Romans 8:5–13
A Sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 8th August 2021
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 set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but that of the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Let me start by reminding you what we learned last time. There is no condemnation for those who belong to the kingdom of Jesus. Sometime in my early school years I tried to catch a cricket ball and it hit me on the end of the finger. It was a formative moment, because after that I was never at ease playing cricket. Many years later I walked past a group playing in the churchyard and they shouted at me to come and play. I wasn’t keen, but I was their minister. “Go in and bat,” they said. I stiffened as the ball came towards me and was out with the first ball. Thankfully I dropped the bat and was about to move on, but they shouted at me, “Stay in!” I picked up the bat again, had a few more swings and was caught out. “Stay in!” they insisted. The third time round I relaxed and managed to hit one over the wall. “Stay in!” That’s what God says to us now when we mess up. Once our sin disqualified us from sharing in his kingdom, but now there is no condemnation. All our sins, past, present and future—Jesus paid the price, and did away with the guilt. Remember the words of Charles Wesley’s song; it was his personal experience. It can be yours.
Long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast-bound in sin and nature’s night. Your eye diffused a quickening ray; I woke, the dungeon flamed with light. My chains fell off, my heart was free. I rose went forth and followed thee.”
However, not all our chains come off. When we come to the Lord Jesus we do not cease to sin—but we are no longer disqualified. “Stay in,” he says to us. We have to pull ourselves together and pick up the bat once more.
If this is strange to you, you may be thinking, “Hang on, if even my future sins are forgiven, I should be able to get out there and do anything I want: all the stuff I haven’t been able to do for fear of God’s judgement. But that’s not how it works, and I will tell you why. When you start to trust Jesus and God forgives you, he also gives you his Spirit, and that changes you. You find you want to please him. You begin to hate the things that once enticed you. That is why Paul calls us those “who no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” Today we will start to explore what it means to have God’s Holy Spirit living in us.
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 set their minds on the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5)
This is where Paul starts. No doubt you have asked yourself: “Do I really have the Holy Spirit in me?” Here is one way you can know. The Holy Spirit actually changes us. Before the Spirit comes, we are naturally attracted to evil, and the things of God leave us cold. A lot of people don’t come to church and often the church is blamed for that. We should be more relevant, there are too many hypocrites, the services are boring, and so on. But if we got everything fixed, people would still avoid us. Why? Because they are not interested in God; many are afraid of commitment. They think to themselves, “If I went to church, I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite, but I don’t want to do all that Christian stuff, so I’d best stay away. There is a deep hostility towards God. But you may remember when you surrendered your life to God, how suddenly the Bible wasn’t boring at all; it was exciting. You wanted to know God. You wanted to serve him and please him. Or you might always have come to church, but you do not have the Spirit in your life yet. All you want is for the service to be over so you can get on with what you really want to do. Prayer doesn’t turn you on, and sermons are the pits. I know they can be, but if you do not want to know God better—well, that may mean you do not have the Holy Spirit. I’ve spoken of church, because that’s a particular problem these days. But it’s not just church. Paul says that our natural inclination is away from God. The Spirit changes that. In verse 7 he says,
For the inclination of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
“Those who are in the flesh”: what does that mean? To be in the flesh means to be in your natural fallen state. “I’m only human.” You will often hear people say that as an excuse for their sin. It’s true they are only human. But that is no excuse for evil, because our human nature is fallen. It is not in its original natural state. That’s what we mean by original sin. Our human nature is sick, so we are naturally drawn to things that are not good. Rotten meat smells; that is its nature, but this doesn’t make it any sweeter. When Paul talks about “flesh” he doesn’t mean our meat. Flesh can mean meat, of course, but that is not its meaning here. Nor is “the flesh” our sexual desires. This is a mistake people often make. Our sexual nature is corrupted, but it is also part of the good creation of God. The right use of sex can be part of walking according to the Spirit. One of my teachers used to say that the two most spiritual things in marriage are praying together and making love. Uncontrolled sex can be a work of the flesh, but not sex at the right time with the right person.
We talk about “the sins of the flesh”. Sometimes this means the drive we have to do what we know is wrong, like wanting to sleep with someone who is not our married partner. But sometimes the flesh is just our laziness. I really should talk to someone, but I just can’t be bothered. I’m tired, or I want to watch television. That’s our human nature pulling us down. It’s why we confess, “we have done the things we ought not to have done, and not done the things that we ought to have done.”
