Join the discussion on how faith can transform hardships into instruments of grace. By acknowledging and giving thanks for past struggles, we can witness the work of the Holy Spirit as it brings life and strength to our mortal existence. As we explore the intersection of faith and personal trials, this episode offers a message of hope, encouraging us to embrace the eternal life promised to believers.
So now Paul brings a line or two to us that has a possibility of two meanings. Let’s read it. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So remember the context we’re talking about in chapter 8, the life in the kingdom that is freed from the power of death. We’ve talked about Romans 5, where life in the kingdom is freed from the judgment of God and we’re reconciled to his heart. Chapter 6, we’re freed from the identity of sin in that Christ took our judgment upon the cross himself for us. That’s chapter 6. And chapter 7, we’re freed from the judgment of the law because Christ has brought in his righteousness that has been given to us, counted to us as ours. And then chapter 8, we’re freed from the power of death. Even though we die, we shall rise again. We are freed from the power of death by the resurrection of Jesus. So, wrath, sin, law, and death, Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8, are a description of life in the kingdom of grace. It’s as if we get the taste of the kingdom ahead of time. That’s the kingdom of grace. The kingdom of glory will come when Jesus returns, and this mortal shall put on immortality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruption. But in the meantime, we get these what are called firstfruits, right? You’ve heard that word before, firstfruits, these samplings of what it’s like to be in the kingdom of God. And so Paul says, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and we learned how we know that the Spirit of Jesus lives in us, because we learned in the few verses prior to this, that those who have faith in Christ have the Spirit of Christ. Because, as it says in Colossians 2, verse 9, I think it is, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Christ. So when we have Christ, we have the Spirit of Christ. Yes, granted, we receive more of the Spirit as we learn to put more faith in Him and walk more faithfully with Him. But we continue in this wonderful knowledge that we’re not alone in the world anymore. We have Christ who is our companion through His Spirit. So then he says, but if the Spirit of Christ, of him rather, who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies. Well, what’s he referring to? Is he saying that we will get life in our bodies here now, these mortal bodies? The word mortal means subject to death. So these bodies that are still subject to death, Jesus will bring life into them. through his spirit, as we dwell in him? Or is he talking about the second coming of Christ, when these mortal bodies of ours will be given new life? In fact, they will be given immortality. Well, I know it’s an easy cop-out to say both, but I think it’s probably true that it is both. The fact is, Jesus is coming again. And we must never forget that. The message of the gospel is not that we live on earth as sinners and then we come to Christ and then we die and go to heaven. That is not the gospel message. It’s part of it, but it’s not the whole story by a long shot. Because the larger picture is that we live on this earth As sinners, we give our hearts to Jesus and are converted. We die, we go to heaven, but then we are raised from the dead. Yes, our souls are in heaven, but we are given back our bodies at a certain point in time when all things shall be made new. And so this mortal, that is, bodies subject to death, will put on immortality, and this perishable body will put on the imperishable. What we look forward to, especially as it’s described in 1 Corinthians 15, is resurrection life. That’s what we look forward to, the resurrection from the dead. Jesus rose as a physical, real body. You remember when he came into that room where the disciples were and the doors were locked? Well, it didn’t seem as though he had a real physical body, did it? When he came into the room, how did he get in the room? He must have been able to pass through concrete objects. He must have been able to pass through that door. Nevertheless, it was a real body because he told Thomas, who had doubted him, to put his finger into the holes in his hand and to put his hand in his side. Poor Thomas was so embarrassed, and by his unbelief, he just bowed and said, you know, proclaimed him as Lord. But Jesus is revealing to us a real body. So you and I, as we face our future, do not face death so much as resurrection. That’s what we face. We need to look to that. as a wonderful, new, and eternal life that we have in the everlasting home that Jesus is going to bring to us. But there’s another reality that we need to face. and that is that Christ will give life to our mortal bodies as we believe in him, here and now, in a certain and to a certain degree. Let’s read the verse again. But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Well, Have you experienced that? I have to say to you, I experience that every day. The moment I feel down and depressed or lonely or sad, and I lift up my heart and say, Father, thank you that you are with me. I praise you that