Bella Vista Church of Christ
LIFELINES
March 28, 2001 Bobby Dockery
Chained to a Corpse
Of all the barbarous tortures contrived by the perverted mind of man, one ancient practice was especially gruesome. A prisoner would be chained to the body of a dead man so that he would be forced to drag the putrefying corpse with him wherever he went. In the Aeneid, Virgil accuses the Etruscan king Mezentius of inflicting this macabre punishment upon some of his captives.
In Romans 7.24, the Apostle Paul pictures mankind apart from Christ shackled to a far more hideous corpse: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” The idea is that if the sinful nature remains unrestrained, the result is bondage to sin which leads to spiritual death. (James 1.15.) How disturbing to think that even now we may be forging the links of the chain which binds us to a corpse! Notice some corpses to which we may find ourselves chained:
1) The Corpse Of Sin.
Many are shackling themselves to a corpse through their involvement with sin. They fail to consider that the practice of sin makes them slaves to sin! Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” (John 8.34). Enslavement in sin results in spiritual death. James reminds us: “when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.” (James 1.15.) Man allied with sin is man chained to a corpse!
2) The Corpse Of Dead Works.
Some are binding themselves to a corpse by pursuing salvation based on their own merit. It is widely held that if people are honest and morally upright, God will be satisfied with them even if they make no effort to worship Christ or become involved with His church. Those who seek salvation on this basis are actually trying to become their own Savior on the basis of keeping works of law. But Hebrews 9.14 dismisses such works as “dead” and warns that we must be purged from them by the blood of Christ! The individual who tries to please God on the basis of his own “honesty and integrity” is chained to a corpse of dead works!
3) The Corpse Of Religious Error.
Near the beginning of the Second Century, the early Christian writer Ignatius described a teacher of doctrinal error about the nature of Christ as “a bearer of a corpse.” Religious error leads to spiritual ruin! The Bible warns: “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” (Proverbs 14.12). Those who unite themselves with religious bodies built on error have bound themselves to a corpse!
To be free of a corpse we must bury it. Paul explains how we bury the corpse of sin in Romans 6.3-4: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Paul then goes on to say: “Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” (Romans 6.6). The corpse of the old self must be buried in the act of baptism to break the chain which binds us to death. Baptism results in Emancipation from sin -- it is the casting off of a corpse!
If you are still dragging a corpse, isn’t it time you broke the chain?
BOBBY DOCKERY
Fayetteville, Ark.
