Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the Holy Spirit from Ezekiel 37:1–14 and Romans 8:5–11
“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ I said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’
Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” ’ So I prophesied as I was commanded.
And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” ’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
Then he said to me: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.” ’ ”
“Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
This is the Word of God.
After an absence of two years from Knox Summer Fellowship, it is an honor and a pleasure to be back. My topic, The Spirit Overcomes Death, is especially appropriate for me. Three years ago, I lost my mother. A few months ago, I lost my father. Many here have faced the anguish of bereavement. Some of you, I doubt not, face terminal illness. All of us, barring the Lord’s prior return, face certain implacable death. Hear, then, the Word of the Lord. The Spirit overcomes death. I have three points. The first emerges from Ezekiel 37 and the last two from Romans 8.
1. In Ezekiel’s vision, nothing can overcome the national death of the exile but the Spirit of God.
The passage I read, Ezekiel 37:1–14, can be divided into two parts. First, the vision itself (verses 1–10) and then its interpretation (verses 11–14). The vision, then. “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley.”
Whether this was in the Spirit alone or some transportation of Ezekiel as a total human being, spirit and body, I do not know. I am not even sure if Ezekiel knew. We remember Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 12. He was transported, he says, by the Spirit into the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body he doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. God knows.
One way or the other, he is transported by the Spirit into this valley. There, we are told, he sees bones. “This valley was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry.” They had apparently been picked clean by birds and animals. They had been desiccated and bleached by the sun. They simply laid there. There was nothing of life to them. They were dry.
There is no question here of uncleanness, which might have bothered some Jews who remembered that no kosher Jew should be too long in the presence of that which was dead. That’s not the point here. The entire focus of the passage is on death leading to life, not ceremonial laws about uncleanness. God then addresses Ezekiel, and he asks him (verse 3), “Son of man, can these bones live?”
Apart from the identity of the questioner, the question itself is ludicrous. One does not expect bones to live again. The situation is as hopeless as it can be. Ezekiel, in all fairness, answers with appropriate humility. “I said, ‘O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’ ” In the face of implacable death, there is utter human inability. There is nothing human beings can do to organize themselves out of that one. No committee will suffice. No preaching is adequate in itself. No plans, no skill, no medical power will suffice.
But Ezekiel recognizes that God is not so limited, and he replies with a little more caution. In verse 4, Ezekiel now becomes not the one who is in intercourse with God but God’s own spokesman. “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” ’ ” We are so used to this passage it is hard for us to remember how ludicrous this scene is. Does one go out to a cemetery and preach? Does one approach dead bones and expect a response?
Cicero may practice with stones in his mouth, preaching to the open sea, preaching into the open wind, because he’s merely practicing his ability as an orator, but Ezekiel is not merely trying to improve his homiletical style. He is commanded by God to preach to bones. “This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin.”
Do you hear what the burden of this message is? This message is not, “Repent.” This message is not, “Turn from your evil ways.” They are bones. How could they possibly repent? No, this message from God through Ezekiel is, “I, the Lord, will bring life to you afresh. I will bring the bones together. I will cover you over with flesh and skin. I will call forth my breath, my Spirit, my wind, and you will be animated again.” It is all promise and all God’s doing.
“So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone.”
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.
Now hear the word of the Lord.
Very evocative, and it has it exactly. This is the power of the Word of God mediated by the Spirit. The bones came together, and in his vision, that which was dead and desiccated and hopeless came and formed afresh. Not by the word alone. That was insufficient. No, he preaches, and there is some coming together, but no life. So Ezekiel is told, “Prophesy to the breath.” The word is ambiguous. It can mean to the wind or to the breath or to the spirit, and the word is repeated.
Verse 5: “I will make breath enter your spirit [or wind].” Verse 6: “I will put breath in you.” Verse 8: “There was no breath in them.” Verse 9: “ ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.” ’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”
The language is richly reminiscent of Genesis 2. “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, the spirit of life, and the man became a living being.” So also here, in this wonderful scene, by the ministry of the Word and the power of the Spirit, that which was dead now lives. That is the substance of the vision. Now what does it mean?
The interpretation is given for us in verses 11–14. Everything depends on understanding verse 11 aright by understanding what is meant by these dry bones. Some say this valley of dry bones represents the shattered, desiccated corpses of a fallen army, and this constitutes the gathering of the Israelite army afresh, but look at verse 11.
