Rom 8:7-8 | KingComments | STEP | . After experiencing the struggle to leave the marshes in Romans 7, you now have firm ground under your feet. This firmness is in Christ. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Isn’t this a relief? This is how God sees you and this is how you should see yourself. Every fear of judgment is gone because Christ bore the judgment and rose from the dead. . If you have come far enough in your faith-life to be Christ-centered instead of self-centered, then the Holy Spirit can start working in you. The Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of life” here. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work death, but life. This is how He worked in the Lord Jesus. Everywhere the Lord Jesus went, He brought life. When the Lord Jesus died, He rose from the dead by the power of the Spirit of life. In the same way, the Spirit of life has delivered you from the power of sin and death. . Remember how the law promised life to anyone who kept it, but no one could keep it. Not because the law wasn’t good, but because in the flesh there wasn’t the power to keep it. I once read the following comparison that may help make this clearer. Imagine a skilled woodcarver who can create the most beautiful figures from a piece of wood. He has the best tools money can buy. But if you give this man a piece of rotten wood, he can’t do anything with it. You can’t blame him, for he’s certainly skilled enough. Nor can you blame his tools because you would not find any better. What then is to blame? The piece of wood! This is how it is with the law and us. God is not to blame. He is perfectly skilled. Nor is the law to blame: it is holy and righteous and good, as we saw in Romans 7. It is therefore our fault if the law is not seen to its full advantage. It is our flesh that makes the law powerless. How marvelous that God didn’t leave us struggling all by ourselves! When it became clear it was impossible for the law to deliver you from sin and death, God set to work. He sent His own Son as Man into this world. At the cross of Calvary, God judged sin in His Son when He made Him sin for us ( ). When says “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, this applies to the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, that is, His becoming Man. In this respect He became like us, but with the exception of sin ( ). He didn’t partake of the wicked, sinful flesh that we, being born from sinful parents, have from our birth due to our human nature. Being like us applies to His outward appearance which was that of a man. When the Lord Jesus was hanging on the cross, and even then only during the final three hours, did God condemn sin in the flesh. He has finished with it completely and put it away forever. . The new source of power that wants to work in your life from now on is the Holy Spirit. If you let yourself be led by Him you will fulfill the righteous demand of the law. Perhaps you think: “Am I then still subjected to the law?” No, most definitely not. But do you think the Holy Spirit would have you do something against the law? No, of course not. For that reason, if you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, you will automatically, so to speak, do what the law says. But this is not the aim of walking according to the Spirit. Walking according to the Spirit means a lot more than this. It means you give the Holy Spirit freedom in your life and that He fills your thoughts. . The way you think makes it clear what is guiding you. On what do you fix your thoughts? What do you long for? You have been converted. You have been given the new life. You have received the Holy Spirit. Despite the battles you’ll have to fight now and then, you’ll have other things on your mind than before your conversion. Then you were thinking fleshly thoughts; you were self-centered. What was the result? Nothing other than death. Now that you think of spiritual things, your life is God-centered. What are the results? Life and peace! The real and true life is what you received in your inner being and it becomes visible by the way you live. You now have a different outlook on the things around you than before. Only now does life have a real significance. You know God and you know Christ. There is peace in your heart because in relation to God everything is in order. Read Romans 5:1-2 again ( ). You will experience this peace in deeper and deeper measure as you surrender yourself to God in all the areas of your life and if you remain God-centered. . With the flesh it is entirely different. In the flesh there is no life or peace. On the contrary, whatever it thinks of is always at enmity with God. The flesh is completely evil without the possibility of improvement. It can’t subject itself to God’s law, nor does it want to. Keep all the things mentioned here as characteristic of the flesh and of the Spirit firmly in mind. Then you will recognize whether a certain desire is from the flesh or the new life. Now read Romans 8:1-7 again. Reflection: What is the difference between walking according to the flesh and walking according to the Spirit?

‏ Romans 8:7-8

Walking According to the Spirit

Rom 8:1. After experiencing the struggle to leave the marshes in Romans 7, you now have firm ground under your feet. This firmness is in Christ. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Isn’t this a relief? This is how God sees you and this is how you should see yourself. Every fear of judgment is gone because Christ bore the judgment and rose from the dead.

Rom 8:2. If you have come far enough in your faith-life to be Christ-centered instead of self-centered, then the Holy Spirit can start working in you. The Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of life” here. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work death, but life. This is how He worked in the Lord Jesus. Everywhere the Lord Jesus went, He brought life. When the Lord Jesus died, He rose from the dead by the power of the Spirit of life. In the same way, the Spirit of life has delivered you from the power of sin and death.

Rom 8:3. Remember how the law promised life to anyone who kept it, but no one could keep it. Not because the law wasn’t good, but because in the flesh there wasn’t the power to keep it. I once read the following comparison that may help make this clearer. Imagine a skilled woodcarver who can create the most beautiful figures from a piece of wood. He has the best tools money can buy. But if you give this man a piece of rotten wood, he can’t do anything with it. You can’t blame him, for he’s certainly skilled enough. Nor can you blame his tools because you would not find any better. What then is to blame? The piece of wood!

This is how it is with the law and us. God is not to blame. He is perfectly skilled. Nor is the law to blame: it is holy and righteous and good, as we saw in Romans 7. It is therefore our fault if the law is not seen to its full advantage. It is our flesh that makes the law powerless. How marvelous that God didn’t leave us struggling all by ourselves! When it became clear it was impossible for the law to deliver you from sin and death, God set to work. He sent His own Son as Man into this world. At the cross of Calvary, God judged sin in His Son when He made Him sin for us (2Cor 5:21).

