Keys to Abundant Living

Some examples are the victorious life, the abundant life, the exchanged life, the Spirit-filled life, the surrendered life, the obedient life, the abiding life, the fruitful life, the peaceful life, the resting life.

Edman points out these are all different descriptions of the same reality. That reality is this: the normal Christian life is the life of the Lord Jesus lived within the life of the believer. He is our abundant life.

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Jesus implies this in John 10. He says that He is the door into the abundant life (vv. 7–9); His sheep belong to Him. He calls them “my own” (vv. 14,16). He says His sheep know Him just as He knows the Father (vv. 14–15,27–30). He is one with the Father. His sheep are one (but on a different level since they are created beings) with Him.

He gives His sheep “eternal life” (vv. 27–29). This is quality, not duration. It is God’s life which Jesus has with the Father and shares with His sheep (John 5:26; 10:28–29). Finally Jesus says continually in John that this life results from His indwelling presence through His indwelling Holy Spirit (John 4:13–14; 6:41–58; 7:37–39; 11:25–26; 14:1–18,25–27; 15:1–11; 17:1–23;).

We all would agree, I believe, with what has been said. The question is, How do we enter into that life?

The Crisis of Salvation

First, it is crisis. It begins with the crisis of salvation. We are born again. Christ, by His Spirit, comes to live within us. “It is because you really are His sons that God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts to cry Father, dear Father” (Gal. 4:6, phillips).

Next is process. Paul describes it this way, giving his personal testimony to the secret of his abundant life: “And my present life is not that of the old ‘I’ but the living Christ within me” (Gal. 2:20a, phillips).

The Process of the Crisis

This leads to a process of crisis. The apostle puts it this way: “Oh, my dear children, I feel the pangs of child birth all over again until Christ be formed within you” (Gal. 4:19, phillips). It is Christ being born within us (Gal. 4:6). It is Christ living His life within us (Gal. 2:20). The goal is that Christ “be completely and permanently formed and molded within” us, as Bishop Lightfoot paraphrased Galatians 4:19 so long ago.¹⁰

This perspective is biblical enough and broad enough to fit all the particular emphases on the way to the abundant life given by all believers of all ages. The abundant life leads to the conquering life, the subject of the rest of this chapter and the next two.

^[2] Paul’s thinking seems to progress through Romans chapters 6–8. In chapter 6 he tells of our death to sin through our identification and union with Christ in His death to sin. He also tells of our present spiritual resurrection to newness of life which comes through our identification and union with Christ in His resurrection (6:1–13). Chapter 7 reveals the warfare which the true believer faces with the flesh while striving to live that resurrection life, a common theme in the epistles of Paul. The child of God rejoices that the sin nature is dead with Christ. He has a totally new resurrection life, not two opposing lives or natures. Therefore potentially he is able to consider himself “dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v. 11).

As he begins to do so, however, he finds that sin still dwells within him. It is joined to his flesh. The flesh, unlike his old self or his sin nature, was not crucified with Christ once and for all. It is at war with the law of God written in his mind. He longs to discover the way to live in victory over the lusts of the flesh, the subject of at least the first 17 verses of chapter 8.

This is the meaning of Paul’s “therefore” in 8:1. It takes us naturally into his discussion of the way of victory over “the law of sin and death” described in chapter 8. I call it the ecstacy of the normal Christian life.

The Ecstasy of the Christian Life

“By our identifying with Him through faith, we enter a union with Him in which His death to sin is our death also,” to continue the paraphrase. “We too now live to God. It has already happened. Declare it to be so. Work it out in practice by presenting yourself and the members of your body to God as instruments of righteousness, just as you formerly presented yourself and the members of your body as instruments of unrighteousness.”

