The Flesh versus the Spirit
Romans 8:3-11
We are in Romans 8 and we'll review here a little in verses 1 and 2 and then move on through, I hope, verse 11, understanding that this is the spiritual life. I think that this is really important to review. If you just pick up your Bible and you just start reading Romans, chapter 8, you might come to some rather unusual conclusions about what Paul is talking about because you just jump into the middle of his letter.
It's like coming home in the evening and it's about 7:15 or 7:30 and you turn on a murder mystery, police show, CSI, NCIS and you're halfway through the show and you have no idea what they're doing. You turn it on and you have to guess and figure out what they're trying to solve, the whole circumstances of the murder or whatever the issue is. You just start guessing at it and you know as well as I do that for probably the next 15 or 20 minutes you're wrong. You don't know the context of those first thirty minutes. You're just guessing. Often that is how people approach the Bible when they're interpreting the Scripture. They don't understand the importance of context.
As we've studied before, the three laws of Bible study, like the three laws of real estate are location, location, location, but in Bible study we call it context, context, context. When you take the text out of the context, you're left with a con job. And that is often what happens in many, many sermons and Bible teaching, you're just left with somebody using a text as a pretext to get across whatever they're wanting to teach.
Romans 6, 7, and 8, as I've said probably to ad nauseam, is not how to get justified but how the justified person lives. Therefore, when we approach Romans 8 and some of the things that are said here we have to understand that Paul is not talking about how to become a believer, how to become a Christian, how to be saved, how to be justified. He's talking about the Christian life. He's in that point where we've already understood what it means to become saved, to be justified, to become a Christian and that's by faith alone in Christ alone. It's trusting in Jesus as the One who died on the Cross for our sins. But what we have here is understanding how we are now to live.
When we get into discussions and readings about, for example, a verse like verse 9, which talks about "you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit", what exactly what does that mean? When it talks in verse 6 and verse 7 about to be carnally minded is death, what does it mean? Is that an unbeliever? Sometimes when we read these words 'carnal versus Spirit' we think of in terms of unbeliever versus believer. But what this is talking about is believers who are not walking by the Spirit, their life is not being energized and empowered by God the Holy Spirit, then the only other alternative is the sin nature.
The term 'flesh' is a word Paul frequently uses to refer the sin nature. The word 'flesh' or the Greek word sarx [sarc]has several different meanings as does the word 'spirit'. So the word 'flesh' can refer to the physical, material substance of our corporeal body or the 'flesh' can refer to, for example, the flesh of the meat we're eating. That word is used that way sometimes. Or it can refer to that which energizes the body which is the sin nature. It's interesting that Paul uses the terms 'flesh' and 'body' or 'body of sin' as synonyms for sin and the sin nature. That suggests very strongly that the location of the corruption of Adam's original sin is not in the soul but in the body. It's passed on through the DNA structure. Now how that happens I don't know. I think we make a mistake if we try to identify a Biblical principle like that too closely with where modern science is in terms of its explanation of DNA and biology and cell structure and things like that simply because in the next decade or two that may change. But the truth of God's word doesn't change. So how it fits we don't know; we don't have to know. All we see is this connection between the sin nature and the corporeal body.
It is through our physical flesh that the sin nature works itself out and manifests itself and that the only solution to overcoming the dictates of the sin nature is through the Holy Spirit. Now while we're here in Romans 8, I want you to just hold your place here and I want to turn to Galatians 5. The reason I'm going to Galatians 5 is because it gives us one of the two or three passages in Paul's writings where we see this contrast between walking by the Spirit and living according to the flesh or the sin nature.
Now for those of you who were here Tuesday night we're going to have a test. When did Paul write Galatians? Very good. First missionary journey. Very good. So that means this is the earliest stage in the first writings of the Apostle Paul. And when does he write Romans? Romans is at the end of his third missionary journey. Remember the first missionary journey resulted in Galatians. The second missionary journey he writes 1 and 2 Thessalonians, the third missionary journey he writes 1 and 2 Corinthians and Romans. The fourth trip which is not a missionary journey but a trip to Rome and he writes the four prison epistles. So Galatians is written somewhere around probably 52 or maybe a little earlier and he's addressing a problem that has come up in Galatians. I think this is so important for us to understand the spiritual life.
