TRANSFORMED INTO FIRE
I’d like to begin this morning with a reading from Romans 7:
Romans 7:14. . .We know that the law is spiritual, yet I am fleshly—sold to sin. 15 For I don’t understand my own behavior; for I do what I don’t want to do. Indeed, what I hate is what I do! 16 So if I don’t wish to do the things I do, I am [plainly] agreeing that the law is good. 17 So it is now no longer I doing it, but the sin that dwells in me. 18 For I know that good doesn’t dwell in me—that is in my flesh. For wanting to do [the good] is present in my flesh, but actually doing the good is not! 19 For I don’t do the good I want to do; rather the evil I don’t want to do is precisely what I do! 20 Moreover, if what I do not wish to do is precisely what I do, [I repeat], it is no longer I doing this thing, but the sin that dwells in me. . . 22 For even though in my inner being, I delight in the law of God, 23 I see another law at work in my body warring against the law of my mind and imprisoning me in the law of the sin that is in this flesh of mine. 24 What a wretched person I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?!
If you are like most Christians (including me), Paul express here thoughts and feelings that you have experienced. Maybe they describe the depressing undercurrent of your life that you try to suppress, but that comes to the surface now and then in spite of your best efforts to deny it. Or maybe these feelings come to you only as an occasional spiritual attack. Or perhaps you’re somewhere in between. Wherever you may be on this continuum, it occurs to most of us at least every once in a while that life with God is supposed to be better than what we’re experiencing. In our heads, we know we’re supposed to understand that God loves us, and that doing his will should be a delight--and a no-brainer! Yet we continue to do really stupid things that only cause us--and others--trouble. Or we want to live as we know God wants us to, and yet we find that we are continually falling short. We are stuck in a place of striving, but never arriving. Some of us may even have resigned ourselves to a life of continual failure, made bearable by the consolation that someday we’ll die and go be with Jesus, and things will be better then. And so most of us periodically find ourselves crying out with Paul “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
But before we look at Paul’s answer to this question, we need to clear up a common misconception. Because Paul uses “flesh” and “this body of death” to identify the locus of his problem, many people assume that Paul is teaching that our bodies, with their biological urges are just evil. If he could just get rid of his body, he’d be rid of sin!
But the phrases “the flesh” and “this body of death” and “the world” should not lead you to think that sin and death are to be identified with your physical body, or with the material world. The entire universe, including our bodies, was created by God and pronounced “very good” by him in the beginning. Yes, it is fallen and full of problems now (or, to use Biblical language, “sin and death”). But in their essence, our bodies, our minds, our spirits, are all very good, as is all of creation. And scripture makes it perfectly clear that God intends to renew all of creation--including our bodies, and mountains, and clouds, and animals, and houses, and trees--and EVERYTHING!
So Paul’s description of his struggle against the flesh is not a struggle against the physical body, because that body is a gift of God, not a curse.
So let’s look again at the passage to see what Paul does mean: Throughout it, he speaks as if he is two people : There is the Paul who wants to follow God, who wants to do the right thing, and who delights in the law of God. And then, there is the Paul who does what the first Paul doesn’t want to do, the Paul who is fleshly and sold to sin. Paul seems to regard these as two different selves, almost as if he’s schizophrenic.
But we know he’s not. In fact, since most of us have experienced comparable frustrations with our own behavior, we have thought very similar things, “Good grief, what’s wrong with me? I’ve got high cholesterol! I knew that eating a second bowl of ice cream is bad for me, but I did it anyway.” Or, “I knew that I shouldn’t have snapped at my spouse when he (or she) was late AGAIN. I’ve told myself over & over to be more patient, but I just can’t seem to do it when push comes to shove.” Or, “I know I shouldn’t be watching TV when I need to be working on my sermon--or finishing that school assignment--or grading papers--or. . . “ well, you name it! We know we’re not two people at times like these--yet we almost feel like we are.
Now the interesting thing about this is, that as a matter of fact, in one sense, we really are two people! Paul uses a few other phrases to refer to this “second self” that most of us experience. In Romans 6:6, he says, “This we know: that our old self was crucified with him, in order that the body of sin might be emptied of its power, in order that we might no longer be enslaved to sin.” (Notice that “the body of sin” is very similar to “this body of death.” Paul is referring to the same entity here.) In Colossians 3, he says, “. . . Having put off the old self with its practices, do not be untruthful with each other. Rather put on the new self, which has been made anew, that you may understand all things with the same mind as the one who has created that new self.” So the Paul who delights in the law of God is his new self; and his old self is the one who does what his new self doesn’t want to do--it is his body of sin- his self who has been crucified with Christ.
I recently read “Transformed into Fire” by Judith Hougen. This book deals in depth with the old self versus the new self, the body of death versus the life in Christ Jesus. She uses the terminology the “false self” and the “true self” to describe these aspects of our experience. Her discussion beautifully opens up to our culture--which is quite different from Paul’s--the significance of these two selves in Romans 7.
She points out that the “old self”, the “body of death,” “the flesh” is, in fact, false. The Bible uses the term “dead”. That self--which she calls “the false self” has been crucified with Christ. Because it is dead, it is powerless. Its insistence that it has the power to rule our lives is, in fact, a lie. The REAL us, the ESSENTIAL us, the US that exists because it is the person who God created us to be, is the “true self,” or in Biblical language, “the new self in Christ.” Because that is the person God has created, the true self is who we really are.