Also, flesh does not mean material, and spirit non-material; that is another mistake. The sacred writings of some religions are works of the flesh, because they come from human imagination and not from God. Many so-called Christian books are works of the flesh. It is fashionable with some to speak of their spirituality, but if it’s not driven by the Holy Spirit it’s the flesh again. Transcendental meditation is a work of the flesh; it seeks an experience of God, but not the way God says. On the other hand, cleaning up someone’s vomit may be the most spiritual thing you have ever done. “The flesh” is our natural human nature without the supernatural help of God’s Spirit. A person who is “in the flesh” can’t do the will of God, says Paul, any more than a person without legs can compete in the high jumps.
Here is where the modern humanist dream of making people good through education comes unstuck. We are the most educated generation in human history. There are more people who have finished high school—more people with degrees—than ever before. But what is happening on the roads, in our city streets, around our nightclubs, on the internet; what is happening even in our homes?
Paul says the mind of the flesh is death. That must mean that without the transformation of the Holy Spirit, people’s thinking is leading them to death. This could be two things. One is the guilt which mounts up as people move further and further away from God, guilt which leads to judgment and death. The other is the gradual disintegration of a life which ignores what God teaches us in his Word. His law is for our good; it is the way to human happiness. When we think we can do better, we do not become happier, but gradually erode away our life. But Paul is speaking to Christians:
“But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.” (Romans 8:9)
This is an important statement. It is good to know that you are on the road to life—if God’s Holy Spirit is at work in you, it means you belong to Jesus and are being prepared for eternal life. If you do not trust in Jesus, if you do not experience this desire to follow God and do his will, then, of course, this statement is a warning; you may be on the road to death. In which case, turn to God, ask for his forgiveness, accept his gift of eternal life, ask for his Spirit to help you. If you are for real, God will not refuse you.
But also, don’t miss that Paul here makes it clear that every true Christian has the Holy Spirit. No one who does not have the Spirit belongs to Christ. There are not two classes of Christian, those who have the Holy Spirit and those who don’t. The Spirit is God’s birthday gift to everyone who believes in his Son. When Peter’s audience in Jerusalem learned they had killed the Saviour and asked what they should do, he said, “Be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” Do not be hoodwinked into thinking you have to do something more than trust Jesus to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12) So Paul does not speak to the Roman church like there are two classes of Christian, the Spirit-filled and the unspiritual. There are two types of human being, those who belong to Christ and those who don’t. Those who belong to Christ all have the Holy Spirit; those who don’t belong to him don’t.
I want to point out one more thing in verse 9, before I move to the next statement. Notice how Paul speaks at one moment of the Holy Spirit, at another of God’s Spirit, and at another of the Spirit of Jesus. A little later he will speak of the Spirit of adoption who enables us to be children of the Father. These are all the same, of course. It shows very clearly that Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit are all the one creating, saving, indwelling God; they share the one Spirit. Now look at verse 10.
“But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness (or justification).” (Romans 8:10)
In this statement we learn something of the utmost importance for our lives as Christians. We are not yet fully saved, but the process has begun. The Spirit comes first, the body second. Our bodies are subject to decay and death the same as everyone, but something has come alive inside of us. Our body is dead because of sin. We have already met the law of sin and death: “The soul who sins will die.” But the spirit—that’s spirit with a small “s”: our spirit, is life because of righteousness, or justification. One of the leading themes of this letter is that God qualifies the disqualified by giving us a “righteousness” ticket, even though we are not good. This is called “justification”. Justification is the flip side of forgiveness. It is our Covid certificate to enter the kingdom of God. Without it, we will never get in. So, a living spirit in a dying body: that’s the Christian life. And Paul has one more thing to say about this:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Romans 8:11)
Our bodies may be dying, but they are destined for resurrection and life. It is not like we have an immortal soul. The Bible doesn’t teach that. Jesus was raised from the dead, body and all. We don’t often think that what brought him back to life was the power of the Holy Spirit—he same power that at the beginning gave form to the universe. If this Spirit lives in us, then we can be sure that one day he will raise us from death, like he did Jesus. So, the point is, we don’t get it all now. Some Christians make the mistake of thinking that because Jesus’ carried our sins on the cross and we are in his kingdom, we now have everything: forgiveness, the Spirit, healing—even prosperity. But no, we do have forgiveness and the Spirit, but our bodies continue to be fallen dying bodies. Sickness is a normal part of living in a fallen world—even for Christians. Resurrection—what Paul later calls the redemption of our bodies—comes when Jesus returns—along with health, prosperity, and even dominion.
Paul has only begun to unwrap what the Holy Spirit does in the life of a believer. There is much more for us to discover in the weeks ahead. For now let’s finish by taking his words to heart in verses 12 and 13:
So then, [sisters and] brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. 13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
You owe the flesh nothing. You have been set free to fight; so now get on with it.