The Obligation of Grace

The Obligation of Grace
8:12 “So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.
8:13 For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live.
8:14 Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.” (GNB/TEV/Pew Bible)
Introduction: Last time, we saw how:
The Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead is in you! (That is, in all genuine believers in Christ)
This Spirit is God the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity.
That the OT writings and the Lord Jesus promised the Spirit to the church.
That the Holy Spirit has a ministry in our lives.
The Spirit is the One who makes Jesus real to us.
He is the power generator in our lives to enable us to live as Christians should.
In applying that to ourselves we see that the reason the Spirit is not more evident in our lives is that we do not honour the Him as we should.
We do not submit to His will as we should.

Also, He is less evident in the church’s witness to the world today because the church has compromised the gospel message and persistently refused to turn to the Spirit for renewal of her own life and witness. I know we have been encouraged to shape our message to meet with the cultural understandings of today but that’s not what the first Christians did. They turned their world upside down!

We still find it in the arm of flesh to do all that we do in the name of God and tell God in our prayers what we can do and tell each other what to do without God’s authority.




The Obligation of Grace
Now Paul tells the church there is no condemnation but an obligation. Condemnation for your sins has been replaced by pardon through God’s grace. With grace comes an obligation:
8:12 “So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to. 13 For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live.
8:14 Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.”
(GNB/TEV/Pew Bible)
This obligation to live for God does not come from an obligation to law but from God’s grace.
It is because God has put us right with Himself through Jesus Christ and given us His Holy Spirit that we want to please God.
We are obliged by grace. We want to love God out of gratitude for all that He has done for us.
Who are God’s Children?
To explore what Paul says in verse 14 we have to ask what he means by “God’s children.” Who are God’s children? Is everyone a child of God?
This teaching that we are God’s children ties in exactly with Jesus’ teaching about who are God’s children where He says in John’s Gospel in at least two places:
Firstly in John 3:3, He states, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
And in v. 5 Jesus said: “ ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ ”
Being born again is a clear description of becoming a child, of being born spiritually. It is a description of what needs to happen for us to become God’s spiritual children. Being reborn spiritually is the Holy Spirit’s work. It is how we become God’s children. We cannot enter God’s kingdom, says Jesus, unless we are born again.
Jesus says we are made spiritually alive by God’s Holy Spirit. Christians are what Jesus calls ‘born again or born from above.’ Their life comes from God. Once they were dead in their sins, now they are alive to God. EPH 2:1 says: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins…”
The second place where Jesus teaches about who are alive to God and can be called God’s children is in John 3:36.
Jesus states that: “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Then in John 5:24 Jesus says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”
This is precisely what Paul is telling the Roman Christians and us!
He says there is an outcome, a consequence, of being born again:
8:12 “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors (obligated) - not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
Rom 8:13 For if you live according to your human nature, (i.e. the flesh) you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live. 14 Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.”
We are debtors, says Paul or, as the GNB says, we have an obligation, verse 12: “So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.”

Let me share an Illustration of what it means to try to live as your human nature wants you to, as opposed to enjoying the healthy life God intends for you.
Let me tell you about a young man, Martyn, who was eating all the wrong kinds of food.
He was eating nothing but sugar, lollies and salty carbohydrates!
Although he did not look overweight or anything like it, he was making himself very ill. So he was shocked to hear what the experts said about his laboratory tests. The doctor said to him that when she looked at his results she thought: “These are the blood tests of someone who is either an alcoholic or has hepatitis. In my opinion your blood tests and abnormal liver function tests are due to your diet. Does that surprise you?”
Martyn said that it did.
“Your liver has to work double or triple its strength to break down the food you are taking in. So it’s overstretched, so it’s essential that you get these fruit and vegetables and give your liver a break. If it’s not working, you won’t survive.”
Martyn said: “I’m quite shocked at the seriousness of what’s going on.”
The doctor went on to say about Martyn’s liver: “I mean the choice is: fix this (pointing to his liver) or get a new one or die.”
What’s interesting for us is what he said when he discovered what was happening and, more importantly, what he did about it. When asked about what he had learned about his test results Martyn said:
“It’s changed from being something I’ve chosen to change to something I really must change.”
With some help from nutritionists and doctors Martyn came to see that what he described as a ‘foible’ in his eating habits and just part of his quirky makeup, was in fact killing him.
“Talking to the doctor really did frighten me I mean, I don’t want to die as a result of my food issues… something that’s just been… what I have thought of as part of my character, my, you know, foibles, my weirdness, but this part of me is actually killing me.” Martyn was wise enough to get help and is changing his diet and working on overcoming his unhealthy food habits.
Some people are like that about their spiritual health. They think that the spiritual diet they are on is perfectly adequate. That they can pick and choose whatever they want to believe and nothing will happen to them.
That they don’t have to respond to the commands and the love of God and even though God wants a personal relationship with them that they can shun Him or effectively ignore Him all their lives as though He did not exist. A personal relationship means meeting with a person and having friendship with them.

