in, we are still jealous, lustful and have our share of struggles. We are still tempted. What is up with that? Check out 1 Samuel 16:7.

We’re still jealous, lustful and other fleshly attitudes? We still view other Christians as failures sometimes and see their flesh. Check out 1 Samuel 16:7.

1 Samuel 16:7 — But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

God does not see us as we view ourselves. He sees us in our new identity, while we view ourselves in a totally different way. Think about it this way: For Halloween, a friend of mine dressed up as Carlell. She did a good job: She had the hair, the face and the clothes down well. But inside those clothes, God still knew who she really was. God knows that she is not Carlell. But while God knows that, the people on earth surrounding her do not. That is the same way it is with our flesh: While we see our flesh and other people even see our fleshly struggles, God does not view us that way. He sees us as perfected in Christ.

The flesh hides our new identity and we will still sin in our new identity. While we can try to grow spiritually through reading the Bible, praying and spending more time in fellowship, we have to deal with our flesh in a totally different way.

Romans 8:29 — For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

Our flesh is like a drug. It’s so pleasing and feels so good and gives us a quick fix, but it kills and destroys us. That’s why Christ tells us, “Let me have it all; I am the way.” He says he will give us life. That’s why we must get rid of our flesh so that we can see Christ in other Christians.

The reason this is hard is because we want this control, but as humans, we weren’t designed to have control. The idea of giving yourself up to Christ and being conformed to his image (See Romans 12:1-2), and these negative ideas come from man. God is not trying to suck the life out of us so we’re all robots. When he created us, he said we were good because he created us and he loved us, but we chose to take control into our own hands and go our own way. But God wants to reel us back to him. And this is all part of the battle between flesh and spirit, and it requires a breaking process.

John 10:10 — The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

God wants to give us life, which means we have to give control back to Him. But how do we do that?

Romans 8:13 — For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

We must kill the outer self. Our flesh needs to die so that we might live.

2 Corinthians 4:6-7 — For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves;

In Paul’s time, this clay jar was a metaphor for the body and flesh. Clay is fragile and easily broken. Paul describes our flesh as a clay pot. Although a clay pot might be beautiful (we often form the jars ourselves), there is something much cooler inside. The same goes for our flesh and the spirit: While we spend years making our flesh or our appearance what we want it to be, there is something much cooler inside. That is our spirit. Yet we have to rip off the facade we build on the outside to make that spirit be shown. To show our new identity in Christ. God is love and he is way cooler than any identity we might build for ourselves on earth.

Katherine:

Romans 8 has two aspects: The flesh and the spirit. And the spirit is the inner man. We can grow spiritually through prayer, the Word, fellowship. But none of that works by our own power or our flesh. So what should our response be if we find ourselves in this breaking process?

Before we tell you what to do, here’s what NOT to do: Do not run away from the suffering to find a quick easy way out.

Often, God is chiseling away at our flesh. And this chiseling can be pretty ugly. When we try to stop God from chiseling at our flesh, we hinder God’s breaking us and letting him shine through us.

Not too long ago, I was walking my dog, fell and cracked my elbow on the sidewalk. An ambulance came to pick me up, and I was in a lot of pain. When I was in the ambulance, the whole time, all I could think was, “Ow! Oh my God, please just give me morphine!” to deal with the pain. The EMS men wanted my name, age, information. But I was a total brat! Instead of giving them my name, I kept shouting at them, “Ugh, give me the morphine!” and of course, they calmly responded they couldn’t do that and that they had to jot down my information.

Now, it’s human to act that way and to not want to experience pain. We can be in situations like the one above emotionally, too. God might be telling us, “Hey! So while you are here in this pain, I can work with this. Let’s break off your flesh.” But instead of complying with God, we often turn to things to dull our pain: Entertainment, fun, work, sleep. Anything to not face it.

How do you escape pain? For me, it was books and weed when I was growing up: I would get lost in either of those things so I wouldn’t have to deal with emotional pain. But through those two outlets, I lost the opportunity for God to do something cool in my life.

Hebrews 12:11-17 — All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled; that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.

This verse tells us to endure pain because it will produce a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who don’t look for a way to get out of it. We shouldn’t be telling God, “I’ve got this under control” because things will be way messier that way.

So what should you do?

Be Willing
Have a right perspective.

First, you need to cooperate willingly with what God is doing. You need to trust him. When you hit a wall, are you going to rely on God or are you going to rely on yourself to get out of a situation?

2 Corinthians 1:8-10 — For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us,

Paul is in such a bad place here, and Paul is a tough guy. He must really have been hurting. But the key thing is Paul says that this happens so we don’t rely on ourselves, but on God. Are we going to rely on God and depend on him or in ourselves. What would my arm look like now if I decided not to let the doctor fix it? If I said, “I can heal it myself! I’ll punch it down on the table, find some gauze and let it heal,” it would be a huge mess. But I didn’t do that: I relied on the doctors regardless of my choice.

Romans 8:22-23 — For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

Suffering is not fun. But we live in a fallen world, so we cannot change this. We have to decide how to respond to it: Will we try to control it or are we going to put it in God’s hands? For the Christian, we can choose to gain benefit of suffering if we have a willing heart for Him to work through that pain.

The second thing we must do: We must have the right perspective.

Romans 8:9 — However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

When our minds are on the flesh, it makes it harder to break the flesh off. We shouldn’t dwell on the suffering happening to us. We need to keep our eyes on Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:18 — while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

This verse parallels with the clay pot verses: Don’t fix your eyes on the present sufferings, but on the eternal things. When I was in the hospital with a messed up elbow, the doctors told me, “Do not look at your elbow; look instead at your husband.” We are to look away from our suffering and to God. Looking at the suffering makes the process a lot more painful and scary. Looking at God, though, makes things simpler.

2 Corinthians 4:16-17 — Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison,

Whatever pain you are going through, it is nothing compared to the glory that awaits Christians in the end.

Romans 8:18 — For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

The suffering you endure now is worth it because of the glory that will be revealed in us. When Christ is revealed in us, that is when we touch people’s lives. It’s beyond anything we could do on our own. When God works through suffering, don’t short circuit it by taking matters into your own hands or depend on yourself. Instead, depend on God. Have a willing hear to rely on God and have an eternal perspective on the matters of suffering. What God has down the road is way cooler than what you are currently going through. So allow yourself to be broken.

2 Corinthians 10:4 — for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.

God’s work can be seen through us if we go through the process of breaking as Christians. It can only happen if we let God continue his work and rely on him, no matter how painful it gets. And if we do that, that is when we are most effective for advancing God’s kingdom.

Luke 9:23 — And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

The cross is an instrument of execution. And this is what we go through when we break off our flesh. It means denying yourself. This is pretty heavy stuff, so if you do not have a relationship with Christ, to be clear, this topic is just talking to people who already have that relationship with Him. And if you do not have that relationship with him, think about taking that initial step into coming into a relationship with God. When Christ knocks on the door like in the Revelation 3:20 verse, that is separate, free decision. It is grace.

Ephesians 2:8-9 — For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

God wants to give you life. He wants to take what is dead in you and have the life of Christ replace that. Then, you can take your sufferings and instead of them being meaningless, God can transform it greatly.

For the Christian, the next time you deal with suffering, are you going to risk the opportunity of not benefiting spiritually because you held back to flesh or are you going to put things in God’s hands? That is the point where you trust him and rely on him to get through the suffering.