We read about that in Romans 8 verses 12 and 13.
It says,
So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the
flesh.
For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.
But if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
The Bible teaches that there are a number of different kinds of obligations that we
have or can have in life.
One is the obligation of money.
In Matthew chapter 18 verse 24, Jesus told a parable about a man who owed another 10,000
talents.
That's one kind of obligation and the kind that I suppose most of us here tonight are
all together too familiar with.
There is another kind of obligation that we might call a debt of commonality.
I think that's what Paul is referring to earlier in Romans in the first chapter when he says,
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish.
What did Paul mean there?
Well, he had something in common with these people, Greeks and barbarians.
Like them, he, a former Jew, was a sinner.
And because of the death that comes upon sinners, he was under obligation to get the message
to all men that they might be saved.
This is the same kind of debt that a person who discovered a cure for cancer would have
to the human race.
A debt of commonality is something that we all face, at least the possibility of it.
And then there is the debt of favor.
I remember back on the farm there used to be the phrase that some of the older farmers
used, much obliged.
Have you ever heard that?
Much obliged.
Well, that's the idea here.
It's the thought that Paul seems to express again in Romans in the 15th chapter when he
says, yes, they were pleased, that is the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.
They were pleased to do so, that is to get together a love offering.
And they are indebted to them, the Jerusalem saints.
He says they are indebted to them.
For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews spiritual things, they are indebted to minister
to them also in material things.
Paul says here is the debt of a favor.
The Gentiles shared in the blessings of the Jewish Messiah.
And now he says that those Gentiles have an obligation to those Jewish believers in Jerusalem
and they have fulfilled that obligation, he says, in sending a contribution to help them
in their poverty.
And then there is debt in the sense of our verse tonight, Romans chapter 8.
The debt of loyalty.
It is debt that is due to a supreme sacrifice on behalf of one.
This is the kind of debt, for example, that a nation owes to the widows of those who have
given their lives in war for that nation.
It is a moral debt, a debt of loyalty.
What the apostle says here is that you and I who have trusted Jesus Christ are under
obligation.
He says number one, we are not under obligation to the flesh.
But number two, implied, we are under obligation to the Holy Spirit.
Those are the two points I want to talk about tonight.
The believer's obligation, number one, is not to the flesh.
It is to the Holy Spirit.
What is the flesh?
We've talked about this before, but let me remind you that the flesh in biblical terms
in this context refers to an unredeemed humanness.
It is the mortal body with its powers, drives, and opportunities.
It is that part of me where even though I'm a Christian, sin operates still.
The flesh.
And he says that I as a believer am not under obligation any longer to that part of me called
the flesh.
Once I was in bondage to the flesh.
That's when I was, as he says earlier in this chapter, in the flesh.
That is unsaved.
I was unregenerate.
Sin operated as a sovereign in me, making me a slave, subjecting me to its desires for
me.
Let me list for you a number of passages that talk about that slavery to sin that those
who are still in the flesh have.
Ephesians 2 verses 1 to 3.
We don't have time to read these tonight, but I want you to refer to them if you wish
to follow up on this message.
Ephesians 4, 17 to 19.
He gives there a further description of life in the flesh.
Titus 3, 3 says that we were enslaved to the flesh in its lust, its sensuality.
First Peter 1 verse 14.
Chapter 4 again, verses 1 to 3 of 1 Peter.
Then here in Romans chapter 6, verse 6 and again in verse 12.
What he says basically in all of these texts is the same.
I was under obligation to the flesh before I was saved, because sin operated in the flesh
as a sovereign over me.
But a dramatic, dramatic transformation took place at my salvation.
He points to that in the conjunction that begins verse 12.
He says, so then, or therefore, brethren, we are under obligation not to the flesh
at this point.
Now that conjunction refers back to what he's talked about in the previous verses.
He spoke about our being saved now, no longer in the flesh, but we're in the Spirit, we're
in Christ.
Now because I am in Christ, there is a new principle that is at work in me, which he
describes earlier in verse 2.
It is the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
That principle sets me free from the law of sin and death that once enslaved me.