When Paul says: “So then, my friends, we have an obligation, but it is not to live as our human nature wants us to.” (Rom 8:12) he means that we owe God a relationship which puts Him first in our lives. We have to allow Him to be the boss of our lives.

So is what you are doing, is what you believe killing you spiritually? Martyn’s body was being severely affected by a sick liver and if he continued that diet of nothing but sugar, lollies and salty carbohydrates he would kill his liver an then he would die.
Paul’s warning is found in verse 13: “For if you live according to your human nature, you are going to die; but if by the Spirit you put to death your sinful actions, you will live.”
It’s clear enough isn’t it?
We have an obligation not to live as our human nature wants us to but to live as God wants us to.
To have the ability to do this we must be born again.
We must start with God’s new birth as we come to Jesus Christ in faith.
We must all repent of our sins and believe the gospel.
Only then can we have the power and inclination to do as God wants.
It is because the Spirit indwells every true Christian that Paul says we who claim to be Christians have to live for God. Elsewhere, in Eph 2:4, Paul says it’s all by God’s grace: “ But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…”
Then he outlines the purpose:
2:8 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
2:9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
God’s children, Christians, are described in Romans 8 verse 14 as those who are led by God: 8:14 “Those who are led by God's Spirit are God's children.”
These are the ones who benefit from their new life in Christ.
8:15 “For the Spirit that God has given you does not make you slaves and cause you to be afraid; instead, the Spirit makes you God's children, and by the Spirit's power we cry out to God, "Father! my Father!"
We benefit from the new relationship we have with the Father, because of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf and through the indwelling Holy Spirit who makes it all real. What before was a vague,
hoped for,
perhaps seen in other people,
promised intimacy,
but never quite there,
is now a close personal relationship in which you can call the Lord of the Universe: “Daddy!”
Nice to be such a child, one of God’s children!

Concluding on a note of assurance…
Some people think the Christian life is too hard because on the one hand, God expects so much; we have to put Him first, and on the other hand the world we live in is going in the opposite direction, so we find ourselves swimming upstream all the time…It’s tough!
The story is told by George, a Jewish Christian who lives with his family in the Negev Desert in Israel, about the runner Mike Delcavo. George writes:
“Mike Delcavo and 127 of the best runners in the country were battling for glory over the 10,000 meter course. About three miles into the race, Delcavo was somewhere in the middle of the pack, when he realized that the runners had made a wrong turn. So he yelled out, "You're going the wrong way," but they didn't listen. Only 4 others followed Mike when he turned in the right direction... and suddenly, he found himself in the lead.
However that lasted only about a mile, since Mike and the runners who followed him soon reunited with the larger pack who, having gone the wrong way, actually shaved about a half a mile off the course, and were now in the lead again. The final blow came when, because so many of the runners had gone the wrong way, the officials changed the official course route to accommodate their error. So when Mike Delcavo finally crossed the finish line, he was number 103 overall.

At the end of the race, some of Delcavo's competitors "thought it was funny that he went the right way."

In our mixed up world, when everybody is wrong, then wrong becomes right. However, in the world to come there is only one Judge and He will not change the correct course regardless of how many or how few actually run it…

It's easy to follow the crowd. But it takes courage and conviction to follow wholeheartedly after God. Sometimes it can get lonely running your race, wondering where the crowd is going, and even whether you, yourself are on the right road. But you my friends, keep running with the Lord. And when the race is over and you have finished your course, may He say to you, "Well done, you good and faithful servant!" Amen.