God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.” This is not just a picture of the army; it’s the entire nation. Some say Ezekiel 37 is a vision of the final resurrection, but look at the end of verse 11. God says to Ezekiel, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ ”
This is the cry of the people of God in the exile. What has happened to them? Their nation has been wiped out. First of all, in 605 BC, the cream of the crop were removed. In 596, the mainstream leaders and the nobility were removed. By 587 or 586, Israel was destroyed. Judea was destroyed. The city was razed to the ground. The temple was nothing but dust and ashes, and all but the poorest of the poor had been transported to foreign nations. There was no covenant nation left.
Do you remember that terribly sad psalm, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we hung up our harps”? They hung up their instruments of joy because there was no cause for joy left. The enemy said, “Come on! Take down your harps. Play us a sad song. We’d like a little folk dancing.” “How can we sing the songs of Zion in a strange land?” The covenant God was tied to his covenant people through a covenant temple and a covenant land, and the people knew only despair.
This reference to bones comes out of that framework. “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone.” This is the heart of Hebrew poetry. Think of Psalm 31. “My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning. My strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.” Proverbs 17:22: “A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
That’s the idea here. These bones are dried up because the nation is crushed and in the pit of despair. There is no hope. Two and a half millennia later, we know there is a return from the exile, but the people who had been transported into Babylon, the earlier people who had been transported into Assyria, they didn’t have such word apart from the word of the prophets, which they found hard to believe. Everything looked bleak.
In short, the nation is dead. It is a valley of dry bones. There is no priesthood that is offering sacrifice. There is no temple where the shekinah dwells. There is no capital city, no promised land for the promise people. Thus, in terms of the imagery of the vision, the resurrection is nothing other than the returning to the Promised Land and being reconstituted as the covenant people of God on their own covenant land.
That is the power of verse 3. “Son of man, can these bones live?” In the vision, the bones can’t live. In that to which the vision refers, how can these nations be brought back again to be reconstituted afresh? It took nothing less than the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea and 40 years of wandering and the approach at Kadesh-Barnea, circling again and coming in across the Jordan River to constitute the nation in the first place. The fall of Jericho, the miracle at Ai, and on and on. Will God do it again? Will he reconstitute the nation?
The people have been chastened and destroyed, wiped off the face of the land, disseminated amongst the superpowers of the day. Note well, then, that the vision is not here for the people. The vision is for Ezekiel, to strengthen his hand. Ezekiel is not told to tell this vision to the people. That’s for him, to understand that God is capable even of raising the dead. Then he is told (verse 11) what he is to tell the people.
“Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.” Therefore prophesy and say to them: “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.” ’ ”
This great work is tied to God’s Spirit. “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” What is the main point of Ezekiel’s vision? It is this: In Ezekiel’s vision, nothing can overcome the national death of the exile but the Spirit of God. Yet in Ezekiel’s visions, there is always an overtone of something yet future, something beyond the merely national hope. This is bound up with the great and sometimes difficult theme of typology.
In the Old Testament, there are not only verbal predictions of what will take place under the new covenant; there are also patterns, models, types, examples of what will ultimately take place under the new covenant. Thus, for example, the exodus that brought the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land becomes, under the new covenant, a picture, if you like, of how God’s people are taken out of the land and domain of sin and introduced to the kingdom of God by God’s own power.
The temple, that great institution that taught the people how God provides a means for bringing his sinful people into his holy presence by God-ordained sacrifices and a God-ordained priesthood and God-ordained death and God-ordained blood; the place where God’s representatives met before God himself in all of his splendor as the shekinah glory came down on the mercy seat … The temple becomes a pattern of Jesus Christ himself, the new temple. “Destroy this temple, the crucial meeting place between God and man …”
To change the image slightly, in the language of Hebrews the temple is nothing other than heaven, and Christ the Priest enters this temple with his own blood. We are told that the old temple thus serves as a kind of picture, a foreshadowing, a kind of image on the wall that a child creates with his fingers to create a fox or a chicken or a hare with light shining to create a kind of image, but the reality is not the image. The temple itself is not the reality; it’s the image.
So also the covenant people coming back out of their exile and into the land, animated by the Spirit, is picked up again and again and again in Old Testament prophecy as a picture of the way God will gather his people by his Spirit and constitute them as his people, finally to be settled in a new heaven and a new earth.
Thus, in the previous chapter, chapter 36, there is strong reference there to the Spirit, picked up by the Lord Jesus Christ in connection with the new birth. Notice how this passage in Ezekiel 37 ends. God says, “When I have done all of this, you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.” This is God’s doing.
