How to Fight Sin

(Romans 8.12-17)

Jason Procopio

I’ll be putting the verses on the screen for those who don’t have their Bibles handy, but if you do, keep them open in front of you; it’ll be helpful to have the whole text in front of you today.

When my brother Jeremy was about six years old (I was ten or so), he got a sling-shot for his birthday. My dad let him hold it, but he was careful to tell him, Wait for me to show you how to use it responsibly before you use it. We had to go to the store for something, before my dad got a chance to show Jeremy where to point it and how to use it correctly. I was walking next to my dad on the street, and Jeremy was a few feet behind us.

As we were walking, all of a sudden the glass storefront window next to us shattered, in a million pieces, like in a movie. It startled us, of course, because we couldn’t figure out what had happened. Then we turned, and there was little Jeremy, frozen, holding his slingshot in one hand, with a look of absolute terror on his face. He had picked up a little rock in the parking lot, and figured it was small; he didn’t realize the power he held in his hands. So he let it fly, and broke a massive storefront window my dad had to pay for.

Romans 8 is kind of like that slingshot. It’s an awesome weapon, but most of us don’t know how to wield it. We read the beginning of Romans 8 and it makes us feel good…and we think that’s mainly what it’s there for—to encourage us, to give us a boost when we’re feeling down. And it certainly does that.

But the goal of the first seventeen verses of Romans 8 is not to make us feel good. Its goal is to give us a powerful weapon to wield in our fight against sin.

At the beginning of chapter 8, Paul comes out of the feeling of uncertainty he described in chapter 7, that we can sometimes feel as born-again believers living in a sinful world and in sinful bodies, and he encourages us by reminding us that there is no condemnation for us if we are in Christ, because he has set us free from sin (freed us from our disobedience of God’s commands), so that we might learn to obey God as he did. If we are engaged in the struggle against sin, we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, and the Spirit gives us the power to fight.

That’s what we saw last week: Christ has fulfilled the law, so that we might fulfill the law—he fulfilled the law for us so that the law might be fulfilled in us. He obeyed in order that we might obey. This is going to work, because the Spirit is infinitely more powerful than our sin.

This week, he tells us what it looks like to fight.

But we need to keep something in mind. Last week I said that the Spirit gives us a “sword” to wield in our fight against sin. That’s a little misleading, because it gives the impression that the Spirit hands us the weapons, and then steps back and lets us run into battle alone.

That’s not what happens. Romans 8.1-17 is not about how we fulfill the law, but about how the Spirit fulfills the law in us. We sometimes have the impression that it’s either/or—either the Spirit is working, or I am working. But the way the Bible talks about this is more in terms of cause and consequence: we work, because the Spirit is working. We can do nothing without him, but he won’t fight sin in our place. We do this together.

Every weapon Paul mentions here in our fight against sin are things that the Spirit not only gives us, but that the Spirit uses in us, to train us to fight our sin. And in today’s passage—Romans 8.12-17—Paul describes five things that the Spirit does in us, five weapons he puts in our hands, with which he trains us to fight our sin.

So I have five points today—five weapons, five points.

Now I want it to be clear why I’m talking about these things as “weapons”, and why I’m talking about our fight against our sin. Out of context, it might seem that v. 14-17 at least are simple encouragements; but they’re not. This is just a bit technical, but it’s vital that we see it.

V. 12 begins with “So then”, meaning it’s giving us a logical inference of what came just before. Then v. 13 begins with the word “for”, meaning that v. 13 is the ground of v. 12—he’s telling us the reason why he just said what he said in v. 12. And likewise, v. 14 begins with “for”, so v. 14 is the ground of v. 13. And again, v. 15 begins with “for,” so v. 15 is the ground of v. 14.  And then from 15 on, everything he says follows a united theme: the fact that we are children of God.

So because Paul is giving successive reasons for his argument (“I just said that because this is true, and I just said that because this is true,” and so on), you can do it the other way around: you can start with the one big idea at the end, and then dig further down in Paul’s reasoning, finally getting to the root of it. What that looks like for this passage is this:

• V. 15-17: If we have received faith by the Spirit of God, we are children of God.

• V. 14: If we are children of God, that means we are led by the Spirit.

• V. 13: Those who are led by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body (that is, they fight to kill their sin).

• V. 12: And those who fight to kill their sin do so because they owe it to God.

