Body of Death

Introduction
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I became a Christian nearly 3 decades ago. I embraced the Christian faith very
reluctantly, because I could no longer hold on to my atheism. In a way, I was
constrained to bow down to the Lordship of Jesus because I had no choice.
Atheism no longer had sense to me, and then when I read the New Testament, I
was captivated by the person of Jesus as told in the Gospels. I was intellectually
convinced by the arguments of Paul about the faith in his letters to the faithful,
especially in his letter to the Romans.

And I knew what was required of me. The proclamation of the Gospel demanded
my full allegiance to the Lord Jesus. And because I had no other choice, I had to
bow before King Jesus and gave up my life to him.

Well, at least that’s what I thought. I was not aware that I had not completely
turned my life over to him. There were major parts of my person that continued
to be rebel strongholds and had not yet surrendered to His Kingdom.

Because of that it took me less than two years to start backsliding from the faith.

You see before I became a follower of Jesus, I was your typical circa 1980’s young
adult. I drank heavily. I smoked up to three packs of cigarettes a day. I loved
going out with friends to beer joints. I enjoyed lewd and boisterous drunken
discussions over beer and pulutan.

So when I backslid, I got drawn back to the things that I enjoyed doing when I
was still a non-believer. So I went back to drinking. Went back to smoking.
Joined my friends drinking in beer joints again.

But I noticed a major difference this time. I was doing the things that I enjoyed
doing before, but by this time I was no longer enjoying them. I didn’t like getting
drunk anymore. I hated getting hung over. Whenever I smoked, I was doing it
more as a habit, but I hated the cigarette smell on my clothes. I was going to beer
joints but somehow I felt out of place. I felt like I didn’t belong there anymore.
I wanted to get out, but I could not. I wanted to stop drinking and smoking, but
I could not. I felt I did not have control. I could not stop myself.

But after doing that for a year I could sense a feeling of guilt building up inside
me. It became a heavy burden. So at one point, I remembered Jesus, and I called Page | 2
out to Him, and prayed for deliverance. And praise the Lord, He restored me. He
took away my desire for alcohol. He allowed me to have a lung infection and I
started coughing very painfully that I swore never to touch cigarettes again. And
when I would be out with my friends drinking, God opened my eyes and he made
me see the foolishness that drunken men do. So after than I made a decision to
never drink to get drunk anymore.

And not long after that I began serving him. In a few years time I was already
serving as a pastor of a start-up church in Bulacan.

Sinners to the Core

I believe some of you can related to my experience. We all understand that even
when we already became Christians, somehow the fleshly desires still tend to get
the better of us.

That’s because as even the Bible itself tells us, in our natural self, we are sinners
to the core.

We have been sinners since Adam and Eve. Somehow when God created
humans, he installed this strange built-in capacity to disobey Him. The freedom
to love God came with the freedom to the do the opposite—to NOT love God
and to love something else.

This is God's grace to man. We are given the freedom to choose. We are free to
choose to follow God or we can choose to follow someone else. Unfortunately,
our human weaknesses and desires drive us to pursue our own agenda, gratify
our own pleasures and desires, and feed our own egos.

But we know what happened in the book of Genesis. Adam and Eve fell for the
temptation of the serpent to appropriate for themselves the authority that was
God’s alone, to determine good and evil. Rather than trust in God to define it for
us, Adam and Even wanted to know for themselves what is good and evil. They
wanted to be like God.

And so they were banished from the garden of Eden. And since then they died.
They were spiritually separated from God, and their bodies became mortal. Page | 3

And all of us have inherited that sinful nature. We, just like Adam and Eve are
sinners to the core.

And yet, though stained by sin, we retained the image of God in us. Having that
image in us, we can still sense God when He chooses to reveal Himself to us.

During the time of Moses, God revealed Himself to the People of Israel. And He
laid down to them the Mosaic covenant—that Israel will be His People, and He
will be their God. And part of that covenant were the terms of the covenant—
the Law. At the very core of this Law is the moral Law of God encapsulated in
the Ten Commandments. And these are translated into a whole set of ethical
rules of how the People of God are to live.

And through the Law, God gave His people a set of instructions of the way of
living that leads to life as God intended. It gave a glimpse of how God desires his
people should live, so that they will give glory and honor to Him as their God.
So that all the other nations in the world would know who the God of Israel was.

All the people of Israel had to do was obey the law, and they will live. Obey the
law, and they will be blessed.

Rebel from the Law

Law serves as a standard, a plumb line. It’s purpose is for us to know right from
wrong. God uses this plumb line to determine obedience to His will and rebellion
from His will.

Through the Law, we get to know God’s righteousness. Without the law,
ordinary people will have no idea of what is right and wrong. Without the law,
people will struggle to define what is right and what is wrong. We would be
bound to violate God’s will and we wouldn’t even be aware of it. If we keep in
mind the limits of human behavior according to the law we'd be OK.

God was telling us though the law that there is a godly design for human life.
There is a way of living that pleases God, which gives glory to Him. God wants Page | 4
us to love him above everything else. We are meant by God to serve one another.
He created us to be in loving relationship with one another. He gave this world
to us so that we can be stewards of all creation. We are meant to give glory to
God in all we do.

The Law that God instituted was meant to keep us in line, and to keep us alive.

But because of the sinful nature, instead of leading us to godliness the law draws
us to sin and ungodliness.

Instead of serving one another, we tend to assert our power over each other.
Instead of love, we tend to oppress and use one another. Instead of being
stewards, we end up exploiting our natural resources and destroying the
environment all for profit. And we steal the glory that is meant for God alone.

