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, 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 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? 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? At the end of
his third missionary journey. Remember the first missionary journey
resulted in Galatians. On the second missionary journey he writes 1 and 2
Thessalonians, and on the third missionary journey he writes 1 and 2
Corinthians and Romans. On the fourth trip, which is not a missionary
journey but a trip to Rome, 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,
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 is not just loving
them from afar; it is 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 is being energized,
nourished, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, and 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 is 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”. Then draw another line and circle to 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, 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 is 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 is 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 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 rip 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, 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 are 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, 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 is 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 is filled by the Spirit; He is 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. 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. 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 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
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
Hebrew 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. The Law said, “Love your neighbor as yourself” but no one could do
it because the authority of their sin nature wasn't
broken. 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 Arminian
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 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 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.