To me Galatians is even more clear than Romans but that's because of the structure of the epistle. The problem in Galatia was that the Galatian believers had been deceived by a group of Jews, maybe even Jewish believers, but completely distorted in their theology who were loyal to the Mosaic Law, who were following along behind Paul and Barnabas. They were coming up and saying, "You know this thing about trusting in Jesus is just fine but it's not really enough. You need to add the Mosaic Law into the mix." So they added the Mosaic Law into the mix to get saved. So it was faith in Christ plus the Law to be justified.
That's the topic in the first two chapters in Galatians and then the other thing they taught was that if you're going to really experience the spiritual life then you have to also follow the Law. So in Galatians 3 Paul changes from talking about the gospel of justification by faith alone. We have the very well-known verse in Galatians 2:16, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law, no flesh shall be justified." Now that's when he's reaching his conclusion, sort of the high point of his argument in those first 2 chapters telling us that the topic is justification.
When we get into chapter three he immediately just blasts them and says, "You foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? The only thing I want to learn from you is did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by the hearing of faith?" Now notice that's the key question for the rest of the book. "Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law?"
When do we receive the Spirit? At the instant of salvation. At that instant there are a number of things God does to us that we don't experience but they are spiritual realities that are part of the transformation to being a new creature in Christ. One of those is that God the Holy Spirit indwells us. We'll look at that a little later on in detail. So we receive the Spirit in that instant of salvation. Paul is saying, "Now did that happen by obeying the Law or did that happen by just simply believing in the gospel?" Well the answer is hearing the faith.
So he goes on to state the question in a different way in verse 3: "Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit..." The starting point of the Christian life is not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. So we begin by the Holy Spirit and Paul says, "...are you now being made perfect by the flesh?
There are three key words that he uses there: spirit, perfect, and flesh. 'Spirit' referring to the Holy Spirit, 'perfect' is the Greek verb teleioo [teleiow] meaning to be brought to completion or maturity. This is not the idea of perfection in the sense of flawlessness but the idea of being brought to completion of what you're intended to be. Now Paul doesn't answer this question right away. In modern classrooms Paul would get an "F" in pedagogy. Since it's by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I guess that means the Holy Spirit flunks the class because he doesn't give you all the nice little illustrations.
In fact, he goes a long way around the barn to answer the question. He takes us back to Abraham in Genesis 15:6. In Galatians 3:6 he says, "Just as Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness." Then he goes on from there talking about Abraham, talking about Moses and the Law and then he goes into the purpose of the Law in the last part of chapter 3. At the end of chapter 3 he talks about the baptism by the Holy Spirit which we've seen is foundational for Paul's understanding of the spiritual life.
In chapter 4 he talks about what happens when we get adopted into the Royal Family of God and then in chapter 5 he gets to the fact that we have freedom in Christ and all of that takes us to Galatians 5:13 where he says "For you, brethren, have been called to liberty, only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh..." What's that? That's the sin nature. Don't use your freedom for the sin nature to express itself"... but instead [strong contrast] through love serve one another."
That's the primary command here governing the last portion of the epistle. Through love we're to serve one another. Then he's going to explain why that's so important. In Galatians 5:14 he says, "For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Now that's really interesting because he's nailing down the fact that ultimately maturity for the Christian is demonstrated and exhibited in love for one another. In contrast he says, "But if you bite and devour one another, beware lest you be consumed by one another." Christians are probably the only army in the world that loves to shoot its wounded.
In verse 16 he's going to explain how in the world we can love one another. We all know we're not very lovable a lot of the time and there are a lot of Christians we know who aren't very lovable and we really don't want to be around them but we're still commanded to love them. It's not just loving them from afar. It's loving them up close. How can you do that? You can't do it in the power of the flesh. You can only do it through the Holy Spirit.
Paul says in verse 16, "I say then, Walk in the Spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Because we've gone through this passage many times in the past you should have three words circled in verse 16. 'Spirit', 'fulfill', and 'flesh'. The same words that were used just a couple of pages back in Galatians 3. Same words. What does that tell us? Now he answers the question. He asks the question, raises the issue, in Galatians 3:3. He lays all this groundwork in chapters three, four, and five so that now we ought to be able to understand the answer.
