Or, How the Spirit Fixes Us to Love Pleasing God
Scripture: Romans 8:5-11
Date: October 16, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
As often found in this world of binaries, we come to another one or the other. These two categories go by other names in addition to what’s found in Romans 8, but these divisions are important to bear in mind when it comes to how people relate in the world.
The line is between flesh and Spirit. There is a world of difference between the two. That is not exaggeration. It’s less like the difference between rain flowing east or west off the top of a ridge, and more like the difference between living in the desert or living in the ocean. A man lives “according to” the principles of either the flesh or the Spirit, one has his “mind set” on either flesh or Spirit. One lives in a realm where death is normal, the other has died in order to be transferred to a realm of life and peace. One is an enemy to God and His ways, the other has God’s Spirit dwelling inside of him and is being transformed into a lover of God’s ways. It’s not apples or oranges, but apples or bricks.
Before looking at these verses, keep in mind that the line dividing flesh and Spirit is a vertical line, a personal line, one that runs through every individual heart. (Read this article for more on the two lines: Straight from the Pit) This means something about the world.
The way to life and peace and pleasing God is not being on the right side of any other line. Karl Marx did a number when he tried to classify righteousness by rich and poor. He made an economic dividing line that was horizontal. Men are drawing horizontal lines all over the place these days: men oppress women, whites oppress other colors, heterosexual cisgender normies oppress homo-bi-question marks. Humans love drawing horizontally, and they want to be on the side of the oppressed, the victims, who are by default the right (until they get the downside turned up, but that’s a problem for later).
But you can be either gender, in any tax bracket, having completed any level of schooling, be any sort of professing religious person, in the center or on the fringe of society, even a minority actually worked over by an unjust system, anywhere at all in any of these demographics and be condemned or not condemned by God.
You can be a monk and have your mind set on the flesh. You can be a Fortune 500 CEO and have your mind set on the Spirit. A missionary who thinks he’s more spiritual because he gives up all his money and temporal comforts is defining himself by the things of the flesh. Fools can believe the gospel and are in a better position than life-time religious pros who like to judge others by unspiritual standards, or in unspiritual ways. Claiming to be wise, they showed themselves of the flesh.
In Romans 8:5-11 we have flesh and Spirit as dominating worldviews, and the descriptions fit unbelievers and the regenerate respectively. But in context, Paul is instructing believers about acting consistently and that means they can act inconsistently. When they look to the law (and hold the law over the heads of others) they are toying with fleshly, deadly things.
Verse 5 is the third verse in the chapter that starts with “For” (with two more “for”s in verses 6 and 7). We just saw in verse 4 that the no-longer-damned do obey but their obedience is a fruit of another’s power; they walk according to the Spirit. More explanation about that here.
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. “According to” points to a standard. You prepare a meal according to the recipe, which means you keep according to the measurements. If you got a covid vaccine according to government mandates about loving your neighbor (rather than according to your own research and conclusions), it’s okay, you can be forgiven.
The key word is set their minds (φρονοῦσιν), which means giving careful consideration to those things (BAGD). It’s an attitude, an outlook, being opinionated (according to standard) that keeps looking at things in a certain way. It’s not what you think about necessarily, but how you think about all the things. So it’s less what preoccupies you and more your perspective on your occupations. It can’t be limited to certain times, but what limits your view of the times.
It’s not unrelated to what Jesus told Nicodemus: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. … Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:6, 3).
Everyone gets a paycheck, how do you view it? What is the system that your paycheck acknowledges? The paper and ink, the dollar amount and the items purchased, are not by definition fleshly. Whose kingdom is it for? Your quiet time could be more fleshly than your commute time. The line is vertical, in your heart.
Verse 6 explains the outcome. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. Death and life are certainly final issues, corroborated in verse 11. But they are also current issues. They are different worlds, different cities (per Augustine), different kingdoms.
How can so many women lionize their own abortions? How can any doctor call abortion reproductive healthcare? Why do some families not seem to be able to escape the bondage of cyclical criticism, toward each other or toward outsiders, telling themselves stories about how they’ve been misunderstood and mistreated? It’s because they dwell in the Land of Thanasia. That’s their language. The “self-indulgent is dead even while she lives” (1 Timothy 5:6). It’s madness.
On the other side, for the un-damned, are life and peace. They are raised to life to walk in newness of life.
Verses 7 and 8 drill in on the current condition of the fleshly-deathly. 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. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. This is a quad-shot of nothing good.
Hostile to God. It’s enmity of enemies, Inimicus. It’s spiritual war. There is antithesis, antagonism.
Does not submit to God. See the law, shake one’s fists at the law. Know the requirements, break them.
Cannot submit to God. This isn’t an excuse, it is the basement level of blame. The inability is a fault of sin not an alibi for it.
Cannot please God. This is the life of the damned. Whatever common graces, including restraints from evil that would be consistent with their nature, they still don’t have God’s favor, which they didn’t want, and which makes them Cain-kind of mad.
As John Calvin mocked: “Behold the power of free-will!”
While this consistently applies only to unbelievers, it should cause believers to hate their damned sin and give thanks to God and His sovereign grace for delivering them out of their depravity into a new paradigm for seeing the world. We live in and walk according the Spirit. It’s not red-pilled or blue-pilled or black-pilled, but this living mindset is larger and more local than any of those.
The person changes, from the “us” in verse 4 to the “those” in verses 5-8 back to the “you” in verses 9-11.
The application is binary. This does not equal an expectation of perfectionism, as Keswick theology and a strand of Wesleyan teaching promoted. We can live inconsistently with our identity, but that calls us to understand and live according to our nature as those united to Christ.
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. No Spirit, no salvation; those who are united to Christ are the ones living in the realm of the Spirit. When the Spirit dwells in us there is the abolition of man’s flesh. Spirit of God is the same as Spirit of Christ, because Christ is God, and because both Father and Son sent the Spirit. You are in the Spirit and the Spirit…dwells in you. This is belonging to Christ. This is a Trinitarian union and identity.
But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. The Spirit in us and Christ in us is a wonderful weapon. Why would we sin with divine presence around and within? Our body has limits, even to physical death, but the Holy Spirit renews the inner man and leads us in Spirit ways, in holy Spirit ways.
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. Regeneration, resurrection. Life to life. Spiritual life, eternal life, physical life.
The vertical line between flesh and Spirit changes everything. If you are in the Spirit it’s a whole new world, a deliverance from the futile traditions of fleshly fathers and the desires of the flesh in the world and the condemnation and mindset of death. In the Spirit there is freedom and fruit, freedom for fruit. The Spirit is supernaturally fixing our minds on peace and hope and learning to love pleasing God. You might be immature, but you’re either initiated or not; it’s anathema or blessing.
There really ought to be some experienced differences. This is the power of the gospel from faith to faith: giving us a living mindset.
Anger, division, rivalry, envy, “and things like these” are not fruit of the Spirit. You, beloved, are in the Spirit. You belong to Christ. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24). Live in the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit. Let the Spirit fix your mind on pleasing the Lord.
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead. (Ephesians 1:17-20a, ESV)