Decay Prevention

For the past year or so, my son Michael and I have been working our way through the book of Romans.  It has been slow progress.  In the beginning our goal was to read one chapter per week.  But it quickly became obvious to us that by packing so much of the Apostle Paul into a single session it was impossible to come close to gaining a full and comprehensive understanding of his theology.  As anyone is well aware who has spent time delving into the Holy Spirit infused mind of this great Apostle of Jesus, his sentences are long and complex, his thought patterns are deep and expansive, and his understanding of the gospel of Christ is second to none.  And so, as time went on Michael and I quickly decided to slow down and take Romans in smaller, bite-sized chunks.  This approach has sometimes caused us to read a paragraph, sometimes as little as a sentence, and occasionally even just a partial sentence.

Recently we made it to chapter 12.  And although I have certainly read the first verse of this chapter before, as so often happens with study of God’s word, this familiar passage exploded in my mind with new understanding, fueled by additional insight gained from the study of complementary scriptures.  The full verse is as follows:

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

This verse is densely loaded with truth.  To fully unpack it would be the work of hours.  In lieu of that, there is a single phrase that I want to focus on at this time.  It is the phrase “a living and holy sacrifice”.  This phrase is both deceptive in its appearance and perplexing in its ramifications.  It is deceptive because there is very likely a fundamental variance in our understanding of the words used here as opposed to what was in Paul’s mind when he wrote them.  And it is perplexing because when we comprehend the individual words and then assemble them together into the form used in Romans 12:1 this innocuous little phrase becomes the very definition of an oxymoron, or a contradiction in terms.

So then, let us set ourselves to the task of dissecting this text, picking apart the individual components, and then putting them back together into a whole that pierces through the clouds of sin fueled thought that threaten to dim our comprehension and extinguish God’s special revelation.

The first thing we need to consider is the context of this verse in light of the greater whole of the book that it’s in.  This will help us to more accurately see the meaning that is being conveyed here.  The literary style of Romans is that of a letter.  And it is a towering theological manifesto from Paul to first the church at Rome, and then to every believer throughout history.  In it Paul leaves no stone unturned in his explanation and defense of the gospel.  In chapter one he greets the church and clarifies his intent in writing to them.  From chapter one through five we find a detailed description of the gospel of Jesus Christ; beginning with the complete and utter depravity of all mankind which establishes our need for salvation, proceeding to our complete inability to save ourselves as evidenced by Israel’s failure to obey the letter of the Mosaic Law, and finishing with the only solution to this dilemma which is justification by faith alone.  Having expended great effort to prove that God alone justifies purely by His own grace and mercy, Paul then needs to defend himself in chapters 6 to 8 against potential accusations that he is both ridiculing the Law of God and preaching a completely works-less gospel that results in Christian weaklings who not only do nothing to work out their salvation but actually sin more so as to cause the grace of God to abound all the more.  His defense is made by explaining that it is impossible for true believers to walk in sin, either through action or through inaction, because if someone has truly died to sin, as the Lord Jesus did, they can by no means continue in it.  The Apostle then proceeds in chapters 9 to 11 to explain to these, mostly Gentile Christians in Rome, how they also have a part in the promises of God and the inheritance to be received, even though they are not Jews biologically.  He outlines how the Gentiles have been grafted into the family of God, represented as a wild olive tree.  Finally, having clarified the believer’s position legally, spiritually, and relationally, Paul spends chapters 12 to 15 giving them instructions for Christian living.  So just as back in chapter one he used the depravity of mankind to set the tone of the miraculous and purely divine salvific work that would follow, here in chapter 12 he uses these first two verses to set the tone of all the nuts and bolts details of living out the Christian life that he is about to share.  And even more specifically, this first phrase we are going to examine is what sets the tone of this tone setting passage.  As such, it is critically important that we grasp as fully as possible the import of Paul’s writing here.  Because if we miss the mark on this our perception of the next four chapters will very likely be subtly distorted.

The first thing to notice is the word therefore.  This is the hinge of the door which separates both the past from the present and future and the involuntary from the voluntary.  All of the saving and grafting work that has been explained for eleven chapters has already happened to these Christians in Rome.  That’s all in their past.  Furthermore, they had zero part in all of it.  Paul has made it exceedingly clear that salvation is all of God and none of man.  But now he is going to explain to man what his responsibility is in living out this gospel he has been saved by on a daily basis.  And the trigger point is therefore.  Paul says “therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God”.  It is precisely because of this purely divine work that he has been describing that we should now seek to work out the gospel with every fiber of our being.  We owe an unpayable debt of gratitude to God for the merciful and gracious work He has performed in us.  So therefore, we ought to now do something about it.  And what is it that Paul urges us to do?  He says we are to “present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God”.  And it is in this phrase, rendered in some translations as living sacrifice that we are presented with a bit of a dilemma.

