How does that finished work of Christ accomplished two thousand years ago on a Roman cross become real and operative in my life today? How does the death of Christ become the defeat of sin in me?
There are debts that cannot be repaid—only carried with gratitude. My wife, Lori, is one such debt. In 1992, she packed her life into what could be carried and followed me to Kenya. A year later, to Zambia. She did not have to. She chose to. And she has stood beside me through seasons bright enough to make you forget the cost and seasons dark enough to make you count it. I would do anything for her—not because I must, but because I am glad to.
A man named Bruce Richards is another such debt. He was my high school teacher, my coach—the kind of man whose voice carried authority in a gymnasium and whose patience outlasted failure on a baseball diamond. He came into my life at a time when my father had been removed from our home because of his violence, and the absence he left was not quiet. It was loud with everything a boy needs and cannot find for himself. Bruce looked at that boy and decided to invest anyway. He gave a sixteen-year-old responsibilities and opportunities that no high school student would normally receive. He became a mentor, then a friend, then the reason I entered ministry at all. After high school, he brought me to New Hampshire to serve alongside him—to lead, to teach, to preach. He handed me a future I had not earned.
I owe Bruce a debt I will never repay. I am glad to carry it.
But there is a greater debt. A debt owed not to a friend or a wife, but to God himself. Paul names it without softening: “So then, brothers, we are debtors” (Romans 8:12). The question the text immediately demands is this—debtors for what? What has God done that places us in his debt?
The answer is in the chapter before. Romans 7 records one of the most honest confessions in all of Scripture. Paul—apostle, church-planter, theologian, a man who had been caught up to the third heaven and seen things he could not repeat—admits to a war he cannot win:
So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. —Romans 7:25
His renewed mind wanted to obey God. His flesh dragged him back. He woke with fresh resolve and found it spent by noon. He stood over the same ground he had consecrated, watching his own feet cross the line again. The same sin. The same defeat. The same hollow shame afterward. He thought what he vowed never to think. He did what he swore he would never do again.
This is not a description of an immature believer. This is Paul. And if you are honest, it is you. It is all of us.
His cry in verse 24 is the sound of a man who has exhausted himself trying to be holy in his own strength: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” It is not the cry of someone who has given up on God. It is the cry of someone who has given up on himself—which is precisely where God can begin to work.
The answer comes in verse 25, and it is not a technique or a strategy. It is a person. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Jesus delivers. That is the declaration.
God’s answer to sin was not a revised moral standard. It was a crucified Son. Picture it plainly: a man who had never thought a sinful thought, never spoken a corrupted word, never acted from a motive less than pure—nailed to a Roman cross under the accumulated weight of every sin ever committed by everyone who would ever believe. Our sin was placed on him. Our condemnation fell on him. Our death was his death. He bore the punishment we deserved to bear, and in bearing it, he satisfied every righteous demand that stood against us. His substitutionary death was not a gesture. It was a verdict: paid in full.
This raises the question that presses on every believer: how does that finished work—accomplished two thousand years ago on a Roman cross—become real and operative in my life today? How does the death of Christ become the defeat of sin in me?
Romans 8 gives the answer: by the Holy Spirit. God applies the work of Christ by sending his Spirit to dwell within his people. The Father ordained salvation. The Son purchased it. The Holy Spirit applies it. And Romans 8:12–17 shows us what that application looks like in practice.
The Spirit does not merely give us life. He transforms our identity. He takes slaves and makes them sons. Read the text:
So then, brothers, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 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. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 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!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 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. —Romans 8:12–17
Three realities emerge from this text. The Spirit frees us from slavery. The Spirit adopts us as sons. The Spirit assures us as heirs. Each is a gift. Each carries a demand.
We begin where Paul begins: with our debt. The phrase “so then” in verse 12 anchors everything that follows to what has already been established in chapter eight. Because the Spirit has delivered us from condemnation and granted us life, we are therefore debtors. The grace we have received is not free in the sense of cheap. It cost the Son of God his life. And it calls us to live accordingly.
The Spirit Frees Us from Slavery
We are empowered by the Spirit.
Verse 13 states the terms plainly: “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.” Two paths. One ends in death; one ends in life. Paul offers no middle ground, no third option, no gradual drift. There is the flesh, and there is the Spirit. Choose.
The only distinction that ultimately matters is not nationality or denomination or church attendance. It is this: are you living according to the flesh, or by the Spirit? Those are the only two kinds of people in the world.
The death Paul speaks of is not merely physical—though that too is coming for all of us, arriving on a day we have not marked in our calendars. He means spiritual death. Eternal death. The second death. A state in which God’s presence is permanently withdrawn and his wrath permanently sustained. Revelation 21:8 names those who will face it:
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
This is where the flesh leads. Not to satisfaction. Not to freedom. To the lake of fire. The flesh promises what it cannot deliver and delivers what it never promised. It seduces, then destroys.
To live according to the flesh is to move, however slowly, toward two deaths: the body’s death first, and then eternal separation from God. Every compromise with sin is a step in that direction. There is no neutral ground.
The Christian life is a war. Not a border skirmish or a minor inconvenience—a campaign for the soul’s permanent allegiance. Paul says we must put sin to death—actively, deliberately, relentlessly. Not manage it. Not negotiate with it. Kill it.
Verse 13 places this responsibility squarely on the believer: “you put to death the deeds of the body.” This is not passive. This is not something done for you while you wait. But notice the means: by the Spirit. You fight. God empowers the fight. Philippians 2:12–13 holds both truths together:
Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.
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