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, the things of the Spirit.
Parallel Translations
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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, the things of the Spirit.
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For they that are carnall are carnally mynded. But they that are spirituall are gostly mynded.
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For they that are after the flesh, sauour the things of the flesh: but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
Cross-references (13)
Passages linked to Romans 8:5 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 1 Corinthians 2:14 Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
- Galatians 5:19-25 Now the deeds of the flesh are obvious, which are: adultery, sexual immorality, uncleanness, lustfulness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousies, outbursts of anger, rivalries, divisions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. If we live by the Spirit, let’s also walk by the Spirit.
- John 3:6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
- Colossians 3:1-3 If then you were raised together with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
- Romans 8:6-7 For the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace; because the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.
- Philippians 3:18-19 For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, as the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things.
- Romans 8:9 But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.
- Mark 8:33 But he, turning around, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you have in mind not the things of God, but the things of men.”
- Romans 8:12-14 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God.
- 2 Corinthians 10:3 For though we walk in the flesh, we don’t wage war according to the flesh;
- 2 Peter 2:10 but chiefly those who walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignitaries;
- Ephesians 5:9 for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth,
- 1 Corinthians 15:48 As is the one made of dust, such are those who are also made of dust; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (24 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 5. For they who are after the flesh, etc.…
5. For they who are after the flesh, etc. He introduces this difference between the flesh and the Spirit, not only to confirm, by an argument derived from what is of an opposite character, what he has before mentioned, — that the grace of Christ belongs to none but to those who, having been regenerated by the Spirit, strive after purity; but also to relieve the faithful with a seasonable consolation, lest being conscious of many infirmities, they should despair: for as he had exempted none from the curse, but those who lead a spiritual life, he might seem to cut off from all mortals the hope of salvation; for who in this world can be found adorned with so much angelic purity so as to be wholly freed from the flesh? It was therefore necessary to define what it is to be in the flesh, and to walk after the flesh. At first, indeed, Paul does not define the distinction so very precisely; but yet we shall see as we proceed, that his object is to afford good hope to the faithful, though they are bound to their flesh; only let them not give loose reins to its lusts, but give themselves up to be guided by the Holy Spirit.
By saying that carnal men care for, or think upon, the things of the flesh, he shows that he did not count those as carnal who aspire after celestial righteousness, but those who wholly devote themselves to the world. I have rendered φρονουσιν by a word of larger meaning, cogitant — think, that readers may understand that those only are excluded from being the children of God who, being given to the allurements of the flesh, apply their minds and study to depraved lusts. Now, in the second clause he encourages the faithful to entertain good hope, provided they find that they are raised up by the Spirit to the meditation of righteousness: for wherever the Spirit reigns, it is an evidence of the saving grace of God; as the grace of God does not exist where the Spirit being extinguished the reign of the flesh prevails. But I will briefly repeat here what I have reminded you of before, — That to be in the flesh, or, after the flesh, is the same thing as to be without the gift of regeneration: and such are all they who continue, as they commonly say, in pure naturals, (Puris naturalibus.)
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain They that live as the flesh leadeth them.
They that live as the flesh leadeth them.
A reason why to walk after the flesh, agreeth not to them which are grafted in Christ, but to walk after the spirit agreeth and is meet for them: because, saith he, that they which are after the flesh, savor the things of the flesh, but they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 5 For they that are after the flesh do…
5 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
Ver. 5. Do mind the things] For want of a better principle. The stream riseth not above the spring.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh; i.e. that…
For they that are after the flesh; i.e. that are carnal and unregenerate persons, in a mere natural state.
Do mind the things of the flesh; either such things as are absolutely evil, and are called, the works of the flesh, Gal 5:19-21; or else such things as are occasionally evil, as riches, honours, pleasures, &c. These are also called the things of the flesh, and are such as carnal persons mind; i.e. they savour, affect, and take delight in them.
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But they that are after the Spirit; i.e. that are spiritual and regenerate, in whom the Spirit dwells.
The things of the Spirit; i.e. they mind spiritual and heavenly things, they relish them most of all; see Psa 4:7; 73:25.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. A difference of persons mentioned. Those…
Observe here, 1. A difference of persons mentioned. Those that are after the flesh, and them that are after the Spirit.
2. A difference of properties belonging to these persons; the one minds the things of the flesh, the other the things of the Spirit. They mind them; that is, they relish and savour them, they lay out their thoughts about them, and let out their endeavours after them.
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Learn hence, 1. That there are but two sorts of men in the world; some after the flesh, and some after the Spirit.
2. That these two different sorts of men have two different objects, which they savour and relish; namely, the things of the flesh, and the things of the Spirit.
