The Romance of Romans-Part 30

Romans Chapter 6 cont'd

Even during this earthly life, you can now say "no" to the enticements and impulses of your lower passions- so just do it! You are not to submit to the selfish demands and compulsive cravings of your physical drives. Courageously resisting sin is another key to your victory. No longer turn over your human powers to become weapons of unrighteousness and thereby continue in sin. Rather, consciously and deliberately surrender your powers of both mind and body to God and he will possess and use them as weapons in his powerful hands for his noble purposes. After all, you are alive for his pleasure.

Comments:
Following are some simple ways to think about the physical side of our lives:
1. It's more biblical to think in terms of the "visible and the invisible", when it comes to the "duality" that exists between the heavens and the earth, rather than the "spiritual and the "natural"--the latter leads to "dualism".
2. It has always been tempting for religiously inclined people to imagine that the "spiritual" realm is holy and the "natural" realm is unholy. But scripture makes it clear that both the invisible and the visible realms were created by God as good and both realms have also been affected by rebellion and sin. Christ came to bring and ultimately apply his salvation and justice to both realms--thereby redeeming/renewing the whole of God's good creation and securing/fulfilling the amazing eternal destiny of human life under and with God.
3. Sin in human nature goes deeper than sins of the body...right to the core of the heart, soul and mind...the actual fountainhead of sin. But sin has certainly taken advantage of our physicality and very often uses the physical needs/drives as a base of operations for it's expressions: food, drink, sleep, sex, strength, speech, wealth, beauty, companionship and the like. None of these things are sinful in and of themselves, but...they are often conduits of sin in human life. Most every "sin of the body" is simply a God-ordained human need/activity taken beyond its proper bounds or expression.
4. The body, through Christ, becomes holy, sanctified and a temple of the Holy Spirit himself.
5. In following Jesus as disciples, we are called, not to suppress or negate our physical drives and needs, but, rather, to subordinate them to the dominion of the Holy Spirit and thereby enjoy and celebrate the physical side of life through its proper expressions, which are defined and protected by the boundaries set for them by God's word and wisdom.
6. Spiritual disciplines (solitude, silence, prayer, fasting, secret giving, contemplation, study and the like) are useful in training our bodies to cooperate and integrate with the Holy Spirit (I call them "humility drills") and are to be engaged in: regularly, gracefully, rhythmically and temporarily. (Extreme asceticism is actually counter-productive to becoming more like Christ by the power of the Spirit...though it appears very holy.) They are not meritorious in nature or signs of our spiritual maturity to flash around for others to admire--and this is the constant danger associated with utilizing them.
7. The Holy Spirit wants to use our bodies/physical life as a vessel of his life and power. This is a manifestation of the "incarnational" nature of true biblical spirituality that is modeled to us by our Lord Jesus...our simple presence, our speech, our gaze, our smile, our touch, our hospitality, our sleep, our work, our marriage and family life, our talents, our art, our science, our money, our menial services, our property and the like.

Let's ask Christ to be the Lord of our body...a mobile fiery and living sacrifice...useful in this broken world to bring a taste of heaven's love and grace and power here and now...to the people he brings our way today and every day.