THE SPIRIT LEADS; HE PUTS TO DEATH OUR MISDEEDS, AND FOR US HE INTERCEDES.
Romans 8:6 “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace.”
The eighth chapter of the letter of Paul to the Romans is the greatest chapter in this entire epistle, and set alongside the opening chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, those two chapters stand as the most majestic pieces of Pauline writing in the New Testament. They are words that will last for ever. But this chapter is also important for our purpose in the observations it makes on the person and work of the Holy Spirit. There are three themes I want to pick out from this chapter.
“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (v.14). These words are the “classical passage in the New Testament on the great subject of the ‘leading of the Holy Spirit’,” B.B. Warfield observes. American forefathers crossed the continent on a wagon train through deserts, facing hostile Indians and outlaws. How indispensable was the role of the experienced wagon master leading them to their appointed destination. Or again, think you are a new recruit, entering the battle on a long front of advancing men. How important it is for you to know that the army commander leading you into battle knows where to deploy you and what you must do. Again, imagine that you are climbing a mountain and a thick mist falls; how crucial to have a guide who knows that peak like the back of his hand. We all need leaders; we may believe that the evangelical church is weak today because of its lack of leaders. On the world stage who can name the presidents or prime ministers of the countries of Europe? Where are the inspirational political leaders? Who will you follow?
You are a young person facing the great journey of life. How then should you live? What should be your values? What is truth? What should you do with your gifts and energy? What can prepare you for death? Who can guide you aright? What if you fell in with people who led you astray? Is there a leader who will guide you through life and death? If so who is that one? I’m not that leader.
“Put no confidence in princes,
Nor for help on man depend.
He shall die, to dust returning,
And his purposes shall end.”
Paul speaks here about a favoured people, the sons of God, those who have received Christ, and this is their great privilege, that they are led by the Spirit of God. The same word is used of Jesus that he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and we also find Paul telling the Galatians, “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (Gals. 5:18).
In Matthew 21 the word is used of leading animals, but generally it describes persons being led. In the parable of the Good Samaritan it is used of his leading the wounded traveler to the inn (Luke 10:34); it is also used of the blind man of Jericho being led to Jesus (Lk. 18:40). Then it is used of Jesus being led to Caiaphas (John 18:28); it is used of Stephen being led to the council (Acts 6:12); it is used of Christians being arrested and led bound to Jerusalem (Acts 9:2); it is used of Simon Peter being led by his brother Andrew to Jesus (John 1:42). The Holy Spirit leads like that; it is individual; he has that personal, controlling influence over the sons of God. What we must remember is that they’ve been delivered from the leadings of sin which had told them to ignore God and the Bible and church and allegedly ‘morbid thoughts’ of death and eternity. That submission to that cruel master is all behind them. They’re no longer doing what sin once had told them to do; they are being led by the Spirit, and they’re not being compelled against their wills to reluctantly go along with him. They have been given new life, the power of a new affection, good and pure desires to walk as the Spirit directs them. “They go through life not where they would but where he would. They don’t do what they might wish, but what he determines” (Warfield). So what is this leading? Look at it in these ways:
i] This Spirit who leads us originates from heaven. He comes from the omnipotent Creator, the sovereign Lord, and he himself is the mighty God. I am emphasizing that it is not our spirit that is being referred to. The third person of the Godhead is the one who is at work in the believer, overcoming our inclination to carry on sinning, making us restless about our poor attainments, recalling to us the memories of our past falls, giving us a longing for the time when these bloodied battles and defeats will all be over. So this leading is not at all natural; it is a divine and supernatural work of the third person of the Godhead, and so the whole journey of the Christian life is divine and supernatural. Today is a divine and supernatural occasion. We used to be led by self; he had put a ring through our noses and took us wherever he wanted, but now, praise God, we are being led by the Spirit of God.
