Romans 8:5-11

5 Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind controlled by the sinful nature [d] is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The sinful mind [e] is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. 8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

9 You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life [f] because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of [g] his Spirit who lives in you.



Dig Deeper
I have lived virtually my entire life in the cold climate of Wisconsin. Growing up, you just get used to cold winters with a lot of snow and the accompanying countless hours of snow shoveling that come along with the snow. We never had a snow blower growing up so I had to do a lot of shoveling as a kid. A special thanks to my parents who immediately bought a snow blower only after I moved out of the house. For years, then, after my wife and I were married she would try to convince me to buy a snow blower but I felt like it was a waste of money and I didn’t mind shoveling. A few years ago, however, after moving to a new house with a much bigger driveway and realizing that I wasn’t getting any younger, I broke down and bought one in the middle of a late November blizzard. After purchasing the thing and using it the first night, I discovered something very important the next day. It was a special kind of snow blower that required a certain kind of fuel to run on. With this type of snow blower, you have to combine oil and gas quite carefully and pour it all into the same tank. If you don’t do that and just put in regular gas, the engine will no longer start and you’ll be out in the driveway shoveling like a fool while your brand new snow blower sits in the garage with a seized engine, no longer able to run. It simply requires a certain kind of fuel or it will not run.

As Paul continues to discuss the Mosaic law and the fact that it could not give the lasting life of the age to come that it promised but that God has now made that life available through the resurrection of Christ and the gospel announcement that the Messiah has defeated death, he will continue his contrast of the flesh and the Spirit. This contrast is really part of the contrast that he has been talking of since chapter 5, the contrast between the Adamic humanity and the Messiah humanity. It is the clash of the realm of sin and the realm of grace. The realm that you live in, Paul will demonstrate here, is determined by whether you live in the flesh or in the Spirit. Back in 7:14 Paul asserted that humanity is made of flesh but that the law is spiritual. If we really want to fulfill the law it simply won’t happen if we live in the flesh. It is like pouring the wrong fuel into an engine and just hoping that it works. It never will. The law will never bring the life that it promised if someone attempts to fulfill the law by the flesh. The promised life will only come to someone who no longer lives by the flesh but by someone who is animated by the Spirit. You must have the right fuel in order for the engine to run correctly. This is, in essence, what Paul is about to show us when it comes to living in the Messiah.

The contrast that Paul makes here between the Spirit and flesh is as simple as life and death. There is an unbreakable connection between the Spirit and life, and the flesh and death. We should again make clear that when Paul speaks of the flesh and the Spirit he is not speaking of the difference between the material world and the non-material world. When he refers to flesh (what the TNIV translates as sinful nature) he speaks of the part of human life that has been given over to corruptible and mortal rebellion against God. It is the aspect of humans, and indeed of the world in a sense, that stands in open opposition to God’s purposes for his world. That which is spiritual can still be absolutely part of the physical world, but they are the things that stand connected with God, working together with him for his purposes and according to his will. Thus, that which is connected with the flesh is part of the realm of sin and leads to certain death, while that which is connected with the Spirit is part of the realm of grace and leads to certain life.

Once a Christian is freed from the enslavement to sin, something that the law could never do, we are given a choice. Before entering into the Messiah humans have no choice. They are slaves to sin, with minds that are controlled by the flesh. But Christians have a different master and have minds that are to be set on God. The picture that Paul is really painting here points forward to 12:2 where he will declare that the act of Christian transformation has to do with changing our minds from the fleshly patterns of the world towards thinking according to the Spirit.

In practical terms this means that our starting point matters very much. What many Christians find is that cannot ever seem to grab hold of a consistent Christian, Spirit-led life as they would wish. The problem is not that they have not been freed from sin, the problem is their starting point. We have been freed from sin but that doesn’t mean that we will still not be pulled to live according to the old rules to which we are so accustomed. We have been trained to go after certain things in life, to have a certain starting point for our thinking which will control our actions. Perhaps an example here will help. If my starting mentality is to be happy in life that will control my actions. The problem is that being happy is something that very much comes from the flesh side of the equation. It is self-focused and often selfish. It means that I will go through life controlled by my desire to be happy and I will interpret everything in life as good or bad based on whether or not it brings happiness. The Spirit, however, desires Christ-likeness, not happiness. If I desire the things of the Spirit I will realize that oftentimes the best thing for me to become more like Christ is not the thing that will make me happy but the thing that will stretch me and make me feel uncomfortable. The flesh will lead me to things I want; the Spirit will lead me to things I need. The flesh will call me to avoid people that bother me; the Spirit will call me to love those people and grow in my patience, my humility, and my willingness to sacrifice.

Those who are committed to a flesh-driven mind simply cannot please God nor can they fulfill the law because they are running on the wrong fuel. Incidentally, Paul says that the sinful mind is hostile to God and cannot submit to his law but he only hints at what he will spell out later in 10:5-9 that faith in Christ’s life is how the law is fulfilled and in 13:8-10 that living out the love of Christ how Christians fulfill the demands of the law. Those who are controlled by the flesh will find themselves feeling much more like Israel, the “I” of chapter 7, than those that are fueled by God’s own Spirit.

You, however, Paul says very directly and personally, are not controlled by the flesh but are in the Spirit, which is virtually synonymous with being in Christ. That doesn’t mean that one cannot choose to live according to the flesh but we are free from automatic enslavement to it through the power of the Spirit. Christians have, and this is a monumentally important point, the same Spirit in us that raised Christ from the dead. We have access to incredible power. Yes, there is responsibility laid at the feet of the Christian to do the constant mental work of transforming our minds from subjectivity to our old master to living according to the desires and will of the Spirit, but this is not a losing battle. The Spirit brings life and just as surely as he brought life to the body of the Messiah, he will bring life to us. Paul is still operating here under the belief that what is true of the king is true of his people. That means just as surely as the power of the Spirit that was sent by God resurrected Jesus from the grave so he will give us life in the present age in the Spirit but he will also raise our mortal, physical bodies just as he resurrected Christ’s. The life that the Spirit gives us now and the justification that we have which is demonstrated by living by faith in the life of Christ gives us a guarantee of the final vindication that God has reserved for his people. The life we have now guarantees our resurrected life in the age to come.

Paul has basically laid out a clear connection between walking according to the Spirit and being in Christ. This not to say that every time we falter in following the Spirit we should question whether or not we are in the Messiah. It should serve as a wake-up call, though. It is a call to re-examine what we have been running on and what our starting point mentality is. If you see absolutely no evidence in your life of the growth in the Spirit and a willingness to realize the victory over sin and the flesh that is already yours, then it is time to go back to the beginning. Have you truly died to yourself? Have you really grabbed hold in your life to the power of the same Spirit who raised the Messiah from the dead? We must wake up as Christians and realize the incredible power that is available to us. We need to stop living in subjection to our old master who now longer has any rightful claim over us and live the lives free from sin that Spirit has made available to us.


Devotional Thought
What do you have your mind set on? Is it truly set on the things that the Spirit desires or is it on the things of the flesh? Do you find yourself being able to relate more to Israel under the control of the law and sin in chapter 7 than you do a Spirit-driven victor over sin? What does Paul challenge you here to do in order to realize the life that is yours in Christ?