His command is, "Walk by means of the Spirit." It's the 'in' plus the instrumental use of Spirit as the means for facilitating the spiritual life and "You shall not fulfill or bring to completion the lusts of the flesh." Now in the Greek grammar of this verse there is a strong double negative stated plus a subjunctive mood in the verb. What that means is that you can say 'no'; you can say 'really no' and you can say, 'absolutely not, impossible.' In English if you double up negatives they cancel out each other but not in Greek. So the strongest way to say or negate something is to use both negatives, ou [o)u] and me [mh], in Greek with a subjunctive voice mood and it has the idea that it's impossible to do something. You will not be able to do something. It can't be said any stronger.
What Paul is saying is "walk in the Spirit" and as long as you're walking by means of the Spirit it will be impossible to bring to completion the lust of the flesh. Now a lot of people say, "Well, how could that be? If I'm in fellowship, how could I sin?" Because you stop walking by the Spirit before you sin. If you break that one second down into its components, just like when Peter is out there walking on the water, as long as he's looking at Jesus, he's okay. But the second he quit walking by Jesus, he took his eye off Jesus, what happens? The consequence is that he falls, which is comparable to sin.
As long as we're consciously dependent on the Holy Spirit through the Word, as soon as we take our eyes off Him, boom, we go down into the sin nature. So the command is, "Walk by means of the Spirit and it will be impossible to fulfill the lusts of the flesh for [now he's going to explain it] the flesh lusts against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh." So he sets this thing up in Scripture. It's the Spirit or the flesh.
There's this war going on between your sin nature and this new nature you have that's being energized, nourished, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit so the flesh is fighting against the Spirit, the Spirit against the flesh. They're contrary, completely opposed to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. Doesn't that phrase sound familiar? It's right out of Romans 7 where Paul is talking about his life before he understood the role of the Spirit and he says, "I don't do the things I want to do and I'm doing the things I really don't want to do."
So there's that concept. When we're walking by the sin nature we don't do the things that we wish, that we desire to do as a new creature in Christ. Then he says that if you're led by the Spirit "you are not under the Law." What he means by that is that under the Law there was no provision for being able to obey the Law. So "leading by the Spirit"...the word here for leading means lays out a path. If you've ever been out in the woods and there's no path and you're sort of laying out a path, you may go along, or if you're just out in your backyard and you're putting some flagstone down for a place to step as you walk through your garden, you lay down a path. It goes in front of you, step by step. You put a stepping stone here, a stepping stone there and there.
The Holy Spirit lays out an objective path for us with stepping stones. The name for that objective path is the Word of God. That's where we see the path charted in the Word of God. That's why we have to know the Word of God. In Galatians 5:18 Paul says, "But if you are led by the Spirit [and we are] you're not under the Law." One of the ways you can tell who's running your life is by the product of your life so there's a contrast set up here. First there are the works of the flesh in Galatians 3:19-21: "Now the works of the flesh are evident: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery [which is really the use of mind-altering substances], hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like..."
In contrast to that we have the fruit of the Spirit in verse 22 and the first thing mentioned is love and you ought to circle "love" in verse 22 and take it and draw a line up to verse 14 and circle "love your neighbor" and then draw another line and circle the word "love" in verse 13 so the next time you read this you'll see how it all connects together. Verse 22 now gets back to the topic in hand which is to learn how to love your neighbor as yourself.
It's done from the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is a result of walking by the Spirit. It produces love and I think that the rest of these manifestations are different facets of love: "joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such there is no law." Verse 24 says, "And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires." What does that remind you of now that we've gone through Romans 6 a lot? That's the Baptism by the Holy Spirit. When we're saved, at that instant, we are identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection and so the old man is crucified, that power is broken, but the sin nature is still there.
The old man, everything we were before we were saved is gone, so now Paul says, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." We live by the Spirit, regeneration. If we're going to be alive, have new life from the Spirit, what should we do? We should walk by means of the Spirit. There is a different word for walk which we had before. The word we had before was peripateo [peripatew] which just means to go step by step. The word here has the idea of following in ranks or following in a path that's laid out. So we walk down that path laid down by the Spirit.
It's similar to Proverbs 3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him [that's studying the Word] and He directs your paths." How? Through the Word. So why did I go here? Because we see first of all that as a believer you're either living your life on the basis of the sin nature or you're living your life by the Spirit. It's one or the other. It's not a little bit of both. You don't have one foot that's kind of being spiritual and at the same time, have one foot that kind of being carnal. There are a lot of people that teach that but you can't make that work with Galatians, chapter 5. That's just human viewpoint theology. So it's one or the other.
