Romans 8:5-13

 

In Romans 7, Paul described some of the struggles which will occur on the road to transformation, and then with the first four verses of chapter 8, we have his triumphal declaration that God has done anyway with the consequence of sin, that we are delivered from the bondage and slavery which sin brings, because of the atonement provided by Jesus. Paul ended that section by mentioning the two ways of walking, walking after the flesh and after the spirit. In the next few verses, he expands on this, describing this contrast in more detail.

Paul is picturing two paths, two ways of life. In verse 4 he spoke of walking after the flesh or after the spirit. Here he continues this thought by saying that those who go after the flesh 'mind' the things of the flesh and ditto for those who go after the Spirit. They think about, put their mind on the things of the flesh or the spirit respectively. This doesn't mean simply that thoughts concerning these things go through their mind—Paul was thinking about both flesh and Spirit as he wrote this—but these two things are the center and foundational part of the mind in their respective followers. The NET Bible translates it: “For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit.”

So, we have walking after or walking according to one of these two principles and we have our thinking molded by one or the other. And this is a matter of life or death, for the one mindset is death and the other is life. It is tempting to call these the results of the two paths, but Paul doesn't say that to be carnally minded leads to death but that it is death; death and life are the essences of these two ways of thinking. 

Why is this? Why is the mindset of flesh synonymous with death? Because this mindset, this way of thinking, this principle is enmity against God. The mind of the flesh cannot be subjected to the law of God. They are irreconcilable; incompatible. It is impossible. Therefore, so long as someone is walking after the flesh, and has the mind of the flesh, they cannot please God. You cannot look someone in the face if you are going the opposite direction. But what exactly is this principle of the flesh?

In the world, there are sinners; those who are separate from and opposed to God. Paul spent the first several chapters of Romans driving home this reality—the reality of the sinfulness of humanity, the unrighteousness and ungodliness of man against which the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven. And what was the beginning point, the springboard, the catalyst of that sinfulness? It was Romans 1:21: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

The heart of sin is a refusal to acknowledge and fellowship with God. Ephesians 2:12 describes the conditions of those who are in sin: “That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.” They were without God in the world; this doesn't mean, necessarily, that they were unaware of God's existence but that they had no vital connection with God. “The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God: God is not in all his thoughts.” (Psalm 10:4) There are various different ways to translate the final phrase of that verse which point to different aspects of the wicked man's mindset, but they all have this underlying idea; the wicked man lives as if there were no God; he does not factor God into his plan. “The transgression of the wicked saith within my heart, that there is no fear of God before his eyes.” (Psalm 36:1)

This is the essence of sin; it is being cut off from God; it is acting as if there were no God; leaving God out of the account. A sinner is not somebody who committed every single sin in the Bible; it not someone who has never done an act of virtue; it is someone whose will is set elsewhere than God. 

This is the nature of a sinner, and this is the nature of all mankind taken on its own. We can say that man is naturally sinful in the sense that sinful is what man is until something is done to change his state; even though the original design of man was to be holy and righteous. So, a car is referred to as a 'moving vehicle' because the designated purpose of a car is to move. But the natural state of a car is standing still—that is all it will do unless you turn it on. 

In Romans 5:12 Paul established that sin is a universal human reality because of the sin of Adam. Because of that primal transgression, mankind was stopped in its tracks; the car of human nature was turned off and it is still sitting unmoving in the driveway until God's Spirit gets into the driver's seat.

And this sinful nature is what the Bible calls flesh. As we discussed in a previous article, flesh in this context does not mean the physical nature of man—his literal flesh in the sense of his body—but rather the inner moral weakness of man. Thayer defines this concept of flesh as “mere human nature, the earthly nature of man apart from divine influence, and therefore prone to sin and opposed to God; accordingly it includes whatever in the soul is weak, low, debased, tending to ungodliness and vice.” Philip Melanchthon gives this definition: “'Flesh' signified the entire nature of man, sense and reason, without the Holy Spirit.” Finally, from William Barclay, we have: “The flesh is anything in us which gives sin its chance; it is human nature without God.”

That is why the mind or the mindset of the flesh is enmity against God and cannot be subject to the law of God. This isn't an arbitrary dislike between the flesh and God; it is essential to the very nature of the case. They exclude each other as light and darkness exclude each other. Where one is, the other is not.

