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Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5018 | Two Kinds of People in the World
Greg Williams
Have you ever heard someone say, “There are two kinds of people in the world”? This is usually followed by a joke or some oversimplified statement about people.
Here is one that does both: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who put everyone into two groups… and those who don’t.”
Well, I guess that was someone’s attempt to make fun of the idea of dividing people into two groups. But it’s no laughing matter when people are depersonalized by such groupings. Surely there is more to being an individual than the generalizations often attached to group labels.
Some group labels do have an element of truth to them: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who live as if they belong to Christ, and those who don’t.” This is similar to a “two kinds of people in the world” statement found in the Bible.
Although it is not worded exactly like that, let’s notice how Paul puts it in the book of Romans.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Romans 8:6-9 (ESV)
Unlike many “two kinds of people in the world” statements, this one is not depersonalizing. In fact, it is intended to do just the opposite. Paul can make this division between two groups because he is basing it on reality. When God came in human form, he chose all of humanity. All people were created to belong to Christ and have abundant life in him.
But not everyone believes that or wants it yet. However, there is no other option left for us. We either live by the truth of who we were created to be, or we choose to live a lie, which amounts to no life at all. So, Paul is encouraging us to embrace the life we have in Christ and live it out. That is a personalizing life. That is a meaningful life that carries forward into eternity.
Paul reminds us that no matter how many kinds of people there are, there is no life outside our life in Christ, who is continuing to pursue, draw, and embrace all of humanity to himself. Embrace the one who has embraced you.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5018 | Two Kinds of People in the World
Greg Williams
Have you ever heard someone say, “There are two kinds of people in the world”? This is usually followed by a joke or some oversimplified statement about people.
Here is one that does both: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who put everyone into two groups… and those who don’t.”
Well, I guess that was someone’s attempt to make fun of the idea of dividing people into two groups. But it’s no laughing matter when people are depersonalized by such groupings. Surely there is more to being an individual than the generalizations often attached to group labels.
Some group labels do have an element of truth to them: “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who live as if they belong to Christ, and those who don’t.” This is similar to a “two kinds of people in the world” statement found in the Bible.
Although it is not worded exactly like that, let’s notice how Paul puts it in the book of Romans.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Romans 8:6-9 (ESV)
Unlike many “two kinds of people in the world” statements, this one is not depersonalizing. In fact, it is intended to do just the opposite. Paul can make this division between two groups because he is basing it on reality. When God came in human form, he chose all of humanity. All people were created to belong to Christ and have abundant life in him.
But not everyone believes that or wants it yet. However, there is no other option left for us. We either live by the truth of who we were created to be, or we choose to live a lie, which amounts to no life at all. So, Paul is encouraging us to embrace the life we have in Christ and live it out. That is a personalizing life. That is a meaningful life that carries forward into eternity.
Paul reminds us that no matter how many kinds of people there are, there is no life outside our life in Christ, who is continuing to pursue, draw, and embrace all of humanity to himself. Embrace the one who has embraced you.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Psalm 130 • Ezekiel 37:1-14 • Romans 8:6-11 • John 11:1-45
This week’s theme is living into life. The call to worship Psalm is an individual’s prayer offered in hope that the Lord will save him from trouble on account of the Lord’s steadfast love. The Old Testament reading from Ezekiel offers a vision of dry bones coming to life as a prophecy to Israel that they will be delivered from the death of exile to live again in their own homeland. Romans records Paul’s comparison of life in the Spirit with death in the flesh. In the Gospel reading from John, Jesus raises Lazarus to life after being dead four days.
A Mindset of Life and Death
Romans 8:6-11 (ESV)
We are now five Sundays into Easter Preparation (referred to as Lent in many Christian denominations). We have a text before us that may serve well in guarding us from making some common mistakes when it comes to this season on the Christian calendar. During this season we seek to align our lives with the reality we have come to know in Jesus Christ our Lord. This alignment leads us to make changes, repenting of things in our life that do not fit the revelation of who Jesus is, and who we are in him. When we see who we are in Christ, we no longer want to live as if we are living apart from Christ. That is a life of contradiction and chaos. We want to live in our true identity as those in whom Christ lives.
