A Look at a Book
by Christina Duncan

BOOK REVIEW:
Paul’s Key to the Liberated life: Romans Six to Eight
by Norman Grubb

Living a liberated life in Christ is the central theme of this booklet printed in 1988 from articles first published in The Intercessor magazine. Aimed at Christians, the 24-page booklet covers in detail what some have termed the most difficult Bible passages to understand.

Norman begins by re-stating the fact that Christ’s death on the Cross and His resurrection as our representative means that when He than, we all died, and as the Holy Spirit entered Jesus’ body at His resurrection, we also receive the Holy Spirit at our new birth. Paul says we are now to "reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God." Norman then explores the implications of Paul’s assertion that for this fact to be manifest in our daily lives, we must know that not only are we dead to sin, but also dead to the Law.

Norman goes on to expand on how the Law exposed the Satanic delusion, transmitted to man at the Fall, that we were independently capable of keeping God’s Law. The main point is that we have no independent human self which keeps or doesn’t keep the Law; we have always been a slave to the deity who owns us, and it is his law we keep. By believing that we have a human self which can operate and manage itself, we have unknowingly given control to Satan, who continues to deceive us.

Norman gives different examples explaining and expanding this one key point of Romans 6 and 7: the lie of an independent self. Using supporting passages from throughout the New Testament, Norman unfolds "the lost secret." We were never self-managing selves; we are containers, created to contain the Spirit of God. But at the Fall we were infused with the Satanic spirit of self-for-self. And at our new birth the self-for-self nature is replaced by God’s self-for-others nature. His light should shine through us as believers, but because we are deceived into thinking that we are self-managing selves, Satan still controls us through our members (from the outside). We are caught–as Paul was caught–in Romans 7, unable to do the good that we want to do, but doing the very thing we hate.

Norman shows the solution by carefully examining how Paul retraces his steps from being a born-again believer to his present experience as dead to the Law and, thus, free in Christ (the Lawkeeper) to live a totally liberated life. Norman compares in some detail his (and our own) experience to Paul’s, illustrating step by step that they are the same, and that with Paul we can come to see that there is no wrong human self, only the wrong operator (sin). Then he brings us to Romans 8: there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus and, as walking Christs, we are more than conquerors.

Although still tempted to believe the lie of independent self, we live daily by faith, affirming who we are–Christ in our form: "we are naturally Spirit-led in the affairs and decisions of our lives and take that for granted." Amid tension and frustrations, we can see these negatives as coming from God to be used positively in our growth, conforming us to the image of Christ and training us for our destiny as co-sons and co-inheritors with Christ, whilst moving on and encouraging others to step out in faith as who they are. Norman’s summation in the final chap-ter is clear and succinct, re-stating the key points previously expanded upon. I highly recommend this booklet for all who are ready to take the leap of faith into a liberated life in Christ.