Romans 8 hits us with some astonishingly good news, but also continues to haunt us with the question – what will it look like to walk in the Spirit? Not for the sake of “getting” the Spirit (that already happened (8:9); the Spirit is in us just as we are in the Spirit!), but for the sake of awakening us to what the Spirit is doing in and around us. Fortunately, in Romans 12, we find a robust answer to our question:
“Love one another. Serve the Lord. Persevere in prayer. Pursue hospitality. Bless and care for each other, as well as for your enemies. Rejoice and weep together. Resist arrogance and practice humility. Live peaceably with everyone. Welcome your enemies to dinner. Overcome evil with good.” (12:9-21)
We must be careful how we hear this ethical teaching from Paul. Stated in this “do this, not that” kind of language, we might instinctually hear Paul as the deliverer of rules from on high, not to be broken lest we disappoint our heavenly Father. That would be the consumeristic way of hearing scripture (something we inherit from the world around us, always running on the engine of consumerism, always nervously grasping at meaning, security, and belonging). But we are not a consumeristic bunch. We are the Church that has already been set free from sin and placed in the Holy Spirit (8:1-11).
When we say “Holy Spirit,” we’re not alluding to something nebulous and vague. No, we’re speaking of something tangibly observable, something with measurable dimensions, something with a concrete shape to it. We can observe when the Holy Spirit is truly in the driver’s seat, and when it isn’t. And here in Romans 12, we see that shape of the Spirit-filled life: prayer, service, hospitality, humility, joy, and a love so explosive that it spills outside of the Church and into the world around us, even toward our enemies! The theology of Romans, rich and dense as it often is, is lived theology, finding concrete expression in the daily life of the baptized community. Being in the Spirit is not merely a status or feeling. It is a way of being in the world, that runs counter to the world. Romans 12 begins by calling us into the transformation of the moral consciousness (12:2) and ends by describing what that transformed life looks like in practice.
Nothing is missing here. This is a top to bottom renovation of the human heart. Love, hope, prayer, hospitality, empathy, humility, peacefulness, forgiveness, and reconciliation. There’s nothing here that the Spirit is not going to stir up in us and pull out of us. There’s nothing in the spiritual, emotional, relational existence of the Church that the Spirit is going to leave untouched.
Is God up to this task? Of course he is. These aren’t suggestions on how to live happier lives or how to convince God that we’re good people. This is nothing less than a portrait of what God is actively making us. Romans 5-8 has gone to great lengths to declare to us that everything (namely, sin) in the way of reconciliation with God, everything in the way of holy living, has been eliminated. Therefore, God’s transforming work is in us is in full swing, perfectly unhindered.
If we find ourselves needing to be rooted once again in what it looks like to walk in the Spirit, let’s come back to Romans 12. It is as good a picture of the Spirit-filled life as is available to us. Because Jesus has freed us to leave behind the life in the “flesh” and live fully in the Spirit, there is now nothing left to prevent love, hope, prayer, hospitality, empathy, humility, peacefulness, forgiveness, and reconciliation to have their way with us.
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