But here is a common misstep that can take place during this process. Our focus can turn from Christ and get fixated on our sins. If we are not careful, we can become preoccupied with our individual sins where our actions and inactions blind us to the larger issue. The larger issue that our text will focus on is our mindset. The point of the Easter Preparation season is not to make a list of every little sin that we struggle with and then commit to overcoming those sins. That can quickly become a list of dos and don’ts that serve as a scorecard of our righteousness. Our focus is diverted from Christ and onto our actions.
Here is an analogy that hopefully is not too oversimplified. Let’s say you are trying to eat healthier. In this analogy, chocolate cake may represent the sin you most easily fall prey to. If you spend all day thinking of chocolate cake and how you need to avoid eating it, guess what’s going to happen. You are probably at some point going to eat chocolate cake. Why, because it’s what you have been thinking of all day. Your mind is set on chocolate cake, not eating healthier. If you are focused on eating more vegetables, getting exercise, and so forth, then you will not be tempted by chocolate cake unless it is put under your nose. You’re not even thinking about it. The point of the analogy is that it’s the mindset that is more important than making a list of sins to avoid. And that is what we will see in our text today. So, let’s dive in.
For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:6 ESV)
Right out of the gate we are given what is important during this season. Our mindset. Or more precisely, what our mind is set on. Paul will give us a comparison to make his point. He contrasts a mind that is set on the “flesh” with that of a mind that is set on the “Spirit.” And Paul is clear that this contrast is a matter of life and death. A mindset on the flesh is death. A mindset on the Spirit is life.
More than that, a mindset on the Spirit is also peace. Not only does the Spirit bring us into life, but this life is a life of peace. And peace biblically understood, is living in relationship with the good of the other in mind. It doesn’t just mean there is no fighting. The peace of the Spirit is an active peace, seeking and working for the wellbeing of the other. This kind of peace in a broken world may actually amount to “fighting” at times. Like Jesus telling Peter to “get behind me Satan.” Those are some serious fighting words. Peter was going down a dangerous path resisting what Jesus was sent to do. So, Jesus “fights” for Peter, to set him back on the right path. So, a mindset on the Spirit cannot be spiritualized away as if we are talking about some ephemeral realm outside the body. Peace will mean living in this present world with a mindset that seeks to be a blessing to others. It’s a mindset that does not want any harm to come to another even if it means harm to one’s own self. That’s the kind of peaceful living we see in Jesus Christ.
And to avoid confusion, let’s be clear. Paul is not saying that there are two competing parts to being a human. (The pagan Greek philosophy of “dualism” taught the mind and body were two distinct and separable entities.) He is not saying our bodies are bad and we just need to be “spiritual.” That would not stand to the fact that Jesus Christ assumed a human body, was raised in the flesh, and will return in the flesh. This come into sharper focus in the next couple of verses where Paul first deals with the mind that is set on the flesh.
For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:7-8 ESV)
It’s important to understand that when Paul contrasts the terms “flesh” and “Spirit” he is making a contrast between two “ways of life.” He is not talking about the body as if our material flesh is in some way evil or sinful on its own. No, God created us with bodies, and he blessed it and said it is good. Again, for Paul, the “flesh” is a mindset, a way of living, one that is shaped and controlled by the ways of the world, which stands in opposition and outright rebellion against God. So, Paul is also not referring to a list of bad behaviors, but a mindset that wants nothing to do with Christ. This type of orientation is a focus on death because it is not focused on the author of life. It is a mindset that will lead to nothing. Paul is so bold to say that this mindset, this way of life, is not even capable of pleasing God. It’s worse than just making some bad decisions, it is a form of slavery, an inability to live according to who we are created to be.
Those strong statements may lead us down to another misstep that can occur during the season of Easter Preparation if we are not careful. We may be tempted to look around and try to determine who has the Holy Spirit and who does not. We may even begin to wonder if we have the Spirit. We will need to move to the next couple of verses to avoid that pitfall.
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9 ESV)
Now Paul is going to move to the other mindset. And it is important to remember that he is writing to believers. So, he is trying to encourage them to live out the reality of who they are. He begins by confirming who they are as those who are first, “not in the flesh,” and then second, “in the Spirit.” If we ever begin to wonder whether we are in the Spirit, let Paul’s words here remind you that you are. In fact, if you ever are concerned about not being in the Spirit, it is only because the Spirit is nudging you to live into the fact that you are. If you weren’t in the Spirit, it wouldn’t even cross your mind. Remember, for Paul, living in the Spirit is a mindset. In this case, the mind is turned to the reality of living in Christ.