I believe we in our modern cultural perspective have a fundamentally different understanding of sacrifice than Paul did.  And if so, such a variance can cause us to miss the full import of this passage of scripture.  So let’s spend a few minutes carefully examining this word from a biblical context.  According to Merriam Webster there are three definitions of sacrifice, as follows:

•  the act of giving up something that you want to keep especially in order to get or do something else or to help someone
• an act of killing a person or animal in a religious ceremony as an offering to please a god
• a person or animal that is killed in a sacrifice

     Now clearly, definitions two and three are linked in that the one is a verb referring to the act of sacrificing something in a religious setting while the other is a noun referring to the thing being sacrificed.  But definition one is completely different.  It has the idea more of a pragmatic approach to sacrifice, in that one gives up a possession so as to accomplish an objective of acquiring something else, whether that be a material possession or social recognition.  I believe our typical use of sacrifice in every day modern thought and speech is in the sense of definition one.  When we talk amongst each other and the issue of making a sacrifice comes up, I believe it rarely if ever has anything whatsoever to do with either death or God.  No, when we talk about sacrifice we are meaning to give up something we have, whether that be time, money, or possessions.  But was that the idea in Paul’s mind when he wrote this word two millennia ago?

      Remember, if you will, that Paul was a biological Jew.  He was, by his own admission, a “Pharisee of the Pharisees”, meaning that he was as strict in adhering to the precepts of Judaism as anyone could be.  He was trained by Gamaliel himself, one of the most prominent of the religious leaders of the day.  And for Paul, his religion was no mere charade.  He was not putting on a façade of sanctimonious airs so as to garner the accolades of men.  No, the scriptural evidence supports the notion that his fervor in preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ was only matched by his fervor in persecuting that same gospel when he was under the misunderstanding that it dishonored God.  Therefore, just as our cultural world view is shaped by the customs, laws, and social stigmas of the United States, the Apostle Paul’s cultural world view was shaped by the customs, laws, and social stigmas of first century Israel.

     From this basis it would be reasonable to assume that it was the Jewish sacrificial system that was the imagery that flashed into Paul’s mind as he wrote his letter to Rome.  But in fact, it is not necessary to rely upon assumptions.  The Apostle gives hints within the letter as to what is in his mind.  Romans 3:25, in referencing Christ, says “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.”  Propitiation refers specifically to the Old Testament practice of causing the guilt of sin to fall on the head of another.  Then an animal sacrifice, now once for all the Son of God.  This is precisely the same idea found in Leviticus 1:3-4 when the requirements are given for a man bringing a burnt offering to the tabernacle: If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer it, a male without defect; he shall offer it at the doorway of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD.  He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, that it may be accepted for him to make atonement on his behalf. 

     Having established this idea of sacrificial atonement and propitiation as what was in Paul’s mind, we are presented with a problem.  Namely, that sacrifice in a Jewish context always involves death.  As Romans 6:23 makes clear “the wages of sin is death”.  God requires blood to pay the penalty for controverting His character, as revealed in His law.  But Paul is calling us to offer ourselves as “living sacrifices”.  How can this be?  Sacrifices are, by the very nature of the purpose they serve, dead.  The idea of a living sacrifice is inherently a contradiction.  We might even call it an oxymoron, or a contradiction in terms.  In spite of this apparent paradox created by the Apostle, it seems likely that he has a meaning in mind that is free of confusion.  It is our aim to find it.

     There are two complementary interpretations we can draw from the phrase living sacrifice.  In a broad sense we can see living sacrifice as a reference to the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement.  That is, unlike the Mosaic Covenant system in which animals served as scapegoats and their blood was shed as a covering for sins which had to be repeated endlessly due to their imperfect nature, now with the New Covenant Jesus serves as the ultimate perfect scapegoat whose blood is fully sufficient to cover and atone for all sins infinitely.  We can see this idea represented in 1 Peter 3:18: For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit.  So one aspect of Paul’s meaning in Romans 12:1 is the contrast between the old and new, the imperfect versus the perfect, the fact that we no longer are under the penalty of death because of Christ’s sacrifice.  Thus now instead of a single act of death and shed blood, we are to offer up our entire lives as ongoing sacrifices.  From this angle the term living sacrifice would be seen as more symbolic in nature because our sacrifice is no longer serving as a propitiation.