ii] Again, this leading is not something that only super-Christians experience. This is nothing spooky in being led by the Spirit, but this is the common, normal privilege of every believer without exception. This is what differentiates us from unbelievers. We may properly modify the inspired words, “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he – and he alone - is not led by the Spirit.” It is not a proud boast for a Christian to claim that he is led by the Spirit. It is rather a mark of humility; I dare not trust the sweetest frame of mind I might be in. I am an unworthy and unstable person and so I have to be led by the Spirit. It is a sheer necessity. Even children need to pray constantly,
“Holy Spirit, help us, daily by Thy might,
What is wrong to conquer, and to choose the right”
(William H. Parker, 1845-1929)
iii] Again, the purpose of the Spirit’s leading is not to ‘enable us to escape the difficulties, dangers, trials or sufferings of this life, but specifically to conquer sin’ (Warfield). The letter to the Romans begins back in chapter one with a description of the sheer rottenness of sin, and then goes on to describe the great deliverance that Jesus Christ obtains for his people. The Spirit’s work is to bring that new life to us, and clean us from the inside, making us holy people. The leading of the Spirit is another phrase for the tough single Latin-based word ‘sanctification’. In other words, we are being led into Christ-like living, and constantly restored to Christ-like living when we fall and repent. Do you see that this cannot be the privilege of a few hyper-Christians who have had the second blessing? This is the blessing which every Christian experiences.
iv] Again, this leading of the Spirit is a continuous work. It affects the whole of the believer’s person, his mind, his imagination, his affections, his soul and his body. The Spirit has made up his mind that all those to whom he has been sent by God are going to be freed from sin. They will be led into holiness during the years of their earthly pilgrimage, so that in every part of us that needs to be delivered from sin the Spirit of God is going to be at work. So when we talk biblically about being ‘led by the Spirit’ we are not talking of special promptings, and insights, and deliverances, and hunches, and feelings. We are talking of the way the Spirit leads us to break with sinful habits, and guides us down the paths of good works and service. In other words, when we deem other people better than ourselves we are being led by the Spirit. When we bear the burden of the weak we are being led by the Spirit. When a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the church he is being led by the Spirit. When a wife respects her husband she is being led by the Spirit. When we are ready to give an answer to a person who asks us for the reason for our hope then we are being led by the Spirit. When we present out bodies a living sacrifice to God we are being led by the Spirit. When we clothe ourselves in the armour of God then also we are being led by the Spirit. That is how and why he leads us.
v] Again, this leading of the Spirit is not so that we let go and let the Spirit do the work for us. You remember how Paul captures the tension of the Christian life in Philippians chapter two and verses 12 and 13 where he says; “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” You work out what it means to be a Christian in your heart and mind, in the home, in your place of employment, with your neighbours, with the members of the congregation – wherever God puts you. You apply yourself to working out with dead seriousness what it means to please God as a saved person in every activity of life, and if that responsibility crushes you then never forget this, that God the Spirit is working in you. He really is as he supplies you with energy and power, motivating and encouraging you each day. That is how we are to understand the leading of the Spirit. It is as far as it possibly can be from imagining the Holy Spirit to be a kind of auto-pilot who carries us along as if we were in a trance.
The Spirit is certainly constantly leading, but we have to lead our thoughts into purity and truthfulness; we lead our daily paths into integrity and service; we lead our families those ways; we lead our churches in the way of righteousness constantly follow, step by step, often fighting to plant one foot after another at every pace as we slowly advance. We lead and we are led. There are sections of our pilgrimage that lead through Vanity Fair and the Slough of Despond, and out from under the control of Giant Despair in Doubting Castle, and away from Enchanted Ground, and on through the Valley of the Shadow, and licking our wounds from battling with Apollyon, on and on we have to lead ourselves and families and congregations, even to the river of death, and through that, on and on the Spirit leads us. It’s not that we by-pass the conflict, or that we do nothing and the Spirit does everything. We do everything; we work out our salvation with fear and trembling. The Spirit does everything too; he works in us leading us each step of the way. His impulses and our impulses concur; his desires and our desires concur; his hatreds and our hatreds concur. We are active agents under his active leading.