If you ever get discouraged over a sin in your life and begin to doubt that you have the Spirit, or fear that you don’t belong to Christ, remember that if you did not belong to Christ, you would never be discouraged or disappointed that you have sinned. You wouldn’t care one bit. So, Paul is not trying to beat us down and tell us we need to get with the program and quit sinning. No, he is reminding us of where our focus needs to be, what our minds should be occupied with. And that is Jesus Christ whom we belong to. Focusing on him is the only way we ever overcome any of our sins, because the reality is we don’t overcome our sins, we come over to the one who has overcome them for us. Paul has not turned from grace and now is preaching works. He is trying to turn our eyes and our minds back to Jesus. And that is the whole point of this season. To turn to him again and again, for only in him is there life and peace.
This verse and the two following will also give us three things to remember about living in the Spirit which flows from God’s grace.
First, the Spirit is not something that belongs to us. We do not possess the Spirit like we do an object. The Spirit is “the Spirit of God.” It belongs to him and is a gift to us. The Spirit is a “who” and not a “what.” And it is given to “dwell in you.” Living in the Spirit is living in the relationship we have with the Father through Christ, all by the power of the Spirit. The mindset of the Spirit is to remain and abide in this life-giving communion we are given in Christ. We no longer live as if we are not in relationship with Jesus.
Second, the gift of the Spirit empowers us. Let’s look at the next verse.
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10 ESV)
Paul has already established that his hearers are in the Spirit. So, his “if” statement is not set up as a question to see “if” Christ is in them. Rather, he is stating a reality on account of having Christ alive in them. He is letting us know that our body of sin is dead. It has been crucified with Christ and it no longer has any power over us. We are free from the bondage of sin, and free to live a life of righteousness. That righteousness is not our own, but the righteousness given to us in Christ by the power of the Spirit.
This is a staggering new identity that is hard to believe. But, since you are in Christ, you are actually given his righteousness. You don’t have to work up your own righteousness. You can’t get more righteous than you already are in Christ. But, in this life we do need to have our mind set on that reality in order to live it out. We won’t do it perfectly this side of heaven, but we are given hope and assurance that in the end, our lives will perfectly align with who we truly are in Jesus Christ. And that’s the third and final point we see in the last verse for today’s text.
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11 ESV)
Third, living in the Spirit today will not be taken away tomorrow.
One thing the season of Easter Preparation will force us to acknowledge is that we still sin. Even as believers we still struggle to live a life of righteousness and peace. The more we walk with the Lord the more we will see our sins and hate them. We are growing to be more like Christ, and anything that does not look like him we will not want to see in ourselves. But we are assured that the Spirit was not given to us to leave us in our sins. He is determined to bring us to resurrected life, the very life Jesus has for us. So, even when we fail today, we have hope for tomorrow. And it is on this ground of hope that we can repent and turn to him once again. He’s not going anywhere, and his grace is always towards us.
Wake Up, Sleeper! w/ Marty Folsom W4
March 26 – Fifth Sunday of Easter Prep
Romans 8:6-11, “Spirit of Christ”
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Program Transcript
Wake Up, Sleeper! w/ Marty Folsom W4
Anthony: Well, our final passage of the month is Romans 8:6-11. It’s from the Common English Bible. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday of Easter Prep (Lent) on March the 26th.
Marty, would you read it for us please?
Marty:
6The attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death, but the attitude that comes from the Spirit leads to life and peace. 7 So the attitude that comes from selfishness is hostile to God. It doesn’t submit to God’s Law, because it can’t. 8 People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God. 9 But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to him. 10 If Christ is in you, the Spirit is your life because of God’s righteousness, but the body is dead because of sin. 11 If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.
Anthony: God is triune and other-centered. The Father is for the Son. The Son is for the Spirit. The Spirit’s for the Father. And so, it goes.
And yet this pericope points to how destructive selfishness and self-centeredness is in our walk with God. But Marty, anywhere you look, you see selfishness, selfishness everywhere. Sometimes even in our churches, we’ll see it. So, during this season of preparation for Easter, many Christians see it as a time of a spiritual reflection.
What would you say to us about what is being revealed in this passage?
Marty: So, a couple things about Lent just to throw in here. We often think of Lent as a time to get rid of those things, the selfishness, the attitudes and all that. And so, we focus on getting rid of those things.