     But I believe there is another level that this concept of living sacrifice operates on.  This is a plane of thought that is at once more narrow in that it drills down to our daily lives yet also more comprehensive because it leaves no corner of those lives untouched.  To draw this out we need to touch down at a few different points throughout the Old Testament as we march our way forward in history to the book of Romans and the passage in question today.

     There is a theme of purging evil that runs through the Mosaic Law.  Deuteronomy 17 describes a situation in which an Israelite is found worshipping false gods.  His punishment is to be put to death by stoning.  And in verse 7 the reason is given: So you shall purge the evil from your midst.  Two chapters later God warns against a man committing perjury so as to condemn a fellow Jew on false charges.  For this crime it is decreed that the court shall do to him just as he intended to do to the man he falsely accused.  And again we find the same underlying reason in verse 19: Thus you shall purge the evil from among you.  In chapter 21 we find the same capital punishment prescribed again, this time for the sin of disobeying one’s parents.  And continuing the trend, God stresses the same purpose of implementing such a harsh penance: so you shall remove the evil from your midst.

     What is going on here?  Why is God so adamant about this idea of completely eliminating corruption from the midst of Israel?  If we compare this theme from the Torah with the Wisdom of Solomon I believe we can see a pattern emerge.  Proverbs 23:13-14 says the following: Do not hold back discipline from the child, although you strike him with the rod, he will not die.  You shall strike him with the rod and rescue his soul from Sheol.  The prophet Habakkuk echoes this thought when, in response to God’s revelation of impending Babylonian judgment to come against Judah, he says “We will not die” in Habakkuk 1:12.  What did the Biblical writers mean with these sayings? 

     In 1888 the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche published the book “Twilight of the Idols”.  In this book he wrote the phrase “what does not kill me makes me stronger”.  The humanistic philosophy intended by Nietzsche is of a rugged individualism where one’s own strength and veracity is increased by the trials one endures.  It’s a very man centered idea that seeks to eliminate God from the equation and was in keeping with much of Nietzsche’s work. 

      In contrast to this the biblical philosophy is that the only path to godliness is through the medium of discipline which serves to cut away the sin which clings to us and causes corruption and distortion.  Think of it in medical terms.  We’ve probably all heard of Gangrene.  It is a deadly condition that occurs when living tissue dies.  Its danger comes primarily from how quickly it spreads through the body, leading to life threatening situations in a short time.  In the most severe cases the only viable medical treatment option is to amputate the affected body part so as to halt the spread of the disease before it reaches healthy tissue.  In this way, by cutting away the infection and accepting the loss of a portion of the body, life is preserved and the greater part of the body is saved.  This is very similar to how sin impacts us.  It can very accurately be thought of as a disease.  In fact, Jesus emphatically links personal sin with personal sickness.  In John chapter 5 we read the account of the man at the pool of Bethesda who had been ill and unable to walk for 38 years.  Jesus heals him and he begins to walk.  Later, the Lord finds this man in the temple and gives the following warning in verse 14: Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you.”  Now, I think it would be a stretch to take this encounter and use it to teach that all sickness is always caused by sin.  But undoubtedly there is some mysterious connection between sin and disease, wickedness and infirmity.

     And just as sometimes an infection needs to be cut away from the rest of the body so as to preserve physical life, what the Bible teaches regarding sin is that it should be ruthlessly cut away from the rest of the soul so as to preserve spiritual life.  That was exactly the point God was making with the Israelites.  The contamination of sin, once introduced into and among the people, had to be forcibly eliminated lest it spread rapidly and bring down the whole assembly.  It is a poison that must be removed at all costs.  Consider the words of Christ in Matthew 5:29-30: If your right eye makes you stumble, tear it out and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.  If your right hands makes you stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; for it is better for you to lose one of the parts of your body, than for your whole body to go into hell.  Jesus was not teaching a literal doctrine of self-mutilation.  He was making a point that the sin that threatens to ensnare us must be dealt with ruthlessly, without remorse or compassion.  Sin is your enemy.  It seeks to destroy you.  It is the principle weapon of our enemy, Satan, who seeks to devour you not via supernatural manifestations of whatever power he possesses, but rather he seeks to wipe you out through the medium of the sin that you so casually toy with.  Bringing this full circle back to the words of Paul in Romans 6:20-23: For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.  Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?  For the outcome of those things is death.  But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  The outcome, the payment due, the paycheck as it were, of sinning is ultimately death.  Here Paul is talking about someone who has already been saved and set free from bondage to sin.  So in that sense the death that sin guarantees is no longer applicable to that person.  But the point in light of this message today is that sin is an enemy that infects, kills, and destroys.  Paul continues his theme of the dangers of sin in the very next chapter.  In Romans 7:10-11 he describes the effect sin has upon the holy and righteous law of God: and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.  The only way to deal with such a threat is mercilessly.  Consider the attitude God Himself took toward sin in Romans 8:3: For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.  Paul goes on to say in verse 13: For if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

