Daily Bread

Living by the Spirit – Romans 8:13

“For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” – Romans 8:13

Many times we are being warned about not to live according to our flesh. For so many instances, God has saved us from temptations and has given us a way out in every situation because He knows that we are always tempted since we are living in this world. Our flesh will always crave what is wrong and what only satisfies our bodies but never what is right and pleasing in the eyes of God. 

This message might be repetitive ones, but God purposely let this message repeat over and over again so that it will really stick inside our shallow minds. So, our verse today reminds us about if we live according to our flesh, we will die but if we live by the Spirit, we put to death our misdeeds of the body and we will live. However, many people confuse this and retort the Gospel into a different meaning. Thus, we must know that our salvation does not come from all the horrible things we put to death. It does not come from all the righteous things we did, for there is no one righteous. 

Now, we must focus on the fact that Paul reminded us through this verse that even if whatever we did good or whatever good we have inside, it will never be the basis of our salvation for it is by grace we have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8-9). So, as we can observe from this verse, we can see the part where it says, “if we live by the Spirit” shows that we are still independent of God. We need Him to live and we need Him to always keep us in check. 

So, Paul really mentioned that if we continue to live in the flesh, we will really die. We will die a spiritual death but if we live by the Spirit, we will be able to put to death the misdeeds of our body. We will have the power to say no and to become victors of Him. The fact that we need the Spirit of God, that we need God to put to death the misdeeds of our bodies, it just means that we are really dependent on God. Therefore, we must really realize that God does not mean in this verse that we will not be saved if we will not be able to put to death all the misdeeds of our body, but what He meant by this is that as Christians it will really manifest in us. 

We will not delight and desire what our flesh wants but we want to desire what God wants and we will always put God’s glorification as our main priority and goal. Thus, our joy should be grounded to God’s will and our desires should be to follow what God has commanded us to do. In short, as Christians, we should not dwell on our sinful desires but dwell by the Spirit of God. Through it, we will be able to stop sinning, we will be able to stop glorifying our flesh. We will indeed live for Jesus Christ has already died for us and truly understanding the grace of God will manifest in our lives. There will be really a transformation from darkness to light. 

Again, it is not something we can achieve on our own, but it is something we can only achieve if we are in God and if we live by His Spirit. That is the crucial part of it, being not in the presence of God, it will be impossible to overcome our sinful nature but in God, He has given us power and strength to resist temptation and to defeat sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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