"The Body of This Death"

Subject: "The Body of This Death" Wed Sep 10, 2014 9:09 am

It has been said, “The lost need saved, and the saved need delivered," which another has mentioned can be analogous to God freeing (saving) Israel from the Egyptians, and later delivering them from the Egyptian’s pursuit, and also from their perils during their wilderness wanderings.

It may be rightfully asked, “From what do the saved need delivered, seeing they no longer incur the guilt of sin? Learned believers should be full aware of their guiltless position in Christ, but may not necessarily be aware of the continued presence of “the old man” (“flesh”; Strong’s Greek 1161; IV. the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God), for there exists within the believer a continual opposition between it and the Spirit of God, “so that you cannot do the things that you desire” (Gal 5:7).

Instead of “the things that you desire,” which was submission to the “rein” and “dominion” of sin (Rom 6:12, 14), it becomes the things that God desires (Phl 2:13). The new “nature” (2 Pet 1:4; Eph 4:24; Col 3:10) implanted within the believer, along with “might by His Spirit in the inner man” (Eph 3:16) are the sources from which God “works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

Thus the paradox of the believer exhibited by Paul’s dichotomy between the “old” and “new” natures (Rom 7:14-25, esp. vs 17, 20, 25; cf. Isa 6:5 ) is purposed by God to manifest Himself within the believer—through the defeat over the “body of death,” which is “the body of sin” (Rom 6:6) with its “members” (Col 3:5), and is the source of the wrongful “deeds of the body” (Rom 8:13).

Though Christians “are not in the flesh” (Rom 8:9), e.g. not in alliance or agreement with the sin nature, the sin nature is within them, but to the result of being cleared of its guilt and rule through Christ’s expiation, which is manifested in our service to “Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Eph 6:6).