     This then, is the answer to our question.  What is a living sacrifice?  It is a life lived to the glory of God that ceaselessly strives to cut out the deadly poison of sin that is ever present and ever seeking to infect, spread, and destroy.  It is a pattern of behavior in which the deeds of the flesh are constantly being put to death so that this sacrifice of sin rises into the spiritual air as a pleasing aroma to the nostrils of God.  Just as the ancient Israelites slaughtered animals and burned their flesh, with the pleasing smell of burning meat symbolizing the pleasure God enjoyed from His children’s obedience, so our own slaughtering of the sin that infests us operates in a similar manner.  As Paul makes clear in Colossians chapter 3, we are to “set our minds on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.”  He says we are to “consider the members of our earthly body as dead” to all forms of sinfulness.  And we are to simply “put them aside”.  This is not a complicated doctrine.  The teaching is clear and the meaning and application is obvious.  Many of you will remember the slogan from the 1980s designed to encourage people to stay away from drugs: “Just say no.”  It really is that simple.  Just stop playing with your sin.

     The fact of the matter, Christian, is this.  The word of God makes no bones about the sin that threatens us.  Although it has been defanged by the blood of Christ, it is still an ever present dangerous reality of our lives.  It cannot steal away our inheritance in heaven, but it can and will cause suffering, anxiety, and timidity.  It will rob you of the joy and the hope that you should be exulting in as a child of God and it will cause you to wither on the vine of the Christian life.  By playing around with sin you will languish as a spiritual baby when you should be growing into spiritual maturity.  It is insufficient and unacceptable for you, if you claim the name of Christ, to mollycoddle the sin that tempts you.  Here are a few examples that I thought of.  If none of these apply personally to you then fill in the blanks with one that does:

• ·      Christian men, if you are at the beach or the pool it is insufficient and completely unacceptable for you to allow your eyes to linger on the bikini clad female bodies that surround you.  You guys know exactly what I’m talking about.  The temptation to lust passes right in front of you and you can’t help that first glance, but then you permit your eyes to follow and your gaze lingers where it ought not to.
•      Christian wives, it is insufficient and completely unacceptable for you to usurp your husband’s God given position of authority in the home.  I know sometimes he doesn’t deserve it.  That is completely beside the point.  His position of authority was not granted to him by you nor was it achieved by his own merit.  It was granted by God and as such we humans have no right to try to take it away. 
•      Christian children and teenagers, it is insufficient and completely unacceptable for you to systematically rebel against your parent’s authority.  Realize that it is really not your parents you are rebelling against, but God Himself.  He is the one who has established the authority structure of the family.  So by resisting your parents, either openly in defiance or behind their backs in a passive aggressive refusal of the heart so submit, you are really shaking your fist in the face of the creator of the universe.  And He will not permit the unrighteous to go unpunished forever.
•      Christians of all ages, it is insufficient and completely unacceptable for you to permit yourself to become addicted to any vice, whether it be drugs and alcohol, entertainment, work, family, or anything else under the sun.  Understand that in so doing you are guilty of exactly the same crime that the ancient Israelites were condemned for when they slashed their bodies in zealous frenzied worship of Baal, they engaged in debauched fornications in adoration of Asherah, and they burned their children to death in homage to Moloch.

Now then, having said all of this I need to make two points of clarification.  The first is this.  Some of you, as you read this, may be thinking to yourself that this doesn’t sound like a very enjoyable way to live.  The pattern of behavior being laid out here may sound an awful lot like a 12^th century monk, sitting alone in his cell, ripping his back to bloody shreds with a whip in an effort to atone for his misdeeds and do penance for his sin.  The typical human reaction to this sort of teaching is to believe that it is a joyless and dull existence.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  A splinter irritates and pain is experienced when it is removed.  But the joy that comes after its removal is so euphoric as to render the former pain powerless.  When we have a cut on our skin and it grows infected, sometimes the cure involves peroxide or other uncomfortable medical solutions.  But the gladness you feel when that scab finally comes off, exposing pink and healthy skin, causes the previous discomfort to fade into forgotten obscurity.  The thought that this is somehow different in the case of sin is a lie conceived and propagated by Satan himself.  Christ said that the devil is a liar and the father of lies and that the truth is not in him.  Sin is Satan’s primary weapon.  As such it bears all the hallmarks of his hollow and deceptive philosophies.  Death, as a perversion and corruption of God’s perfect design, is itself a falsehood.  I don’t mean that death is not real; of course it is.  But it is a distortion of the truth.  Therefore, since Paul has already said “the wages of sin is death” it is clearly obvious the fictitious foundation that sin is built upon.  This means that if you refuse to ever take the splinter of sin out of your skin or apply peroxide to the infected cuts that sin leaves on you because you don’t believe you will be better off after the fact, then you are believing a lie.  Furthermore, to be blunt, you are acting like a child who lacks the foresight to see past the temporary discomfort to the lasting bliss that is to come.