vi] Again, this leading of the Spirit is always according to the teaching of the Bible. It will never be into the ways of sin. However hard the way, and however strenuous the effort and however mysterious the trials and sufferings we pass through, when desirable doors close and undesirable doors open, we are making progress because he is leading us all the way according to the Scriptures. We are not going down the road of life by our own feelings, but by the revealed truth of the one controlling us and guiding us to the appointed goal, the throne of God. Let me just change the word ‘Saviour’ to the word ‘Spirit’ and repeat this hymn;
“All the way the Spirit leads me; cheers each winding path I tread;
Gives me grace for every trial, feeds me with the living bread.
Though my weary steps may falter, and my soul athirst may be,
Gushing from the rock before me, Lo! A spring of joy I see.”
(Frances Jan Van Alstyne 1820-1915)
What a consolation this truth is, that we have been led by the Spirit of God even to this very moment, and to this precious theme. So, because we find ourselves falling into sin so often - sin which is far more powerful than the natural man - let us not despair as Christians because the indwelling Holy Spirit is far greater and more powerful than remaining sin. We’d despair if we were simply meeting sin after sin, but we are not. We are meeting mercy after mercy; we are meeting the energy to carry on the journey. The Spirit of grace himself produces the believer’s conflict against sin, and he’s also the spur to continue the fight. The victory is assured. The Spirit is within us and we cannot fail. He will lead us home. The Spirit leads.
“If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live” (Roms. 8:13). The Bible affirms that the Christian has been delivered from the dominion of sin by the Holy Spirit coming into his life. He is the Christian’s new Master, and so King Sin is no longer his Lord, not of a single Christian; he has been made free from sin’s insistent commands that we give in to sin and satisfy its lusts; every true Christian is now able to defy sin and do what is righteous. But, of course, that does not make him sinless (oh that he were [!]; for that he must wait for heaven), the remaining virus of sin and its misdeeds will ever trouble him; they will make their presence felt even on his deathbed. So what are we to do with remaining sin, which, while not controlling us, is still within us?
We keep looking to the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, that is the main source of our victory over sin, our constant trust in the Saviour. That is the primary biblical insistence, while the other is found in this chapter. Paul tells us that our hope lies in putting to death the misdeeds of the body, that is, to mortify remaining sin, to weaken, starve and murder everything evil that rises up within us which urges us to defy God and his law. We are to be engaged in this work by the energy and under the direction of the Spirit of God. Regeneration is vain without the work of the Spirit. Sanctification is vain without the work of the Spirit. The fruit of Christ-likeness will never appear without the Spirit. Intercession is impossible without the Spirit. So we also are impotent to put to death the misdeeds of the body without the Holy Spirit. All other ways of killing sin are vain; all other suggested helps are helpless. It must be done by the Spirit, by him alone; no other power is to be appealed to. If you do appeal, for example, to Yoga to kill your sinful natures, or you turn to the solitary life to dwell in an isolated cottage on top of a Welsh mountain, or beat yourself with a whip until the blood flows to overcome your sins then all that is saying that God the Holy Spirit is inadequate for this work. That is an insult to him. Remember the promises of God in the Old Testament, especially in the prophecy of Ezekiel (11:19 and 36:26), that the Spirit will come, and he will remove those elements of proud, stubborn, rebellious unbelief from our hearts. That is the work of mortification, and it is only as a gift of the Spirit of Christ that deliverance from sin and increased likeness to the Lord can be ours. There is no other way than by the Spirit. All the work of weakening sin and increasing love, joy and peace is the work of God. So mortification is a happy work. The very conception is his work; the continuance is his work; the consummation is his work. The Paraclete’s task in us is to weaken sin and strengthen Christ. Only he is sufficient for this work.
