For those who strive against sin but fail, there is hope. If they are ‘in’ Christ, and try to do God’s will, walking after the Spirit, the condemnation that they inherit from Adam will be cancelled. To be ‘in’ Christ, as Paul has explained in chapter six, means to believe in him and to be baptised into his name. Then we have the hope of eternal life.
So, Paul suggests, there are two laws operating at the same time. There is the law of sin and death, which Adam brought into the world. We all follow in Adam’s footsteps. We sin and we die. But there is also the law of the Spirit of life. This states that if we are ‘in’ Christ Jesus, we can be released from the law of sin and death.
This transformation in our affairs is entirely the work of God. The Law could only spotlight our sins. It could not remove them. But God sent Jesus in a body subject to human nature like the rest of us, and Jesus conquered sin in himself. For thirty-three years he never once succumbed to the temptation to sin. On one occasion he challenged his enemies to convict him of sin, but they were silent (John 8:46 ). The apostle writing to the Hebrews says Jesus ‘was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’ (Hebrews 4:15). Through this sinless man God has prepared a way for us to be forgiven, through our faith in him.
The Law indicated the way to righteousness. But to attain it, you had to keep the Law in all points. That was the problem. However, if we walk after the Spirit, that is, we try to do what God asks, and turn our back on the way of the world, we can be counted righteous, like Abraham, through our faith in Christ. Let us be clear – the apostle is not saying that sin does not matter because God will always forgive us through the work ofFor the mind that is set on the flesh is vhostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; windeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Jesus. Sin is always bad, and it separates us from God. We must come to God in humility and ask for his forgiveness for our sins, just as David did after his great sin (Romans 8:6-8). And we must abandon the sinful way of life in which we indulged before our baptism. The apostle John puts it clearly: ‘You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him’ (1 John 3:5,6 ESV).
Paul contrasts living ‘according to the flesh’ with living ‘according to the Spirit’. He says there is a difference in the mind-set of the two approaches. If we seek to live by God’s rules, we need to concentrate our minds on good things, not bad things. Years ago, most popular writers and film directors made sure their plots ended with the triumph of good over evil. Nowadays, most plots incorporate all the bad things that God hates – adultery, fornication, divorce, drunkenness, murder and violence. As Paul exhorts us in Philippians 4:8, as followers of Christ we must train our minds to focus on good things: ‘Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things’.
The control of thoughts is a battle. Our minds naturally indulge in the forbidden. But as the proverb says: ‘the thought is father to the deed’. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus teaches us that murder begins with hate, and adultery with a forbidden glance. We have to stop the bad thoughts before they expand into sin. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 10:4,5, ‘the weapons of our warfare are not human weapons … we take every thought captive to make it obey Christ’ (NET). What a challenge that is!
The stakes are high. We choose our own fate. If we follow a life of sin, we will die for eternity. If we seek God, we will find life in the Kingdom, and a peace of mind even now in the midst of uncertainty, because we trust in Him.
Paul puts it starkly. We cannot serve two masters. There is no middle way. Esau was a man of the flesh, and he was rejected. His twin Jacob made many mistakes, but he set himself to serve the God of his fathers and was rewarded with the title ‘a Prince with God’.
This verse has aroused controversy. Some assume the apostle is saying we cannot be saved unless we have the Holy Spirit within us. They then go on to claim the power to heal or speak in a special language.
The first phrase ‘you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit’ clearly flows on from the previous verses. It is the age-old conflict between Spirit and flesh that we find in Genesis 6:3: ‘the LORD said, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh’ (KJV). We have to align ourselves with the way God thinks. But that is also the spirit of Christ. It is the way Jesus thought. If we read ‘spirit’ without a capital ‘S’, it makes the position clearer.
We must take Jesus into our hearts. We must say to ourselves in every situation: ‘What would Jesus do?’ He is our example of how to overcome the thinking of the flesh when you live in a human body. As he says himself in John 6:54, we have to symbolically eat his flesh and drink his blood until we are one with him. We enact our desire to be one with Jesus each week, when we take bread and wine together. The apostle Paul, after years of following Christ, could say: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).
The work of God’s Holy Spirit, which comes to us through his written word, transforms our minds. But eventually it will transform our bodies in the day of resurrection. Having been born of water, we shall be born of spirit, as Jesus told Nicodemus (John 3:5 ).
‘Therefore’ here means ‘in consequence’. If we have accepted the logic of Paul’s argument so far, we will agree that when we were baptised, we chose to be set free from sin as our master. We had no wish to die in his employment. Instead, we changed over to the way of the Spirit, and put sin to death.
We have escaped from slavery to sin, with its fear of death. God has adopted us as his children, and we can address him as ‘Abba’ or Dad, just as Jesus did when he prayed to his father (Mark 14:36).
Where does the Holy Spirit bear witness that we are the children of God? Paul will give us the answer when we reach Romans 9:26. Hosea the prophet wrote, under inspiration, that even Gentiles can be counted, along with God’s own chosen people, as ‘sons of the living God’. Our own spirit will confirm this amazing gift, once we begin to walk the Kingdom Road. As the Psalmist invites his readers, we taste and see that God is good (Psalm 34:8).
There is a wonderful corollary to our adoption by God as his children. In Greek society, as in ours today, a child who has been legally adopted has the same rights as the natural sons and daughters. He or she inherits the estate along with them. Jesus is the only begotten son of God. But he counts us as his brethren (Hebrews 2:10-12). So, when Jesus inherits the Kingdom, he will share it with us. But there is a penalty, the verse concludes. We may have to suffer with Christ, when we call ourselves by the name of God!
Verses 1–2