That's very clear from Galatians 5 so when we get into Romans 8 we realize that whatever Paul is saying in Romans 8, he's not contradicting what he said in Galatians 5. So he has to be talking about the same kind of thing but from a slightly different perspective so when he's talking here about carnally minded, that is being empowered by the sin nature or the flesh, versus being spiritually minded, he's talking about walking by the flesh or walking by the Spirit. He's talking about a believer. He's not talking about an unbeliever.
There are a lot of people, especially people who come out of a Reformed or Calvinistic background or from more of an extreme Armenian background, like Wesley and Methodism, a lot of Holiness and charismatic theology, Lordship salvation, they interpret Romans 8 as related to an unbeliever. But that's because they don't understand the real dynamics of the spiritual life or the role of the Holy Spirit.
As we said last time Romans 8:1 is really talking about the fact there's no condemnation now to those who are in Christ Jesus. It's not just positional where many of us have taught this in the past because we haven't appropriately understood the significance of that relative clause. That relative clause is left out of most modern translations. It's in the King James and the New King James but it further defines those in Christ Jesus as those who are not walking according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
What Paul tells us in Romans 8:1 that he's not just talking about believers who are positionally in Christ. That's what happens when you drop that last part off. He's not just talking about our position of 'no condemnation.' He's talking about no condemnation to those who are in Christ and are walking by means of the Spirit. He's not talking about those in Christ who are walking according to the flesh. See, they're under condemnation. Not eternal condemnation, as I pointed out but Divine discipline.
Because the word condemnation, as I've been emphasizing the last two or three weeks is not katakrima [katakrima] used here, but the idea of just punishment, the consequences of sin. So this isn't talking about the fact that because we're saved there's no condemnation. Yes, that's true but that's not what he's saying here. He's not talking about salvation here or getting justified. That was back in chapters three and four. What he's talking about here is those in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh. He's talking about no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus who are walking according to the Spirit.
You have to get both phrases in there, not just one phrase in there. Don't just stop at "in Christ". He's talking about a group that are "in Christ" who are also walking according to the Holy Spirit. That's the focal point here. Because those who are walking according to the Holy Spirit are the ones who are growing, who are being forgiven by using 1 John 1:9 as an opportunity to get back in fellowship, to abide in Christ, and to keep pursuing spiritual growth. He's talking about how to be a victorious, winning believer and he's not focusing on those who are going through condemnation because they're living according to the sin nature as believers and living like unbelievers.
The Lonighter Dictionary focuses on the idea of judging someone as guilty and subject to punishment. Don't read into it eternal punishment in hell. It's talking about someone guilty of disobedience to God and undergoing punishment. That can be eternal or temporal but if you're coming in in the middle of the TV show at 7:30 you're going to think he's talking about just being positionally in Christ and you ripped it out of the context of Romans 6 and 7. So as I pointed out the emphasis is not on eternal punishment but on the consequences of sin in this life.
((CHART)) We looked at the sin nature last time. The lust pattern drives everything. This is the lust of the flesh. It can produce either relative good that says, "I'm better than you are. Sometimes you're better than I am." When we compare ourselves to the ultimate point of God's righteousness I'm not okay and neither are you. So we do produce relative good but because it comes out of a corrupt nature, it has no eternal or spiritual consequences. And then we have personal sins which are those things we normally think of as sins, whether they're mental attitude sins, such as arrogance, mental attitude lusts for any number of things, sins of the tongue such as gossip or slander, or overt sins. Then this lead us to various desire trends, either toward asceticism which is the idea that by giving things up and by doing anything it really gets God to bless me.
According to Ephesians 1:3, God has already blessed us with "every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." He just hasn't distributed them all yet. He's already blessed us so we don't do anything to get blessing. It's sort of like if you have a baby and that baby starts to grow up. You're just a proud daddy and you have a wonderful son, you've been blessed materially so you give the keys to a brand new Lamborghini to your son at six. It's his. You've put his name on the title deed for that car. But you're not going to give him the keys until he's old enough to demonstrate some responsibility and capacity for ownership so he doesn't kill himself or anybody else by driving that vehicle. That's how God distributes our blessings. They're already ours. That package has been given to us at the instant of salvation but only as we grow and develop maturity and capacity does he distribute those blessings so we don't self-destruct.
