“So then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh, because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever met somebody who somewhat slavishly sought to live up to the expectations of others? It almost didn’t matter who the other person was, if this person felt like she might have an expectation on her, she just about killed herself trying to meet it. In truth, though, the real expectation she was often trying to meet was to herself. In many such cases, this person had been shaped by a potent blend of personality and life experiences to have a need to please other people. This need, understandable as it might be, was making her sick. Obligations can be a heavy thing, especially when they aren’t good. Let’s talk about it.

What kinds of obligations do you currently have on you? Are these mostly light, or mostly heavy? Does meeting them occupy a great deal of your time, or only a smaller portion of it? Did you choose these for yourself, or were they put on you by others?

Obligations are an interesting thing. They take all sorts of forms. They come in all shapes and sizes as well. Obligations aren’t neutral either. They grant power. The one who places an obligation on someone else holds power over them. The stronger the obligation, the greater the power.

Now, some obligations are freely chosen. Parents, for instance, are obligated to care for their children. They voluntarily take on this obligation when they choose to get pregnant. (And if you are choosing to have sex, married or not, then you are choosing the potential for getting pregnant, or rather getting her pregnant.) The children are the ones who hold the obligation and the power, but it is usually the society that enforces them since children don’t actually have much power.

Others, though, are impressed upon us without our consent, and even though we want out of them, we find ourselves powerless to get rid of them. When children grow older, sometimes their parents place on them the obligation to meet with a certain expectation. Maybe you still feel the weight of that kind of an obligation today even after your parents have passed away.

These kinds of externally enforced obligations can become a sort of slavery that leaves us trapped in a particular circumstance in spite of a desire to get out of it. Even, though, self-chosen obligations can become like a slavery to us. We may have chosen it freely in the beginning, but once we did, the power over whether or not we were going to continue having to meet it was taken from us. We were trapped.

Sin is this kind of an obligation. Once we take that first dabble into sin, obligating ourselves to our flesh, we become owned by it. We can do whatever we please, but satisfying our flesh will always be the final statement on whatever it is. That can play itself out in obviously evil ways. It can also play itself out in ways that seem totally innocent and benign. But lurking there in the background, even if only as an internal motivation, is the gratification of our flesh.

This is what we are freed from by Jesus. When we place our faith in Christ, and He comes to dwell in us through the Holy Spirit, we are made new. We are made into new creations, as Paul would later write to the Corinthian believers. The old is gone, and the new has come. As we have already talked about, when we place our faith in Jesus, we are spiritually participating in His sin-defeating death. That is, we die to sin.

When someone dies, any obligations they had whether those were self-imposed or externally imposed die with them. They lose all their power. Whether they were sufficiently met or left sitting out on the table, they are done. Well, if in Christ we die to sin, then any obligations to the flesh that we might have once had are removed. Or, as Paul puts it here, “so then, brothers and sisters, we are not obligated to the flesh to live according to the flesh.” We are free to pursue the righteousness of Christ and to receive the life that comes with it.

It is vital that we remove this obligation from ourselves as well. When we walk the path of sin, when we live according to the flesh, as Paul puts it, death is the only thing waiting for us at the end of that road. As Paul continues, “…because if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die.” And let’s talk about why again because even though we have talked about it before, this is one of the most challenging ideas of the Gospel, so it is worth repeating.

When we walk the path of sin, living according to our flesh, we are disconnected from the God who is the only source of life. Life did not happen on its own. The evidence for that is simply overwhelming. The odds against its happening are simply too small to make the idea that it just happened by chance a rational position to hold. Plus, there’s not any actual evidence that it happened by chance. There’s simply what some would identify as a lack of evidence for the contrary position (namely, that God did it). But that’s not the same thing as saying there is positive evidence. This means that accepting the claims of naturalism is a position of faith, not evidence. That is, it is a worldview-driven conclusion, not an evidentiary one.

In any event, because God created life and sustains life, and because there is no other source of life, if we disconnect from the God of life, death is the only thing we should expect to receive. Because the God of life is good and gracious, patient and kind, that death isn’t generally something we experience right away, physically at least. He is patient with us even in the face of our open rebellion to His authority and sovereignty, working with steadfast diligence to convince us to follow Him. But eventually the time allotted for us to make that choice will come to an end. Physical death will arrive, and all decisions on our part will be final. If we have chosen to remain disconnected from the God of life, then our embrace of death will become an eternally permanent state of affairs.

But there’s another option. “But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Rather than walking the path of flesh toward death, we have a choice. We can choose Jesus. We can choose to align our lives with His sin-defeating work on the cross. We can with Him put to death the deeds and desires of our flesh, choosing instead the righteousness of Christ through the Spirit. We can have our lives reconnected with the God of life, walking the path toward His kingdom with the help of Jesus through the Spirit. That path always and only leads to life. Eternal life.

The choice here seems like it would be a simple one, but the pull of our flesh is strong. Yet why choose death when life is available? If that’s a struggle for you – and it has been a struggle for not a few – know well that you don’t have to make it on your own. There is hope. There is help. There is help through God’s Spirit in you once you choose the path of Christ in the first place. There is help in a loving church community and the gentle accountability they can provide for you. Indeed, trying to walk the path of Christ on your own is silly. It was never intended to be done like that. If you try you’ll fail. But you don’t have to do it that way. You can choose the body of Christ. You can choose the path of life in Him. You can choose the leading of the Spirit. So choose wisely.