3. That all men discover the true temper of their minds, and the complexion and disposition of their souls, by the respect which they give to either of these objects, by minding the things of the flesh, and the things of the Spirit; that is, by minding them willingly and cheerfully, resolvedly and constantly.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh,.... By flesh…
For they that are after the flesh,.... By flesh is meant the corruption of nature; and they may be said to be "after" it, not all that have flesh in them, for the best of saints have it in them; regenerating grace does not remove it from them; there is a difference between being in and after the flesh, and flesh being in us; but such who are as they were born, who have nothing but flesh, or corrupt nature in them, in whom that is the governing principle, whose minds are carnal, and whose whole walk and conversation is, such, are here meant: and these persons
do mind the things of the flesh: not merely things corporeal, belonging to the welfare of the body; or things natural for the improvement of the mind; or things civil, as riches, &c. which may be minded and sought after in a lawful way; but things sinful, the lusts, works, and sins of the flesh: which they may be said to "mind", since they judge them to be good; the bent and application of their minds are to them; their affections are set upon them; they are solicitously careful to provide for them, and savour and relish them: nor is it to be wondered at, since these are natural to them; they are opposite to God and so agreeable to them; they have no mind, thought, affection, or relish, for anything else; and it is entirely owing to mighty grace, that any mind the things of the Spirit:
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but they that are after the Spirit; not such who follow the dictates of their own spirits; or are outwardly reformed; nor all that have spiritual gifts; or profess themselves to have the grace and Spirit of God; but such who are born again, are renewed in the spirit of their minds, in whom grace is the governing principle: the work of the Spirit is begun in them, though not perfected: the Spirit himself dwells in them, and they walk after him; their minds and conversations are spiritual, though there may be a great deal of carnality in their hearts, thoughts, words, and actions, which is matter of grief unto them: these mind
the things of the Spirit; the graces of the Spirit; spiritual blessings; the doctrines of the Gospel; spiritual sacrifices and services: these have some understanding of, can discern the difference between them and carnal things, judge and approve of them as right; have a great esteem and affection for them, and taste a sweetness in them. They have no mind naturally to these things; nor is the bias of their minds altered by themselves, nor could it; this is wholly the work of the Spirit of God; and these things are minded only because, and as they are agreeable to the spiritual part, the inward man.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain They that are after the flesh - Who remain…
They that are after the flesh - Who remain under the guidance of corrupt nature. Mind the things of the flesh - Have their thoughts and affections fixed on such things as gratify corrupt nature; namely, on things visible and temporal; on things of the earth, on pleasure, (of sense or imagination,) praise, or riches. But they who are after the Spirit - Who are under his guidance. Mind the things of the Spirit - Think of, relish, love things invisible, eternal; the things which the Spirit hath revealed, which he works in us, moves us to, and promises to give us.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 5. For they that are after the flesh]…
Verse 5. For they that are after the flesh] And here is the great distinction between Jews and genuine Christians: the former are after the flesh-are under the power of the carnal, rebellious principle; and consequently mind, προνουσιν, relish, the things of the flesh-the things which appertain merely to the present life; having no relish for spiritual and eternal things.
But they that are after the Spirit] They who are regenerated, who are born of the Spirit, being redeemed from the influence and law of the carnal mind; these relish the things of the Spirit-they are spiritually minded, and pass through things temporal, so as not to lose the things which are eternal. And this, which in these apostolic times distinguished between the carnal Jew and the spiritual believer in Christ, is the grand mark of distinction between the nominal and the real Christian now. The former is earthly minded, and lives for this world; the latter is spiritually minded, and lives for the world to come.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Rom 8:5-7. For — Or rather, now; they that…
Rom 8:5-7. For — Or rather, now; they that are after the flesh — The apostle having, Rom 8:1, described those to whom there is no condemnation, as persons who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, to prevent all mistakes in such an important point, here informs us what he means by walking after the flesh, and after the Spirit. The former, he says, is to mind the things of the flesh; that is, as the word φρονεω signifies, to esteem, desire, and delight in them; namely, the things that please and gratify our senses and animal appetites and passions, or our corrupt nature, namely, things visible and temporal; the things of the earth, such as pleasure, (of sense or imagination,) the praise of men, or the riches of this world, — to set our thoughts and affections upon them. But they who are after the Spirit — The persons intended by that expression; mind — Think on, relish, love; the things of the Spirit — Things invisible and eternal; the things which the Spirit hath revealed, or which he works in us, moves us to, and promises to give us. For — Or rather, now, as the particle γαρ should be rendered; to be carnally minded is death. The original expression, το φρονημα σαρκος, is literally, the minding of the flesh, the preferring and pursuing its interests; is death — A sure mark of spiritual death, and the way to death everlasting. “My whole employment,” said even a heathen, (Socrates,) who yet was not fully assured of a future and everlasting life, “is to persuade the young and old against too much love for the body, for riches, and all other precarious things, of whatsoever nature they be; and against too little regard for the soul, which ought to be the object of their affections.” But to be spiritually minded — Φρονημα πνευματος, the minding the Spirit, that is, the setting our thoughts and affections on spiritual things; is life and peace — A sure mark of spiritual life, and the way to life everlasting; and attended with peace, namely, peace with God; opposite to the enmity mentioned in the next verse; and the peace of God, which is the foretaste of life everlasting. In this verse, therefore, the apostle sets before us life and death, blessing and cursing; and thereby furnishes us with a third motive to holiness: all who live after the flesh shall die eternally, but all that live in a holy, spiritual manner shall obtain eternal life. Reader, to which of these art thou in the way? Because, &c. — Here the apostle assigns the reason of the doctrine contained in the foregoing verse; the carnal mind — As above described; is enmity against God — Against his holiness, his justice, his truth, his power and providence, his omniscience, his omnipresence, and indeed against all his attributes, and even against his existence. For the carnal mind would wish that God had not the perfections which he possesses; that he were not present in all places, acquainted with all things; so holy as to hate sin, so just as to be determined to punish it; so mighty as to be able to do it, and so true as certainly to fulfil his threatenings, as well as his promises; and, in fact, that there were no such Being. For it is not subject to the law of God — To the moral law in general; not even to the first and great commandment of it, which indeed comprehends all the commands of the first table, namely, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, &c.; that is, Thou shalt be spiritually minded; shalt set thy affections on God, and things divine and heavenly; a law this, to which those who are carnally minded, and continue so, in the nature of things neither are nor can be subject.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh - They…
For they that are after the flesh - They that are under the influence of the corrupt and sinful desires of the flesh; Gal 5:19-21. Those who are unrenewed.
Do mind the things of the flesh - They are supremely devoted to the gratification of their corrupt desires.
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But they that are after the Spirit - Who are under its influence; who are led by the Spirit.
