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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Cause and Effect, #6
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:11—NIV)
The Apostle Paul speaks of the filling of the physical body with the Life of God. This will take place in the Day of Resurrection. But then Paul tells us what we must do if we would attain the filling of the mortal body with eternal life.
For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, (Romans 8:13—NIV)
Is Paul speaking to Christians? Of course! He still is addressing the saints in Rome.
What is Paul saying? He is saying if the Christian does not live according to the Spirit of God, putting to death the deeds of his sinful nature, he will die. If instead he follows the Spirit of the Lord each day, overcoming the passions and appetites of his body, he will live.
What does Paul mean by "live"?
Paul means live in eternal life in the Presence of the Lord.
What does Paul mean by "die"?
He means not live in eternal life in the Presence of the Lord but to live as any other person whose body is dead because of sin.
The relationships expressed here seem to me to be in the form of cause and effect rather than rewards and punishments. If the believer chooses to live according to his fleshly nature the result is spiritual death. Since the Christian churches have in many instances decided to make eternal security a cardinal doctrine, they may not accept the fact that a person could be a Christian and then die spiritually. But I think this is what Paul is stating.
If the believer chooses to live according to the Spirit of God, then he or she continues to grow in resurrection life. He has laid hold on eternal life, as the Apostle Paul exhorted Timothy.
Now we are faced with a question: how will our possession of eternal life, or lack of it, affect us in the Day of Christ? Remember we are not speaking of Heaven, Hell, or the Lake of Fire but of the state of the personality, including the body.
It seems likely to me that since Paul mentioned the making alive of the body in verse eleven, and then speaks of living and dying in verse thirteen, that Paul may be implying that if we do not live according to the Spirit of God, our body, when it is raised in the Day of Christ, will not be made alive by the Spirit of God. It is only as the Spirit of God is dwelling in us that we have the hope of having our body made alive in the Day of the Lord.
This puts us in mind of the five foolish virgins who had the door shut in their face when the Lord came. Why was the door shut against them? Because they had run out of oil, out of the Holy Spirit to speak in a figure.
To be continued.