Well, Paul left us in a pretty bad place yesterday, after telling us that the sin principle, the power of sin, like a living thing, is embedded in our physical bodies – which is why we will struggle against sin for the rest of our lives – we will struggle against the pull to do things we do not want to do until the day Christ comes in the clouds –
And Paul says an awareness of that fact makes us wretched – the translated “wretched” can also be translated “miserable” – and so we are – when we think about our struggle against evil and the number of times we have faltered and failed, it can leave us feeling pretty down, pretty miserable –
So he asks a question at the end of chapter 7: 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? He calls it a body of death, because it carries the seeds of our own death, one day it’s gonna die, gonna give out – one day we will get a new body that will never die, never wear out, but this body is not it – gonna have to wait to claim that body –
In the meantime this body is the carrier of the amartia virus – amartia is the Greek word for sin – it is a virus that has invaded our human bodies and that virus is going to plague us and bother us and trouble us until the day we die –
So Paul thinks, man, that’s a depressing thought – does that mean I am a helpless victim of this virus, and there is nothing I can do about it? He says no, there in fact is someone who will deliver me from this wretched body of death – who will by his indwelling presence in my life give me the power, the will, the desire to meet sin in open combat and defeat him –
That someone, he says, is the Holy Spirit – he says the righteous requirement of the law can be fulfilled in us if we learn to lean on the power of the indwelling Spirit of God – he has come to take up residence in our bodies just like the amartia virus, but he is stronger than the sin virus, and is willing to impart his life to us so that we begin to obey the word of God –
Paul uses the analogy of walking – he says in v. 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. So the central point here is that we can defeat the sin virus, we can overcome it, by walking according to the Spirit –
When Paul uses the verb “walking,” it’s a metaphor for our daily lives, the daily round of activities that make up our lives, and we can learn to walk around all day according to the Spirit –
He says in 6 to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace – Literally, he says the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace – if we walk with our minds set on the flesh we’re gonna run into death, but if we walk around with our minds set on the Spirit, we will find life and peace – even in these wretched, sin-invaded bodies –
Now notice that this is not an automatic process – to set our minds on something involves a decision on our part, and act of the will on our part, and an act of mental focus – I think most Christians want the Christian life to be effortless, they want the process to happen all by itself, without any effort on their part –
But that’s not how it happens – the job of the Holy Spirit is to transform us, but our job is to set our minds on him so he he is free to do it – to set our minds on the Spirit will involve us in the process, it’s a decision we make to focus our minds on the things of God –
Now the flesh is constantly tugging us to get distracted, to lose our focus, to get sidetracked, to get sucked into the the swamp – so our part is when we catch that happening, when we find our minds wandering away from the path, our part to refocus our minds on the things of God –
We can do this through prayer – when we pray, even if it is a flash prayer, we are turning the attention of our mind to God, we are setting our minds on the Spirit, we are training our minds to think the thoughts of God after him – so life may involve us offering up a whole series of flash prayers, in one circumstance after another –
You might be in the middle of a project at work and you get stuck – so you offer up a flash prayer: God please help me with this, or God, I don’t know what to do here, please give me wisdom –
Prayers do not have to be wordy and windy or theologically profound to be effective – they only need to be sincere – some of the most effective prayers in the Bible are the shortest ones – remember Jesus when Satan confronted him in the wilderness – remember how brief the Lord’s prayers were? “Man shall not live by bread alone, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test” –
Each time he prayed one of those flash prayers, he was setting his mind on the Spirit, and he found life and peace, just as Paul promised –
10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 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.