The things of the Spirit - Those things which the Spirit produces, or which he effects in the mind, Gal 5:21-23. This verse is for the purpose of illustration, and is designed to show that the tendency of religion is to produce as entire a devotedness to the service of God as people had before rendered to sin; that is, that they Would be fully engaged in that to which they had devoted themselves. As the Christian therefore, had devoted himself to the service of the Spirit, and had been brought under his influence, it was to be expected that he would make it his great and only object to cherish and cultivate the graces which that Spirit would produce.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain For the who are according to the flesh. That…
For the who are according to the flesh. That is, who live according to the false, vain, and deceitful maxims and customs of carnal men, which he also calls the prudence of the flesh: and this prudence he calls death, as leading men to eternal death. Such carnal men relish nothing else but such pleasures. But they who are and live according to the spirit, mind the things which are of the spirit, fix their hearts on the things that belong to God, and his service; and this wisdom of the spirit, in which they experience much greater pleasure, leads them to eternal life, and to eternal peace in the enjoyment of God. The false wisdom of the flesh is an enemy of God, cannot be subject to the law of God, because the maxims of the flesh, and of the world, are so opposite to those of the gospel, and to the doctrine of Christ. (Witham) --- They who are subject to the flesh, by having their affections fixed on the things of the flesh, that is, carnal men, whilst they are such, cannot please God: for this prudence of the flesh makes them the enemies of God. (Estius) --- If Christ, or the spirit of Christ, which he also (ver. 9.) calls the spirit of God, as being one and the same, dwell in you, and direct you, the body indeed is dead because of sin; that is, is mortal, and liable to death, the consequence of Adam’s sin; but the spirit and the soul liveth by the life of grace, by reason of justification: that is, because she hath been justified and sanctified by the merits of Christ. And the spirit of God, who raised Jesus to life, will also raise all who remain sanctified by the grace of Christ to a happy resurrection. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh--that is, under…
For they that are after the flesh--that is, under the influence of the fleshly principle.
do mind--give their attention to (Phi 3:19).
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the things of the flesh, &c.--Men must be under the predominating influence of one or other of these two principles, and, according as the one or the other has the mastery, will be the complexion of their life, the character of their actions.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 5. Do mind—Think of, care for.
5. Do mind—Think of, care for.
Things of the flesh—The gratification of purely earthly and selfish ends.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 5. they that are] This “being after the flesh”…
5. they that are] This “being after the flesh” is the state of which “walking after the flesh” is the exhibition and proof.—St Paul here, and in a measure to the close of Rom_8:11, expands and illustrates the difference between the past and present state of the Christian.
after the flesh] i.e. obeying it, (as the organ of sin;) making it their rule, in spite of their knowledge of right and wrong.
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do mind] Same word as Col_3:2, where E. V. has “set your affection on.” It means far more than to “like,” or “care for;” it indicates the full preoccupation of thought and will with a chosen and engrossing object.—Such, according to St Paul, is the natural state of men, as regards any real bias of will and love to the true claims of the true God.
the things of the flesh] All things that the unregenerate nature prefers to the “things above,” whether in themselves guilty or innocent.
they that are after the Spirit] Ruled and determined by His awakening, regenerating, illuminating presence; characterized by the fact that He dwells in them.—It is plain (a) that St Paul regards the two classes as mutually exclusive, and together exhaustive of mankind; (b) that he makes the “being in the Spirit” to be a strictly supernatural state, the result of a Divine Indwelling once unknown to the soul, but now real and living; and (c) that this state is, in his teaching, an absolutely necessary condition of the true “sonship” of men towards God. Further, he does not mean by it a state of unnatural exaltation, (for nothing can be more practical than his view of daily life and duty; see ch. 12. &c., &c.,) nor of freedom from trial, (Rom_8:17,) nor of absence of inner conflict with sin (Rom_8:13). He means a state in which the will is decisively roused to that conflict, by the knowledge and love of God.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (5) They that are . . .—Those who not…
(5) They that are . . .—Those who not only walk (direct their conduct) according to the promptings of the flesh, but who are in themselves and in the whole bent of their dispositions the slaves of these promptings.
Do mind the things of the flesh.—Their whole mental and moral activity is set upon nothing else but the gratification of these cravings of sense. The phrase “who mind” is not confined to the exercise of the intellect, but includes the affections; in fact it includes all those lesser motives, thoughts, and desires which are involved in carrying out any great principle of action—whether it be selfish and “carnal” or spiritual.
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(5-8) Further description of the antithesis between flesh and spirit in regard to (1) their object, Rom_8:5; (2) their nature, Rom_8:7-8; (3) their end, Rom_8:6.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Vers. 5-8. For they that are after the flesh…
Vers. 5-8. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. These verses are added for explanation and enforcement of the condition demanded at the end of ver. 4; pressing the fact that "the infection of our nature lust of the flesh, called in Greek phronema sarkos" (Art. 9) with its antagonism to the Law of God, and its deadly tendency, remains even in the regenerate, and that hence we are still in danger of succumbing to it; but that if we do unless the Spirit within us prove in practice the stronger power the condition required for our individual redemption is not fulfilled. oi en sarki ontev , in ver. 7, evidently does not mean those who are still in the body, but the same essentially as oi kata sarka ontev in ver. 5; en denotes the element in which they live (see verse following). The de which connects ver. 8 with the foregoing has its ecbatic, not its adversative sense. So then, in the Authorized Version, though not strictly equivalent, seems sufficiently to express the general idea.
Vers. 5-8. For there are two fronhmata in us still, of the flesh as well as of the Spirit; the one tending to death and the other to life; and it is only those who give themselves to the latter that can share in the life to which it tends.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh do mind…
Rom_8:5-6
For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.
