The Spirit of Christ

Romans 8: 6-11 (April 10, 2011)

1) The Text

6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

2) The Context

In Romans 7, Paul has sought to demonstrate that perverted human nature is such that it subverts the Law. Confronting human nature with the demands of the Law does not bring about change. It tends to ensconce people in their rebelliousness. The Law does not then bring life but death.

The situation seems quite hopeless, but for divine intervention. Paul sees that divine intervention in Christ. Its effect is to offer a relationship of love which includes forgiveness of sin, the overcoming of alienation, and the power to begin anew and to keep on going (8:1-4). What the Law could not achieve because of the state of human nature (8:3a) God has achieved in another way, through sending his Son right into this hopeless situation of humanity to deal with it (8:3b). 8:4 then reinforces Paul's claim. Rather than showing disrespect for the Law of God, enshrined in scripture, he is proclaiming a gospel that liberates people to live in ways that fulfill what the Law asks of them. They do so not by trying harder but by becoming engaged in a relationship which has the effect of changed behavior.

In 8:5 Paul then explains the contrast. People live according to "the flesh" or according to the Spirit. They are two mindsets. By the first Paul means trying to improve yourself by your own efforts and remaining focused on yourself. By the latter he means opening yourself to the transforming reality of love through the Spirit. "Flesh" is not neutral here nor does it mean our human nature in itself, let alone our sexual nature as if to be human is bad. "Flesh" is a certain way of living, a perversion of our true selves.

3) Interpretation

Our passage comes in at 8:6 where Paul elaborates further. If you set your mind or focus just on yourself in a selfish kind of way, you will not succeed. It is the way of death. The way to liberation is to let go of focusing only on yourself and making yourself self-sufficient. It is to open yourself to being loved.

We give up the struggle of justifying ourselves to ourselves and to others and to God and we accept our human frailty and sinfulness and we accept God's love. We can stop fighting. We can find peace (8:6). It is OK to let go and be loved. Sometimes it takes a lot of courage especially when we have spent our lives trying to maintain our own construction of ourselves, which has often meant kidding ourselves and others. We stop trying to make ourselves feel better by doing good. We give it away and accept grace.

Fighting to sustain our identity apart from God and by all this effort at achieving worth sets us on collision course with those who just want to look us in the eye with love and embrace us. We are then our own worst enemies and it also means we resist being loved. That includes resisting God (8:7). Sometimes our fear of love can even be violent, because love sees us as we are - we can't stand that. Such a mindset sets us heading not to life but death, even though we think it is the way we shall save ourselves, it is certainly debilitating. Even when we acknowledge God's law as good we won't be able to keep it because we lack the inner resources (8:7). We just can't please God like that and we also do no good to those around us and to ourselves (8:8).

Paul celebrates that love liberates people. It gives them hope. Here in 8:9 he speaks of God's Spirit entering people. In the same verse he speaks of Christ's Spirit entering us. It is really all the same. The God who meets in compassion in Christ is there for us in the present. We stop being isolated. We become God's (8:9). Much earlier Paul spoke of the glory which humanity has lost by its alienation and sin (3:23). Now we can become what we were made to be.

8:10 could mean one of two things: the body, the old state of affairs, has come to an end. Then it reflects an answer to the cry of liberation from the body of death in 7:25. Or it may be that Paul wants to say we still have to live with these negative dynamics entrenched in our psyche but we don't have to be overwhelmed by them because the Spirit of love can set us on a new path. The latter fits more into our notions of gradual and dynamic change. Certainly Paul thinks change is possible in the here and now, but he also knows that we keep having to realize this potential and keep focused. It doesn't just happen automatically. The statement is so dense that it is hard to tell. Like a set of notes Paul contrasts: body/death/sin with Spirit/life/goodness. He knows we can choose the second cluster. Its result is goodness: love begets love.

Paul has a big-picture understanding of what love does. It more than enables him to respond to the quibbles of those who think he is abandoning scripture because it is grounded in the bigness of God and is as defiant as Christ's resurrection to which Paul keeps returning. There can be change now and there needs to be change in the future. How else can one understand the movement of radical love?

4) Thought Exercise

Are there times you feel isolated from God?

Are there times you have let God in and felt less isolated?