I like to think of Lent as like a honeymoon. Now, when people go on a honeymoon, there’s all kinds of things they leave behind, but they don’t think about what they’ve left behind. They think about the one who they get to be with. And the whole nature of that is to have a time of serving, caring, learning to integrate our life with the other, to have this new life that’s in a sense determined by a lifestyle of love.
And so, do you leave things behind? Do you change when you come back because of it? I hope that the time dedicated to loving the other becomes so transformative that there are things that naturally are left behind because they no longer serve the nature of what love looks like in this relationship.
So, if we think of Lent as a season of focus, that prayer and fasting is not a getting rid of. It’s the attentive love of the person of Christ who has come into the world. And the anticipation that the celebration of Easter is going to be the fullness of the covenant life that we are going to be living into, and that we are reminding ourself of who is most important and how that affects us.
Then the nature of destructive selfishness and self-centeredness is already washed away because we’re not focusing on trying to get rid of our self-centeredness, which becomes its own kind of moral failure. If we’re focusing on trying to get rid of something bad in ourself, then we’re focusing on ourself and that is a moral problem because we’re focused on ourselves.
So, the whole idea of the world that we live in is that, as you have said, it is a culture of individualism. Individualism is what everybody’s focused on. How do I be happy in the world? And from that, we want to defend our individual rights. Rights are all about the individual looking out for themself.
If we thought out of responsibility, responsibility is what do I owe others? And if we were always asking, what do I owe to others in love, then we wouldn’t even have to talk about rights because others would also be looking out for us by virtue of what it is that for them to be responsible or loving to us.
But because we focus on rights, then everything becomes about me protecting my way of being. And that just feeds the self-centeredness. We want to own more, consume more. Everything just feeds into this problem of self-focusedness. And so, if we recognize that the nature of the gospel that is being put out here is to recognize all of that stuff just leads to separation from others from God.
And so there is no peace there. The law of God is ultimately the law of love. But if the law is, how do I get more? How do I use the economy, the politics, the whatever, to get more for myself? Then we will be enslaved to that. And so, the language of selfishness and death and slavery and fear is all bound together.
The alternative to that then is that the God who looks at us with love, who comes to us in love, pours his Spirit into us. And so Lent is this openness to the Spirit so that we’ll be open to the life of love. And there is a reprioritizing because the Spirit focuses us on the one who has loved us, what it means to know about the meaning of the cross, that it removes all of that need for making our own way in the world, to see all as gift.
And so, if our season of Lent is to ask the question, how do I more focus the value of who Jesus is? And to say Spirit, if you’re going to show me what it is that’s selfish in myself, show me the flip side even more as the enduring sense of what is that God has given me and continues to give me every day as the gift from which I would live.
And therefore, to say, when we get the gift, then we have the way of gratitude and thankfulness. If we thought of Lent as more about gratitude and thankfulness that the Spirit awakens in us, there would be a sense in really a living according to the will of God. What is the will of God?
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18] That’s Lent.
Anthony: Yeah. It reminds me of what Eugene Peterson said, that Christian discipleship is focusing more and more on Christ’s righteousness and less and less on our own.
Yes. And that’s where you’re flipping Lent on its head. And I think there’s something to that. It’s like Peter keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus walking on water, but as soon as he focused on himself, that’s when he ran into trouble. So, I think there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying.
You know, the epistle writer said that if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to Christ. How does someone know if they have the Spirit of Christ? And additionally, does this mean, Marty, non-believers don’t belong to Christ?
Marty: Right. It’s a very interesting passage and it’s very easy to read it wrongly.
So, one of the things about being alive as a human being is that the God that made you, sustained you by his Spirit. So to say, you wouldn’t be alive, were it not for the Spirit sustaining you. The question, do we live as though that is true?
Do human beings generally know that the Spirit of Christ is the one who gives them that which Karl Barth says is the distinctive what it means to be human rather than animal, and that is that we have the Spirit who gives us this connection, this being with the God who has loved us. Do we acknowledge that? Well, obviously much of humanity does not.
So, when we say, how does someone know they have the Spirit of Christ? We never possess the Spirit of Christ. Rather, when we are aligned with or attuned to the reality of the Spirit, our life will look like the fruit of the Spirit. When the Spirit is sustaining our very life and breath and being, we can live in denial of that. And then all of the shadow darkness that we’ve talked about, all that comes into play. The Spirit is still the one who gives us life, but we’re living our life as though that’s not real. So, we can call that living in unreality, living in denial of the Spirit of Christ.