A new principle works within me.
I have a new position.
Verse 9 says, you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God
dwells in you, if you're a Christian.
I have a new position now, identifying me with Jesus Christ, those who were baptized
this afternoon, pictured by what they went through, their identification with Christ
in his death, burial, and resurrection.
You and I in Jesus Christ have a new position.
We are in him, no longer in the flesh, no longer in sin.
And then there is a new person.
This transformation has brought about a new person who indwells me, and that person is
Jesus Christ himself, as he explains in verses 9, 10, and 11.
So this transformation, this new dramatic thing that God has done in me and in you when
we were saved, brings about a new principle, a new position, a new person.
Therefore we are not under obligation to the flesh any longer.
It is unreasonable, unthinkable to imagine that I have a further obligation, any loyalty
to my flesh.
It is that flesh which still is in me, though I'm not in it.
It is that flesh that is in me that causes my problems.
It's what gives me trouble in my Christian life.
It brings misery upon me.
I have no obligation anymore to it.
That flesh and death go together, as he explains here.
He says if you are living according to the flesh, verse 13, you must die.
Now is he saying there that if we live according to the flesh that we're going to lose our
salvation?
Of course not.
That would be entirely in contradiction to other portions of the word.
Death seems to be a metaphor here in this context.
He says if you are living according to the flesh, you are about to die, is literally
what he says.
The idea is the loss, the separation from joy and the abundant life, the reward.
And there may be also an implication here of the possibility of an early physical death
as well if I persist in living according to the flesh as a believer.
His main point is this, I am under obligation but it is not to the flesh.
The flesh has done me no good.
It has given me only trouble.
I am now released from its domination.
I am no longer indebted.
I have no loyalty to it anymore.
Therefore I should not live according to what the flesh tries to get me to do.
But he says I do have an obligation to the spirit.
Now that's implied, Paul doesn't finish his sentence actually, but that's what he's
saying here.
He says look to the work in you which the spirit has done.
He says in verse 2, he has set you free.
He says in verse 9, he indwells you.
He says in verse 11 that one day he will affect even my physical resurrection.
He's going to say in verse 14 the spirit guides me as a son of God.
In verse 16 he says the spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am genuinely saved.
And in verse 26 he says the spirit intercedes within me.
Now he says in light of that, because of the spirit's work on your behalf, because you're
in Jesus Christ, you are obligated to the spirit.
What am I to do as one who is indebted to the Holy Spirit?
There's no question about that.
He says by the spirit put to death the deeds of the body and you will live.
Put to death the deeds of the body, he says.
Does that mean that my body is sinful?
No.
Nor are the natural desires that God has given me in my body.
It's appetites.
Those are not inherently sinful.
He's not saying here put to death your body.
He talks about the deeds of the body.
He's talking about what sin operating within my body seeks to use.
You see, sin even uses those natural and good desires and appetites that God gives to me
and perverts them.
Sin seeks to use those good appetites to fulfill its evil intent and desire in me.
So he's saying put to death the activities, the works, the expressions of sin in your
body.
Those solicitations to evil that arise within you from within your mortal body which if
obeyed result in the weakness of your inner man.
He says put them to death.
Notice he does not say put them in their place.
He says put them to death.
He does not say to us rectify them.
He says mortify them.
He says kill them, murder them, execute them.
That is my response to what God has done for me in sanctification.
There are those who say well sanctification is all God's work.
Bless God it is his work but it's not entirely that way.
There are those who say well sanctification is what I have to do.
Well yes but it's not just all that either.
It's a cross between the two.
God has done all that he can do and now it's up to me to respond.
My responsibility is to put to death and that's in the present tense here.
It means to continually put to death those expressions of sin that arise within the appetites
of my body.
Let me again give you some scriptures to follow up on in your own study.
Romans 13, 14.
He says put on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will not fulfill the lusts, the sensual desires
of your flesh.
First Corinthians 9 verses 24 to 29.
Paul said that even as an apostle he had to gain mastery over his body, his physical body
lest sin using its desires and appetites should put him on the shelf for God.