None of this is just about encouragement. The goal of everything he’s saying here is that the children of God put their sin to death, because God has been so good as to save them from their sin.

So the context—not the biblical context, but the life context, where these things are put into practice—should be: we are tempted to sin, we’re called to resist temptation and obey God. In that moment, when we are tempted to sin, how do we fight? What do we remember that helps us make the tough decision and do what God calls us to do, rather than what we want right then?

Knowledge of Our Debt (v. 12)

The first weapon the Holy Spirit puts to work in us is, he shows us our debt.

Let’s start reading at v. 11, which we saw last week:

11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.

So we ended last time on this amazing promise, that if we have been saved by God, if God has given us faith in Christ and repentance of our sin, then the Holy Spirit dwells in us. And this Holy Spirit—the same Spirit who raised Jesus Christ from the dead—will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. He will give us what we need to live for him.

This is an unbelievable, almost incomprehensible, kindness that God has shown us, and he showed it to us before we ever did anything to try and earn it. He did not ask for payment before saving us.

But that does not mean he expects nothing of us now. Remember chapter 6. When Christ set us free from sin, we stopped being slaves of sin and became slaves of God. Every single human being who has ever lived either serves one or another, God or sin. No one serves no one.

I know that’s tough to swallow—we want to hear that God saved us, and expects nothing in return. But it’s doesn’t work that way, because he saved us for a reason.

I lived in Oklahoma as a child, and nearly every kid in Oklahoma dreams of having their own horse. Now say one of these kids actually gets a horse for a gift. And the person who gives it to them says, “I’ve given you this horse; your job now is to learn to ride it. Don’t spend all your time in the corral, brushing it and petting it and talking to it. You can do those things too, and that’s fine—but it’s not why I gave you the horse. I gave you the horse so you could learn to ride it. It’ll take work, and it’ll take time, but once you start riding, you’ll see there’s almost nothing better.”

That’s what’s happening here: God saved us for a reason, and that reason is infinitely better than riding a horse (and we’ll see why in a minute). But that knowledge is the first weapon the Spirit puts to work in us: the knowledge that if we have been saved, this is not optional. We are in God’s debt. We can never repay him for what he’s done; our debt requires us to respond to his grace by living, joyfully and abundantly, for him (cf. v. 13).

The Promise of Life (v. 13)

The second weapon the Spirit puts to work in us is the promise of life. V. 13:

13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

So he’s hopping on what he said in v. 12, emphasizing the fact that if we’ve been saved, our lives cannot continue as they were before.

The fact that this is a conditional sentence (“If you do this, than X will happen”), can be confusing, because we can have the impression that we can have faith in Christ and still end up failing, and dying. That’s not what Paul is saying.

Zadie sometimes complains when we tell her she’s getting bigger now, so she has to do things she didn’t when she was little: she has to brush her teeth by herself, she has to clean up her room by herself. So she’ll complain, and often she’ll say, “I don’t want to get bigger. I want to little.”

To which we respond: “Well, if you stay little forever, you won’t get to do the really fun things that grown-ups get to do, like staying up late and eating ice cream whenever you want.”

Of course, when we say that, we are never suggesting that she actually might not grow up; she’s a human being, and she’s alive, so as long as she’s alive, she’ll keep growing. We use a conditional sentence to show her why obedience is good, and to help her obey willingly.

That’s exactly what Paul’s doing here. He does it a lot—he does the same thing in v. 9, 10 and 11. He’s not suggesting that those who have been saved by Christ, who have received the Holy Spirit, might not “put to death the deeds of the body.” He’s using the conditional—he’s using the “if”—to show us what’s at stake, and to help us see why we do what we do.

It’s a promise, given in a conditional form, of what will happen to us if we have received the Spirit. If the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead lives in us, then he will give life to our mortal bodies (we saw this in v. 11). And in v. 13, he tells us what that looks like: we put to death the deeds of the body, and we live. We fight our sin, and we resist temptation, and we grow in holiness…and consequently, we live. We have life.

This promise of life is the second weapon he puts to work in us.

Knowledge of Our Adoption (v. 14-16)

The third weapon he puts to work in us is the knowledge that God has adopted us. V. 14:

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God…

Depending on what kind of church background you come from, it’s easy to get sidetracked by these verses. (If this isn’t where your brain goes, forgive me for this quick detour, but I know at least some of you will think this way.)