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Description of regenerate and unregenerate
The word flesh is here to be taken not in the natural sense, but in the moral; and the word Spirit is here to be taken for the Spirit of grace and regeneration. First, the universality of these two states and conditions of men; and secondly, the contrariety. First, to take notice of the universality of these two states and conditions, as they do divide and make up the whole world; for so they do. All men living are one of these two. Therefore let us everyone search and examine ourselves in this particular, and observe how the case is here with us; whether we are such as are after the flesh, or which are after the Spirit. As there is not a middle place betwixt heaven and hell, so there is not a middle state neither betwixt sin and grace. This it may be much discovered by us according to the principles that prevail in us; by what we most delight in and give ourselves to. The second is in reference to the contrariety, in that they are opposed here one to the other (Gal_5:17). The contrariety of these two sorts of persons one to the other is considerable in sundry particulars; as, first, the contrariety of their principles which they are carried by, and that is, of flesh and of Spirit (Gal_5:17). There is a different law and rule and principle, which does act and move the servants of God than does other persons. Secondly, the contrariety of their aims and projects and designs. Those who have different and contrary ends which they do set down and propound to themselves, they must needs be contrary to one another. Thirdly, the contrariety of their courses and actions and conversations. This is another thing which makes up this contrariety to us as observable in them. The consideration of this point is thus far useful to us. First, as it gives an account of that enmity which is in the one to the other (Gal_5:22; Joh_15:19). Secondly, we see here also how unsuitable it is for those who are good to have intimate society and familiarity with those who are evil. Thirdly, we have from hence a discovery likewise of the excellency of the kingdom of Christ, and of the efficacy and power of the gospel, which makes such an admirable change and alteration as we may observe it to do. This is the nature of conversion, to deliver us from the power of darkness, and to translate us into the kingdom of Christ, as the apostle expresses it to us there in that place in Col_2:13. The second is the difference of properties as belonging to these persons, and that is, that the former do mind the things of the flesh, the latter the things of the Spirit. First, to speak of the former, which is the property of all carnal and unregenerate persons, such as are yet abiding and continuing in the state of nature, and here expressed to be after the flesh. This is that which is here declared of them, as proper to them, that they do mind the things of the flesh. When it is said here that carnal persons do mind carnal things, and they that are after the flesh the things of the flesh, this minding it may admit of a various explication to us. First, they mind them in a way of apprehension, that is; they understand them, and know what belongs unto them; they are well skilled and expert in them. This is one property of carnal and worldly persons, that they are best seen and knowing in such things as these are. Worldly men are best able to judge of worldly matters; as for the things of the Spirit, matters of grace and holiness, here they are plainly ignorant and unlearned. Everyone is still most capable and apprehensive of such kind of matters as he hath a proper genius for and inclination to; now this have carnal persons to worldly things. Secondly, in a way of affection. They mind them, that is, they favour them and relish them and take delight in them. Worldly persons, their hearts are set upon the world, and it is the most delightful thing to them of anything else. Thirdly, in a way of contemplation. They mind them, that is, they think upon them; such things as these are the chiefest study and meditation, and which their thoughts are most exercised about. Fourthly, in a way of activity and contrivance. They mind the things of the flesh, that is, they lay out chiefly for it. They bend their chiefest study and endeavour to promote such things as these are. They seek opportunities for the flesh, and they seek how to accomplish and to improve these opportunities. Now, the ground of all this is two fold. First, that inward principle which does act in them and prevail in them. This is a sure rule, that everything doth after its kind. Nature it is a most certain principle wherever it is. Secondly, there is Satan also who has a further stroke and influence hereupon. He is the spirit that works in the children of disobedience (Eph_2:2). He makes it his business to promote these things in them, by his suggestions and instigations and concurrences and assistances of them. The consideration of this point may be thus far useful to us. First, as a sad discovery to us of the state and condition of the generality of people in the world. Secondly, we may learn from hence the necessity of regeneration and the work of the new creature, in order to a holy life to be led by us, and the freeing of us from the power and dominion of sin in us, because so long as men are carnal they will be sure to do carnal things. The second is the property of those who are spiritual and regenerate, and that is, that such as these they do mind the things of the Spirit; that is, heaven and heavenly things, grace and holiness. First, spiritual persons, they have their minds enlightened to discern of spiritual things. The reason why most kinds of people do so little regard the things of the Spirit, is indeed because they do so little know the things of the Spirit, nor understand that excellency which is in them. That which men do not know, they do not desire. Secondly, as spiritual persons have an enlightening of their understanding to discern these things; so they have a touch also upon their hearts to suit with them, and to correspond unto them. Thirdly, they have, moreover, the Spirit of God Himself dwelling and abiding in them, who is a faithful monitor to them and exciter of them to that which is good. The use of this point to ourselves may he drawn forth into sundry particulars. First, as it calls us to search and examination of our estate in this respect, and to see how it is indeed with us. There is nothing more necessary for Christians, and those that profess religion, than to be able to make it out to themselves that they are such as are truly regenerate and after the Spirit. So again, as for the affection to these things; let us examine that. Men are then said to mind those things indeed when they savour them, and have some relish of them. Now, how is it to this? Alas! there are a great many people that do it not at all. The Word and the sacraments and prayer and the communion of saints, it may be they are present at them, and in a formal and customary manner partakers of them, but they relish no sweetness in them at all. And so likewise for contemplation. What are the things which we chiefly meditate and think upon in our greatest retirements, when we are solitary and alone by ourselves? Is it these things of the Spirit; yea, or no? O how I love Thy law! says David, it is my meditation all the day (Psa_119:97). Again, for counsel and contrivance and design. How is it here? What is the business which we do most of all study, and endeavour and beat our brains about? Is it the great things of the world, how to improve ourselves and enlarge ourselves here; or is it to get grace into our hearts? (Thomas Horton, D. D.)
The things of the flesh and the things of the Spirit
I. The things of the flesh are the bodily appetites, sympathies, and propensions. These are its great forces moving its members and organs. These are--
1. Good when subordinated to the interests of the soul. When they are controlled by a holy intelligence they are blessed handmaids to the Spirit.
2. Bad when they are allowed to hold empire over the soul. This they do in all unrenewed natures; the curse of humanity is when the body rules the intellect and conscience too. What shall we eat; what shall we drink? etc.
II. The things of the Spirit are its moral intuitions, rational dictates, intuitive longings, and varied powers of thought and sentiment. These are--
1. Good when they control the things of the flesh, when they hold the body in absolute subjection--use it as an instrument.