Colossians 3, 5 says something very similar to this.
First Thessalonians 4 verses 3 to 5 and 1 Peter 2, 11.
I am under obligation to the Holy Spirit because of what he has done for me to execute the
sinful expressions that arise within my body.
Notice that my responsibility is not left up merely to my resolve, my determination
to do this.
If it were frankly speaking out of my own experience I don't get very far.
That's why those three words are so critical.
If by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body.
It is my resolve, it is an act of my will, but it is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
who must strengthen me, strengthen you so that we can follow through on that decision.
In a sense the Spirit of life becomes the Spirit of death as he enables us to put to
death the deeds of the body.
This cooperation with the Holy Spirit is my obligation to him.
He says the result of that obedience in my life is that I will live.
He says if you by the Spirit are putting to death the deeds of the body you will live.
You will really have life he says.
No sin seeks to yet fulfill its evil in you.
Put it to death.
Sin will say to you if you experience this you will really enjoy life.
If you go after this you will get out of life a real gusto.
You will get the most.
The word of God says if we recognize the source of that as being sin and put it to death then
by the Spirit then we will know true life.
Life is not to be found in self-actualization and self-realization.
It's not to be found in self-fulfillment and living out our pleasures but real life is
found in yielding to the Spirit of God enabling him to work in us to put to death the deeds
of the body.
That is my obligation to the Holy Spirit.
What are some practical applications of this?
How is it that I cooperate with the Holy Spirit?
Let me just suggest two or three things and we'll stop.
If I am serious about putting to death the deeds of the body that is the expressions
of sin within my body then there are some things I need to do.
Number one I need to watch my companionship.
Those that we run around with influence us.
I want you young people, you young men and women in school to hear me.
Junior high, senior high, listen.
The friends that you choose will influence your life.
The kind of people you choose to be around will inevitably have an impact upon you.
I have known some very sincere well-meaning young people who have for whatever true motive
decided to forsake their Christian friends and to run solely with a crowd that was worldly.
They felt in their hearts, I trust sincerely, that they would have an influence on them
and that they could somehow lift those people from the kinds of things they desired to do,
the kind of people they wanted to be.
Very frankly I have yet to see that work.
Inevitably the worldly crowd will impact the Christian young person.
Now you say are you trying to tell us not to have friends or people that we know who
are like that?
I'm not saying that at all.
I am saying though be careful who your companions are.
Be careful whose lives are really influencing you because of the amount of time you spend
with them.
The Word of God says, and it picks up here actually a proverb from the Greek culture,
but it legitimizes it.
It says bad company corrupts good morals, 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 33.
Be careful of the company that you keep, those that you allow to make an influence upon you.
Watch your companionship.
If you are serious about this matter of your obligation to the Holy Spirit, here is a practical
application for your life, and it's not just teenagers, it's all of us.
The second application is this, be careful not to make provision for your flesh to fulfill
itself.
I refer again to Romans 13 and 14 where it says put on the Lord Jesus Christ and you
will not make no provision for the flesh to fulfill its lust, it says.
Make no provision for the flesh.
You know it's possible for you and me to do that, to plan ahead, to think how we might
be able to fulfill our desires.
We scheme, now we almost do that subconsciously, but the fact is we choose to do it.
We make provision that we might fulfill those appetites within us in an ungodly manner.
That's why it's important that we guard our minds, that we not play with sin.
What the flesh enjoys doing is to remind us of a previous experience of sin that did produce
pleasure however wrong and temporary it may have been.
Almost like a piece of candy, you put it in your mouth and you kind of suck on it and
it tastes good, it creates appetite.
So the flesh puts into your mind memories and it tends to wipe out for you the downside
of it and it gives you only the pleasure side.
You begin to think about that and it begins to create appetite and desire for something
like that again.
Before you know it, you begin to make provision that you might do that.
The Word of God says that we are to be careful to guard our minds.
Philippians 4.8 emphasizes that.
Be careful what you think about.
Preoccupy your mind with Christ.
He says put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Put Him into your mind.