Now go back to Ezekiel 36, verses 22 and following. “Say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I’m going to do these things (that is, bring you back again and chasten the nations that have punished you), but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone.
I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I show myself holy through you before their eyes. For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land.
I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.’ ”
The return to the land is tied in this prophecy ultimately to God’s cleaning up the hearts of his people, to his pouring out of his Spirit upon them such that they are reconstituted, changed inside, so they want to follow God, which is language Jesus picks up in connection with the new birth in John, chapter 3.
The point, then, is this: In Ezekiel’s vision, nothing can overcome the national death of the exile but the Spirit of God. Nothing. Yet that historic fact becomes a pointer to new dimensions of the Spirit’s activity in our lives today and ultimately at the end of time. That brings me to the second point. Romans, chapter 8.
2. In the Christian life, nothing can overcome our death-dealing sinful nature but the Spirit of God.
Romans 8, verses 5 and following. There is a massive contrast in these verses between the flesh (rendered in the NIV “the sinful nature”) and the Spirit. Listen carefully to the argument. Verse 5: “Those who live according to the sinful nature, the flesh, have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.”
Now the mind which is set on the flesh or on the Spirit might be rendered here a mindset. It’s not just your rational processes. It’s not just your mind in that sense. It’s your mindset; that is, your reasoning power, your affection, your will, your whole you, your whole identity. It’s either tied, on the one hand, to the flesh or to the Spirit.
Now what is meant by flesh? It is not simply this stuff that drapes my bones, nor is it simply sexual sin. “Sins of the flesh,” we sometimes speak of today. The flesh, in Paul’s language here, refers to the whole order of fallen humanity apart from God. There are so many ways of looking at it. Try this one. When God made us in the first place, he was at the center, and all of us were rightly related to him. That is how he made us.
So made in his image, we thought about him. Our loves and our ambitions, our goals and our hopes were with respect to him, and if we related properly to each other, it was because each of us individually related first to him. He was the center. He is God. He made us for himself. But now this side of the fall, each of us individually thinks of number one. Isn’t that the framework in which all of us think?
I view the world from my focus, from my narrow self-centeredness. I think of how everything and everyone relates to me. Isn’t that how children grow up? Their focus is themselves. Watch a child go through puberty, and they’re just desperately concerned all the time about how everybody relates to them. As we go into full adulthood, we hide it a little better, but aren’t we still saying the same things? We’re terribly concerned about how everyone relates to us.
Proof: When was the last time you had a good argument with your spouse or with an employer or employee? A really good knock-down humdinger. Then afterwards you go away and think about it, and when you think about it, you’re still steaming a little, and you think of all of the things you could have said, all of the things you would have said if you had thought of them fast enough, all of the things that would have made you win.
Now in this replay of your argument, do you ever lose? I have lost many arguments. I’ve never lost a rerun. Why not? Because in my heart of hearts, in my imagination, I always want to be number one. In this terrible situation, even God is placed in my mind as someone who exists out there to serve me. I am at the center of the universe. He is not; I am. The trouble is you think you are, and you think you are, and you think you are.
So there is strife horizontally, and there is antipathy toward God, because God must exist to serve us. That’s the very nature of sin. It is destroying. It can result in what we call social pathologies, but it can result in religious cant. It can result in endless religious self-righteousness. It can end in endless moral relativism, but it’s still the same problem. One can have very upright, uptight religious people or one can have terrible social pathologies still with the same root problem: I want to be number one.
All of that is the fruit of the flesh. It is thinking apart from God. It is value systems apart from God. It is goals and ambitions apart from God. It is desires and lusts apart from God, what someone has called the love of beauty divorced from the love of goodness. It is desperately sad and utterly hopeless, and our mindsets inevitably are locked into the flesh, the sinful nature, or they are locked into the Spirit. That is what Paul says.
Those who live according to the flesh have their mindset driven by the flesh, by this profound self-centeredness that will not let go, that makes me, finally, to be god; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their mindset in the Spirit. They learn to think God’s thoughts after him. They want to look at things from God’s perspective. They want again to return so that everything is seen from the vantage point of God’s throne. God is God.
The mind of sinful man, the mind of the flesh, is death. That is, it leads inevitably away from God so that it ultimately ends in death. It is the cause of our spiritual death. It is the cause, finally, of our physical death. It is the cause of the second death. We will not live with God. We want to be number one, and we are damned.