Does this mean we enter into a state of sinless perfection? Are we totally incapable of sinning any longer? “No,” the apostle says. “We know that is not true. Our experience reveals this to be false. We still live in this mortal body (vv. 12–13) which is made up of ‘members of my body’ which in turn are ‘slaves to sin’ (v. 13). In fact, I find sin warring within my mortal body.”¹³

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This is why Paul insists that everything we need to overcome the evil within (the flesh), the evil without (the world), and the evil from above (evil supernaturalism) is ours in union with our Lord (Eph. 1:3–2:10; 3:14–21; Col. 1:13–3:4) through spirit (Rom. 8:1–17a). He also insists, however, that nothing is automatic or magical. If a believer does not know who he is in Christ and the Spirit and what Christ is to him as He indwells by His Spirit, that believer will be defeated most of his Christian life.⁴

Our acceptance before God has nothing to do with our performance as Christians. It has nothing to do with the stage of victory over the flesh we are now in. It has only to do with being “in Christ Jesus.” All that needs to be done to bring us to God has already been done. No personal merit brings us to God. No personal demerit can keep us from God. If we are in Christ, we are “accepted in the beloved.” For us there is no condemnation. John Murray writes:⁵

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It is important to see, therefore, that the “no condemnation” of verse 1 is not deliverance from sin’s guilt and penalty, but from sin’s power. Paul has already dealt with the former in the early chapters of Romans. Since Romans 6 he has been dealing with the believer’s deliverance from sin’s power, that is, from “the law of sin and of death.”

This view is further supported by verse 3, indeed, by all the rest of this first part of Romans 8. In verse 3 Paul speaks of the Old Testament law. It could never free us from sin’s power because of the weakness of the flesh, the flesh here being human nature. God did this for us by sending His Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh—human nature which is weak and unable to do the will of God—and, as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.”

Murray repeats again that “the governing thought of this passage is concerned with deliverance from the law of sin and death, and therefore, from sin as a ruling and regulating power.”⁹

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Even though our body is God’s temple and though Christ by His Spirit dwells within our body, Paul says “the body is dead because of sin.” This is not meant to discourage us. He then states that “the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” By saying this, Paul is not declaring a negative dualism of body and spirit. Both exist together in this world, and both will be joined together in the world to come at the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:35–37; Phil. 3:20–21).

Thus the redemption provided for the whole person is experienced in two phases. By faith our spirit is born again and receives eternal life through the indwelling Spirit of Christ, but the body does not (Rom. 8:10). This is phase one. Phase two occurs only at “the revealing of the sons of God,” at the moment of our full “adoption as sons” (vv. 19,23). Only then will the full redemptive benefits of the Cross be experienced by these sinful, mortal bodies; only then will we experience “the redemption of our body” (v. 23).¹⁴

The Adoption as sons

Thus the redemption provided for the whole person is experienced in two phases. By faith our spirit is born again and receives eternal life through the indwelling Spirit of Christ, but the body does not (Rom. 8:10). This is phase one. Phase two occurs only at “the revealing of the sons of God,” at the moment of our full “adoption as sons” (vv. 19,23). Only then will the full redemptive benefits of the Cross be experienced by these sinful, mortal bodies; only then will we experience “the redemption of our body” (v. 23).¹⁴

The apostle continues promising hope for this sinful body in verse 11. Verses 12–17 are a summary and application of all he has been saying until now. We are again reminded to walk in the Spirit, which I take as synonymous as “being led by the Spirit of God” (v. 14).¹⁵

As to Paul’s blunt warning in verse 13a, “for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die,” Calvin rightly remarks, “Let then the faithful learn to embrace Him, not only for justification but also for sanctification, as He has been given to us for both these purposes lest they render Him asunder by their mutilated flesh.”¹⁶

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Verse 15 is one of the great verses of Scripture setting the “Spirit of adoption,” the Holy Spirit, over against the opposing spirit, “the spirit of slavery leading to fear.” The Spirit of God, even when He is the Spirit of conviction of sin, is always the Spirit who lets us know we belong to God and His kingdom, Paul is implying. He builds up. He encourages. He blesses. He enlightens. He makes Jesus more and more precious to us. He empowers us to the defeat of the flesh, the world, and Satan and his demons. It is he and he alone who cries within us, “Abba! Father!”