2. Bad when they are devoted to the things of the flesh. They are often thus devoted; souls are everywhere prostituted to animalism. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The opposition between the things of the flesh and the things of the Spirit
I. As human to Divine (Mat_16:23).
II. As earthly to heavenly (Php_3:19; Col_3:2).
III. As sin to holiness (Gal_5:19-23). (Archdeacon Gifford.)
Minding the things of the flesh
It is not necessary that you mind all the things of the flesh in order to constitute you carnal man. It is enough to fasten this character upon you, that you have given yourself over to the indulgence or the pursuit even so far as one of these things. A sinner may not be a debauchee, and neither the one nor the other may be an aspiring politician. But whatever the reigning passion may be, if it have the effect of attaching you to some one object that is in the world, and which with the world will terminate and perish--then still your mind is in subjection to an idol, and the death of the carnally minded is your inheritance and your doom. Be not deceived, then, ye men, who, engrossed with the cares, and observant of all the sobrieties of business, are not addicted to the influences of dissipation; nor ye, who, heedless of wealths accumulations, can mix an occasional generosity with the squanderings of intemperance and riot; nor ye, who, alike exempted from sordid avarice or debasing sensuality, have yet, in pursuit of an ascendency over the mind and the measures of your fellow men, made power the reigning felicity of your existence; nor yet even ye, who, without any settled aim after one or the other of these gratifications, fluctuate in giddy concern from one of the worlds frivolities to another. None of you mind all the things of the flesh; yet each of you mind one or the other of these things, and that to the entire practical exclusion of the things of the Spirit from the preference of your habitual regards. We do not charge you with a devotion of heart to all these things in the world which are opposite to the love of the Father, any more than we charge you with idolatrously falling in obeisance to all the divinities of a heathen polytheism. But still, if only one of these divinities be your God, there were enough to constitute you an idolater, and to convict you of a sacrilegious disavowal of the King who is eternal and immutable. And so, your one earthly appetite, though free from the tyranny of all the others; your habit of ungodliness, though it be the only one that breaks out into visible expression in the history of your life--of itself renders you a carnal man; of itself drives you from the spiritual territory; of itself proves that you are still one of the children of this world; and that you have not passed from death unto life. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
The carnal and spiritual mind
I. The marks of the carnally minded.
1. They mind the things of the flesh. The flesh is the body, mans animal nature, the seat of sensual appetite and passion. It is through the organs and the senses of the flesh that we engage in the activities of the world, and participate in its enjoyments or sorrows. The things of the flesh, therefore, are all the things of this present life, apart from any connection with that which is unseen and eternal. These are summed up in chap. 1, as the creature, which is worshipped and served rather than the Creator. They are spoken of by John as all that is in the world (1Jn_2:15-16). This all is further defined as the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--covetousness, sensuality, and ambition. To mind these things is to think a great deal about them, to set our affections upon them, and to satisfy our souls with their possession (Luk_12:16-20).
(1) The things of the flesh may be guiltily minded, even when the objects of our pursuit are such as may be lawfully desired. Who can complain of our addicting ourselves honestly to the toils of business, or enjoying in moderation the pleasures of the table and the home? To the Christian man they are blessings and means of holiness; to the carnally minded they are curses and snares.
(2) It is not necessary to mind all the things of the flesh in order to be carnally minded. There may be pursuits and pleasures which you hate; but if there be others in which you immerse yourself, it is enough to stamp you as a carnal man. You need not sail on every sea to be a voyager on the water; and so you need not follow after every wickedness to be a child of the devil.
(3) Carnally mindedness refers not to occasional impulses or feelings, but to the habitual bent and disposition of the soul. The carnal man may be, at times, the subject of good desires, and may form good resolutions; while the spiritual man may often have to struggle with the lusts of the flesh, and be for a moment cast down by them. Our real character may be determined by--
(a) Our secret meditations (Pro_23:7).
(b) The crises of our history. There are times which compel us to show whether we love God or the world most.
(c) The practical outgrowth of our principles and disposition. We are known by our fruits (1Jn_3:7; 1Jn_3:10).
2. To be carnally minded is death.
(1) Their present state is one of death. The soul is devoid of those affections, experiences, joys, in which the true life of a spirit consists.
(2) Hence their doom in the future is to be banished from God forever. They sow to the flesh, and of the flesh reap corruption. This is the second death.
3. The carnal mind is enmity against God. True, there may be no full consciousness of this, but still it is there ready to be brought out when occasion arises. A man may hate his neighbour and yet not discover his resentment for years; but at length that neighbour may confront him in some such form as shall instantly bring it out.
4. It is not subject to His law, neither indeed can it be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. And why? Because they are still unforgiven as to past offences; and because also, in all seeming goodness, there is the total lack of a true and acceptable purpose.
II. The marks of the spiritually minded.
1. They mind the things of the Spirit.
(1) The things which He has revealed, or the spiritual gifts which He has imparted--all that concerns us spiritually and in relation to eternity, in contradistinction from all that concerns us only materially and temporally (1Co_2:9-16).
(2) All the joys, states, and experiences of our spiritual nature which are produced within us by the realising contemplation of those sublime and enduring realities. Justification, forgiveness, the sense of that forgiveness, sanctification, advancement in the knowledge of God, the peculiar privileges of Divine sonship, together with all the gladdening prospects of ultimate glory.
2. He who minds the things of the Spirit shows it by making constant efforts to acquire them. He takes pleasure in meditating upon them, in conversing about them, and in listening when others describe them. Then he must needs read about them in the Word of God, and must be frequently found in closest communion with God. To be spiritually minded is life and peace.
(1) It is life, inasmuch as it quickens the soul in its nobles attributes, awakens it to its highest functions, and fills it with its purest pleasures. Not to be spiritually minded leaves the mind of man but partially developed, and shuts up its most Godlike faculties in darkness, torpor, and neglect.
(2) Must not such a state be one of peace? The carnal mind can have no peace. It is troubled from both within and without. (T. G. Horton.)