So as you battle with the sin that so easily besets you then never forget your duty. “You put to death the misdeeds of the body” (v.13). You do it. You don’t lie back on a comfy bed of ease and wait for the Spirit to do it. You have to put to death the misdeeds of the body, but you do so by the Spirit, by his power and love and wisdom. How so? [See Kris Lundgaard’s The Enemy Within: Straight Talk about the Power and Defeat of Sin, (P&R, 1998, p.147ff)].
i] The Spirit alone can convince your heart of the danger of sin. Your sin may seem to you to be beautiful, so natural, so obvious and so rational. “Who could possibly consider it to be tawdry and ugly?” Jonah arrives at the port of Tarshish in defiance of God’s command that he go to Nineveh (which was in the opposite direction). There Jonah discovers a boat on its way west with a berth for him, and he has the money for the fare. Isn’t that an obvious indication of God’s approval of Jonah’s reluctance to go to Nineveh? In ways like that we persuade ourselves that it is all right to do what the Lord forbids. We use providence to support our own rebellion. If we are left to our own wits it will be a very long time before we mortify our pride and look to the cross of Christ; it comes when the Spirit speaks to our conscience, and sounds an alarm and doesn’t stop. “What are you doing here Elijah?” If our only hope were through state education and politically correct counsels that men killed the inward power of sin then we’d be hearing a lot more weeping over sin in the land that we’re hearing today. Being convinced of the danger of sin comes only by the work of the Spirit.
ii] The Spirit alone reveals and teaches the fulness of Christ to deliver you. Think of him as the greatest teacher the world has ever known. What did Jesus say? Didn’t he tell us that if our eye offended us that we should pluck it out? What did his apostles say? ‘If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live’ (Roms. 8:13). They are all talking about the same duty. “Hear Christ the teacher,” the Spirit says. He brings to our remembrance what the Lord said. What of our future? Where shall we soon be? Our God is the end of the journey; we shall soon meet at the feet of Christ, and closed is that place to sin. All you who have this hope in your purify yourselves as God is pure. The Spirit constantly reminds us of the future God is preparing; “As it is written: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ - but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (I Cors. 2:8-10).
The love of Christ constrains us to put our sins to death. “If you were to see Paul through a normal day spending his energies and his faculties in self-sacrificing service for the Lord Jesus and for the sake of the souls of men, and at the close of that day you were to watch him drop exhausted to his place of rest, and you were to say to him, ‘Paul, what is it that drives you with what seems to the world this almost insane passion to preach the gospel, to rescue men as brands from the burning, to establish men in the truth as you write your letters, to give yourself to the formation and the edification of the churches ?’, he would say, ‘If you want to know in a simple statement the secret of what drives me, it is this: The love of Christ holds me in its grip, it constrains me, that is, Christ’s love for me, the fact that I stand in constant amazement that the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me.’ This was the gospel motive, an understanding of the fulness of Christ, which drove Paul with far more zeal than any legal motivation could drive a man” (Al Martin, “Practical Helps to Mortification of Sin,” Banner of Truth magazine, July August 1972).
iii] The Spirit alone sustains your heart in expectation of help coming from Christ. “Be convinced, I say, of the power that is in Christ to overcome sin. ‘Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins’ [Matt. 1:21]. ‘Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a peculiar people zealous of Good works’ [Titus. 2:14]. Romans 6 makes clear that, by virtue of our union with Christ, when the sentence of death was passed on him we died in him and with him, and sin’s claims over us are broken. So the exhortation in verse 11 runs, ‘Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord.’” (Al Martin, op cit). The Holy Spirit convinces us of our provision in Christ. This is why he came, to justify and glorify you. Look at him on earth, setting free men and women bound by lust and sin for years, and bringing them into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Look to Christ. Ask the Saviour to help you, not to give up on you, finish the work he has begun in you, and take you safely to the place where you will never sin again. All fulness of grace is in him, patience, gentleness, forgiveness, mercy, courage, endurance and those full graces are available for you. The Spirit will sustain your heart in that hope.