So we either move toward asceticism which says, "I'm really impressing God. I'm going to do all these things and He's going to bless me." Or we go in the opposite direction and we're licentious, lascivious, antinomian. We just say, "Jesus died for my sins. I just confess it and move on. Or I'm going to confess it, using the word "rebound" for confession. I'm just going to pre-bound before I sin and God's grace will cover it." We've all done that. Don't sit there with some smug look on your face like you don't know anybody ever did that. I won't name any names.
In salvation we are identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection by the Baptism by the Holy Spirit. That is being "in Christ". That is what is going to be talked about when Paul gets down into verses 9, 10, and 11. He's going to be talking about that positional truth. But then we also have another realm of our temporal realities. Usually I talk about this as being filled by means of the Spirit but it's also described in these verses as being "in the Spirit" as opposed to "in the flesh". So when we sin we're out there in the darkness of the sin nature in the flesh and we have to confess our sin to get back in the Spirit and walking in the light as He is in the light. When we sin, we go out.
((CHART)) Now that I've laid that framework, let's talk about this a little bit. Paul makes his first statement in verse one that there's no punishment to those in Christ who are walking according to the Spirit. That whole phrase has to be there. In verse 2, he says, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." And as I pointed out the last couple of weeks it reminds us what Paul said in Romans 6. I focused on this last time.
It's the first time Paul starts using the Greek word for spirit, pneuma [pneuma],in this passage. He uses the word thirteen times, once in Romans 7:6 and now twelve times in Romans 8. It's always contrasted with sin and the flesh. They didn't have this dynamic in the Old Testament. Old Testament believers didn't have this option. How do we know that? Because they didn't have the Baptism by the Holy Spirit. They couldn't be identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. So there's no deliverance from the tyranny of the sin nature in the Old Testament.
They were born with three stripes against them. They get saved but they still have that slavery to the sin nature to deal with. So all through this section we have this contrast between flesh and spirit and life and death. It's all about life. How do we really experience that full life Jesus has for us? Romans 6:16 is where we see the whole principle of that deliverance from the mastery or the tyranny of the slave master of the sin nature. Romans 6:16 says "Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness?"
He's talking to believers and he says that you as a Christian have a choice, maybe a thousand choices, maybe ten thousand choices every day to either let sin master you or to let the Holy Spirit be the master. It's your choice. Before you were saved you didn't have that choice. It was all from the sin nature. But now you have a choice. So if you're messing up in your spiritual life you only have one person to blame. It's not God. So you make that choice every day,
You let sin be the master or not. Romans 6:18 says, "And having been set free from sin you became slaves of righteousness." See you've been set free from the tyranny of the sin nature but we still have that corruption. We can still walk according to the sin nature. Positionally we're slaves of righteousness but we have to live that way. That's the left circle. Positionally we're a slave of righteousness. We are sons of light but moment by moment we have to choose whether we're going to walk like a son of light or not.
If you grew up in a family where your father or mother was proud of your family and your family heritage and your family name, if you did certain things they would say, "Now, no one in this family does that." Did that mean you weren't a member of the family? No, it's a way of stating what the standard of behavior is for that family. If you act a certain way, you're not acting like a member of the family. But you're still a member of the family. So positionally we're slaves of righteousness but sometimes we act like we're slaves of sin.
Romans 6:21, "What fruit did you have then in the things of which are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death." These people are already justified. They have eternal life. He's talking about temporal death as a result of living according to the sin nature. So in Romans 8:3, "For what the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh..." This is a great example of the word asthenes [a)sqenhj]which sometimes means physically weak or sick but in the epistles it almost always means spiritually unable or spiritually weak or being a spiritual wienie.
That's how it's used in James 5 when it says, "Is there anyone sick among you, let him call for the elders and have them pray for him and anoint him with oil." It doesn't have anything to do with being physically sick. It's this same word. It means to be a spiritual wimp. And you're wimping out and you're a wienie and you're just a failure by the numbers and so you need more mature believers to come alongside and encourage you and pray for you and move forward. It doesn't have anything to do with being sick. Otherwise, we'd translate this "What the Law could not do, sick as it was through the flesh." That doesn't even make sense.
