The Body of this Death

In the previous message we saw that the sentence of death imposed on Adam and Eve at the Fall in the Garden of Eden was passed on to all human nature. We mentioned that this death is spiritual death or separation from God, the source of life, and it also includes physical death eventually. Because of the importance of understanding the nature of spiritual death in order to appreciate the extent of the grace of God in raising us into life at salvation, we will continue in this message and perhaps a few more to explore the Bible’s description of man being born into this world dead in sin.

Paul dramatically highlighted his frustration and helplessness in dealing by himself with spiritual death in Romans 7. There he referred to it as “the body of this death.” He lamented with an agonizing sense of despair in Romans 7:24: “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?”

Paul’s account of his experiences which eventually led to this cry of despair is one of a nagging struggle between his intention for good and his passion for evil. It was a frustratingly constant struggle in which his good intentions kept on being defeated by his evil inclinations. This was humbling to a man who pursued the precepts of his religion with great zeal and strictness.

How can he get out of that embarrassing moral quagmire? He mustered his knowledge of the law; he summoned his sensitive conscience to right and wrong; he engaged renewed psychological resolutions to do the good and shun evil; and he exercised strict adherence to his religion. But all his efforts proved vain as these shameful vices seemed to relentlessly pull him down.

Who is the religiously zealous or ethically disciplined man or woman who has not known such a moral agony? It is the inherent symptom of humanity’s downfall into death – the painful and shameful illness of a human nature, fallen into spiritual death after coming to a haunting knowledge of good and evil by disobedience in the Garden of Eden.

Human philosophy and even most religions have ignored the reality of the morally crippling effect of spiritual death on humanity. This highfalutin idea of the inherent good in man is still a popular one in both the religious and secular world. And while social, religious, and psychological rehabilitation techniques may achieve limited success in reforming certain human behaviors, they have had absolutely no effect in ridding man of the body of this death.

Having to inescapably deal with the body of this death is a wretched experience which ought to humble every human being – rich and poor, educated and uneducated, noble and common, civilized and primitive, church-goer and publican. King David in shameful confession of his moral failure acknowledged: “Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me” (Psalms 51:5). He was admitting that the sin he had committed was not just an incidental error, but the result of a fundamental corruption of his nature – a thorough depravity of his character running back to the conception of his being in the womb. He honestly faced the reality. And that’s the condition for the solution to this problem in all humanity.

Because, when the humiliating domination of the body of this death within us leads us like Paul to give up on self and cry out in helplessness, hope appears in the light of total dependence on the grace of God in Christ Jesus. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-25). Rescue comes not by more intense discipline or stricter laws, but solely through Jesus Christ by grace and grace alone – grace to help the helpless.

We will stop here and continue looking at the body of this death next time. But it certainly magnifies the role of the grace of God in our salvation.

Father, I have known the humbling wretchedness and frustration of consistent moral failure brought about by the operation of the body of this death in me. I thank you for the hope and effectiveness of the deliverance your grace has brought to me through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.