Genuine Christianity is not just a new set of beliefs or even a new pattern of behavior; it’s a matter of new belonging. After declaring the glorious truth that there is “now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” the apostle Paul called his Roman readers to live “not in the flesh but in the Spirit.” In the message “Living in the Spirit,” Alistair Begg examines the reality and results of the Spirit’s presence in the life of the believer—as well as the responsibility that falls to those who are in Christ:
The issue is actually stated very clearly in verse 13: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” John Stott says, “There is a kind of life [that] leads to death, and there is a kind of death [that] leads to life.”1
Keep in mind that Paul is addressing believers. And the doctrine of the security of the believer does not eliminate the warnings of the Bible. Think Hebrews! “See to it,” the writer to the Hebrews says: “See to it … that [you do not have] a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (Heb. 3:12 NIV).
Now, if you read that and say to yourself, “I wonder who that’s for,” you’ve immediately made a mistake. It’s for you! And it’s for me. Later on, he says, “We are not those who would shrink back and are destroyed, but we are those who continue and are saved” (Heb. 10:39, paraphrased)—that the ground of our relationship, the ground of our salvation is in the work of Christ; the evidence that we are in Christ is in our continuance. It’s a “long obedience in the same direction.”2 We daren’t mistake a false sense of security in sin from a true experience of salvation from sin. I find that quite helpful.
… The reality of what he’s urging us to here is the very antithesis of a kind of mentality that I was exposed to as a young man in Scotland. And you may actually still be exposed to it, and I may be about to offend you as I point it out. And it goes along these lines: “Let go and let God.” It sounds, really, very spiritual, doesn’t it? “Well, this is not something I do. Let’s let go and let God.” But what Paul is actually saying here is not “Let go and let God” but is “Trust God and get going.”3
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John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, rev. ed., The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1994), 221. ↩︎
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, trans. Helen Zimmern (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 107, quoted in Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2000), 17. ↩︎
J. I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1984), 157. ↩︎
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