Listen to how Hougen further describes the nature of the false self and the true self:
*The false self is “a façade that we construct in order to gain love and acceptance in the world. . . [It is] a mask of counterfeit adequacy. This mask is constructed of all the characteristics and qualities that we fiercely clutch as ours and want others to believe that we possess. It is our unreal identity, controlling and defining us. . . . [The false self is born out] of the negative messages we receive from culture, parents, and other authority figures—[and those messages boil down to three ideas]:
*We are irredeemably defective;
*We need to earn love in order to receive love;”
*and God is not enough. [Note to readers: this last idea is not in Hougen’s book—it is my own insertion]
*But the true self is “the person whom God thought up and loved from the foundation of the world. It is Christ dwelling within you. . . All thoughts of identity apart from this single, magnificent truth are shadow and illusion. . . Immersed in . . God, you live and move and have your being. . . . the most accurate way to think about your true self, . . . is, “I am the beloved of Christ”. Can you open yourself to this wondrous truth? You are the beloved. The glory of God is at home in you.” p. 107
Any why is it important to understand this? Because, as Hougen says, “the spiritual life begins with identity, . . . and all action, each thought, every prayer--is formed and informed by the foundation of identity.” Paul confirms this in Romans 6:11, where, after stating that our old selves have been crucified with Christ he says “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. “Consider yourselves,” could as well be expressed by “identify yourselves as.” Moreover, again and again in Romans, Paul says that God considers us to be righteous. Paul’s assumption through the book is that because God consider us to be righteous, we really are. That is, the righteousness of Christ is part our of true identity--and he insists that we need to accept that fact--because out of our identity, all of our actions will arise.
To the extent that we accept the lies of the false self--that we are irredeemably defective and that we must earn God’s love, and that God is not enough-- to that extent we will be trapped in a boxing ring with the false self (otherwise known as “the flesh”, the “body of death,” “sin”). And this is an opponent who will pummel us without mercy, until we will cry “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
On the other hand, to the extent that we experience the reality of the true self --to that extent our feelings and actions will be controlled by our true self -- the one who knows that we are God’s beloved, and that nothing and no one in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ.
And that is the essence of Paul’s answer to the question, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?!, for he says,
“25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! For indeed, I [in my real, essential self] serve God. Even though in my flesh [my false self] I am [enslaved] to sin. 8:1 Yet there is no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has freed you from the law of sin and death!”
Another way of saying this is that through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the power of the false self--the self that lives apart from God, and claims to be us--is broken! In some way we will never fully understand, God’s giving of himself for us in Jesus has made it possible for us to walk away from that false self, and to begin to live in the new self--the self that lives and moves and has its being in the love of God. Hence, Paul’s statement, “Even though in my false self I am enslaved to sin, yet there is no condemnation at all for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Why is this true? Because our false selves are not us! And being our true selves, we can understand that our failures and defects do not diminish God’s love for us one iota. He is in the business of delivering us from the grip of those failures and defects so entirely that eventually we will be remade in the image of Jesus. And throughout this process, we can know and experience that he loves us entirely and unconditionally.
This sounds wonderful! Indeed, it is wonderful! But if it’s true, why isn’t it happening for more of us? And for those of us for whom it is happening, why isn’t it happening more? With this question, we have arrived at the “so what” part of this teaching. In other words, what practical steps can we take to enable us to throw off the lies of the false self, and live in the reality of the true self?
Given that what we accept as our identity will determine whether we will live as God’s beloved, or as God’s rejected, the first thing we must realize is, as Hougan says, “receiving God’s love is our primary spiritual responsibility,” God’s love received is the core, the place from which all else finds purpose and fullness. Brennan Manning says, “The most important thing that ever happens in prayer is letting ourselves be loved by God.”
Fine, but how do we let God love us? How do we change our hearts so that we can believe he does? Well, the fact is, we can’t change our hearts. We can, to some extent, change our actions, but we can’t change our selves. We can’t deliver ourselves from the presence and lies of the false self.
But, there’s no need to despair. II Cor 3:18 says, And all of us, with unveiled faces, as we gaze upon the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” And I Jn 3:2 tells us, “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. But we do know this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”
So, simply by being with God, by gazing at him, we will be changed. Because God can change us. God wants to change us. He longs for us to experience more and more and more of the joy and deep rest of fellowship with him.
But how can he change us if we never look at him? How can he touch our hearts if we never seek to be with him? How can he speak to our deepest selves and convince us of his love if we are always filling our eyes and ears and minds with music, television, radio, phone conversations, reading, writing, doing, working--anything but being still and quiet and listening for him and, as the Psalmist says, “gazing on his beauty”?
Thomas Merton said, ” In prayer we discover . . . [that] Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess. The trouble is, we aren’t taking time to do so.”
“Pray without ceasing,” Paul tells us. But that is only possible as the outgrowth of time spent quietly with God, not talking, but listening, looking, resting, trusting. If you want to learn to do this, God can show you how. And in case it would be useful, I want to share with you two practices that many Christians have found to be extremely helpful in learning to be present to God, and therefore letting him love them. These are lectio divina, which simply means sacred reading, and centering prayer. Judith Hougen’s book, Transformed into Fire, is a far better introduction to these practices than anything we can do here in a few minutes.