The flesh can't obey the Law. "... what the Law could not do, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh." Now if I give you a test, which is why I spent all that time back in Galatians 5 because I was establishing something. Why did we go there? To show that when Paul is making these contrasts between flesh and the Spirit, he's talking about believers and he's talking about the choices you make.
Now, what's the context? You've been here all the way through since before seven o'clock watching the whole TV show, you've got the context. The context is talking about a believer and the spiritual life. It's not talking about how to be justified. So you look at this verse and you scratch your head and say, "Now that looks like it's talking about what Jesus did on the Cross." But you'd be wrong. Why?
Because it doesn't fit the context. It doesn't fit the context at all. This isn't talking about what Jesus did on the Cross. It's talking about what he did in laying out the pattern for the spiritual life for the Church Age believer.
Jesus' life was really like a hinge in history. He's fulfilling the Law in the Old Testament. And the Law in the Old Testament was external with no internal enablement. But in order to demonstrate righteousness, Jesus under the Mosaic Law in the Age of Israel has to fulfill the Mosaic Law. On the other hand he does it because He's filled by the Spirit. He's enabled by the Holy Spirit, just like you and I are and He's setting the precedent for the future dispensation of the Church Age by how He lived. And He's showing by how He lived that there's no punishment for sin.
He demonstrates that condemnation for sin in the flesh. He's the One who is condemning sin in the flesh. Because in His flesh He doesn't sin. "... So God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh..." Now that's the same word that's used in Philippians, chapter 2 to talk about how Jesus is in the likeness of humanity, that when He came, entered into the world, the whole deal with kenosis, adding to His deity, humanity, He's in the likeness of sinful flesh but he's not sinful flesh. He just looks like it. He looks like you and me. He looks like a normal human being except He doesn't have a sin nature in the cell structure of His body. He hasn't inherited Adam's original sin and He doesn't have a sin nature. He's not corrupt. But he's a full human being but He's in the likeness of sinful flesh. He's truly human and as an offering sin he condemned sinful flesh by the way He lived.
Why? Why did He do this? Verse 4, "That the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us ..." What's the requirement of the Law? We covered this just a few minutes ago. Did y'all go take a nap? Go watch a commercial. Remember we saw that in Galatians 5 when he first introduced the concept of loving your neighbor as yourself He said, "For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Okay, keep that in mind.
In Romans 8:4, "that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us..." What's that? Love. Love is the ultimate. So it assumes and summarizes all the other virtues of spiritual growth and maturity in the fruit of the Spirit under that one thing. So he says, "That the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, [comma] who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." Now see, this is another example in this chapter where commas are very important but in Greek there weren't any commas. They didn't put in any commas or periods. In fact, they didn't even put spaces between the words. They do it like one long run-on sentence and you had to figure out by grammar and your knowledge of the language. You think, "Boy that would be hard to read." No it's not.
It's like Hebrew reading backward. After you get used to it it becomes part of your thinking. I remember after about the fourth or fifth day my first year Hebrew class which I took in summer school. I think that was a mistake because there were so many little, bitty rules you have to memorize the first few days that it's just too intense at the beginning. But I remember coming home, driving home the fourth day and I came to a stop sign. Hebrew reads from right to left and I kept looking at the word "pots" on that stop sign. And that's when I knew I was beginning to get a handle on Hebrews a little bit. Your mind can take these things up and adjust as it goes along.
We put commas in in order to clarify things, and sometimes it's a little ambiguous in the original language and you're not sure which it is and that's where theology comes in to help. You can either translate "us, who do not walk" but if you don't put a comma after us then all of us do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit and that's not true. There's some people who think that, that all of us who are true believers walk according the Spirit and not according to the flesh. And if you're not and you're walking according to the flesh, then maybe you weren't saved. But we have to put that comma in there because there are some of us who don't walk according to the Spirit very much, if at all. Then there are others who walk according to the Spirit a lot more.
What Paul is saying is that the requirement of the Law... Which is what? Love your neighbor as yourself. The requirement of the Law is fulfilled in us who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. But it's not fulfilled in us who don't. See that's the same thing he said in Galatians 5. He started off, as I pointed out, that we're to love one another, to love our neighbor as our self. That through love we're to serve one another and then he goes on to this whole discourse of walking by the Spirit or walking by the flesh.