The carnal and spiritual mind
I. The text divides men into two classes and only two. The test of these two classes is the bent and inclination of their minds towards carnal or spiritual things. It is important to determine to which we belong. We cannot do so by any conventional test.
II. The test is carried into the inner man.
1. It is minding the things of the flesh or spirit that determines character; what a man is rather than what he does. God looks at the heart, and no outward act can deceive Him.
2. Minding the things, etc., includes the exercise of the affections.
III. Man really is what his nature is. The prevailing instincts of the heart determine the external habits of life. Character is determined from within, not from without. A man may live in a church all his life. This will not make him a saint. You may sow wheat and barley and flax in the same soil and under the same conditions, softened by the same shower, warmed by the same sun; but these influences only lead to the development of the different species according to their own intrinsic natures. Circumstances may repress the outward manifestation of character as a man may avoid worldly amusements from a sense of impropriety, etc.; but such abstinence does not prove him to be a spiritual man.
IV. The practical application of this principle. In regard to--
1. Prayer.
2. Reading the Bible.
3. Christ.
4. The world and the things of the world.
5. The unseen world. (P. Strutt.)
Carnal and spiritual mindedness
I. The antithesis of carnal and spiritual mindedness (verse 5).
1. The contrasted classes.
(1) They that are after the flesh. The flesh means the body (Job_4:15; Job_21:6); the present life (Php_1:24); all that in religion is outward (chap. 4:1; Gal_3:4); corrupt, vitiated human nature with all its sinful habits (Joh_3:6; Rom_7:18). This last is its signification here. To be after the flesh--
(a) We need not live in profligacy. Passions may be dormant, while not provoked. Dynamite is harmless till fired. The particles of clay may temporarily subside from muddy water till the liquid is agitated again: then fresh discolorations arise.
(b) Nor indulge in every form of evil. In the mountain range of a mans iniquity certain peaks may start sheer above the general level of the chain.
(c) Nor flagrantly wicked in any one thing. If only the mind be steeped in frivolities, forgetful of anything but self-gratification, we are in the flesh.
(d) We may even experience longings after nobler soul attainments (Mat_19:16-22). Just as there are manifold depths of complete submersion, at six or sixty fathoms, so there are souls not far from the kingdom of heaven (Mar_12:34), others as whited sepulchres (Mat_23:27), others of your father the devil (Joh_8:44).
(2) They that are after the Spirit.
(a) Such are renewed in heart. The change they have experienced is deeper than reformation. They are not like irised minerals whose surface is made gleam with all rainbow colours while the centre is lustreless, opaque.
(b) They desire unreserved consecration to Gods service.
(c) Their portrait is drawn in the Beatitudes.
2. Their different conduct.
(1) Those after the flesh mind worldly advantages, honours, pleasures. Deeds often beautiful adorn them. The soldier dies, leading a forlorn hope for his country. A daughter withstands temptation, and toils herself into a premature grave that her aged parents may have a roof and bread. But no nature can transcend the principles of its own life. Water cannot rise naturally above its own level.
(2) Those after the Spirit mind what is holy, despite many impulses of disposition and training. Like the sunflowers, which turn after the light, they try to keep looking to Jesus (Heb_12:2). Note--
(a) We may know our spiritual position by observing what things we mind. A bar of steel, by what it minds, will show whether it is magnetised or not. Our conduct, like the hands of our watches, tells out the unseen movements within.
(b) The old nature cannot be sanctified, it must be crucified (Gal_5:24).
II. The different results of such antithetic positions (verses 6-8).
1. The consequences are--
(1) That to be carnally minded is death. This is--
(a) Alienation from all godliness and spiritual movements, as physical death is separation from activities of bodily existence. The heart chords of the carnally minded never respond to the Spirits touch, as no plays of thought or feeling flit over the pallid face of a corpse though touched by the friendliest hand. Yet the spiritually dead are neither incapacitated for, nor insensible to, sensual pleasures (Php_3:9; 2Pe_2:13).
(b) Not so much negation of spiritual comforts as positive hunger of unsatisfied desires, desolations consequent on indulged passions. Cain (Gen_4:13), Esau (Gen_27:34), Judas (Mat_27:3), felt it to be so.
(c) Always takes hold on eternal perdition. The tap root of the sin tree strikes into the inmost recesses of human nature (Rom_6:23). Present soul death is prophetic of future.
(2) To be spiritually minded.
(a) Life, the complete opposite of death (Eze_37:1-7), including delight in God, power for good, conformity to Christs character, holy activity, and eternal felicity. At present this life is subject to many fluctuations, dishealths, languors; but as given of the Spirit and hid with Christ in God (Col_3:3) it is deathless (Rom_5:17; Joh_14:19).
(b) Peace. This is not exemption from all disquietudes, but in spite of them; like a river flowing amid dark cliffs with its curves lit up, and its ripples glancing in the sunlight, the peace of the believer, luminous in the shining of Gods reconciled countenance, courses on, diffusing comforts, serenities, joys. In contrast with the wild tumult of fleshly lusts this peace signifies the harmony grace establishes between the sinner and his God, his fellow men, and the several parts of his own being. It counterworks the souls anxieties on the chief grounds whence they arise. It is a peace the world knows not of (Isa_59:8), and cannot take away (Joh_14:27). It is a distinct fruit of the Spirit (Gal_5:22). It passeth all understanding (Php_4:7).
2. Why the consequences are so.
(1) Carnal mindedness is death, because the carnal heart is enmity against God. The hatred quiescent for a time may be very intense, as Sauls against David (1Sa_26:4). The flame lies latent in flint till the applied steel evokes it. Vesuvius is not always in active eruption. The strength of this enmity is evidenced from the fact that the only time when man got an opportunity of striking at God he struck at Him in the person of Jesus Christ (Act_2:23). The carnal heart is not subject to the law of God. From the very necessity of its nature it cannot be (Rom_7:14), and such enmity against the God of all life can mean nothing else than death.
