The words we just read feel to me like a roller coaster. We climb the hill as we hear that setting the mind on the flesh is death and setting the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. The coaster slows as we climb: the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God, it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it. We reach the top of the climb and slow to a stop as we are told that those in the flesh cannot please God. We must live a certain way, orient our minds a certain way…or else. With these words, the coaster seems to stop. The wait at the top of this high hill after such a climb seems like an eternity. So we’ve got some time to think about these things.
Living according to the Spirit…setting the mind on the Spirit…achieving life and peace…pleasing God. There have been a couple of times when I was pretty sure that I had this figured out. I loved the thrill of the climb because I “got” the whole Spirit/flesh divide and was certain that I could live in a way that was pleasing to God. I had little patience for religious talk that strayed too far from demands like we heard in the first half of today’s text.
After working at a Bible camp a few summers back I was sure that I got it. I spent the summer bumping chests (Donald Miller) with Jesus and getting holier with my fellow counselors. Together we were more than certain about what was pleasing to God and what wasn’t. Everyday, we would rise before our campers to do Bible study together. We kept each other accountable for our horrible sins (most of which involved our teenaged hormones). On weekends we spent our free time passing out tracts at the mall and helping people recognize that they were sinners and damned unless they would repent and be saved. Thanks to our efforts to sanctify ourselves through all of the things we did, we could be certain that we were safe and wanted to get more recruits. The coaster climbed and climbed. As the requirements of faith, the pre-requisites for life and peace and pleasing God pulled us up the hill.
We knew that we were indeed abhorring the flesh and setting our minds on the Spirit and we wanted this to continue when we left each other and headed back into that nasty world. Each of us agreed to keep the others accountable so that we would leave our flesh behind and set our minds completely on the Spirit. So we promised to devote huge amounts of time everyday to prayer and Bible study. When we saw people sitting alone in our college cafeterias we promised each other that we would practice what we called intentional evangelism (I’m still curious what unintentional evangelism looks like). Because we happened to be politically progressive, we promised to be active in our campus advocacy organizations and do at least one thing a day for social justice. On top of that, I became a vegetarian. Since scripture told us that the flesh was bad, we would master our own. Any hormonal urges were to be punished with fasting. We were serious. We knew we had to set our minds on the Spirit. God demands no less. This was all so clear. Life made a lot of sense as our coaster climbed the hill.
Soon after returning to life away from camp things started to come apart. First, my friends sat together at meals, so I didn’t exactly follow through on the intentional evangelism piece. Then homework picked up, so I didn’t always get around to the 30 minutes of prayer and couple chapters of devotional bible reading that we expected of each other. I did better with the justice thing and vegetarianism, but always felt like I should have been doing more. And I certainly did not fast every time lust entered in. After a few short weeks I was miserable. I felt terrible about all of this. I failed my accountability partners and I failed my God. It was devastating. I was frustrated by my failure. And I also didn’t see the thrill of the ride ahead. (Pause)
Paul says in today’s writing that, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God…” At the top of the hill we are left wondering, have we pleased God? For those of us who have felt the sting of failure when we’ve tried so hard to improve, to make ourselves holier, the apex of this hill is a scary place because we know we have not in fact pleased God. Still, without our pushing, the coaster inches forward, and before we know it we are flying down the hill with our stomachs in our throats.
Just as swiftly as the coaster car falls Paul proclaims: But you ARE NOT in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. The coaster whips us around a spiral: If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. And finally, the momentum of that great hill is enough to push us though a loop that turns our whole world upside down: If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
What a ride! All of the demands we heard as we climbed the front of the hill, God has already given us. (Pause) The summons to set the mind on the Spirit is followed by the proclamation that we ARE IN the Spirit, because the Spirit DWELLS IN us, just like God dwelt with the Israelites in the wilderness and just like Jesus dwelt with humanity in the flesh.
After being dropped, spun around, and turned upside down by this surprising indwelling Spirit, I can’t help but see the world differently. In building up good works by my own holiness and a concern for my salvation and sanctification above all else, I was not setting my mind on the Spirit at all. In fact, this self-congratulatory religion that I practiced was really self-centered idolatry, it was a religion of distrust in the work of God and abhorrence for the neighbor, who was only useful to me if he or she added to my holiness.
Please don’t misunderstand, it is not that the things we did were bad, but it is that they came from a place of insecurity, of distrust for God’s work and trust in our own above God’s. As good as we thought our intentions were, my counselor friends and I misunderstood a couple of very important things. The call to set the mind on the Spirit is not a law or an obligation but a descriptive characteristic of life in the Spirit; it is a new way of living, not ruled by us but by the Spirit within us. It is the Spirit’s gift and not our work.
Moreover, we were operating under the assumption that these words against the flesh are a call to detest our bodies and the present, worldly reality. If this text was about hating the present reality and not seeking to change anything here and now, then the Spirit dwelling with us in this world and the promise of life for our mortal bodies that we hear in the text would seem rather out of place. There is a deep concern in this text for the present bodily reality. It is just that the approach is different. We are not called to trust God and love God’s people by our own power or will, but by the Spirit’s power and will. We do not live in that old reality of requirements and pre-requisites, but in the reality of the Spirit.
Flesh, in this text, is simply the characteristic of the old way of living, it is living without the truth that in the Spirit everything has changed. The indwelling Spirit alone makes alive and it alone is life. The righteousness of the law, this setting the mind on the Spirit is not fulfilled by us, blessed be God, it is fulfilled in us. (Pause) The Spirit is life within us and it will give life to our mortal bodies. What’s more, this Spirit is not achieved but received.
So we feel the thrill of the roller coaster, the thrill of God working new life within us. But this ride does not leave us the same as when we started. Here is where all of this really becomes beautiful. Because the Spirit is life within us, because the old way of understanding God and the world has died with our old way of being, we are free to LIVE this new life. We are made alive by the indwelling Spirit of God, and by this same Spirit, we LIVE this new life.
By virtue of the indwelling Spirit, we are free to live with our minds set on the Spirit. God has given us this freedom for a purpose. God has given us the freedom of new life so that we live a life of trust in God’s promises and love for our neighbors.
The Spirit changes everything, so everything must change. This change, this setting the mind on the Spirit, happens in the world in which we already live, and in the callings to which we have been called.
The Spirit has entered into our world, where we are, in our everyday lives and has made us alive to live differently.
So we live deeply into the Spirit in the context of our callings. We are called to live freely in love for God and God’s creation in the context of our day-to-day lives. We live in the Spirit, with our minds set on the Spirit as we change our children’s diapers, write papers, have meals with our spouses, prepare for internship, advocate for justice, plant a tree, or do anything else in our callings out of the freedom of the new life in the Spirit. Out of the freedom of a life changed by God.
The old, dead person who belongs to the flesh will certainly still try to dominate our lives and define who we are. But remember that you are not that old person. You are in the Spirit because the Spirit dwells in you. You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. Now LIVE on the basis of that indwelling Spirit.
Man...you are SOOOO Lutheran
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