If you walk by the Spirit, what happens? The Spirit produces the fruit of the Spirit in your life and you'll have this genuine love develop in your life as the result of the Spirit. So the requirement of the Law to love, to serve one another is fulfilled in you by walking by the Spirit. But it's not fulfilled in those who are walking according to the flesh because according to Galatians 5:19 and following its just divisiveness, outbursts of wrath, and contentiousness, and hatred, and selfish ambition, heresies, envy, murders. So those who walk according to the sin nature have all of those sins manifested in their life.
Romans 8:3 and 4 says that the Law couldn't so it. But the Law said, "love your neighbor as yourself" but no one could do it because the authority of their sin nature wasn't broken. So under the Law they couldn't do it but God sent His Son to fulfill it. He came to fulfill the Law. And He fulfilled it in His humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn't fulfill it through the power of His deity.
Remember there's a firewall between His humanity and His deity. The only time He is authorized to access His omnipotence or His omnipresence or His omniscience is to demonstrate that He is God. He's never allowed to violate that firewall between His humanity and His deity to solve His problems in his humanity. Because He's setting a precedence to show that you and I, in our humanity, by walking by the Spirit can grow spiritually, obey God, and have victory over sin.
In Romans 8:3 the Law couldn't do it but God did by sending His Son in mortal flesh as a human being but not in sin and He condemned sin in the flesh. The idea there is that He punishes sin. Sin is the object of the verb. So it's not that He's bearing the condemnation of sin. That's how we tend to read it. He is condemning sin by His ability to live without sinning in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Then we get another explanation in verse 5, "For those who are according to the flesh..." Now this is where you have people who come with that preconceived mindset of Reform theology, Covenant theology, Lordship theology, or even Armenian theology. At this point they start talking about believer versus unbeliever. "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh." See, believers can be according to the flesh, too, because they focus on the sin nature. They're ignoring the provisions of walking by God the Holy Spirit.
A Christian, a born again believer, can be even worse than an unbeliever. In a lot of cases, the unbeliever is trying to get to heaven.
He's trying to be moral. But the believer thinks he's grace oriented. He thinks God will forgive him; Jesus paid for it so what the heck? And they can be a lot worse. You've never really been betrayed and beat up on until you've been betrayed and beat up on by a believer. Again, "For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit."
See, you're either walking according to the flesh or according to the Spirit. If you're living according to the flesh then over time what's going to happen is your priorities and your values are going to be determined by the sin nature and you're living for temporal glory. But those who are living or walking according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. Then verse six says, "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
There's a contrast here between the person focused on the flesh and the person walking by the Spirit. The verb phroneo [fronew] governs both those who live according to the flesh or those who live according to the Spirit. The verb phroneo means to think, to judge, to give your thinking to something, to set your mind on something, to be focused in a certain way of thinking. It means to give serious consideration to something, to ponder it, to let your mind dwell on it, to concentrate, to fix your attention upon something. So to be carnally minded is a person who is constantly focused on things that appeal to the sin nature or the flesh and to live that way.
So to be carnally minded is death. Not eternal death in the Lake of Fire, but you're going to have a death-like existence in this life.
You'll never experience the benefits or the blessings of God in this life. It'll be a death-like existence. To be spiritually minded is life and peace. Not eternal life like life without end but as Jesus said, "I did not come like a thief to steal and destroy but I came to give life and to give it abundantly." Right here and now we have this abundant, rich life because our mind is set on the Spirit. But if you're a believer and your mind is set on the flesh, then the result will be catastrophe, Divine discipline, judgment for sin, condemnation, all of those things and a miserable life as you're constantly being disciplined by God.
Verse 9, "But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you..." He's reminded us of that positional truth that we're not in the flesh anymore. We are in the Spirit. We understand that at the moment of salvation the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer. Then he goes on to say, "Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousness."
Again there's that connection back to justification. So verses 9 and 10 are talking about our positional realities. Then he's going to draw a conclusion to that in verse 11, "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you [and He does] He who raised Christ form the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." Now we already have eternal life so it can't be talking about eternal life here. It's talking about the experience of the richness of our new life in Christ as a new creature in Christ on the basis of what we're given through the indwelling of God the Holy Spirit. That's our potential.
We're going to come back next week after we've all filled our bottom circles to abundance on Christmas Day and we'll learn all of what it means to live according to the Holy Spirit and the leading of the Spirit in the next five verses, verses 12-17.