But the mind of the Spirit … that is what is meant. The mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. Now we are connected to him who is the author of life. Now we are reconciled to him so that we know his peace and peace among ourselves. The sinful mind (that is, the mind of the flesh, the mindset that is ultimately self-centered) is hostile to God. How can it be deeply, profoundly submitted to the God who is there and worshiping number one? It can’t be.
It may make all kinds of protestations about how much it loves God and how religious it is and how it observes the commandments and how it does many good deeds, but at the end of the day it is still serving number one. It is not saying, “Your will be done, not mine.” The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s demand, to God’s law. It does not bow the knee before him. It is not a principial acknowledgement that God is God and we are not number one. “Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.” That is what the text says.
Now the contrast here is descriptive. It is describing the difference between the mindset controlled by the Spirit and the mindset controlled by the flesh. It is not, in the first instance, an exhortation. The exhortation will come. It is a description. It is saying, “This is the way it is.” On the one hand, you have people controlled by the flesh with a mindset that lives for number one. On the other hand, you have people with a mindset controlled finally by the Spirit.
One is reminded of 1 Corinthians, chapter 2. The natural man (which is Paul’s language for this description here; that is, the person without the Spirit of God) does not understand the things of God; in fact, they’re foolishness to him, and they can only be spiritually discerned. But the one with the Spirit … Of that person Paul says, “We have the mind of Christ.” It’s the same word. The mindset of Christ; that is, a whole different way of looking at things.
It does not mean I think as well as Christ does or know as much as he does. It means I have the mindset of Christ so that I look at things from his perspective. That is what the Spirit brings about. The Lord Jesus says as much in connection with the new birth in John, chapter 3. Do you remember the image he uses? He says, “The wind blows and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
What does he mean? Well, in the ancient world, even less than today, they didn’t know all that much about meteorology. They’d see the wind whistle through the streets of Jerusalem. Some dust would be blown up, and a skirt would fly. There would be a tumbleweed running across the ground. They’d see the effects of the wind. Perhaps if the wind came up a little more, the rain in the rainy season would come at a sharp slant, and the trees would sway back and forth.
No one could deny that the wind was there and operating and powerful, but that didn’t mean that everybody had a very good idea of how the wind came about. Even less so than today, people didn’t know about high and low pressures and ridges and moving fronts and so forth. But no one denied the power of the wind on that account.
So it is, Jesus says, with everyone born of the Spirit. The person who is born of the Spirit has so been touched by the Spirit of God that you cannot deny the effects. You may not be able to explain all the mechanisms. You may not understand exactly how the Spirit of God changes our minds and our wills and our value systems, how this regeneration takes place, but you can’t deny the effects. The effects are there.
So also here. There is the mindset of the sinful nature, and there is the mindset of the Spirit. This language is very powerful. Verse 8: “Those controlled by the sinful nature [literally, those who are in the flesh] cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.” From Paul’s point of view, a Christian cannot be in the flesh by definition.
He does not deny that sins are possible. We’ll come to that. But he does say that being a Christian means you have the Spirit of God, and it changes your value system. It changes your orientation. If you are in the Spirit, you have the mind of God. It changes your mindset, your reasoning, your will, your affections. The point, then, of the passage is this: in the Christian life, nothing can overcome our death-dealing sinful nature but the Spirit of God.
Now before I press on to the last point, it is important that I pause here for three very important implications for the contemporary church. I will merely list them. First, biblical conversion is life-transforming. It is not a question of getting people to make a little decision, sort of getting them to just barely topple up to the top of a fence and teeter over the other side, with all the life-changing business coming by our counseling groups and therapy sessions afterwards. Biblical conversion is itself life-transforming.
Now do not misunderstand me. I am not for a moment suggesting there is no decision involved. Of course there is. He calls us to repent and believe. Nor am I suggesting for a moment that there is no growth in grace this side of conversion. Not for a moment. Our whole lives as Christians will be one unending change of moving from glory to glory, to use the language of Paul, until the final transformation when we’re transformed, metamorphosed, into the likeness of God’s dear Son.
Still, it is important to emphasize that from the biblical point of view, conversion without life transformation is a contradiction in terms. Conversion is the work of the Spirit, finally. Conversion brings about conviction of sin. Conversion makes us ashamed and fearful in the presence of a holy God. It makes us love what was formerly despised or ignored. Holiness becomes attractive.
We still may sin, but when we sin, the Spirit working in us pommels us and will not let us rest. We may drift off, but we will have no peace finally until we are dragged back … kicking and screaming if need be, but we will be dragged back. The Spirit will not let us go. Biblical conversion is life-transforming, and it is God’s work. That means we do not want to press people merely to some kind of cheap decision whereby they think they have almost done God a favor.
