The Essential Difference

Roman 8: 1-9

Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA)

Exposition by Max A Forsythe

A few years ago there was a very popular Christmas toy, called the Rubic's Cube.  For a while it seemed that everyone would have to figure out how to solve the puzzle.  Unfortunately, the puzzle was extremely difficult.  Several books were written on how to work the puzzle out, twist by twist. The year after I had a puzzle, I was given such a book so that I could figure the cube out!  Even with the book, I was unable to completely solve the puzzle!  Of course, so were a lot of people -- so many, that other solutions were published in various places. 

As it turns out, there were three ways to solve the puzzle.  First, you could pry the cube apart with a screw driver and then reassemble it in the right sequence.  This was the solution that I was able to use!  Second, you could carefully peal off the various stickers and stick them back onto the cube.  This particular solution however, was to be avoided.  Because once you did that, the odds were that the puzzle could never be solved in the correct manner.  Third, you could work your way through the book, turn by turn.  As you began to understand the higher mathematics involved you could plan your attack and become successful.  This third method, of learning the mathematics, was the whole purpose of the cube! 

Yet, in spite of the high publicity and encouragement to prove your mental ability, very very few people were able to complete the puzzle.  All methods aside, one only needed to look at the cube to determine the essential difference.  Was it solved, or was it not?  The way to tell was to look and see if each side was completely one color or not.  To often, in our approach to solving problems of many different kinds, social, moral, emotional and theological, we get hung up as people did with that peculiar cube in the late eighties.  How we worry and weep over the methods to arrive at the proper solution to so many problems, yet somehow we continually miss the essential difference of whether or not the problem has been solved.

Let us consider this essential difference in a very important part of our faith today. The problem to which I would direct your attention is the proper biblical understanding of the categories of men in their relation to Jesus Christ.  One of the more popular teachings in our churches today is a teaching that "there were three categories of men -- the natural man, the spiritual man, and the carnal man."  Now, please note that I said most popular, not most orthodox!  You can see this threefold interpretation in the Schofield Reference Bible, and in several popular pamphlets.  Maybe you have seen them?  They picture three circles which represent:

1. The Natural Man, (Non-Christian), where the ego is on the throne; this man is self-centered, his interests are controlled by the self.

2. The Carnal Man, (Christian who is not trusting God), where, while Christ is acknowledged, there has been no basic reorganization or change in the nature and character of the person.

3. The Spiritual Man, (Christian who is trusting God), where Christ is enthroned in the heart of the believer and all of life is centered in Him.

Certainly, we must acknowledge that there are babes in Christ, and different stages of babyhood in understanding divine truth and in spiritual growth.  However, we must ask if there isn't an essential difference between those who are in Christ and those who are not!  After all, like the Rubic's Cube, surface appearances can be confusing.  As in the case of the Rubic's Cube, there is a book that will explain what it is we desire to know.  Let us turn to God's Holy Word for guidance as we consider this important essential difference.

We will continue our study in Paul's letter to the Romans.  Our chapter is the eighth.  In the preceding section of chapter seven, Paul has given an account of the state of a man who is in the bondage of sin and death.  That chapter ends with a personal testimony that this state is brought to an end by an act of God.  In this chapter Paul now proceeds to give an account of what God has done, and of its results in a new state of life.  The key word of this whole chapter is the word “spirit.”  It occurs over twenty times.  We will see that the new state of man can only be described in terms of this spirit, just as the old state was characterized by the word “flesh!”  Romans 8: 1-4 says:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.  And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.”

What Paul describes here is the saving act of God.  Here in my New International Version, this portion is entitled: "Life Through the Spirit."  "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."  The language he uses is that of the law-court.  But he is not here thinking of a simple acquittal from the guilt of past sin.  Rather, he is thinking of a real liberation from the present power of sin.  Now, the Greek word translated here as “condemnation” can also refer to the punishment following sentence.  So we might think here of penal servitude.  Thus, the Greek can mean, "There is no penal-servitude for those who are in Christ Jesus." 

In the next verse we have:  "through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death."  The word “law” here is not used in its strict sense, but in the sense of a principle or system, which is to be contrasted with a principle or system of sin from which the believer is set free.

Next, he mentions something that "the law was powerless to do."  He refers to the fact that the  Mosaic law could not destroy the ascendancy of sin in the flesh.  It cannot deliver us from the power of sin.  Yet that is not the end of the situation. "For what the law was powerless to do, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.”  God has acted, and accomplished for us that which was necessary for our salvation.  And this is done for a purpose: "in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit."