Preoccupy yourself with Him.
And when you sense your mind wandering and you sense the flesh creating its evil desire
within you and you sense yourself being drawn and enticed in that direction, immediately
recognize it and put it to death.
Execute it at that point.
If you're serious about your obligation to the Holy Spirit, that's something you must
work at and that's true with all of us.
It doesn't just happen automatically and forever and never a problem again.
It's something that continually we must do and deal with, all of us.
Then I would urge you thirdly to recognize the ultimate impact of sin in your life.
What happens when I do obey the flesh?
What happens when I do make provision for it and I fulfill its lust?
Whatever that may be, a lust of gossip or sexual desire or covetousness.
Whatever that may be, I make provision for it.
What happens?
Well, as a Christian, the Holy Spirit immediately creates guilt within me and I don't feel so
good.
And I know I've done wrong.
God does that wonderfully to remind us that we need to acknowledge our sin to Him.
We need to deal with that, keep short accounts.
But that's not the ultimate impact of sin, what it does to me.
I need to recognize that the ultimate impact of my fleshly expressions is not upon me nor
is it upon others.
It can affect others, as all of us know.
When you and I get in the flesh, there are times when people better get out of our way.
And we hurt them.
We're sorry about it later.
They're sorry about it.
We apologize, hopefully.
We make up.
But even that is not the ultimate impact of sin.
You see, the ultimate impact of sin is against God.
As David said, against thee and the only of I sin.
Now, there were others involved in his sin too who were impacted.
But he was recognizing that in the final sense, it is God who is impacted by our sin.
That's why he tells us in Ephesians, and grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you are
sealed under the day of redemption.
Realize that the ultimate impact of sin is the sorrow that it creates in the heart of
the very Holy Spirit who has done all of these things for you that we've listed earlier in
the message.
He has caused to grieve and to sorrow within you.
If you and I are serious about our obligation to the Holy Spirit, we have to think about
that, how God, the Holy Spirit, feels when we are disobedient to his Lordship in our
lives and we obey sin.
Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, the most terrible aspect of falling into sin is not so much
that I have failed, or that I have fallen, or that I am miserable, or that I need release,
but that I have failed God and misrepresented him, and that men and women in the world will
know nothing about his praise, his glory, his virtues, his excellencies.
They will say that to be a Christian makes no difference, that Christians are like themselves
after all.
Dr. William Newell said, a holy life without a controlled body is an absolute contradiction.
Please understand that our bodies are not inherently sinful, but they are mortal bodies
that are impacted by sin that yet operates within us as believers.
We can allow sin to be the sovereign, and we can present the members of our body to
sin as its servants.
We can do that, tragic isn't it, that we all do.
How we need to confess that to the Lord and acknowledge it to him and claim his forgiveness.
But beloved, the real obligation we have is to the Holy Spirit.
We might yield to his Lordship, that he might put to death those expressions of sin that
attempt to come forth from my body so that my life is holy, clean, and obedient.
Before you go to sleep tonight, if you have a hymnal at home, I want to encourage you
to read through those words again and meditate on them, for William Longstaff has said so
much and so few words there.
Would you bow with me in prayer?
Lord remind us that this matter of holiness, our obligation to the Holy Spirit is life
long and that there are some things that we must do if we are serious about putting to
death the deeds of sin in our bodies by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Many if not most of us have to acknowledge tonight, indeed all of us, that there are
times we do not cooperate with the Holy Spirit and there are times we make provision for
the flesh.
Thank you for your faithful Holy Spirit who convicts us and reminds us of our need of
acknowledging that sin.
Thank you for restoring us when we do that.
To walk with you, the Lord I pray that we will this week do some of the things that
are written in this hymn, things that we have suggested tonight in the message, each of
us, so that we might grow, that we might become more like the Lord Jesus, that we might fulfill
that debt, that debt of loyalty we have to the Holy Spirit who has done so much for us
and who indwells us.
And to that end we pray your blessing upon us as we go and may the Spirit of God seal
this to our lives and bring forth fruit in us from it.
Amen.
Good night.