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The external, physical aspects of our life are often reflective of the condition of our spirit and strongly influence the condition of our spirit. But that does not make it right for us to give them higher priority than our spirit, for in doing so we fall into the deceptive trap of sin which is reversing the natural order of creation. This is not to say that the external has no importance and can be ignored; that is foolish thinking. It simply means that external matters must always be kept in proper perspective, proper relationship to our spirit.
Jesus demonstrated in His life on earth the proper way to live in balance giving priority to the condition of His spirit above the externals. This caused a great deal of conflict with many around Him who insisted that He was doing it all wrong. But He never wavered from His life of giving higher priority to the things of the spirit, not only His own spirit but the spirits of everyone around Him. In doing so, and in total dependence on the Holy Spirit's power continuously received from outside of Himself, He demonstrated how we are to live the abundant life that He offers to implant into our spirits.
In studying Romans 7 I am beginning to realize that the Law is designed for the external manifestation or description of the internal, spirit attributes of God. Since we are created in the image of God and in His likeness, the Law is a description in the external realm of what we will look like when we are functioning perfectly as designed. But while the Law of God is an external description of the internal realities of God, it is still external. Because of that the law is powerless to change us except to trigger our sinful natures to rebel against it. Externals and a life prioritized around them is the description of what living in the flesh looks like. This is the main point of the whole book of Romans – a contrast between living in the flesh, the external realm, and living in the spirit, the internal priorities.
When this paradigm is used to look at Romans, even at life in general, there are a lot of things that begin to make much more sense and come into proper perspective. To me is seems apparent that the spirit part of our being utilizes our heart and our right brain much more than our left brain. Of course there is much more unknown about this part of us than there is known, but I wonder if other parts of our physical body are also more prominent in the spirit part of us than we may suspect. Many people believe that our spirit is not even a part of our body at all, but I think that to take such a position is to go too far in separating what God has joined together and gets us into trouble.
What Paul is striving to do in Romans is to address two groups of people who have both been living with emphasis on their externals in higher priority than living in proper relationship to their spirit. It is what he calls living in the flesh. That is not to say that they have been ignoring their spirit altogether. The first group apparently lives in abandoned indulgence to the desires of their perverted spirit. Their spirit has been hijacked by sin and is obsessed in its appetite for satisfying legitimate needs of the spirit and body through external, physical and emotional perversions that further distort and damage the heart that God implanted in them originally.
The second group have chosen the path of strict, external-oriented religious activities and voluminous head-knowledge about religious things in their attempt to satisfy the same deep longings of the soul. The needs and longings of the spirit can never be truly satisfied through any of these means but they try even harder to bring themselves into what they believe to be a right condition before God and men so they can experience the peace that their heart was designed to have. But because satisfaction in the spirit can never be achieved through external activities given priority over an internal relationship with God, they find themselves trapped in an endless loop of ever-increasing obsessive religion which poisons their spirit and hardens their heart against the very thing they need the most.
Because the Law is a left-brain explanation of the spirit-characteristics of God, it is incapable of possessing the power to change us like the Spirit of God can do. It was never designed to be the means of our transformation; that is the job of the Holy Spirit. But because of our penchant for prioritizing the externals above the internals, we look at the Law – the description of God and by extension our true blueprint – and feel compelled to obey it by any means we can devise. Because we are not designed to be led by our left-brain which primarily services the external part of our existence, we find ourselves constantly frustrated in our attempts to align ourselves with this description of what we know we are supposed to look like. The affect of focusing on the externals and the ideal of what our symptoms would look like if we were living as we are designed to live is that we live in constant failure to thrive and cannot truly enjoy life from our heart. As long as we give priority to the externals arena over the condition of our spirit and our relationship with God and others, we will continue to live in the flesh, for that is what living in the flesh is all about.
We were never designed to live in the flesh in the way that we find ourselves under the spell of sin. We were created to be led by our spirit in perfect synchronization with God's Spirit. Sin has caused us to attempt to live life completely backwards to how we are designed, and because we are living backwards we encounter endless complications and problems and symptoms that tend to drain us of life rather than energize us with more life. Salvation is the means whereby God desires to restore us to living in proper relationships, not only to Him but to our own design and proper function. Sin has overwhelming power that causes us to resist God's efforts to save us and restore us to life as we were created to live it. But it is only overwhelming in the sense that we cannot correct our condition by our own efforts. Sin and Satan's kingdom are far too strong and too wily to outmaneuver or escape without the surrender of our lives and hearts to the Spirit of God. Only the Godhead through the means of Redemption has the ability to lift us out of our hopeless condition of deception and backwards living.
This is the message that Paul launches into with great excitement in chapter 8. But for now I am focusing on the place of the Law and why it has the effect that it does in our attempts to get right with God. Because the Law is external-oriented it can never do the job of the Holy Spirit. But because sin causes us to give priority to externals over internals, we “naturally” tend to focus on the Law and all sorts of other externals over paying attention to the condition of our own spirit and turning to the Spirit of God to receive life and strength and satisfaction. As a result we have found ourselves “married” to the wrong husband and trapped in a very harsh marriage of rule-keeping when our hearts were designed and craving to be ravished by the love that can only come from being led by the Spirit.
God, I want this to not just be so much theory but for You to work in me to demonstrate this as reality in my life. I have lived all my life, like so many others, thinking that the externals are more important than the condition of my spirit. Forgive me and put a new spirit in me. Replace my heart of stone with a heart of tender flesh and breath Your Spirit into me as You promise in Ezekiel 36. Fill me with Your presence and joy and peace today for Your name's sake.