And so, when we go on then and talk about: do they belong to Christ if they’re in that place? To say, we cannot use the word belong in a way that is a possession as though somebody owns something. But to say that we steal ourself, we have stolen ourself from the one who owns us. We are not rejected by the Spirit. We are not rejected by Christ. We have simply stolen ourself and are living a lie that we are separated.
And so, to say that we don’t belong to or that this person doesn’t belong to Christ, is to say the same way a child may say I don’t belong to that family anymore. Well, the fact of the matter is that mother, that father gave them birth and so to say, the reality is that they do belong in the truest physical sense. They are saying, I am choosing not to identify myself as being connected to those people.
And so, they’re rejecting in a sense, something that you would say cannot reject the truest reality of it, though their personal experience through their individual judgment is that they don’t belong. So, the human being who rejects the love of God, who rejects the Spirit at work in them, will live as though the Spirit is not giving them life and breath.
But that is not the deepest reality, though, as JB Torrance would say, that is their experience of it. And therefore, the blessings of what it means to live from the life of love, they will be those who walk in darkness. They will be those who will stumble. They will be those who do not receive the benefits of having been loved, being able to love.
So, the word belonging there has to be seen in a deeper sense. There is nothing that we can do, neither height nor depth, angels nor principalities. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And the Spirit is the one who gives us the very breath and life to bring the work of Christ to us.
And that amazing passage in Romans in 11 where he has condemned all under sin, that he may show mercy to all. That he may show mercy to all means that in the eyes of the God who has given all for all people he will say, this one belongs to me also, even though he doesn’t know all have sinned, all could be judged, but I have shown mercy to all, they all belong to me.
Not all have awakened to that. And so insofar as someone lives as a quote unquote non-believer, they’re living incongruent with reality. They’re not doing the good scientific work of investigating what is really real. Who am I really? What is this God all about who I’ve heard because I’ve heard some crazy things and there are a lot of crazy things people say about what it means to be a Christian and who the Christian God is?
But the Spirit is always at work in awakening us, inviting us, unveiling our eyes, waking us from the sleep so that we will experience the love of God and the truth of what this is saying is the Spirit does live in us and the Spirit has been given to us 100% gift. There’s nothing we could do to earn it, no condition that we could meet that would make the Spirit come to us.
The question of our allowing the reality to shine through instead of hiding in the ways that we think we can manage our world if we maintain a kind of power that deceives us in the same way that Adam and Eve were deceived. And I say the day they ate that apple, it was kind of like going from the absolute delight of a child to becoming a teenager who becomes independent and says, I’m going to do it my way. I don’t care what you have to say. The Adam and Eve move was in a world of independence, that is the problem.
When the Spirit moves, a third thing happens. And that’s what I call the life of interdependence. And that’s what you hope to have with your adult children. You are a person. I am a person. We belong to one another, and we will love each other with the distinctions of who we are, but also recognize that we belong together.
People who are non-believers are those who are still part of the family, but they’re living in their teenage mentality. And there are a lot of 70, 80-year-olds who still live with a teenage mentality. Maybe it’s even childish. I’ll do it myself. And so, are they loved by Christ? Yes. Does the Spirit give them life and breath? Yes. Do they know that that is true? Nope. They’re living in denial of that. So, we can never be held back from saying to any person, I have no doubt that you are loved by God, sustained by his Spirit, whether you know it or not.
I can preach that to you as the gospel because I know the God who is there. Your choices are going to live in the light of that. And whatever you do, you will never be outside of God’s love.
Anthony: Mm. Hallelujah. Praise God. And therefore, we can say, wake up sleeper and experience true reality that you are beloved of God. As I heard Pastor Brian Zahn once say, salvation is best understood as belonging. We belong to God, and you, Marty, belong to God. You are beloved in his sight.
And this is fun. It what a great conversation. It’s such a joy to do this with you. And I hope you’ll come back sometime, and maybe we’ll have you sing one of your songs that I heard you reference earlier in the podcast.
But I also want to take this moment to thank a couple of people who really make this podcast go: Ruel Enerio, who is our producer, and also Elizabeth Mullins, who does the transcription of the podcast. So, you can read what Marty said, word for word.
Marty, thanks for being a part of this. And as is our tradition on Gospel Reverb, we like to end with prayer. So, would you please pray for us, our listening audience?
