Marks

Every normally functioning person is acutely aware of something wrong within them. Most people subconsciously or consciously understand that they’re horribly wrong somehow. Historically we’ve tried to fix this in different ways. The Pharisees and Sadducees are two archetypal mentalities among religious people — one extreme goes to the right and mandates excessive behavioral restrictions in an attempt to earn God’s favor through what is not far from asceticism. The other side says, “What’s the point in dwelling on it?” and mostly ignore the problem.

The problem with both groups is that they cannot control their bodies’ enslavement to sin. Paul warns against the legalist and traditionalist by saying, “These rules may seem to be wise as part of a made-up religion in which people pretend to be humble and punish their bodies. But they don’t help people stop doing the evil that the sinful self wants to do” (Col 2.23). He warns against those who show no self restraint when he said, “So do you think we should keep sinning so that God will give us more and more grace? Of course not!” (Rom 6.1).

Right now reality is enslaved to death. Death is still a thing because sin is still a thing. Death was not a part of earth’s reality until sin was. Sin introduced death to earth, and it hasn’t left us since. Sin is a proof that we will die — everyone carries that proof because everyone is going to die at some point.

We carry a different proof with us, though. We still have the proof of sin because we’re all still going to die (Hb 9.27). But we also carry proof of immortality. Paul makes it very clear in I Corinthians 15 that our death is no different from a seed being planted. It is planted as one thing, it comes back to life as something much more impressive. So death is imminent for each person because of sin, but our death brings us life! Just like sin is transcendent proof of imminent death, grace is transcendent proof of imminent immortality!