That is why sinners, those that are in the flesh, cannot please God. Because the whole root and center of their being is opposed to God. They are only in the flesh because they are separated from God and therefore nothing they do, good though it might be in the abstract, can please God while they are living in this state of separation from God. It would be like if a man were convicted of being a counterfeiter and ordered to pay a fine and he tried to pay it with counterfeit money. 

This is the life of the flesh, the life lived after the flesh, the manner of those who walk after the flesh, the mindset and worldview of the flesh. And it is death. William Barclay comments: “In the most literal sense, there is no future in it—because it is getting further and further away from God. To allow the things of the world completely to dominate life is self extinction; it is spiritual suicide. By living it, a man is making himself totally unfit ever to stand in the presence of God. He is hostile to him, resentful of his law and his control. God is not his friend but his enemy, and no man ever won the last battle against him.” (Romans 8:5-11)

So what then is the hope for humanity? How can man be delivered from the unrighteousness and ungodliness of man and so be spared the wrath of God which is revealed from Heaven? How can man become just and live? By faith. Faith, on man's side, is the efficient cause of a new relationship with God. Because that is what salvation is; a new relationship, founded on faith, on grace, and on the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But the key player in this new relationship, the catalyst which causes it, the agent which makes all this actually happen is the Holy Spirit. Paul, speaking of the union of the church, the union of all Christians says this: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:13, c.p. Romans 5:5, Romans 8:14-16)

It is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between the sinner and the Christian. This is the beginning of transformation; the first step in the creation of actual righteousness. This is called regeneration; a new beginning, a new birth, a new creation. The Allegheny Discipline defines regeneration as: “that work of the Holy Spirit... whereby the regenerate are delivered from the power of sin which reigns over all the unregenerate, so that they love God and through grace serve Him with the will and affections of the heart—receiving the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”

The Bible describes the life of the Christian as being linked to Christ—Christ in us and we in Him. But this is made possible by the Spirit. In John, Jesus speaks much of the work of the Holy Spirit, and over and over, in different forms, we have this idea that the Spirit's work is to bring Christ. He is the Breath which caries the WORD. That is probably why our passage refers to Him as the Spirit of Christ. Paul here specifically points to the fact that the Spirit was the agent of the resurrection; that it was the Spirit who brought Christ back to life; and that, therefore, He may be the Spirit of life to us. This could be a reference to the future resurrection, something will talk about later in this chapter, but it seems to refer to regeneration—that just as the Spirit was able to make a corpse rise not just to live but to a new, glorious life, so it can make a sinner rise into a new, glorious life.

All Christian life is life in the spirit and that is the only reason why a Christian can live for God. As Paul said earlier, it is the law of the Spirit that frees us from the power of the law of Sin. Verse 9 makes it clear, in very plain terms, that all Christians have this life of the spirit and without it, there cannot be a Christian experience. But that brings us to a problem.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul describes the Corinthians as carnal, fleshly, and not spiritual. But he also describes them as babes in Christ and then goes on to say this: "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16) These quarrelsome, shallow, babyish Corinthians were, nevertheless, a temple of the Holy Spirit--this is specifically why it was wrong for them to be living in strife and disagreement; because they all had the same spirit, they were all baptized into one body with one Spirit.

Therefore, we have to say that it is possible for these two principles, two laws--flesh and spirit, the law of sin and the law of life--to coexist within the soul; that it is possible to have a mixture or at least a mingling of these two things, despite the fact that they are mutually exclusive.

And while that is hard to describe or define theologically, it is quite easy to picture with physical metaphors. Suppose you have a room that has no windows. There are lights all over the roof of this room, but they are all turned off. While it is in that state, the room will be dark. Maybe a little light filters in through the door or through some crack in the wall, but you can broadly say that the room is dark. That answers to the state of a sinner, someone fully under the control of the flesh. God is still at work in such people; you can even say that God is in them in the sense that God is everywhere, but that doesn't change their nature any more than a few cracks will turn a dark room into a light one.

But then suppose all those lights in the ceiling are turned on. At that point, the room is light, and because it is light, it is not dark, since darkness and light exclude each other by definition. You couldn't say: "Well, this is a brightly lit room but it's still dark everywhere." You can't have it both ways; just as you cannot have a Christian who is still a sinner. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death.