Marty: I’d be delighted to.
Dear Abba, we do thank you this day that we get to celebrate your life that embraces our life. As we prepare for Lent, we recognize that the goal of Lent is to live within the embrace that you have for us in Jesus. We know that this is a time that we walk with you, a rugged road, a challenging road, but one that has purpose and meaning.
Help us to find our purpose and meaning in the love that you’ve poured out for us. And the grace that isn’t something separate from yourself. It is you looking us eye to eye. Help us to lift our eyes and our hearts to see your gaze into us. To know that we are loved by you and Holy Spirit, you who have been poured out into us.
We pray that as we listen to these gospel words that you would bring them to resonate in our being, that they would cause us to awaken a way that we have never had before, and that Lent would be all lived in the light of the dawning sun of the resurrection. That gives meaning and purpose of what it means to be fully alive.
Help us to live the fully-alive life, embraced by the one who we have on our lips as Abba, or dear Father, to know the companion of Jesus who goes with us, and that you, Holy Spirit, give us life and purpose and meaning and do your work in us. Do that, we pray, now and in this season of preparation. We pray all these things in your name, you who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Program Transcript
Wake Up, Sleeper! w/ Marty Folsom W4
Anthony: Well, our final passage of the month is Romans 8:6-11. It’s from the Common English Bible. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for the fifth Sunday of Easter Prep (Lent) on March the 26th.
Marty, would you read it for us please?
Marty:
6The attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death, but the attitude that comes from the Spirit leads to life and peace. 7 So the attitude that comes from selfishness is hostile to God. It doesn’t submit to God’s Law, because it can’t. 8 People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God. 9 But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you. If anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to him. 10 If Christ is in you, the Spirit is your life because of God’s righteousness, but the body is dead because of sin. 11 If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your human bodies also, through his Spirit that lives in you.
Anthony: God is triune and other-centered. The Father is for the Son. The Son is for the Spirit. The Spirit’s for the Father. And so, it goes.
And yet this pericope points to how destructive selfishness and self-centeredness is in our walk with God. But Marty, anywhere you look, you see selfishness, selfishness everywhere. Sometimes even in our churches, we’ll see it. So, during this season of preparation for Easter, many Christians see it as a time of a spiritual reflection.
What would you say to us about what is being revealed in this passage?
Marty: So, a couple things about Lent just to throw in here. We often think of Lent as a time to get rid of those things, the selfishness, the attitudes and all that. And so, we focus on getting rid of those things.
I like to think of Lent as like a honeymoon. Now, when people go on a honeymoon, there’s all kinds of things they leave behind, but they don’t think about what they’ve left behind. They think about the one who they get to be with. And the whole nature of that is to have a time of serving, caring, learning to integrate our life with the other, to have this new life that’s in a sense determined by a lifestyle of love.
And so, do you leave things behind? Do you change when you come back because of it? I hope that the time dedicated to loving the other becomes so transformative that there are things that naturally are left behind because they no longer serve the nature of what love looks like in this relationship.
So, if we think of Lent as a season of focus, that prayer and fasting is not a getting rid of. It’s the attentive love of the person of Christ who has come into the world. And the anticipation that the celebration of Easter is going to be the fullness of the covenant life that we are going to be living into, and that we are reminding ourself of who is most important and how that affects us.
Then the nature of destructive selfishness and self-centeredness is already washed away because we’re not focusing on trying to get rid of our self-centeredness, which becomes its own kind of moral failure. If we’re focusing on trying to get rid of something bad in ourself, then we’re focusing on ourself and that is a moral problem because we’re focused on ourselves.
So, the whole idea of the world that we live in is that, as you have said, it is a culture of individualism. Individualism is what everybody’s focused on. How do I be happy in the world? And from that, we want to defend our individual rights. Rights are all about the individual looking out for themself.
If we thought out of responsibility, responsibility is what do I owe others? And if we were always asking, what do I owe to others in love, then we wouldn’t even have to talk about rights because others would also be looking out for us by virtue of what it is that for them to be responsible or loving to us.
But because we focus on rights, then everything becomes about me protecting my way of being. And that just feeds the self-centeredness. We want to own more, consume more. Everything just feeds into this problem of self-focusedness. And so, if we recognize that the nature of the gospel that is being put out here is to recognize all of that stuff just leads to separation from others from God.