When Rom 8:3 says “in the likeness of sinful flesh”, this applies to the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, that is, His becoming Man. In this respect He became like us, but with the exception of sin (Heb 4:15). He didn’t partake of the wicked, sinful flesh that we, being born from sinful parents, have from our birth due to our human nature. Being like us applies to His outward appearance which was that of a man. When the Lord Jesus was hanging on the cross, and even then only during the final three hours, did God condemn sin in the flesh. He has finished with it completely and put it away forever.

Rom 8:4. The new source of power that wants to work in your life from now on is the Holy Spirit. If you let yourself be led by Him you will fulfill the righteous demand of the law. Perhaps you think: “Am I then still subjected to the law?” No, most definitely not. But do you think the Holy Spirit would have you do something against the law? No, of course not. For that reason, if you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, you will automatically, so to speak, do what the law says. But this is not the aim of walking according to the Spirit. Walking according to the Spirit means a lot more than this. It means you give the Holy Spirit freedom in your life and that He fills your thoughts.

Rom 8:5-6. The way you think makes it clear what is guiding you. On what do you fix your thoughts? What do you long for? You have been converted. You have been given the new life. You have received the Holy Spirit. Despite the battles you’ll have to fight now and then, you’ll have other things on your mind than before your conversion. Then you were thinking fleshly thoughts; you were self-centered. What was the result? Nothing other than death.

Now that you think of spiritual things, your life is God-centered. What are the results? Life and peace! The real and true life is what you received in your inner being and it becomes visible by the way you live. You now have a different outlook on the things around you than before. Only now does life have a real significance. You know God and you know Christ. There is peace in your heart because in relation to God everything is in order. Read Romans 5:1-2 again (Rom 5:1-2). You will experience this peace in deeper and deeper measure as you surrender yourself to God in all the areas of your life and if you remain God-centered.

Rom 8:7. With the flesh it is entirely different. In the flesh there is no life or peace. On the contrary, whatever it thinks of is always at enmity with God. The flesh is completely evil without the possibility of improvement. It can’t subject itself to God’s law, nor does it want to. Keep all the things mentioned here as characteristic of the flesh and of the Spirit firmly in mind. Then you will recognize whether a certain desire is from the flesh or the new life.

Now read Romans 8:1-7 again.

Reflection: What is the difference between walking according to the flesh and walking according to the Spirit?

If the Spirit Dwells in You

Rom 8:8. For someone who is in the flesh, it is impossible to please God. Being in the flesh means having yourself, your abilities, your labors, your plans and intentions as a center. Even if someone in the flesh would try to please God by keeping the law, this would be unacceptable to God. The starting point is wrong. God has dealt with the flesh, the nature of man corrupted by sin, once and for all. So how then could He accept anything from it? There is a definitive separation between God and the sinful flesh.

Rom 8:9. He who has received God’s Spirit is no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit. It is the Spirit of God who lives inside you. The Spirit of God doesn’t make you important, but Christ. You are connected with Christ and you belong to Him through the Spirit of God. If someone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn’t belong to Him.

Why do these verses suddenly speak of the Spirit of Christ? I think it is to show you that the Spirit you have received is the same Spirit by which Christ was led during His life on earth. When you read the Gospels, you can see this all the time. For example, take the Lord’s temptation by satan in the wilderness in Luke 4 (Lk 4:1). There you read how He, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from Jordan to the wilderness. Also when He was in the wilderness, He in His perfect holiness was led around by the Spirit. As a result, He remained standing in temptation. He remained focused on God.

Rom 8:10. With you, the Spirit wants to do the same. The Spirit of God is dwelling in you because Christ is in you. The Spirit of God can only connect Himself with something of Christ. This implies that the body, as used by sin for evil practices, is dead. Otherwise God’s Spirit couldn’t enter it to dwell there. But now, Christ being in you, it is completely right for the Spirit to dwell in you and to have authority over the life you now lead, just as it was with Christ.

Rom 8:11. Another important thing is connected with the indwelling of God’s Spirit within you. This has to do with the resurrection of your mortal body. Your body is still subject to the consequences of sin. It can become sick and it can die, but look at what God has done with the Lord Jesus. God raised the Lord Jesus from the dead. How should that be with you? Your body is still mortal. Is this consistent with the Spirit of God dwelling in you, Who has everything to do with life? The answer is that God will raise your mortal body as He has done with the Lord Jesus because His Spirit is dwelling in you. Other verses, like in Philippians 3, tell us this will take place at the return of the Lord Jesus for His own, commonly called the rapture (Phil 3:21).

Rom 8:12. All of this puts you under a certain obligation. You have become a debtor to live according to the position God has given you. He has provided you with all it takes to live a godly life, that is the new life and the Holy Spirit. You no longer have any obligation toward the flesh. It has no claim on you because you died as to your former life.

Rom 8:13. You still have the flesh in you, but you shouldn’t give it an opportunity to manifest itself. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. This must be the case. God’s judgment over the flesh never changes, but now you have the responsibility to deprive the flesh of any possibility to regain authority in your life. By the power the Holy Spirit gives, you have the ability to stop sinning in your body. Though you will never reach a state of sinless perfection here on earth, yet moment by moment you are responsible and able to not sin.

Rom 8:14. Then you will live life with God as God meant it to be. Everyone who is led by the Spirit of God looks like the Son of God, the Lord Jesus. Sons of God are people in whom God recognizes the Son. In Him God found His joy and His pleasure. If you will be led by the Spirit, God will be pleased by it.

Now read Romans 8:8-14 again.

Reflection: How can you kill the workings of the body?