IS IT POSSIBLE FOR MAN TO PLEASE GOD? As with so many questions, the answers to this will range from, "Of course he can; why not?" to "Impossible!" Quite naturally, when we humans are invited to speculate, the result is a wide spectrum of response. However, a matter as serious as man’s ability or inability to please God cannot logically be left to conjecture. Here we must be firmly anchored to the rock of divine revelation or we will drift endlessly on a sea of confusion.

God says, "they that are in the flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:8). Now we have an absolute. There are no modifiers. The statement is a plain statement from God...scientific fact, if you will, and it is not subject to interpretation. The common man can accept it, believe it, research it. It does not await a consensus to become true, nor even the judgment of experts; the Supreme Authority has dogmatically declared it, in a Book that claims infallibility, invites inspection, and offers every type of evidence to demonstrate its divine origin...a Book which claims to be, seems to be, and proves to be uniquely the Word of God.

But who are "they," the ones that are said to be in the "flesh"? We are not left to wonder. The next verse says, "but you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Another absolute! The unregenerate--the unsaved--are not indwelt by the Spirit of God! We must be as careful in our reading of Scripture as God has been in His writing of it. Some teach that God indwells all people...that there is a "spark of divinity" in every man. This is very comforting...if you don’t mind false comfort. God says otherwise. The world is divided into the Saved and the Unsaved. The saved have the indwelling Spirit of God; the unsaved do not. God regards those who do not as "in the flesh"...fleshy creatures as opposed to spiritual beings. It is not a matter of relative morality; every Roman Believer was not morally superior to every Roman unbeliever. Those in Rome who were "His" had His Spirit; those who were not "His"," did not. The citizens of first century Rome were divided, just as mankind is divided today. Those who were not "His" then resented this distinction just as those who are not "His" now resent it.

How had the Romans whom God and Paul address become "His"? In the very first chapter of the Epistle we were told that "the Good News of Christ...is the power of God to salvation to every one that believes" (Romans 1:16). These Romans had simply trusted what God, through Paul’s colleagues, had told them.

We humans, as unsaved sinners have no strength, no power to effect our salvation. The only thing we can do is believe, or trust. It is something we do every day. Every day we trust things; we trust the chairs we sit on to do their jobs, to hold us up and not to let us down. When they fail us we realize that our faith has been misplaced. I sat in my favorite rocker once and it fairly exploded. Like the Wonderful One-hoss Shay, all of its parts quit at one time. One moment a chair, the next-- kindling! My faith in the rocker to support me turned out to be unwarranted, but accurate faith in what God has said is never like that...never unwarranted.

God has done all of the difficult in our salvation, yours and mine. He became a man, without ceasing to be God, and went to a criminal’s death on the cross for you and for me. He allowed all of our sins to be imputed to Him--Him Who knew no sin--that the righteousness of God might be imputed to us who knew no righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). The only thing that He has left for us to do in order to be saved is the only thing we can do without doing anything! Faith is a non-meritorious act (Romans 4:4-5). To trust the death of Christ for my salvation is to cease trusting anything else. Therefore, to trust is not to do something; it is to cease doing anything, and to trust in what Another has DONE! To believe, then, is not a meritorious act, but a non-meritorious. When I believe, when I trust the finished work of Christ, I "lay my deadly doing down;" I "cease from my works as God did from His." (Hebrews 4:10).

Now, if I have not done the only thing required of me to be saved--believe, I am still unsaved (John 3:36). "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit," said Christ (John 3:6). These are present tenses, linear action. That which is born of the flesh is (continues to be) flesh. That’s the bad news! That which is born of the Spirit is (continues to be) spirit! That’s the good news! But there is more good news in this word of our Lord. "(That) which is born" is a perfect passive participle. The Greek perfect tense indicates action completed in time past with on-going, present-day results. Flesh NEVER becomes spirit; it cannot. Nor can spirit EVER become flesh. My father passed on to me what he received from his father...a fallen, sinful, Adamic nature. In the new birth, the birth from above, I received a new nature; a nature with a divine origin. Fallen flesh was all that Adam could bequeath to me. Unfallen spirit is what I received when born of God. I can never make a "Christian" out of my old, Adamic nature! Nor can anyone, or anything, ever make a "non-Christian" out of my new nature.

At the moment of your salvation, you became a new creature in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). God ceased to deal with you as a lost sinner in union with fallen Adam, your former federal head. Now He refuses to deal with you that way, as man in the flesh, having crucified you in the Person of your new and final Federal Head. Now He insists on dealing with you as a saved saint, united to Christ, with Whom He raised you from the dead (Romans 6:4-11).