Romans 8:1-17
8 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power[a] of the life-giving Spirit has freed you[b] from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature.[c] So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 4 He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.
5 Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.
9 But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)10 And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life[d] because you have been made right with God. 11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.
12 Therefore, dear brothers and sisters,[e] you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do.13 For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature,[f] you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children[g] of God.
15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children.[h] Now we call him, “Abba, Father.”[i] 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.
Recently my mum was tracing our ancestry and she discovered that a relative of ours, William Hampton, was the last man in Cornwall to be hanged for a crime. In 1909 he murdered a tobacconist in Falmouth and was sentenced to death by hanging. Since then, the death penalty has been made illegal in the United Kingdom. There is no longer a crime that requires such a severe consequence.
However, Paul in the Bible believes that there is a force on our lives that has such sinister and devastating consequences that we should sentence it to death: sin. He says that if we live in sin then we will die. The fruit of sin in our life is distance from God, from community and from ourselves. Ultimately, all sin leads to death. In John 10:10 it says that the devil came to steal, kill and destroy But Jesus came so that we would have abundant life.
So, Paul looks at sin, sees the devastating impact, and argues that there is only one reasonable response to it: we must condemn it to death.
But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature,[f] you will live.
Notice that he does not tell us to put to death sin in other people. It is not our responsibility to be the sin-police for others or to judge everyone else’s behaviour. Rather, he invites us to look inward, at our own hearts and our own relationship to God. Anything that is sin will pull us away from God and should be removed.
Recently, I bought a rose bush to grow outside my front door. The first lesson that you learn with roses is how important it is to dead-head. That is to cut off dead heads, so that all the energy of the bush goes into the blooms that you want to see and the growth that you envision. The Holy Spirit wants your life to bloom. However, for this to happen, we must be ruthless and relentless at trimming off the deadness of sin and stretching forwards into the light of new life.