But even though the room is lit, that doesn't mean that there is not a single spot of darkness; not a solitary shadow within the room. If the room is furnished, then every chair and table in the room will block the light. For every piece of furniture in the room, there will be a shadow, a portion of that room that the light has not filled. These shadows will not be as dark as the darkness in the room before the lights were on, but they will exist and will still be dark unless someone comes in and cleans out all the furniture in the room so that the light can touch and fill every corner. 

This answers to the state of those that Paul calls 'carnal.' Those who are in Christ and in the Spirit--or who have Christ through the Spirit in them, whichever way you want to state it--but who are also, in some sense and to some extent, under the dominion of the law of sin, of the flesh. The victory that the Spirit brings has not yet touched every part of their soul. The general has fallen, but some of the troops have not yet been captured. 

That is why Paul makes a point of exhorting Christians to live up to the victory which Christ had provided for them. Look at verse 12. He says that we are not debtors to live after the flesh; in other words, we have no duty to it, no responsibility to it; it has no hold on us; we do not owe it one thing, as Eugene Peterson paraphrases it. Instead, what we should do is mortify the deeds of the body (which seems to mean the deeds of the flesh, since flesh literally means body), and we do that through the Spirit. In other words, even for the Christian, there is a decision to make, a decision to live after the Spirit and not after the flesh. Paul makes a similar exhortation to the Galatians: "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25)

So, we have this class of Christians who are described as 'carnal.'--who have been saved and are therefore in the Spirit, but have not, through faith, yet allowed the Spirit to complete His victory over the Flesh. And because the flesh, or the law of sin, is still operative in them, if even to a limited extent, then the battle of Romans 7, the battle between the law of God and the law of sin, the battle of knowing what is right without being able to do, also continues to a certain extent.

It is clear from the Bible that there is a continual growth in the Christian life throughout all of life--that there is no point, before death at least, where we have nothing to gain, nothing to press forward to. There is a sense in which our entire life as Christians will be--or should be--a continual deepening of the victory of Christ in our hearts. However, that does not seem to be what happens regarding to what we are talking about here. Because when Paul is speaking to the Corinthians, he says "ye are yet carnal." Not, "ye are yet too carnal."  In Romans 7:5, where Paul introduces this whole passage, he says "When we were in the flesh," not, "When we were more in the flesh than we are now." 

In other words, in addition to the carnal state, we have a state which can be called spiritual, which is distinct from the carnal state. We shouldn't picture this mixed state—this battle between flesh and spirit—as something which continues throughout the whole of the Christian life, or at least as something which has to continue throughout the whole of the Christian life. There is a possibility—even, so to speak, a probability—of a better state. Paul seems disappointed, almost annoyed with the Corinthians because of the fact that they were still in this state. It was something, seemingly, that they ought to have been beyond by that point.

Furthermore, as we saw, the carnal state is one in which a complete victory over sin is impossible, because of the actions of the law of sin. So look at 1 John 1:8-2:1: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Here we have a progression. There is a state of sin; a state where the individual bares the guilt and reality of sin and can only deny that by lying. Then we have confession and forgiveness and cleansing. Then we have the statement “if we say that we have not sinned.” In other words, this seems to imply that while once they were sinners, now sin was in the past; and not in the present, and this was a result of the confession, forgiveness, and cleansing of verse 9. This is further emphasized by the note in 2:1 which states John's desire that his readers be delivered from sin, even though as the verse makes clear, they would never be free in this life from the possibility of sinning, though even for that there is the hope of an advocate.

In other words, John seems to be saying that it is possible to have a life of victory over sin; a life where one can truly say “I have no sin” though he cannot say “I have never sinned.” This seems difficult to reconcile with the state of the man in Romans 7 or the state of the Corinthians. He seems to be describing what we can call the spiritual state, the state in which the law of the spirit has fully displaced the law of sin.

Because the spiritual state is a state of victory over sin, it can be called 'Holy.' The word 'holy' has two main ideas in the Bible. Holy means that which is cleansed or pure, whether physically or morally and it is that which is dedicated to or possessed by God. And those two ideas usually interlock, since everything which was dedicated to God had to be purified, and that which is purified is like God.  