Now that God's own Son, sent to earth, has given up His life as a sin-offering on His people's behalf, the death sentence has been passed on indwelling sin.   All that the law required by way of conformity to the will of God is now realized in the lives of those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit and are released from their servitude to the old order.  God's commands have now become God's enablings.  Or as Augustine puts it: "Grace was given that the law might be fulfilled."  Please notice that in all of this, God is the active agent.  God's law, God's Son, God's Spirit.  Also notice that there is a difference between the sinful nature and the Spirit.  This is the essential difference.  Let us compare the man who is in the Spirit to the man who is in the flesh.

Romans 8: 5-8 says, “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”  The contrast between the man who is in the Spirit and the man who is in the flesh has already been drawn in many ways in the New Testament.  Such contrasting terms as Slavery/Freedom, Death/Life, and so on, are used.  Here in this text, the contrast is the identification of the new life with the life in the Spirit, as contrasted with life in the flesh.  The trouble with the man described in the seventh chapter was that, although his reason consented to the law of God, his real interests were in the flesh.  Here, this situation is again described.  How very much does this sound like the Carnal Christian popularized in so many evangelical churches?

But what does our Scripture say?  There is an essential difference!  "Those who live according to the sinful nature" are contrasted with "those who live in accordance with the Spirit...."  One mind "is death" but the other is "life;” "the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so."  How can Christians believe that there are three types of people?  Well, it is comforting to those who intellectually assent to the gospel, but heaven forbid that they shape their lives by that gospel.  Thus, you can see why this teaching of the Carnal Christian is so popular in the churches today!  Yet, Paul warns here:  "Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God."

This problem that we have been pursuing today is important.  The solution described by Paul would be uncomfortable to many, because it would cause them to question the saving nature of their relationship to Jesus Christ.  And yet, the New Testament is clear.  Let us turn to Galatians 5: 16-25.  Notice here, we have only two classes or categories:

1. those that do the works of the flesh, and  

2. those that are led by the Spirit.  

There is no in- between category!

Again, let us turn our attention to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, 2: 6-16.  Here Paul describes two types of men.  The first is this natural man who cannot see beyond himself or beyond man's wisdom.  The Greek word for him is psuchikos.  This term describes the man endowed with physical life -- a life shared with all other living things.  This is the man who lives as if there was nothing beyond physical life, whose values are all physical and material.  To such as these an argument for Christianity can be logically irrefutable, yet remain totally unconverting.

The second is the spiritual man who knows God.  This is the pneumatikos.  In the Greek, this is the man who is sensitive and obedient to the Spirit.  This is the man whose life is guided and directed by the Spirit.  This is the man who knows that there are things beyond the values of this world.  This is the man whom God has loved, called and strengthened with the Holy Spirit.  Paul has written that, when he went to Corinth, he did not "come with superiority of speech or of wisdom."  He credited the conversion at Corinth to the sole power of God.  Such is the means of salvation.  God is the mover, and it is because of His power and spirit that we psuchikos become pneumatikos.

Let us return to the eighth chapter of Romans.  Here Paul speaks directly to his readers, in verse nine.  Since it is the Spirit alone who brings men into living relation with Christ, there can be no such relation with Christ apart from the Spirit.  The entire race of Adam is doomed to death because of sin.  And we know from our catechism what sin is:  "Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God."  Life must be the gift of God.   And the life God gives is in His giving the Holy Spirit to those who are in Christ  There is no room for a halfway commitment in acknowledging God and living your own life.  The scriptures speak only of in or out, no half-way in. 

I remember a social game from my Junior High School.  It was a somewhat ritual group dance to the theme of Simon says.  Whether you shook your left foot in or put your whole body into the imaginary circle, it didn’t count unless Simon said to.  Those who didn’t listen carefully ended up outside of the circle.  In a much greater theological sense, what God says is eternally important.  And in this context we would do well to ponder our last verse today:  “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.  And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”  Thanks be to God our Father, that through the Spirit we may have assurance unto glory.

Amen.



Resources Used:   The Holy Bible, New International Version

Bruce, F.F.          Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Romans.
Dodd, C.H.           The Epistle of Paul to the Romans.
Olyott, Stuart.      The Gospel as it Really is.
Pauck, Wilhelm..     Library of Christian Classics: Luther: Lectures on Romans.
Reisinger, Ernest C. What Should We Think of the Carnal Christian?

Places Preached:

Christ Covenant REFORMED (Presbyterian Church in America)
Post Office Box 13926 - Columbus, OH 43213-7926

Rom08a.htm       17 September 95

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