And so there is no peace there. The law of God is ultimately the law of love. But if the law is, how do I get more? How do I use the economy, the politics, the whatever, to get more for myself? Then we will be enslaved to that. And so, the language of selfishness and death and slavery and fear is all bound together.
The alternative to that then is that the God who looks at us with love, who comes to us in love, pours his Spirit into us. And so Lent is this openness to the Spirit so that we’ll be open to the life of love. And there is a reprioritizing because the Spirit focuses us on the one who has loved us, what it means to know about the meaning of the cross, that it removes all of that need for making our own way in the world, to see all as gift.
And so, if our season of Lent is to ask the question, how do I more focus the value of who Jesus is? And to say Spirit, if you’re going to show me what it is that’s selfish in myself, show me the flip side even more as the enduring sense of what is that God has given me and continues to give me every day as the gift from which I would live.
And therefore, to say, when we get the gift, then we have the way of gratitude and thankfulness. If we thought of Lent as more about gratitude and thankfulness that the Spirit awakens in us, there would be a sense in really a living according to the will of God. What is the will of God?
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18] That’s Lent.
Anthony: Yeah. It reminds me of what Eugene Peterson said, that Christian discipleship is focusing more and more on Christ’s righteousness and less and less on our own.
Yes. And that’s where you’re flipping Lent on its head. And I think there’s something to that. It’s like Peter keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus walking on water, but as soon as he focused on himself, that’s when he ran into trouble. So, I think there’s a lot of truth to what you’re saying.
You know, the epistle writer said that if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, they don’t belong to Christ. How does someone know if they have the Spirit of Christ? And additionally, does this mean, Marty, non-believers don’t belong to Christ?
Marty: Right. It’s a very interesting passage and it’s very easy to read it wrongly.
So, one of the things about being alive as a human being is that the God that made you, sustained you by his Spirit. So to say, you wouldn’t be alive, were it not for the Spirit sustaining you. The question, do we live as though that is true?
Do human beings generally know that the Spirit of Christ is the one who gives them that which Karl Barth says is the distinctive what it means to be human rather than animal, and that is that we have the Spirit who gives us this connection, this being with the God who has loved us. Do we acknowledge that? Well, obviously much of humanity does not.
So, when we say, how does someone know they have the Spirit of Christ? We never possess the Spirit of Christ. Rather, when we are aligned with or attuned to the reality of the Spirit, our life will look like the fruit of the Spirit. When the Spirit is sustaining our very life and breath and being, we can live in denial of that. And then all of the shadow darkness that we’ve talked about, all that comes into play. The Spirit is still the one who gives us life, but we’re living our life as though that’s not real. So, we can call that living in unreality, living in denial of the Spirit of Christ.
And so, when we go on then and talk about: do they belong to Christ if they’re in that place? To say, we cannot use the word belong in a way that is a possession as though somebody owns something. But to say that we steal ourself, we have stolen ourself from the one who owns us. We are not rejected by the Spirit. We are not rejected by Christ. We have simply stolen ourself and are living a lie that we are separated.
And so, to say that we don’t belong to or that this person doesn’t belong to Christ, is to say the same way a child may say I don’t belong to that family anymore. Well, the fact of the matter is that mother, that father gave them birth and so to say, the reality is that they do belong in the truest physical sense. They are saying, I am choosing not to identify myself as being connected to those people.
And so, they’re rejecting in a sense, something that you would say cannot reject the truest reality of it, though their personal experience through their individual judgment is that they don’t belong. So, the human being who rejects the love of God, who rejects the Spirit at work in them, will live as though the Spirit is not giving them life and breath.
But that is not the deepest reality, though, as JB Torrance would say, that is their experience of it. And therefore, the blessings of what it means to live from the life of love, they will be those who walk in darkness. They will be those who will stumble. They will be those who do not receive the benefits of having been loved, being able to love.
So, the word belonging there has to be seen in a deeper sense. There is nothing that we can do, neither height nor depth, angels nor principalities. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And the Spirit is the one who gives us the very breath and life to bring the work of Christ to us.
And that amazing passage in Romans in 11 where he has condemned all under sin, that he may show mercy to all. That he may show mercy to all means that in the eyes of the God who has given all for all people he will say, this one belongs to me also, even though he doesn’t know all have sinned, all could be judged, but I have shown mercy to all, they all belong to me.