iv] The Spirit alone will fix Calvary in your heart with its sin-killing power. “See your sin in the light of the self-emptying of Christ. Say to that particular sin, ‘Is this that which caused him to leave the ineffable glory of his Father’s presence, to come to the confines of the virgin’s womb, to be born amidst the stench of a cow barn – from the adoring wonder of angels to the rude, dumb stare of cows and goats? Is it my sin that demanded that self-emptying?’ Bring those sins to the cross of Christ; hear the voice of the Son of God, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me’ and in your own minds hear the Father saying, ‘My son, my son, I have forsaken you because of that sin of Mr ----, that sin.’ Name your sin and dare to bring it into the ‘blazing light’ of that awful darkness. There is no light like that darkness to show sin in its true colours. Keep the conscience sensitive to the guilt and danger of your specific sins by bringing them to the cross of Christ” (Al Martin, op cit).
It is the Holy Spirit who brings the Christian into communion with the crucified Christ. The Spirit brings the cross of Christ into the heart of the sinner by faith and he gives us fellowship with Christ by his death, and fellowship in his sufferings. So the gospel believer fights with the blood of Christ and by the virtue of Christ’s cross. “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ by whom (or by which cross) the world is crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gals. 6:14). The Holy Spirit will always drive me to fight by the mighty weapon of the cross.
v] The Spirit alone is the author and finisher of our sanctification. What does the Spirit use in putting our sins to death? Firstly, he uses the law of God. That is a great theme of this epistle; Romans chapter three and verse twenty, “By the law is the knowledge of sin.” Again in Romans chapter five and verse twenty, “The law entered that sin might abound.” Again in Romans chapter seven and verse seven, “I would not have known what sin was except through the law.” If you want people to be ignorant of sin then never talk about the law of God. The Spirit uses the law to convict us of our sin. He uses Exodus chapter twenty and the ten commandments, certainly, but he also uses Jesus’ exposition of the law in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five, and he uses Paul’s exposition of it in Romans chapter twelve. Men learn that God will no longer be trifled with; sin can no longer by scoffed at. There have been vile actions done by some, and Christians are trying to brush them under the carpet and forget about them, but the Holy Spirit keeps bringing to light the things done in darkness and then helps us to deal with them. What amazing grace of the Holy Spirit that he should probe into such foul and filthy hearts as ours - dunghills of vile attitude, words and deeds. What a loathsome work for the Holy Spirit to perform.
Secondly the Holy Spirit transforms us “into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit” (2 Cors. 3:18). The Spirit puts to death the energies and restless ambitions of sin by making us increasingly conscious of where true life, the abundant life, is to be found, and that it is found in Jesus Christ. “See his perfect loveliness and beauty – what perfection, and that righteousness has been imputed to you. See him willingly taking the form of a servant and becoming obedient to death even the death of the cross, and that was for you. Isn’t that the most wondrous, blessed and glorious object in the whole universe? Behold the Lamb of God, and he is taking away your sin. How can you then live one moment longer under it grip?” It is the work of the Spirit to sanctify you. He mortifies your sins by the law and the gospel.
“In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will” (Roms. 8:26&27). If you want to humble a minister in particular, or any Christian, you talk to him about his praying. How we neglect to pray. Days and weeks can go by without private devotions. What ought to be seen as an honourable and delightful privilege – addressing Almighty God – has become an irksome and neglected task. When we do pray our mind wanders concerning the things we are praying about within a few minutes of beginning. Coldness of heart, a sense of unreality about the things we are talking about, how little we feel the petitions we are bringing to God, the absence of joy and also of reverence and godly fear – our praying seems a mass of confusion and failure.