It is very unfortunate that the very law given by God to lead people to godly
living is the same set of laws that leads to rebellion.

Romans 7:7-8 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet
if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not
have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."
(8) But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in
me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead.

Knowledge of the law does not guarantee obedience. And yet knowledge of the
law somehow gives us an idea of what we can violate, what we can rebel against.

After all, we have to admit that life as a rebel seems a bit more exciting. Whatever
is forbidden feels a bit more enticing. There is a thrill in the pursuit of forbidden
love. There is a sense of satisfaction when you gain the ability to bend people to
our will. There is a sense of excitement in doing something dangerous, even
something that puts lives in danger.
That’s why we see young people who take selfies on top of very tall buildings
doing extremely dangerous stunts. That’s why we have young people having
unprotected pre-marital sex without any concern for the dangers of HIV and
AIDS.
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It must be extremely gratifying when you can satisfy all your sensual desires
without thinking of any taboos, without being hindered by any boundaries,
without any regard for the dignity of the people you use for your sexual pleasure.

It must feel so good to have so much money that you can buy anything to your
hearts desire, even if that money comes from illegitimate means, even if it means
extracting the most profits from workers and customer that they bleed under the
most exploitative conditions, or from getting kickbacks in exchange for favors or
from skimming off the top from public funds.

You get intoxicated with power, when people defer to you as though you were a
demi-god, when you have the capacity to bend many people to your will, when
you can command people to do your bidding at a snap of a finger.

Yes, these things must feel so good. And that’s why I am not surprised that almost
everyone, if given the opportunity to have sex, money and power, they will not
refuse. And they will get addicted to them even.

And you see so many people in government today fitting that description. You
have so many businessmen guilty of that as well.

But the law is clear. You sin. You die. There is no going around that. And it is
that simple. You sin. You die.

And all throughout the world, there are so many dead people walking.

Why would God do something like this? Why would God lay down a set of rules
that was guaranteed to condemn human beings to death in their sins? Is He that
cruel? Does he want everyone to be condemned to death?

Of course not. God desires that everyone be reconciled to Him. But it is very
important that people are aware that they are slaves to sin. People need to be
aware that they are under condemnation of death. People need to know that they
cannot save themselves, and that need to be saved. That was what the law was
for.

Paul said:
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Romans 7:9-17 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the
commandment came, sin came alive and I died. (10) The very commandment
that promised life proved to be death to me. (11) For sin, seizing an
opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed
me. (12) So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and
good. (13) Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It
was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might
be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful
beyond measure. (14) For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the
flesh, sold under sin. (15) For I do not understand my own actions. For I do
not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. (16) Now if I do what I do
not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. (17) So now it is no longer I
who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

And it was the perfect set-up for the great salvation that was to come.

Freedom in Christ
Who will free me from this body of death? This is the compelling question that
Paul asked in the final verses of the 7th chapter of Romans.

It was a rhetorical question of course. We know the answer—it is Jesus Christ,

our Lord.

But do we know exactly how Jesus is able to rescue us from our bodies of death?
Let me propose an answer. It is our union in Christ that saves us.

Remember that according to the law, “the wages of sin is death”. God demands
the life of those who transgress his laws. We sin, we die. So on our own, we can
never save ourselves. Because we cannot control ourselves and we always fall
into sin, we are trapped in this vicious situation. We are condemned under the
law. We are slaves to sin and death.
But Jesus died on the cross for our sins. God’s justice requires life for sin, and the
dilemma of man is that man cannot pay the price to save himself. God’s desire is
to restore man to a relationship with him, but God’s justice requires that blood
be shed. But because of God’s love and mercy, He himself solved the dilemma.
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He sent this Son Jesus to pay that price. It required that Jesus give the ultimate
sacrifice. He came into the world as a man and gave his life at the cross. He
became the perfect sin offering, the Lamb of God, so that the sin of man may be
paid for.

But how does the death of Jesus become effective in us?

When in faith we join our lives to the life of Jesus, we become one with Jesus.
Just as a husband and wife cleave to one another and become one, so also do we
cleave to the Lord Jesus. We abide in Him. We cling to our Lord.

So that his death becomes our death. We died to sin in our union with Jesus.

So if in faith we died to sin, the law no longer applies to us. We are released from
the law. The old Covenant of the law ceases to apply. Just like a marriage contract
ceases when one dies.

Paul said

Romans 7:4-6 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through
the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been
raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. (5) For while
we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at
work in our members to bear fruit for death. (6) But now we are released
from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in
the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

By that act of sacrifice of Jesus, and through our union in Christ we are no longer
condemned to death because we are no longer under the law. Therefore we are
set free from the power sin and death.
Blessed Hope
Now, does that mean we will no longer sin? Our experience tells us we still sin.
We are still tempted in our human nature. We are still humans after all. We are
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not exempt from the urges within our bodies. We are susceptible to temptations.
We are prone to sin.

But the good news is, in Christ, we are no longer under the law. We are under
grace. We will no longer die because if our sin. We do not have to keep offering
our sin offering to God to merit his forgiveness. Someone already paid the penalty
of our sins, once for all. We have already been forgiven.

Now, as we are united in Christ, and united with him in his death, so also when
Jesus rose again from the dead, we rose with Jesus into a new life in Him.

And there will come a time, and that time is coming when Jesus will return to
the earth in glory. And he will usher in His rule over his Kingdom. And there
will be a new heaven and a new earth. Heaven and earth will be one.

When that time comes, Jesus promised that we will inherit the earth. We are no
longer dead. We no longer have bodies of death. We have life eternal. Life that
will never end.

Come Lord Jesus. May your Kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it
is in heaven.