Not all have awakened to that. And so insofar as someone lives as a quote unquote non-believer, they’re living incongruent with reality. They’re not doing the good scientific work of investigating what is really real. Who am I really? What is this God all about who I’ve heard because I’ve heard some crazy things and there are a lot of crazy things people say about what it means to be a Christian and who the Christian God is?
But the Spirit is always at work in awakening us, inviting us, unveiling our eyes, waking us from the sleep so that we will experience the love of God and the truth of what this is saying is the Spirit does live in us and the Spirit has been given to us 100% gift. There’s nothing we could do to earn it, no condition that we could meet that would make the Spirit come to us.
The question of our allowing the reality to shine through instead of hiding in the ways that we think we can manage our world if we maintain a kind of power that deceives us in the same way that Adam and Eve were deceived. And I say the day they ate that apple, it was kind of like going from the absolute delight of a child to becoming a teenager who becomes independent and says, I’m going to do it my way. I don’t care what you have to say. The Adam and Eve move was in a world of independence, that is the problem.
When the Spirit moves, a third thing happens. And that’s what I call the life of interdependence. And that’s what you hope to have with your adult children. You are a person. I am a person. We belong to one another, and we will love each other with the distinctions of who we are, but also recognize that we belong together.
People who are non-believers are those who are still part of the family, but they’re living in their teenage mentality. And there are a lot of 70, 80-year-olds who still live with a teenage mentality. Maybe it’s even childish. I’ll do it myself. And so, are they loved by Christ? Yes. Does the Spirit give them life and breath? Yes. Do they know that that is true? Nope. They’re living in denial of that. So, we can never be held back from saying to any person, I have no doubt that you are loved by God, sustained by his Spirit, whether you know it or not.
I can preach that to you as the gospel because I know the God who is there. Your choices are going to live in the light of that. And whatever you do, you will never be outside of God’s love.
Anthony: Mm. Hallelujah. Praise God. And therefore, we can say, wake up sleeper and experience true reality that you are beloved of God. As I heard Pastor Brian Zahn once say, salvation is best understood as belonging. We belong to God, and you, Marty, belong to God. You are beloved in his sight.
And this is fun. It what a great conversation. It’s such a joy to do this with you. And I hope you’ll come back sometime, and maybe we’ll have you sing one of your songs that I heard you reference earlier in the podcast.
But I also want to take this moment to thank a couple of people who really make this podcast go: Ruel Enerio, who is our producer, and also Elizabeth Mullins, who does the transcription of the podcast. So, you can read what Marty said, word for word.
Marty, thanks for being a part of this. And as is our tradition on Gospel Reverb, we like to end with prayer. So, would you please pray for us, our listening audience?
Marty: I’d be delighted to.
Dear Abba, we do thank you this day that we get to celebrate your life that embraces our life. As we prepare for Lent, we recognize that the goal of Lent is to live within the embrace that you have for us in Jesus. We know that this is a time that we walk with you, a rugged road, a challenging road, but one that has purpose and meaning.
Help us to find our purpose and meaning in the love that you’ve poured out for us. And the grace that isn’t something separate from yourself. It is you looking us eye to eye. Help us to lift our eyes and our hearts to see your gaze into us. To know that we are loved by you and Holy Spirit, you who have been poured out into us.
We pray that as we listen to these gospel words that you would bring them to resonate in our being, that they would cause us to awaken a way that we have never had before, and that Lent would be all lived in the light of the dawning sun of the resurrection. That gives meaning and purpose of what it means to be fully alive.
Help us to live the fully-alive life, embraced by the one who we have on our lips as Abba, or dear Father, to know the companion of Jesus who goes with us, and that you, Holy Spirit, give us life and purpose and meaning and do your work in us. Do that, we pray, now and in this season of preparation. We pray all these things in your name, you who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Small Group Discussion Questions
From Speaking of Life
- What is your favorite “two kinds of people” statements that you have heard?
- How would you describe the “two kinds of people in the world” from a biblical basis?
From the Sermon
- Have you ever fallen into the trap of focusing more on your sins than your savior?
- What are some characteristics of a mindset of the flesh?
- What are some characteristics of a mindset of the Spirit?
- The sermon described the biblical understanding of peace to be an “active peace” which sought the well-being of another. How does this understanding inform how we pursue peace with one another today?
- Discuss these three points brought out in the sermon:
- The Spirit is not something that belongs to us.
- The gift of the Spirit empowers us.
- Living in the Spirit today will not be taken away tomorrow.