“But the Spirit himself intercedes for us” (v.26). He comes as the Spirit of grace and of supplications, the author of every spiritual desire, every holy aspiration, every outgoing of the heart after God. Every thought of holiness is his alone. He who leads the Christian knows what each Christian should pray for and he encourages such prayers. We would find it impossible to pray for strength to pluck out the offending right eye or cut off the offending right hand as our Lord commands. We would find it tough to pray for strength to put to death remaining sin. We might find it irksome to pray for the grace of poverty of spirit, or grief over sin, or hunger and thirst after righteousness, or contentment with the will of God if that will entails loneliness or the loss of one we love best, but the Spirit intercedes for us always “in accordance with God’s will” (v.27), saying, “Almighty God, give her those graces,” and so we begin to pray for them too with increasing discernment and increasing vehemence.
The Spirit intercedes for us “with groans that words cannot express” (v.26). The groanings are his intercession; that is how they register in our hearts, not in articulate speech, not requests in the form of sentences and paragraphs with commas and full stops. His intercession transcends that form of speech, nevertheless the groanings still have content; they have meaning and purpose. They are in our hearts, my heart and your heart, but we cannot spell them out; we cannot say to another, “This morning the Spirit interceded in my heart and he said so and so . . .” No. Our words cannot express them, but God who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit. Hannah went to the house of God and prayed; we are told that, “she spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard: therefore Eli thought she had been drunken” (I Sam. 1:13) Even the high priest of Israel was incapable of discerning the anguish of her heart and what the Spirit was prompting her to pray, but God knew what Hannah longed for. The Lord knows the cause and content of the Spirit’s groaning. God is aware that the groans are the media of the Holy Spirit’s intercession. They are wholly intelligible to him, and they are consistent with God’s will. So from this verse in Romans chapter eight this extraordinary picture emerges, that every day, from the hearts of millions of Christians all over the world, groans that words cannot express that have been conceived by the Spirit of God, are ascending to the throne of God, and this will go on, year by year until the Saviour appears when the Spirit’s groanings shall finally cease.
“Gentle, awful, holy guest, Make Thy temple in our breast,
There supreme to reign and rest, Comforter divine.
“In us, for us, intercede, And with voiceless groanings plead
Our unutterable need, Comforter divine” (George Rawson 1807-1889)
I saw my college Principal, Edmund P. Clowney, a few years ago in California and he sad, “Come and see me tomorrow and we’ll have some coffee.” There he told me why he wanted to see me, that for all the years since I graduated from Seminary, forty years earlier, he had prayed for me every day. “It gets a little disheartening asking God, ‘Bless Geoff Thomas.’ Are there particular needs I can pray for?” That was the source of his inquiry. I was mightily cheered and humbled that he prayed for me every day, and I asked myself whether I had prayed for myself every day. We are touched by those friends and family members who constantly pray for us, but there are two very glorious persons who pray for us, the Lord Jesus above, at the right hand of God ever lives to make intercession for us, and the Holy Spirit below who prays so mysteriously and inaccessibly for us. Son and Spirit will never stop. What encouragement that gives us; God “does exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephs. 3:20) because of the praying above and the praying below by Son and Spirit. So we are infirm and weak in our praying but that does not define the limits of God’s immeasurable grace, but rather the knowledge, love and wisdom of the Son and the Spirit.
Let us remember that the intercession of the Spirit “helps us in our weakness” (v.26). His praying is a ‘help’ to prayer, not the rule or reason for prayer. We know some people who refuse to pray unless they are assured that the Spirit moves them to do so. That is wrong. The Spirit works to help us in the performance of our duty and not in the neglect of it. The rule is that men always pray and not faint. The rule is that in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests known to God. You may start your praying by saying, “Help me now Lord . . .” Don’t think that your coldness of feeling and lack of words is a proof that the Spirit is withholding help from you. Pray! In the gatherings for prayer, when you feel as cold as ice then pray and confess to God, “Lord we feel so cold and far from Thee,” and that will immediately have the effect of warming everyone up and will lift the prayer meeting. That is the consequence of the leading of the Spirit. The Spirit leads; he kills our misdeeds and for us he intercedes.
24th August 2008 GEOFF THOMAS