I grew up in a charismatic background, and I’ve heard people use this term—the spirit of slavery—to mean a demonic influence that makes someone feel like a slave. (They do the same thing in other areas, talking about different types of demons in the same way you’d talk about different types of pests you can find in a house: they’ll say, “So-and-so has a spirit of alcoholism”, or a spirit of oppression, or a spirit of self-doubt, etc.) The Bible doesn’t say much about this—it never talks about demons in quite this way—so I don’t feel comfortable affirming that that’s is how demons work.

But even if that is the way it works—which, again, I don’t think it is, but even if that’s the case—that’s not what Paul’s talking about here. He’s comparing and contrasting what we were before our conversion and what we are now. We talked about this a few weeks ago: in chapter 6, Paul said we are all slaves—either slaves of sin, or slaves of God. What he’s saying here is that slavery to God is not like the slavery we used to be under. In the kingdom of God, slavery doesn’t look like slavery, it looks like family.

Paul’s point is the Christian’s relationship with God is nothing like the relationship a sinner has with sin. If we forget that, and find ourselves falling into fear—fear that God will keep punishing us for our sins (even though he’s already punished Christ in our place), or fear that he’ll treat us unfairly, or fear that we won’t measure up—those fears are lying to us. That is not the kind of relationship with God that the Spirit brings.

What the Spirit brings is a familial relationship between us and God. Before, we were slaves under a cruel master, sin. Now, we look at our Master, and we call him “Father.”

I would do anything for my kids. I will do anything and everything I have to do to protect them. And I’m a bad father, a father who still sins against them, who still sins against my family. Many of us have a hard time even imagining the kind of relationship Paul’s describing here, because of the relationship we had with our own dads. But God is not like our dads; he’s not just a good Father, he is a perfect Father. We need not fear.

The Spirit gives us this gift, this weapon in our fight to live for God: we have been adopted by God. We are no longer slaves like we were before—we are children of a perfect Father, who will do anything and everything he has to in order to keep us safe. He will not fail his children.

The Promise of Our Heritage (v. 17a)

The fourth weapon the Spirit gives us is linked to the one we just saw. We receive this knowledge that we have been adopted by the Father, that we are children of God…and with that knowledge comes the promise of a heritage. Let’s read from v. 16 again:

16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…

So what exactly are we “heirs” of?

It’s a complex question, and we could go on about it for a long time, so I’ll try to keep it short. (I’m paraphrasing Thomas Schreiner here, his commentary on this verse is really helpful.)

Paul says that we have been adopted into God’s family. If we look at the whole of the Bible, who is God’s family? It’s the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham (remember, we talked about this in chapter 4). So if we have now been adopted into the family of Abraham, then we have inherited the promise given to Abraham; and this promise is unbelievable, because, Paul said in Romans 4.13, Abraham is heir of the world. But here he goes even further, because he doesn’t say that we are heirs of the promises of God; we are heirs of God himself. Schreiner writes: “The supreme benefit of the covenant with Abraham is not inheriting the land but having God as one’s God (cf. Gen. 17:7).”

And then Paul tells us how this happens—we are heirs of God, that is, fellow heirs with Christ. Our inheritance of God—of everything God is put to our disposal because God is our Father—comes to us through union with Christ; if we are united to Christ, we share in the inheritance which he purchased for us on the cross.

If this sounds confusing, think about it this way. Two of my oldest friends have been married for twenty-plus years, and after years of waiting, they finally adopted a son when he was a newborn. And then they adopted a baby girl, and then they adopted another son after that. And my friends, Jeremy and Elizabeth, are by all measures amazing parents; Jeremy was born to be a dad; Elizabeth was born to be a mom. They take to parenting like a fish takes to water.

These kids have grown up in this home; they are the legal children of Jeremy and Elizabeth. So the day that their parents die, they’ll inherit what belonged to them—they’ll get the house, the car, the bank account, whatever. But no matter how much they inherit on that day, it is nothing compared to how good it is simply to have Jeremy and Elizabeth as parents. The kids are old enough now to understand the legal realities of being fully adopted, but they don’t care about that—they just love their mom and dad, and they are happy kids, not because they’ll receive their stuff one day, but because they have these two amazing people as their mom and dad.

THIS is what we receive when we are united to Christ. Eternal life, in a happy home, with a perfect Father. That is the fourth weapon the Spirit gives us.

