Prescriptions
Romans 6:16 says “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?” I want to focus on the part of the verse where Paul says sin leads to death. We tend to think that the idea presented here is some variation of the following: when we sin, God will accordingly punish us with the death we deserve. But N.T. Wright, in his book “The Day the Revolution Began” has a view on this passage that differs from this view. He uses an example to illustrate his view, but for now I’ll discuss an example that came to me as I was going through my normal daily routines. But this is still primarily N.T. Wright’s idea. I’m just adding my twist to it.
Many of us, especially as we grow older, have a number of prescription medicines we take. We take these medicines because they are good for us, and help our quality of life. The prescriptions come with a specific set of instructions as to when and how to take these medicines. The purpose in these instructions is to keep the medicine in the body doing its job of fighting disease or otherwise keeping us healthy.
One thing these instructions are NOT, though, is a set of laws that we must follow. As if we did not follow these laws, we would then be subject to punishment. Yet we all know that if we did not follow those instructions, consequences and most likely suffering would ensue. If you take a medicine that helps with high blood pressure or cholesterol, and you fail to take that medicine, chances are you will begin to suffer from high blood pressure or the effects of high cholesterol. If you take a medicine that stifles seizures, and fail to take it, your chances of experiencing a seizure increase. And so on and so forth.
Failure to take these medicines will lead to unpleasant circumstances. But when you fail to take those medicines as prescribed, you are not being punished when you suffer those circumstances. The suffering is not a result of violating a rule, but it is linked to not doing what is good for you. The same is true with God’s word. Wright’s point in his book is not that God punishes us for violating commands by inflicting death on us. What happens is our actions are so far out of line of the goodness that God wants for us, they lead to death. By choosing our own path, and leaving God’s prescribed ways, we leave the path that leads to life and goodness, and begin to travel a path that ultimately leads to our demise and death. We were created by God, for purposes which God intended for us. He knows what he wants from us and he constructed us to do those things he wanted us to do. When we go off down alternate paths of our own choosing, we go down paths that lead to other outcomes. Or, in light of our prescriptions, when we choose to take a prescribed medicine in ways it was not prescribed, or not to take it at all, we will suffer for it. When as humans, we do not follow the “prescription” God gave to us for life with him in what he wanted for us, we will suffer for it.
Another way to look at it is this – you can use a wrench to drive a nail, but that’s not what it was made for. As humans, we can do all sorts of things, and maybe have them result in an effective outcome. But if we are not doing what we were made for, then we are not fulfilling God’s purposes for us. In the end, this path, as Romans tells us, leads to death. But not as punishment for not abiding by the “prescription,” but as a result and direct consequence of not abiding by that “prescription.”
The point for us should be this – choose the path that complies with the “prescription” for life.
-Mike Hendricks