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One Flesh: What does it Mean?
<page 53>Before continuing with 2 Peter 3:5-8, we need to spend a few chapters looking at some differences between the Old and New Covenants. If we don't, we might take the wrong approach to faith, virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love.
…clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart …not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
What does it mean that the letter kills? The letter, in this context, refers to trying to obey God's commandments through our own ability rather than the Holy Spirit's work. This is the way in which people tried to obey under the Old Covenant.
The tablets of stone referred to are the ten commandments (Exodus 34:28). It is important to see this, because it lets us know that Paul is not writing about laws like the Old Covenant sacrificial system, which don't really apply to us in the same way today. He is instead saying that even laws which describe the love of God can be a problem for us. After all, statements like "You shall not murder," "You shall not steal," and "You shall not bear false witness" are obviously loving and profitable (Romans 13:8-10). So how can they kill us?
Paul explains in Romans 7:
What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. (emphasis added)
In these verses, Paul lists one of the ten commandments, "You shall not covet." It is a perfectly good rule that all Christians are called to obey. In fact, Paul calls it holy, just, and good (Romans 7:12). It became deadly for Paul, however, once he tried to obey it. He found that his knowledge of what God wanted activated a principle within him called 'sin,' and sin turned his attempts at obedience into coveting (the commandment produced …all manner of evil desire). The level of coveting Paul experienced wasn't there before Paul learned the commandment (he was alive once without the law). It rose up in response to it.
We see then that the letter of a good law killed Paul by stirring something within him that pushed him into disobedience. We also see that the death that resulted was not physical death. It was a partial spiritual death that produced a loss of joy and closeness with God.
<page 54>Fortunately, outward sins like murder and stealing are easier to control than inward sins like coveting, so the Law doesn't tend to provoke people into brutality and theft. Unfortunately, sexual lust is largely internal, and it is quite difficult to control. If "the letter" provoked Paul to covet, a man who didn't have a serious problem with coveting until he learned he shouldn't do it, imagine how much more "the letter" affects men and women who are already dealing with sinful sexual desires that are as strong as death. When they learn that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart (Matthew 5:28), they find themselves lusting all the more. Then their guilt and shame increase, which leads to even more lust (to bury the guilt and shame beneath good feelings), and the commandment, which is meant to bring them life, kills them.
This sort of experience, however, has a purpose. Paul says:
Has then what is good (the law) become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. (explanation added)
God's commandments are good. It is right and important for us to learn that we shouldn't covet or lust in our heart, but our sinful nature is so wicked that it will take even amazingly good commandments and turn them into opportunities for evil. This happens so that we can see sin for what it is. Paul says that he wouldn't have known covetousness without this painful experience (Romans 7:7). He doesn't mean by this that he wouldn't have known what the word 'covetousness' meant; instead, he means that he would not have known his own covetousness – the true condition of his heart – without going through the struggle he describes. The commandment showed him who he was in his humanity – it taught him that apart from Christ's work he was exceedingly sinful. It helped him to see that this wasn't a little problem that he could laugh off; it wasn't something unconnected from him that he could shake away; instead, it was a deceitful monster woven into his very being that would take anything, even a good thing, and twist it toward its own ends.
This is a lesson that tends to be driven home to sexual sinners often. It is part of learning what they are up against. It is designed to teach them that they can't win this war on their own. Without Jesus, they will be slaves to their desires. They may hold evil off for a time, but in the end, the monster will be their master!
Because of this, they need something beyond human strength to set them free. Only God can keep them from falling to desires they hate (Romans 7:14-15). Our real problem is not a lack of education, it is not a lack of willpower, it is not that we just need a little more love and encouragement – it is that sin is stronger than we are. We need God to make us righteous by the free gift of His grace, and we also need Him to give us supernatural power to enable us to overcome. Only as we walk according to the Spirit can the righteous requirement of the law be fulfilled in us.
…the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the <page 55>righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
(Romans 8:2-4, see also Romans 13:8-10)
Father, apart from You we are exceedingly sinful! …And in ourselves, we haven't got a clue how to fix that! Even when we try to receive Your help, something within us can sabotage our best intentions. Please break our pride and ignorance. Teach us how to rely on You. We surrender to You. We trust You to do through us what we could never do on our own (Ephesians 3:20).