     The second point of clarification is the more important of the two.  What I have described so far may seem to be a very works oriented and self-effort focused message.  It would be easy if I stopped now to walk away thinking I told you to go home and just gut it out, try really hard, and through a rigorous regimen of self-effort you can defeat sin and live a triumphant Christian life.  So I need to add an additional qualifier onto this teaching.  Because if you do attempt to achieve success in your sanctification purely through your own effort you are doomed to failure and depression.  Rather than emerging triumphant you will be shackled into despair and defeat.  This is because the process of sanctification and the actual day to day living of the Christian life is a partnership between the believer and the Holy Spirit who indwells them.  It is not a solo effort that is accomplished through the sheer determination of the Christian.  Notice in the passage we read a few minutes ago, Romans 8:13, how Paul chose his wording: but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.  The Apostle was very careful to qualify the act of putting to death the deeds of the body by establishing that it is by the Spirit that we accomplish this.  He goes on in the next two verses to say: For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.  For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”  The message is clear.  It is by the Spirit of God that we are enabled to defeat sin.

     With that being said, the obvious question is this.  How does this all work in daily life?  How can I balance these seemingly competing and paradoxical responsibilities between my own effort and the enablement of the Spirit?  Where does my job end and His begin?  To answer that come with me to two complementary passages from the Pauline epistles.  In 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 we find Paul, as he often did, using the running of a race as a metaphor for the Christian life: Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize?  Run in such a way that you may win.  Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things.  They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.  And in Philippians 3:12-14 the Apostle adds to our understanding of this topic: Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.  Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

     I would sum up these two passages with one word; mindset.  Paul is not preaching a gospel of salvation through works.  But he is preaching a gospel of sanctification partially through self-control, through discipline, through mental fortitude.  He pictures himself as an athlete competing in competition.  His life is the race to end all races, because it is run for the glory of God with a finish line of full conformity to His image.  It is competition on a scale that transcends this mortal coil and extends into eternity.  As such, Paul is absolutely and unequivocally determined to run his race with every drop of ability in his body.  And then, when he is utterly spent, he is determined to keep going until he stumbles and falls to the ground from exhaustion, and then he will keep crawling forward, one agonizing inch at a time, never ceasing his pursuit of the prize that Christ has called him to.  But he does this at all times with a full and conscious realization of the enablement of the Holy Spirit that he is totally dependent on.  His partnership with the Spirit of God is one in which Paul exercises as much discipline and self-control over his own body as he is capable of exerting in an effort to submit to the Spirit without which he is doomed to abject failure.  In fact, without the Spirit’s presence in his heart Paul won’t even make it off of the finish line.

     Human wisdom would tell us that these two elements, self-control and Spirit reliance, are mutually exclusive.  Our minds would have us believe that this is an impossible balancing act and is a bunch of religious nonsense.  Our culture would tell us that this is yet another evidence that the Bible is not to be trusted by rational, educated, modern man.  But the Word of God tells a different tale.  He doesn’t offer a convoluted defense to explain Himself away.  He simply states plainly what is.  Consider Romans 6:12-14: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.  For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.  The simplicity and the audacity here is astounding.  God is, in effect, saying sin shall not master you, so don’t let it master you.  The one is an act of grace.  The other is an act of the will.  Both are in perfect harmony in the mind of God.  And both are absolutely necessary for Christian living.  It’s as if God is saying “Yes, the water is blue.  And yes, the water is green.”  Our small minds and limited vision would tell us that both cannot be true.  But the reality is that both colors are present in the water.  Some people see more of one than the other.  But an individual’s perception does not alter the reality of what is.

     

     Again the key is having the proper mindset.  Stop trying to rationalize some way of making God’s truth fit into a neat pattern that you are partial to.  Just accept it as true and get on with the task at hand.  Get off the sidelines.  Get into the race and run it like you mean it.  Run it as if you intend to win.  Become a “living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God” by setting your mind on the things above, putting to death the deeds of the flesh, and crying out for help to the Father through the Spirit who indwells you.  Cease the living of your carnal, fleshly life.  It’s time to stop ignoring and disobeying the clear commands of God that we see unmistakably present in scripture.