To be a Christian at all is to be holy, since, as we've already determined, Regeneration is a transformation of the soul enacted by the Holy Spirit; it is a new life controlled by the law of the spirit of life which gives victory over the law of sin. In several places in the New Testament, even in the beginning of Romans itself, we have Paul referring to Christians as those called saints; and a saint is someone who is holy; it is a holy one. Various other scriptures could be used here to point to this idea that there is a new, holy life that begins at salvation.

But so long as the law of sin continues to be active within the soul, so long as the soul is yet carnal, this holiness must be limited, like the light in a room full of objects which cast shadows. Hence why the spiritual state is also referred to by some as the holy state or 'Holiness.' The Latin word for 'holy' is sanctus. That is the source of the word saint, a holy person, and sanctuary, a holy place. And it gives us this word sanctification, referring to the state of a person or thing that has been made holy. This spiritual or holy state is also sometimes referred to as entire sanctification since it involves a more thorough cleansing of the soul that happens in salvation.

So we have three possible states for man—the sinner, the one under the complete control of the flesh; the carnal Christian, delivered from the flesh but also still under it; and the spiritual man who is fully under the control of the spirit and not the flesh. So, granted that, for the Christian, there are these two possible states, the pressing question has to do with the transition between these two states; how can the carnal become spiritual?

We have already touched on several parts of the answer. First, faith, since that is the foundation of everything in our spiritual life. Second, the Holy Spirit, since it is only His power that makes this possible. Third, as mentioned in 1 John 1:7 which we looked at earlier, we have 'the blood of Jesus Christ'--that is to say, the atonement provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

Finally, we have a fourth aspect. In the book of James, James is discussing the spiritual state of his readers, one which seems to answer to the Carnal state; they were facing interpersonal struggle and spiritual frustration because of their desires or lusts which kept leading them astray. And this James's comment: “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.” (James 4:5-6) This is debated, but the spirit of envy and desire seems to correspond to the law of sin in Romans; that within the soul which strives against the law of God. But God gives more grace. Therefore, we can add grace to our list—but the main point I want to draw out is that God gives this grace to the humble. Humility is necessary in order to find this transition. And I think the base idea of humility here is recognizing our need for God. Remember, all the way back in Habakkuk, when it speaks of the just who lives by faith, he is contrasted to the proud, the man whose soul is lifted up. The proud trust in themselves and their own abilities. The just live by faith in God.

So we can say in general that the transition between the carnal and the spiritual state is by the Spirit, the Atonement, and God's grace and by our faith and humility. But when we consider the matter more exactly, we must consider the word crisis. When we talk about crisis in political or social affairs we usually mean a disaster or problem. But it has a narrower meaning here. A crisis is defined as: “A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.” It is the point at which something happens, when something changes--and it stands in contrast to certain things which happen gradually and imperceptibly.

So, for most adults, while they can say that they have grown up and are no longer children, they could not point back to a specific point when they stopped being children and became adults. It is something that happens gradually over a long period of time. But being born is a crisis; it is something that happens at one point in time, something we can pinpoint and identify easily. Again, falling in love is usually a process. Getting married is a crisis. And depending on whom you marry, may also be a crisis in another sense—but that's another subject.

The question is this—does the transition between the carnal state and the spiritual state occur as a process or as a crisis? The general consensus in the Wesleyan tradition is that it is by a crisis event. I'm not sure what the actual scriptural basis for that is—or if it's based on experience rather than scripture—since from my research there's nowhere in the Bible that actually describes this transition from an experiential standpoint.

But even if it is a crisis, a crisis is not an isolated event. Birth is a crisis, but there is a process that leads up to it and a process that follows from it. We've talked several times about the key verse of Romans, specifically the statement that the just shall live by faith. That means that justification—and transformation—comes by faith. But it also means that those who are just by faith must live. In the original, the idea of 'living' is probably simply surviving—the just are those who survive the time of judgment, who live when the unjust die. But we might say there is a second meaning—that to be just, to be a Christian, to be saved, is not merely a state of being, but a process. The just live by faith, not merely stand around and look pretty by faith.

We already established that Paul was in the spiritual state at the time of the writing of 1 Corinthians. Philippians was almost certainly written much later. And this is what Paul said there: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12) In other words, even though Paul had achieved this state of victory, it was a state capable of further progress. 

