The spirit flows into a life and becomes miracle-working energetic

when a person takes the Word of God, hears it, and believes it.

That's the way you put to death the deeds of the body.

There's a way to fight sin that feels like sheer willpower.

And then there's the way Paul describes in Romans 8, by the spirit.

Paul tells us that the spirit doesn't operate in a vacuum.

He works through the Word believed.

I'm your host, Dan Kruver.

In this episode of Light and Truth,

John Piper opens Romans 8, verse 12 and 13

to help us see why faith in God's promises is the real engine of holiness.

This message was originally delivered at the Cove in Asheville, North Carolina on July 9th, 2003.

What does it mean to put to death? But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,

you will live. How do you kill or put to death the deeds of the body? I take the deeds of the body to mean,

and I'm basing this on 613 and 612, where the body is made the instrument of sin. Don't

let your bodies be the instruments of sin. So the deeds of the body here are not all the

deeds of the body, obviously. There are righteous deeds of the body. Make your body instruments

of righteousness or make your body instruments of sin. But if you make them instance of sin, that sense in which you kill the deeds of the body. And I think you kill them before they happen. You don't punch somebody in the nose and say, oh, that's what I'm supposed to kill. Now I'll kill it. It's over. I mean, you can't kill it. It just happened. So you kill the deeds of the body before the body responds to the impulses of the flesh

and the sin.

So the battle is not in the body.

It's in the root in the flesh.

The battle is at that deeper prior level.

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