It is no more possible to get radical conversion out of that than it is to have a return from the exile by a couple of volunteers offering to go back. It takes the work of the Spirit of God to change the course of history, to raise up people with new hearts who want to come back. So also here. There’s the mind of the flesh. What do we learn of them? This mind does not submit to God’s law. It cannot do so. The mind of those who are in the Spirit.
The second thing to observe, then, is that biblical ethics turn on keeping in step with the Spirit. In the passage just beyond what we read (verses 12 and following), Paul gives this point to us. “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation …” Since we have the Spirit, we have an obligation. “… but it is not to the sinful nature, not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”
A great deal of Paul’s appeal to right living runs this way. If you are Christians, you have the Spirit. If you have the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit. Live by the Spirit. Please the Spirit. Delight in the Spirit. Thus, to use the language of the mindset again. Colossians, chapter 3. “Set your minds on things above.” That’s what you do. Or to use the language of Philippians, chapter 2, precisely because it is God himself by his Spirit working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure; therefore, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
The Bible knows nothing of some kind of disjunction in which we argue, “God has done his bit; now you do your bit. God has done his bit and sort of quit, and now you do your bit or else it all falls apart.” That’s not the argument at all. The argument is, “In radical, biblical conversion, God changes your mindset. Now work it out, knowing that it is God working in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
That is why Paul finds it unthinkable that Christians, who by definition are in the Spirit, can just wander away. He calls them “those who act carnally.” That is, according to the flesh. It’s unthinkable, he says. It’s ridiculous that Christians should quarrel. It’s unthinkable that Christians should strive to be number one, because that is fleshly thinking. So biblical ethics turn on keeping in step with the Spirit.
Biblical conversion is life-transforming, and it is achieved by the proclamation of the Word empowered by the Spirit, as was the great message in the valley of dry bones. The bones came to life by the proclamation of the Word empowered by the Spirit. So also in the Christian way God discloses himself by his Word empowered by the Spirit so that we develop a Christian mindset and grow in holiness.
A third implication of this is clear. Revival is nothing other than a fresh outpouring of the Spirit. Every single solitary conversion is the work of the Spirit. Every single step in sanctification, in growth in grace is finally the work of the Spirit. Oh, I know he operates in us and with us. Because he works in us, we too will, we too choose, we too believe, we too repent of our sins, but it is God working in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
When the Spirit comes upon God’s people in powerful display, there is such a solemn recognition of his presence and his holiness that everything that is cheap and tawdry and shoddy and dirty is perceived more clearly than ever before what it really is from God’s perspective. We are ashamed. We stop asking stupid questions that really, in fact, betray our desire to know what we can get away with.
Instead, we start praying, as did Murray M’Cheyne in the last century, “God, make me as holy as a pardoned sinner can be.” Prayer becomes a delight. Doctrine is crucial but not merely creedal. It is bound up with all of our existence. As revival continues, the power of God’s Word beyond the church in the community crushes men and women in terrible guilt, real guilt. Not merely subjective guilt, a recognition of real guilt, so that men and women cry out, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And there is revival.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, you cannot organize that. You cannot ape it. You cannot simply whip it up. This is in the gift of the Spirit. Only the Spirit is powerful enough to overcome our death-dealing flesh, to revive the church again, to bring about a new wave of magnificent conversions and remind the word afresh that Jesus is Lord. That brings me to my last point.
3. In the last day, nothing can overcome our death but the Spirit of God.
Verse 10: “If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is life because of righteousness.” Christ being in you here is equivalent to the Spirit being in us. Christ makes himself present in us by his Spirit. Now if you have the Spirit, if Christ is in you, your body is dead.
What does that mean? Well, in Romans 6, our body is dead in the sense that since Christ has paid for our sins, we are already reckoned dead before God. That is, God views us already as dead, because Christ has died on our behalf. Christ has taken our death. So legally, in God’s eyes, we’re dead. If then we’re dead, we’re freed from the domain of death, the power of death, the curse of death. “So,” Paul says, “get out there, then, and live according to the mind of Christ.”
But that isn’t the point here. Here there is a contrast between the body being dead and the spirit being alive. No, what is at stake here is this: the Christian’s body is still mortal. If Christ is in you, on the one hand your body is dead because of sin. We are still mortal. No one in this room has yet gained a resurrection body. Christian you may be, justified you may be; in process of sanctification, doubtless; in every hope of glorification, wonderful; but you still will die. Your body is mortal. You are dead because of sin.
