Romans 8:5-11

Scripture Verse

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Christian Living – Walk by the Spirit!

In this passage, Paul contrasts two ways of life: in the flesh and in the Spirit. This passage might seem very “doctrinal”, but has, in fact, deeply practical consequences. In Rom. 7, he described the Christian’s struggle with sin, which the law cannot solve because of our fleshly nature (Rom. 7:14) – in fact Christians should abstain from seeking a works-based, legalistic righteousness as solution to this struggle, as Paul explained in more detail in Gal. 3-4. Instead, Paul describes Christian living as having one’s mind set on the things of the Spirit (Rom. 8:5). Only then can the Christian submit to God and please Him. In Gal. 5:16, Paul puts it this way: “Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh”. The condition for this to be possible, Paul explains in Rom. 8, is that “the Spirit of God lives in [us]” (v. 9). What does this mean? The New Testament shows us two ways how this occurs: the Spirit dwells in us personally (1 Cor 6:19) but – and Paul keenly stresses this several times in his epistles – also in the temple constituted by the body of believers in Christ, the church (1 Cor. 3:16, where “you” is plural in Greek; cf. also 2 Cor 6:16, where he quotes from Lev. 26:12, “I will live with them and walk among them”). The Spirit living in us, enabling us to walk by him, is therefore not a purely individual matter, but collective, lived out in the church. The Spirit’s fruit is relational (Gal. 5:22), that we may indeed grow to love one another, as Christ commanded (Joh. 13:34). Hence, it is unsurprising that Jesus’ own teachings on the Spirit immediately follow His injunction to keep His commandments out of love (Joh. 13:15) How does Spirit enable us to do this? He “will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have said to you”, Jesus says (Joh. 14:26). He uses God’s Word (“everything I have said to you”), found especially in the assembly of His disciples (cf. Mat. 18:20), to testify to us of God’s love (cf. Rom. 8:16; 1. Joh. 4:14) and transform us (cf. Gal. 5:22-23). Thus, we may live in the power and hope of Christ’s resurrection (Rom. 8:11) and in love towards God and one another (1. Joh. 4:16). Well may we then say with Paul, “the life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20)!