A vivid visual for a valuable victory
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
I thank God -- through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24)
Hello Saints,
I recently came across a remarkable form of punishment practiced in 1st century Rome. When you read your Bible, are you not shocked by how gruesome societies were back in the times of the Old and New Testaments. Extra-biblical historical documents validate the cruelty that we read about in our Bibles. Think of the war scenes of the Old Testament – the slaughter of “innocents”, the cruel deaths of the enemies of God, who were receiving just retribution for their crimes against God’s people. In most cases, they were experiencing the same fate that they had put God’s people through. Stonings, floggings, torture, decapitations, hanging bodies of captives as trophies outside city gates, and slavery. We are a sick people. Two thousand years of history in the Old Testament seemed to have no impact on the New Testament era, for we know how gruesome the Romans were - Crucifixions, 39 lashes with leather whips embedded with pieces of sharpened bone, gladiator fights, feeding to the lions, burnings. Criminals faced all kinds of horrible forms of torture and reform measures… if you were allowed to survive. It was ‘an eye for an eye’ mentality...literally. People were charged admission fees to watch people be ripped apart in public battles; criminals were left hanging naked on crosses to die a slow, painful death, while everyone spit on and mocked the poor helpless wretch. Friends, lest you think we are more advanced, the history of civilizations since the first century is no different. For the last two thousand years we have been and are as barbaric as ever. Think concentration camps, public hangings and beheadings, etc.
Today, in our society anyways, our criminals have become ‘victims’ to be given the best of treatments, while the victims of their crimes suffer with lifelong sentences of trauma and emotional torment. There seems to be no deterrent for criminals who get more inspiration for their barbaric crimes by having access to a myriad of visual resources at their fingertips, even while incarcerated. I need to digress at some point here, but when I look back at societies and how they handled punishing the guilty for their crimes, I wonder how many would-be offenders thought long and hard before committing crimes. Do we need capital punishment today to deter those wanting to harm/kill others?
As I was saying, in my studies for preparing to preach on Romans 7, I came across an interesting form of punishment for those who committed heinous murder – possibly the murder of a parent. The murdered victim was fastened to the murderer’s body, face to face. The criminal was forced to live the rest of his days, which probably was not long, with the decaying body of his victim strapped in front of him. I won’t go into details because you are already imagining the horrendous scene. It seems almost too hard to believe that a society could do such a thing as punishment to a criminal, but did I mention public crucifixion and gladiator coliseums?
This is the image I believe Paul has as he writes Romans 6 and 7. Paul was a Roman citizen. He was also an enforcer for the Jews, responsible for rounding up Christians for incarceration and punishment. He bound and chained both men and women, marching them off to prison to endure God knows what! (Acts 22:1-5) He probably witnessed and inflicted all kinds of punishment on people and was present at the stoning of Stephen (Acts 8:1). These atrocities he committed affected him greatly, possibly tormented him. He witnessed floggings, stonings and crucifixions on a regular basis. We know he definitely used the crucifixion of Christ as a vivid illustration to demonstrate how in Christ, we have been crucified with Him. His main message to Christians was that in the gospel, the righteousness of Christ was imputed to us by the grace of God and received by faith in the atoning work of Christ, who died for us who believe in Him. Because of Christ we become new creations, whereby the old is gone, and the new has come (2Cor. 5:17). We have been crucified with Christ so we no longer live, but Christ lives in us, and the life we now live is by the resurrection power of Christ who lives His life through us (Ga. 2:20). In Romans 6 and 7, the grace of God is extended to us to be the power we need to be freed from sin, and freed from the demands of the Law. Paul sees his battle to try to fulfill the law as over and done with. His whole Jewish life, as a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee (Acts 23:6) has been like a burden of carrying around a dead body, weighed down with the inability to overcome sin, having to deal with the stench of always being a sinner, never being able to fulfill the law to which he was bound. But now, through Jesus Christ, that old rotting corpse has been unstrapped, and he is a free man (7:25). Now Paul lives in the freedom of the Spirit, in newness of life: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). It if for freedom that Christ has set us free! It’s liberation day! The old man has fallen off us. We don’t need to drag around the old sinner we used to be. He has no control or influence over us anymore. We have the freedom and power to live wholly for God, to choose sin-free living. In the words of Paul, “Put off the old, Put on the new” (Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10). Oh Church! The victorious life in Christ has already been purchased for us and applied to us. It is up to us to embrace it and drop off that rotting corpse called the ‘old man’. You died and have been raised to new life in Christ. It’s time to let that old ‘body of sin’ fall off and live the life Christ wants us to live as His followers (Rom. 6:6). Imagine a church freed to be the Holy Bride she is meant to be! Let the truth of the gospel penetrate and transform your hearts. Read Romans 5-8!
Peace
"Advancing the Kingdom of God by releasing Spirit-filled followers to serve Jesus in freedom and joy."
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