Tuesday | 08 July 2025
Although a believer has been born of the Spirit, and is in Christ, ‘the body is [still] dead because of sin’. Rom 8:9-11. This is the implication of the other law which is still in their heart. This law, fathered in mankind by Satan, causes a person to think and to act in a manner that is inconsistent with their obedience as a son of God. Rom 7:15. On account of the other law, they are brought into bondage to ‘the law of sin and death’. Rom 8:2. Rom 7:23.
Deliverance from the body of death is through regeneration and renewing in the fellowship of Christ’s dying and living. We are joined to this pathway, upon which our salvation is progressively obtained, when we are baptised by water. This is a second dimension of baptism. Writing to Titus, the apostle Paul explained that we are saved ‘through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’. Tit 3:5. The washing of regeneration, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, specifically applies to our humanity.
Once we have been born of God and baptised by the Father into the body of Christ, this washing and renewing work continues in our life as we walk each day in the reality of our baptism by water into the fellowship of Christ’s death, burial and resurrection.
As we embrace the process through which our carnality is being removed, and we walk in the word that we are hearing, the divine nature, which is planted in the soil of our spirit, continues to take root, grow, and become the expression of our identity as a son of God. We are progressively changing from one degree of glory to another, into the image of the Son. 2Co 3:18. Notably, the parable of ‘the seed and grounds’ teaches us that if the soil of our heart is not being changed through this process, we, as a new-creation ‘plant’, can die, even though what is born of God does not sin. 1Jn 3:9.
Further Study:
Romans 6
References:
Rom 8:9-11
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
Rom 7:15
For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practise; but what I hate, that I do.
Rom 8:2
For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
Rom 7:23
But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Tit 3:5
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.
2Co 3:18
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
1Jn 3:9
Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.