Yet not your spirit (the text doesn’t say that) but the Spirit (that is, the Holy Spirit) is alive, is life, because of righteousness, justification. It’s the same word in the original. The Spirit is alive. He is the one giving you life because of justification, God’s work in reconciling you to himself by the death of his own Son. The Spirit is alive. He is life. You may be dead, but you also have the Spirit, and the Spirit is life because of justification.
Now then, the argument runs, if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead, God the Father, is living in you, which is the whole point of this passage, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you. In other words, the same Spirit, the gift from God, which is dealing with your death-dealing flesh now, will ultimately deal with your mortal death.
The same God who raised Jesus from the dead will by his powerful Spirit raise you from the dead. The same Spirit who is so powerful that he changes your nature now is so powerful that he will raise you from the death on the last day. That’s the vision. The point, in other words, is that in the last day, nothing can overcome our death but the Spirit of God.
So there is great stress here, then, on the continuity of the Spirit’s work. This is the Spirit who is the guarantee, the down payment, of the promised inheritance. He begins a work in us, and as Philippians 1:6 says, he continues it until the last day, when he calls us back to physical life, to resurrection life. What does this engender in us? It engenders in us great assurance.
Look at verses 15 and following. “You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received a Spirit of sonship.” Verse 16: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” Verse 17: “If we are children, then we are heirs … heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings.”
Then in the great passage of verses 18 to the end of the chapter, wonderful confidence for the last day. Even if we are persecuted or killed, even if we are betrayed or destroyed, yet God in his great love will not let us go. Why? How could he? The same Spirit who helps us in our weaknesses (verse 26) helps us in our prayers (verses 26–27), prays for us (verse 27), and ultimately raises us again on the last day.
Last week I was in Ottawa. I went to the graves of my parents. It is a quiet cemetery, but one day Thomas Carson and Elizabeth Margaret Maybury Carson will rise again. Is this some sort of pious hope I entertain because I cannot confront death? It is rather a confident certainty because I have seen the power of the Spirit of God in their lives.
The argument of this passage is if God by his Spirit deals with our sinful nature, our flesh, gives us life there and transforms us, this same powerful Spirit will raise us on the last day to resurrection bodies, enjoying all the delights of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, in the reconstituted universe, forever in the presence of the living God, whole beings, body and soul, reconstituted like Christ’s body. The Spirit overcomes death.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, do you see what is at stake in all of these passages, in all three of these points? In all three of these points, it is God by his Spirit who does the work. God brings back the nation. God gives us a new nature and conforms us to Christ. God raises us on the last day. Here is ground for wonderful thanksgiving. Here is magnificent incentive to beseech the living God that he would pour out his Spirit upon us, that we should walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.
Here is the challenge constantly, day by day, moment by moment, again and again and again, to think in line with the Spirit of God as he has disclosed himself in his Word and empowers us by taking up residence within us. We live in the Spirit, and in this domain of the Spirit we learn to overcome the flesh, growing in conformity to Christ until the last day, when we hear him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord.”
Meanwhile, every time we lay someone in the grave, every time we lose a friend or a loved one, we see a baby buried or an old woman, we watch the slaughter in Bosnia and Herzegovina or the famine in Sudan, we remember this is still the valley of dry bones. It is still the time of death. It is still the time of the curse.
We thank God for the gift of the Spirit who calls men and women to new life, and we remember that this is the down payment of the inheritance that is ultimately ours. In the last day, death will die. There will be no more death, and the Spirit will bring to new resurrection life that which has died. So the church in every generation cries, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” Let us pray.
Forgive us, Lord, we beseech you, when even the horizons of our faith are so self-centered that we think of you almost as a domesticated genie who gives us blessings and pats us on the head and thanks us for our enterprises. Forgive us, Lord God, and so renew us by your Spirit that we are ashamed of all that is self-centered and deeply desirous of seeing Christ uplifted and praised. Renew a right spirit within us. Make us to hate sin and cleave to all that is fresh and clean and Christ honoring and lovely.
Glorify your own Son in this broken world and especially in the church. Revive us again. And we beseech you make us to look forward to that day when all that is death dealing here is swept aside and we ourselves know the final transformation that makes us like Christ, joint heirs with Jesus Christ. We bless you for the work of the Spirit. Revive us again, we beseech you. In Jesus’ name, amen.