you are present in all of these terrifying and difficult circumstances. In that very moment, even though it may last for only a few minutes, but sometimes many hours, I find a renewal of my emotional strength. and my physical strength in some circumstances. I have polio in my right leg, and when I get up and walk, sometimes especially in the middle of the night, I say to God, thank you, Lord, for giving me strength to walk. And I feel strength to walk when I say that. Now, you may say, well, that’s just the mind convincing the body. Well, you can say what you want. Of course, it is the mind convincing the body. But what convinces the mind? It is the Spirit of God who gives us faith. Now, I want to encourage you to think this way, because there are people in this country, there are at least 40 million people in this country who are taking antidepressants. And I’m not urging you to get off antidepressants right away. Consult your doctor and all of that, we must say. But I want to say this to you. If you train your faith… you will gradually find antidepressants redundant, unnecessary, because faith does lift the heart. It’s not faith, strictly speaking, that lifts the heart. It’s the Holy Spirit who lifts the heart, who gives us faith, which we then exercise, which gives access by the Holy Spirit to our minds and to our spirits, and He lifts our hearts. Now, I don’t know how many troubles you’ve been through in your life. You may have been through scores of troubles. Some people have loads of troubles. Others have fewer. But if you want to try this out, I know it sounds odd to say try faith out, but Paul does tell us to do that in Romans chapter 12. If you want to do this, then what I encourage you to do is to list down the great, what shall I say, monuments of pain and trouble in your life over the decades you have lived. And you may simply look back in your previous experience, you may have simply looked back on those monuments of trouble and misery as just that. moments of misery and trouble. And you may sort of find those too painful to think about, so you just pass on and move to some other theme, or put the TV on, or pick up the phone and call a friend, because you can’t endure those moments of pain. They’re not moments, they’re sometimes months, aren’t they? And years in some cases. But now I want to suggest you do something else. You list those moments of misery, those monuments of misery and you begin to give praise, and you begin to thank God for allowing them in your life. You may not know the reasons, but you believe that God is good, and that he loves, and that all things work together for good, as we love God. And as you thank God for those troubles, you will find a very slight, maybe minuscule, difference of reaction to them. Instead of there being too painful to contemplate anymore, so you move on to the TV or the telephone, you now find your heart lifted up, that God was somehow in those troubles. And that leads you to contemplate, well, how was he in those troubles? And then you think about how you became a Christian, or how you have grown in your Christian life over the years, and you’ve realized that those monuments of misery, those troubles… contributed to your spiritual growth. Maybe they were even instrumental in bringing you to Jesus in the first place. But what you are finding is that the things that you thought were so terrible and negative have become instruments of grace. This is what I think we can take from verse 11 of chapter 8. Let me read it again. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Now, why would Paul say that the Spirit will give life to your mortal bodies? What’s so significant about the Spirit and life? Well, it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, what he just said. The Holy Spirit was the one who gave life to Jesus when he rose from the dead. It’s true that Jesus said that he can raise himself up from the dead again. But there is more to the story than Jesus alone raising himself from the dead. When Jesus rose from the dead, the Spirit somehow called him back to life. The Spirit is life. The Holy Spirit is nothing but life. He’s not death. He’s not dullness. He’s not whatever makes you miserable. The Holy Spirit lifts and brings life to the world. In the book of Genesis, it describes the Spirit of God as hovering over the waters. The word in Hebrew is penetrating, as in the sense of sexual penetration. That is the Spirit’s work in the world, bringing life to the world. And so when you trust in Jesus… you are trusting, you are receiving the Spirit. And when you receive the Spirit, and you praise Him for all the circumstances and the monuments of misery in your life, you are receiving life into your mortal body. Thanks for listening today, everyone. This is Colin Cook, and you’ve been listening to my broadcast, How It Happens. You can hear this broadcast on the radio at 10 in the evening, repeated at 4 in the morning in the Denver and Colorado and surrounding states areas on KLTT AM 670. And you can also make a donation if you would. It would be so much appreciated. This is listener-supported radio. Send your donation to FaithQuest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160, or make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thanks for all your support. I do appreciate it. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