We can picture this if we go back to our earlier picture of a lighted room. You can turn on all the lights in a room and it would be a lighted room. You could remove everything from the room that would cast a shadow and it would be a fully lighted room. But even if it was fully lighted, it could conceivably be brighter. There would be a necessity for maintenance to keep the light burning and/or make them burn brighter.

And with that, there is another consequence. The spiritual state brings victory over the law of sin. It brings victory over the flesh. And yet, 1 Corinthians 9:25-27 Paul says: “And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” In other words, even in the spiritual life, there is still the possibility of temptation and spiritual shipwreck, and for that reason, there is a necessity for self-discipline.

Paul told the Ephesians to pray for him “that utterance may be given unto me... that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.” (Ephesians 6:19-20) To me, that implies that Paul was aware of a temptation to remain quiet. Even though Paul had spent so much of his life preaching the gospel, he had a normal human fear of the consequences that might follow on it in his present situation. No amount of spirituality prevents temptation—and therefore no amount of spirituality prevents the need for prayer.

Salvation and the transition to the spiritual state are both possible solely because of the work of the Holy Spirit. And this is what Paul says about the Spirit in Ephesians 5:18: “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” That phrase 'be filled' can be translated 'be constantly or continually filled' with the Spirit. Being a spiritual person doesn't mean having one or two encounters with the Spirit, any more than being a drunkard means having one or two drinks. The Spirit is the Spirit of Life, and life has to be lived.

In Romans 7:5, Paul described the condition of the sinner, of the one who is trapped between the flesh and the law, unable to live as he ought to live. Romans 7:6 describes the deliverance from that state: “But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.” The law was present for the sinner but it could not deliver anyone from sin; in fact, sin could only exist because of the law. The law created the possibility of sin, and the flesh guaranteed that man would sin. The sinner could fight against this tendency and try to live a moral life, but it would constantly be going against the grain and would be impossible on purely human resources. The coming of the Spirit and the introduction of a new power of life is the solution to this problem, changing man's nature. We are dead to the old life of death and live to a new life of life. We are delivered from the law—but it that we should serve in newness of spirit. The law is present for the spiritual man every bit as much as it is for the sinner. The difference is that man's nature is altered so as to make obedience to the law possible.

This is the way the Allegheny Discipline defines this state: “Entire Sanctification is that work of the Holy Spirit by which the child of God is cleansed from all inbred sin through faith in Jesus Christ. It is subsequent to regeneration, and is wrought when the believer presents himself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, and is thus enabled through grace to love God with all the heart and to walk in His holy commandments blameless.” And the particular point I want to highlight is the last part of that—the aim of this state is to love God and follow His laws.

The point is that this state of entire sanctification is a preparation for battle and not a preparation for retirement. It is an empowerment, not an excuse. And while it is spiritual it is also entirely practical. There is a famous passage in 1 Thessalonians 4 where Paul says that God's will for us is sanctification; that God has called us to holiness. And in the abstract, you would think it must be a passage about something very spiritual and internal. But in fact, the passage is about marital faithfulness, contentment, and honesty. The life of the spirit is a life of practical and mundane faithfulness. 

This has been a rather long and complicated lesson, and with this section, we reach the conclusion of Paul's discussion of the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. Because we have covered so much territory, I briefly want to recap what we've said thus far. There is, within mankind, something that drives men to sin, something which initiates a conflict between the law of God and the law of sin. This something can still exist within the Christian so that, while God's spirit has begun the work of transformation and deliverance, there is still a counterforce that holds the soul back. But there is a victory over this state which can is obtained, on our side by faith and humility and on God's side by the Atonement and the work of the Holy Spirit. This state of victory or holiness provides freedom from the pull of the flesh, but it still has temptations and room for progress (and therefore the possibility of regress) and still requires prayer and self-discipline and the continued work of the Holy Spirit. This is a major part of the transformation which God wants to work in us, but it is the beginning of a journey and not the end. We still must make a choice to live through the Spirit and not through the flesh. 

As Christians, we have a duty, a responsibility to live a certain way. In a previous lesson, we talked about this—about the special duty we have as God's people. In that lesson, I quoted a certain famous writer who said: “With great power comes great responsibility.” But I think for this lesson, we can say it the other way around: “With great responsibility comes great power.” It is God who gives us the power to live for God, to live a pure and holy life. And that is why the just can live by faith because the righteous power of God is revealed from faith to faith.