(2) Since they that have their habitat within the sphere of fleshly influences as fishes have theirs within the waters--cannot please God. Neither in their more manifestly sinful ways, nor the common transactions of daily life (Pro_21:4), nor their most solemn services (Psa_15:6; Isa_1:13-15; Isa_66:8; Gen_4:5). What can the Divine displeasure mean but death? Note--
(a) The primary cause of mans indifference to gospel truth and ordinances. The dead are deaf. Scientists love to hear of inventions, social reformers of philanthropies, merchants of commerce, because they are alive to these things.
(b) Heaven would be no felicity for any unregenerate soul. Its sorest misery is in meeting with God in the glory of His holiness (Rev_6:16).
(c) The believers peace will be proportionate to his minding the things of the Spirit. The growing stream floats more and larger burdens on its bosom.
(d) The unmitigated dogmatism of verse 8 should lead us to repentance. Better that a man should not be born than not please his God (Mat_26:24).
(e) The measure of our pleasing God is the measure of our Christianity (Heb_11:5; Joh_8:29; 1Jn_3:22). (James Gage, B. D.)
The carnal and the spiritual
I. The different states of mind described by the apostle.
1. To be carnally-minded, to walk after the flesh, to live after the flesh, to mind the things of the flesh, are plainly convertible terms, all meaning, not a proper care for the welfare of the body, but the practical exhibition of that evil principle of fallen man which in the following verse is said to be enmity against God--not to be subject to His law; nay, to be necessarily hostile to it. Carnal-mindedness, therefore, consists in the presiding love and pursuit of those sinful objects of time and sense which alienate the heart from God, subdue it to the powers of death, and deliver it into the snare of the enemy of mankind, to be led captive at his will.
2. But they that are Christs have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. Spiritual-mindedness is a principle decidedly opposed to that which I have described--to pass through things temporal as not to lose the things eternal--to walk by faith, not by sight--to slight and scorn the pleasures of sin, animated by that sanctified ambition which seeks, through undeserved mercy, the recompense of an eternal reward--this is spiritual-mindedness.
II. Such is the great contrast between the characters I have described; and vast as is the difference of these states of heart will also be that of the ends to which they infallibly lead.
1. To be carnally-minded is death. To live after the flesh is a present death--a moral incapacity for the pursuits and duties of a heavenly and immortal life; it is to be dead in trespasses and sins. One thus minded is an alien from the commonwealth of the true Israel, a stranger to the covenant of evangelical promise, having no Scriptural hope, and without God in the world. He may be a living treasury of knowledge, capable of many impressions from religious objects, capable of performing many external duties: he may have a form of godliness, a name to live; but holy and spiritual things, in their predominant importance, strike not his mind nor possess his heart.
2. But to be spiritually-minded is life and peace. Carnal passions are subdued and mortified, and the Spirit is life, because of righteousness; it is capable of a spiritual existence. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made the spiritually-minded man free from the law of sin and death. Like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so he is enabled to walk in newness of life. He is sensible of all the privileges and delights of a spiritual life. He is passed from the death of sin to the life of grace; and the death of the body shall be but the gate and entrance of endless being, both to body and to soul.
Conclusion:
1. Learn we then from this Scripture the necessity of an entire renewal of the heart. To be carnally-minded is present death; and as well might the lifeless corpse gift itself with the powers of being and motion, as unassisted man restore himself to spiritual existence, and live by the exertion of his own energies to God and goodness.
2. Learn, also, how ill they judge, and how idly they dream of happiness, who prefer living after the flesh to living after the spirit. (R. P. Buddicom, M. A.)
The contrasted characters; or, the carnally and spiritually minded
We have here depicted--
I. Those to whom the Christian liberty has not come.
1. Their moral state and character. They are in the flesh. Hence they mind the things of the flesh, The flesh has bound down the mind to its sole service (Php_3:19; Col_3:2; Rom_13:14). Under the dominion of this law they walk (Eph_2:2), What, then, is this strangely fascinating power? The term (σάρξ) properly denotes the fleshy part of living animal bodies. It is also sometimes used for the whole human person. And it is clearly used here and elsewhere for fallen and sinful human nature (Joh_3:6-7; Rom_7:18; Gal_5:17-21). But why?
(1) Not because our Lord or His apostles held our physical nature to be in itself sinful. In Adam the flesh was as spotless as the spirit, and Christ, who was made flesh, was nevertheless sinless (Rom_1:3; Joh_1:14; 1Jn_4:2-3; Heb_7:26).
(2) Not because sin was supposed to affect the physical constitution only. For it is obvious that the physical part of man, by itself, is altogether incapable of sin. A mere animal cannot transgress a moral law. Sin properly pertains, not to the body, but to the soul (Mic_6:7).
(3) But because--
(a) Sin first found its access to the human will through the medium of bodily sense.
(b) By means of this it still maintains its dominion within the soul.
(c) Man suffers his spiritual faculties, by which the animal nature ought to be governed and transformed, to be delivered over in servitude to the flesh.
2. To be in this sinful condition is death (Rom_7:9; Luk_15:24; 1Jn_5:12; Joh_5:40; Joh_6:53; Eph_2:1-5; Rom_6:1-23; Col_3:1-4; Rom_7:9-13; Rom_7:24). Mans true life is not animal, but spiritual. If he attains not to this, or by transgression forfeits it, he does not really live. And so long as he is content with earthly good, he is perpetually sinking down into the second death.
3. This state, with its consequent course of life, is death because it is enmity against God--is directly subversive of His appointment and order. The true life of intelligent beings must consist in conformity to the Creators purpose and arrangements. The carnal mind being of necessity the very antithesis of Gods order, it is not, it never can be, subject to Gods law.
