Romans 8:13 War With Sin Part I

This is a sermon I preached at Wyatt a couple weeks ago. The spacing and bullets are kind of weird on here, but hopefully it is clear how the points flow.

Romans 8:13 War With Sin

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.

Introduction:

Get to know your enemy: Some of the greatest warriors in history were those who knew their enemy the best. You may have brute strength, but brute strength focused in the wrong place, or underestimating your enemy can cause you to be defeated. In the movie “We Were Soldiers” Mel Gibson’s character Colonel Moore was an expert in war. He did not go into the jungles of Vietnam without knowing his enemy and his surroundings. He was always one step ahead of the enemy. If we are going to be successful in our war against sin, and it is a war, we have to know the enemy and how it works.


In my next two messages I am going to answer at least 4 questions about this text:

1. What is the flesh, and what does it mean to live according to it?
2. What death/life is being spoken of in this text?
3. What are the deeds of the body?
4. How do you put them to death “by the Spirit”?

In this message I’m going to answer the first 3 questions and in the next message I will answer the final question.


1. Life by the flesh
1. “For”- This hearkens back to the previous verse. Since we are not debtors to the flesh, we need to know that paying debts to the flesh will kill us. It’s like saying- You owe nothing to the flesh, because if you live as though you owe the flesh, you will die. To put it another way- This was the best illustration that I could come up with. It’s kind of like cigarettes. Living as though you owe something to cigarettes will kill you. Smoking cigarettes does nothing but kill you, why would you live as though you owe something to them? That is the same logic that Paul is using here. Why would you serve a master that has no other intention but to kill you?
2. “If You Live according to the flesh”- Here are the things living according to the flesh means (according to verses 5-9 of Chapter 8). A warning- If you see yourself in any of these things, you ought to repent. Being in the South, and especially in this area, is one of the most dangerous places to live in the world for a Christian. Everyone thinks they are a believer, and it is therefore easy to fool yourself, and easy to be fooled.
1. You set your mind on the things of the flesh- This is anything that does not have God as the reference point. You can set your mind on “church” and have a fleshly mind. Church minus God is fleshly. Marriage minus God is fleshly. Family minus God is fleshly. I don’t think Paul has specific things in mind when he says this. He is talking about a frame of mind or a way of thinking that is fleshly.
2. You are hostile to God- Those who live according to the flesh are hostile to God. You have no interest in subjecting yourself to God. When the Law of God comes to you, you reject it. You want your way, and you say no to God’s way. You know He is there, and you know what He wants, but you reject Him anyway. Because you don’t subject yourself to God and don’t want to, you cannot subject yourself to God. You have a moral inability to subject yourself to God which is why we are completely dependent on Him to give you a new heart.
3. You cannot please God- Because you do not set your mind on the “things of the Spirit” and because you are openly hostile to God, therefore you cannot please God.

2. The Death You Will Die
1. There are questions about what death this is referring to. You may be tempted to say that this cannot mean spiritual death because, “What if a believer lives according to the flesh?” Paul is talking to Christians in this text and therefore, Paul is intending for believers to hear this. Therefore he cannot be talking about Spiritual death, but something else. This is Spiritual death because:
2. People live physically all the time, who live according to the flesh.
3. People die physically all the time who put to death the deeds of the body.
4. Unbelievers who automatically live according to the flesh live long and healthy lives. Believers who put to death the deeds of the body live short, painful lives.
5. It seems from Paul’s letters that he assumes that there will be at least three groups of people hearing the reading of his letters:
1. True believers
2. The openly unbelieving/ skeptics
3. Merely professing believers- If Paul does not have in mind this category, we need to rethink our doctrine of security and assurance of salvation.

3. The Deeds of the Body- Think venue, where does this battle take place?
1. The world tells you that your problem is outside of you, and the answer to your problems is inside of you.
1. All of secular psychology and our therapeutic culture are making all kinds of things a result of environment, or our genes, and hormones.
2. Everything is a “condition”- alcoholism, drug addiction, kleptomania, are all conditions that we suffer from, not sins to be repented of.
3. I’m not saying that there is nothing to depression or chemical imbalances or genes, but you cannot extract the spiritual dimension and the problems caused by our rebellion from life.
2. While the world says the problem is outside of you, Christianity says that your problem is inside of you. We to put to death the “deeds of the body.”
3. While we do not just battle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, we must also not underestimate our own flesh and our own sinfulness. You can’t say “The devil made me do it.” And expect to get off the hook. Paul is not talking about demonic power that forces you to do something you don’t want to do. My problem is not other people, and is not primarily the devil though he can exploit our weaknesses, we must have preexisting weaknesses for him to exploit.
4. The deeds of the body are sins that we all commit. When we sin we believe the lie that sin tells us.
1. Idolatry- You believe that whatever you put before God will be better for you than to put God first. Money, stuff, power, respect
2. Lying- You believe that by lying you will be better off, than if you trust God and speak truth. Do you see how this is rebellion against God. Lying is atheism in practice, you control your own destiny.
3. Stealing- You believe that by stealing you will be better off than by using the legal means of gaining wealth and possessions that God has ordained, and by trusting God to provide for you is a second rate way to live.
4. Lust- You believe that by indulging whatever illicit desires you may have will be better for you than following God’s plan of healthy sexual expression in the confines of a monogamous, heterosexual, Marriage between a man and a woman.
5. These deeds are just symptoms of the deepest problem of our rebellion against God. We do these deeds because our minds are set on the flesh.


The first part of this text is a warning to us, and a description of what the enemy is. The second half of the verse tells us how to kill it which is what we will turn to next time.