The reason Paul wanted a body filled with God's Life is that he might be free from the sinful nature. Paul was a Jew, and he wanted to be completely righteous.

Now compare our viewpoint as Gentiles. We want to be free from the Law of Moses so there will be no law governing our conduct. We want to live as we please, and then go to Heaven where we will be released from all responsibility, pain, and dread.

Paul's understanding of the method and goal of the new covenant are so different from our understanding of the method and goal of the new covenant that it is no marvel we have twisted Paul's message to our own moral destruction.

I believe if we will think carefully about Romans 8:11-14 we will understand what Paul means by "we died to sin," and how this orientation to the Christian discipleship is to work out in practice.

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)

We need to think more about the above verse. The unscriptural doctrine of the "pre-tribulation rapture" has obscured our true goal, which is to attain to resurrection life in our mortal body. This is the true Christian hope. Being caught up into the air to meet the Lord takes place, of necessity, after our mortal body has been made eternally alive in the Holy Spirit.

We have God's Holy Spirit in us. We now have to fight the good fight of faith in order to keep the forces of darkness from removing God's Spirit from us. We have to lay hold on eternal life, or we will lose it.

Eternal life cannot be killed. But it can be separated from our personality.

Death is separation. Spiritual death is separation from God. Physical death is the separation of our body from our spiritual personality. The second death is eternal separation from God.

When the Life of Jesus Christ lives in us, then we are alive eternally. This fact shall be revealed in the Day of Resurrection, when our mortal body is raised from the dead and filled with eternal life. In fact, we have the essence of the resurrection in us at in the present hour.

But if we are not prayerful, the forces of sin can crowd out that eternal life so it diminishes in us. Eternal life can be separated from us, leaving us spiritually dead and unprepared for the Day of Resurrection and the making alive of our mortal body. Does this make sense to you?

Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. (Romans 8:12)

Given the fact that the Spirit of God is in us now as a down payment against the day when God is ready to redeem our body, we do not owe our sinful nature anything that we should obey it.

To be continued.