Given Over

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.

2 Corinthians 4:11

The life of Jesus, manifest in our mortal bodies, is what we need. There is an attitude within to which we must consent, but there is also something done to us. We have no choice in this matter. We are being given up to death. This refers to those circumstances of trial and pressure into which God puts us to force us to abandon trust in the flesh and lean wholly on the Spirit of Christ.

It is impossible for a true believer in Jesus not to walk in the Spirit at least some of the time. God will see to it that the true believer is put in circumstances that force him to do so. Paul's own experience, recorded in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9, is a perfect illustration: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

We do not know what this experience was which Paul describes, but it was something so threatening that Paul despaired of life itself. He felt he had received the sentence of death. He was, literally, being given over to death for Jesus' sake. Notice, though, Paul's conclusion: But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

God put him through this trying circumstance to keep him from relying on his own resources. And this is said of an apostle who thoroughly knew and understood the operation of the new covenant. Even he needed this painful help from time to time to keep him from succumbing to the subtlety of the flesh and enable him to trust the God who raises the dead.

This is why pressures and problems arise in our lives. The God who loves us is delivering us up to death in order that we might trust, not in happy circumstances or in pleasant surroundings, but in the Lord of life who lives within. In the Scriptures we learn the attitude we are to have which releases to us the life of Jesus. Through our circumstances we are forced to experience this so that the treasure within might enrich us, and the power within demonstrate a new way of life before a watching world.

Here we see a life-changing two step process, a process referred to in Scripture as walking in the Spirit. We are to believe in the death of the cross and then appropriate the power of the resurrection. The simplest way to put it is: repent and believe. Repenting is changing one's mind about the value of the old life; believing is appropriating the value of the new. In Romans 6 Paul says, Consider yourselves dead to sin (step one) and alive to God in Christ Jesus (step two). In Ephesians he says, Put off the old man (step one), and put on the new (step two). A walk consists of two steps, one with each leg, repeated again and again. So the walk in the Spirit is achieved when every demand life makes on us is met by taking up the cross so that we might experience the resurrection. It can happen dozens of times a day.

Father, continue to teach me the two-step walk—dying to the flesh and putting on the new life given to me in Christ.