The answer for sin consists in a new kind of relationship with God. In this new relationship, we can receive His word not as "the letter" which kills, but as spirit and life (John 6:63). There are four important points about this listed in 2 Corinthians 3. The first two have to do with how God relates to us; the second two have to do with how we relate to Him:
He writes His laws on our minds and hearts (2 Corinthians 3:2-3; 6).
He makes us righteous by the blood of Jesus, even when we do not yet act righteously (2 Corinthians 3:9).
We can be honest about our weaknesses and His transforming work within us (2 Corinthians 3:12-13).
We behold His glory and are transformed (2 Corinthians 3:18).
The first of these points is that God writes His laws on our hearts rather than on tablets of stone. Sin makes it so that, apart from the Holy Spirit, we are incapable of living up to God's external standard, so God gives us the Holy Spirit to make His standard internal. This change was prophesied in the book of Jeremiah and then quoted in Hebrews:
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
It is essential for us to humbly cry out for the Holy Spirit to teach us what this means. If we don't, we will see obedience only as an act of our mind, will, and emotions, which is what it was under the letter – and sin will continue to reign in us.
I don't mean by this that our mind, will, and emotions are not involved in walking by the Spirit. We still need to study and act on God's word, but we also need to hunger that something more than our own abilities will be in operation. We must seek God to take us beyond education and skill, touching us spiritually and turning knowledge into illumination, discipline into empowerment, and feeling into an expression of His heart.
This sort of seeking affects the way in which we practice virtue, knowledge…. We do them as an act of faith. We step out in obedience based on the promise that God will join us in our efforts and supernaturally guide and empower them. In terms of 2 Peter 1:5-8, we anticipate that <page 56>He will stir us toward virtue. We look for Him to take our knowledge and infuse it with an understanding and wisdom that surpasses our own thoughts. We trust Him to join us in self-control, working through good decisions as His grace enables us to rise to meet the need of the moment. We persevere in hope, searching for the way in which He will strengthen us to keep going long after we would normally give up (Isaiah 40:31). We let Him show us our mistaken views of who He is and how He works so He can replace them with His view (godliness).
Our hope is that He will make the Bible more than a book of instructions. It will become the bread by which we live (Matthew 4:4) and the path by which God comes to us and makes His home with us (John 14:23). We look for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into the knowledge of Him (Ephesians 1:17), so that we may know the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe (Ephesians 1:19). We seek a faith that isn't based in human wisdom (1 Corinthians 2:5), crying out for whatever it takes to make that happen.
As God fulfills these hopes, we experience His freedom from the power of sin. His commandments stop being "the letter" which kills us, and they bring us life (Romans 7:10). In the process, the Holy Spirit takes the law's righteous requirement and fulfills it in us (Romans 8:2-4).
The second truth from 2 Corinthians 3 about our new relationship with God is that He makes us righteous by Christ's blood. This helps us with one of the greatest difficulties we face as He writes His laws on our minds: the condemnation we often feel over our lack of progress. Commandments expose our faults, and it can be tough to deal with the guilt and shame that show up while we wait for the Holy Spirit to teach us how He wants us to correct those faults. We need something that will keep us in touch with God while we struggle with our imperfections. 2 Corinthians 3 describes that something as "the ministry of righteousness."
For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. (emphasis added)
The ministry of condemnation works like this: We hear God's commandments. We believe that if we don't live up to those commandments we will be separated from God and judged. Sin is working in our flesh, so even our best efforts fall short. Therefore, we fall into condemnation, guilt, and shame.
The ministry of righteousness works like this: God makes us righteous by the blood of Christ. Therefore, our condemnation or innocence doesn't depend on our performance, and this changes how we relate to our sins. Rather than seeing them as reasons to cower away from God in shame, we see them as reasons to come to Him for help. He welcomes us, has compassion on us, and helps us to experience the work of His Spirit even while we have little clue how to overcome. Our hearts are won over by His love and care. We move beyond rejection, and we experience His word as the living, powerful, and life-changing force that it was always meant to be. We are set free as we are helped at His throne of grace.
<page 57>For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (emphasis added)
The Protestant reformer John Calvin wrote that under law we were like a servant who had to perform his duties perfectly or he would face punishment from his master. In Christ, we are like a child whose father celebrates and rejoices over his every imperfect step into maturity. Calvin described this with the phrase: "paternal levity" (i.e. "fatherly enjoyment"). Picture a father laughing with his children as he helps them to grow; that is what our relationship with God is like in the New Covenant.[16]
The LORD your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.
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