The fifth might seem surprising:

Suffering, in View of Our Glorification (v. 17b)

The fifth weapon the Spirit puts to work in us in our fight to live for God is suffering, in view of being glorified with Christ. V. 16 again:

16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

So here Paul calls up what we call an “eschatological” promise—the promise that one day we will be glorified with Christ. That means that one day, we will be as Christ is now.

What is Christ like now? We saw it in the gospels—after his death, Christ came back to life in a body that was perfected. He has a physical body (his disciples could touch and see him), but his body was made perfect; it was different enough that some people didn’t recognize him at first, but it was the same body, made perfect—he still had his scars from the crucifixion, but he was healed, no longer wounded, no longer dead or dying. And he ascended into heaven in that body (we see in Acts 1).

That is what Christ is like right now—a physical human being, with a body that is no longer subject to death or decay or sickness—and one day, when he returns, we will be made like him. Our bodies will be resurrected and made perfect in the same way, and we will live forever with him in the presence of God as his Bride: without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish (cf. Eph. 5.27).

That is our destination. But the path that gets us there, Paul tells us here, is a path of suffering.

How many of you wish Paul had stopped writing, and not finished verse 17? Why did he feel the need to tack on that last condition for salvation?

It’s not because it’s all up to us. Paul’s not suggesting there’s a chance we won’t be willing to suffer, and so we might not be glorified with Christ. Didn’t he just say it in v. 11?

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead WILL ALSO GIVE LIFE to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

It’s going to work. Paul’s not telling us this to make us doubt.

He’s telling us this because until the day that Christ returns, we’re still living in a fallen world, living in imperfect bodies. So following God is going to be a struggle. It’s going to hurt. We may suffer reproach and scorn for doing what is right. We may suffer separation from our family members who want nothing to do with us (even some Christian family members who disagree with us on what it looks like to follow God). We may even suffer persecution and death for our faith—it happens every day, in many places around the world.

Depending on who we are and where we live, that may or may not happen. So if no one’s following you and torturing you because you’re a Christian, that’s okay. But at the absolute minimum, there is one kind of suffering that we will all face if we are children of God, and that is the suffering that comes with obedience to God’s commands.

We’ve spent the last several weeks talking about this: putting our sin to death is not easy. It’s a struggle. It hurts. Sometimes we feel like we’re going mad, because we have conflicting desires pulling us in two different directions, and God commands us to follow one, and not the other.

Following God will always be painful. Always.

But this suffering is good, because its end result is, being glorified with Christ. One second in heaven with Christ will make decades of the worst possible suffering look like nothing in comparison.

How to fight sin

So if you look at the list of these weapons the Spirit puts to work in us to put our sin to death, there are two questions you can ask.

The first is this: What does this fight look like, on a practical level?

You’re tempted to sin—any sin. You’re tempted to give in to anger or resentment or bitterness; you’re tempted to be prideful and imagine yourself as better than someone else; you’re tempted to lie; you’re tempted to sexual sin. Whatever.

In the moment of temptation, you remember that given everything God has done to save you, you are in his debt. And your debt is not to give into temptation, but to obey him, because if he gives you the car, he expects you to drive it. So you resist temptation, and you obey.

In the moment of temptation, you remember that the stakes could not be higher, and the promise could not be greater: the end result of the path of sin is death, but the Spirit has promised you life if you put to death the deeds of the body. So you resist temptation, and you obey.

In the moment of temptation, you remember that you have been adopted by the most high God. You are no longer stuck as a slave to a cruel master; you are now a son or a daughter of God. And because he is a good Father, you want to please him, and you want to be like him. So you resist temptation, and you obey.

In the moment of temptation, you remember that the promise to all those who are children of God are heirs of the greatest promise imaginable: that God is your God, and you belong to him. You hold that promise—the end result of everything the gospel has to offer is God himself—and because you want to take hold of your inheritance, you resist temptation and you obey.

In the moment of temptation, you remember that suffering is normal for the Christian life. It is difficult to obey God. It is difficult to resist temptation. So you don’t need to be discouraged if it’s hard. Instead of that, remember where all this difficulty and all this suffering is headed: to the day when Christ will return, and make us new, and we will live with him and love him forever—fullness of joy at his side, pleasures forevermore at his right hand (cf. Ps. 16.11).

It’s an exercise, brothers and sisters. God gives us specific things on which to set our minds (remember v. 5), and when our minds set on him, when our eyes are fully focused on him, sin looks less and less lustrous by comparison. These are the weapons he gives us; this is how we do it.