II. The characteristics of those to whom the Christian liberty has come.
1. Their whole course of life is determined and regulated by the Spirit. The new Spirit of life, imparted to them in Christ, has set them free from the law of sin and death. They are, indeed, still in the body, but the flesh is but a tabernacle and organ of the spirit. For they now live in the Spirit--mind the things of the Spirit, and walk according to the Spirit. Not, indeed, that they neglect the body, or despise all earthly good, but even while occupied with mundane things they learn to make them helpful to their true spiritual interests.
2. To be thus spiritually minded--
(1) Is life. It not only tends to, but springs from, and promotes life.
(2) Peace. The carnal mind is at war with God--with all the Divine plans, purposes, and arrangements--and is therefore evermore fruitful of discord and misery. But the spiritual mind brings man into harmony with God, and with nature, physical, intellectual, and moral. Then, too, the things with which the spiritual mind is preoccupied, are so serenely Steadfast and sure, as to communicate something of their own placid character to the soul of him who thus lives in familiar fellowship with them.
Conclusion: Observe--
1. That there is no hope of securing the salvation of any man while he continues contented with the things of the flesh. The first thing needful is to work in him a living conviction that his present course of life is vain, foolish, and wicked.
2. That the new life in the Spirit can be sustained only by continued attention to its interests. They that are after the Spirit do mind the things of the Spirit, and such minding is life and peace. (W. Tyson.)
The contrast between the carnally minded and the spiritually minded
I. External. Two classes of character evident.
1. The one busied about earthly things, and governed by their corrupt inclinations.
2. The other caring for heavenly things, and therefore denying themselves that they may please God.
II. Internal. This difference is essential; in the heart.
1. The one is spiritually dead.
2. The other is alive unto God, and enjoys His unspeakable peace. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
The contrast between the unconverted and the regenerate
appears--
I. Is their character.
1. The one is sensual.
2. The other spiritual.
II. Is their experience.
1. The one experiences death and misery.
2. The other life and peace.
III. Is their relation to God.
1. The one is an enemy, and cannot please God.
2. The other a friend, and enjoys communion with God.
IV. Is their prospects.
1. The one must perish, for he is none of Christs.
2. The other shall live forever, for he shall be quickened from the grave. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Nature and spirit
Whatever these words may mean one thing is clear--the apostle does teach a radical difference between the physical and the spiritual natures of man. Some philosophers teach that there is no difference between matter and mind; that the operations which we call mental or spiritual, and those which we recognise as physical, are all produced by the same forces, This denial of the distinction between the physical and the spiritual realms, which makes thought only a chemical function, and conscience nothing but a hereditary affection of the nervous system, Paul does not justify. Which is nearer right? Let us hear what a philosopher (Mr. W.T. Harris, of Concord) says about--
I. The law of natural things. The world of nature, to which man is enslaved by his bodily wants and necessities, is a world of selfishness and cruelty. The means of gratification for one body are obtained and used at the expense of another. Is not that true?
1. Every natural thing grows at the expense of something else. The sand of the beach is worn from the rocks of the shore by the action of the waves. But what the beach gains the cliffs lose. The corn grows out of the earth, but only at the expense of the soil in which it grows, and of other plants, that stand stunted under its shadow. Just so the body of the animal lives and grows at the expense of other living things.
2. The law of natural growth is the law of all movement or manifestation of physical power. Every force that is expended is borrowed. If I drive one croquet ball against another, the force imparted to the second one is lost by the first one. The fire burns, but it is only as the wood gives up the heat that was latent in it. The oxygen of the air and the carbon of the wood unite to produce the flame; and whatever force is in the flame existed before the fire was kindled.
3. The great physical law which the philosophers call the law of the correlation of forces, or the conservation of energy, governs all these changes. Every steam engine is an example of the conversion of heat into motion; every hot axle is an instance of the conversion of motion into heat; every machine belt from which the spark flies to the knuckle shows heat converted into electricity; every building set on fire by lightning shows electricity converted into heat. What is lost by one form is gained by another.
II. The law of spiritual things. The law of spirit is harmony, and not mere contention. All spiritual struggle must have reconciliation for its object. The equal shall look in the face of equal, and through mutual recognition each shall reinforce the other. Thus each is doubly strong; strong in himself and strong in his friend. Combination is the great principle of spirit, and its forms are numerous in the practical and in the theoretical world. This statement will also be verified by your experience.
1. You and I sit down hungry to a scanty meal. There is barely enough for one. If my needs are satisfied you get nothing; if you are filled I must go hungry. But you and I sit down with eager minds to talk about some moral or spiritual truth. It is a truth known to me, but unknown to you, and in our conversation you gain from me this truth. Have I deprived myself of anything in imparting to you this truth? On the contrary, I have gained by giving.
(1) I have a stronger hold upon the truth than I had. If I give a man my coat I have one coat the less; but if I give a man my thought it is less likely now that I shall part with it. I have not only a stronger hold upon it, but a greater joy in it. Two faggots burn more freely than one; and my enthusiasm, in the pursuit and possession of this truth, is rekindled when you take fire.
(2) Truth grows in the mind itself by communicating it. Not only do the mental, like the bodily powers, gain strength by exercising them; there is a kind of increase here to which the body affords no analogy. The most productive mind is the most prolific mind. Production fertilises the intellect. It is when the mind is paying out its wealth most lavishly that its revenues are largest.
2. Other spiritual gifts besides knowledge follow in their growth the same law.
(1) Hope is increased by imparting it. If I have strong confidence in the success of any enterprise, and if I succeed in inspiring others with my confidence, it is not at any expense to my own expectation. The same thing is true of--
(2) Courage. A brave man inspires others to heroism, but his own courage is not diminished when it enters into other souls; it is stimulated and invigorated.
(3) The one central element of the spiritual life, love--the love that is the fulfilling of the law.
3. We say sometimes in our prayers that God is not impoverished by giving nor enriched by withholding. That is true of Him because He is a Spirit, and because the law of His nature and of His action is a spiritual law. But man is a spirit also; and the saying is therefore true of man. By giving man is not impoverished--by giving spiritual gifts. A mans temporal possessions may sometimes be diminished by bestowing them, but the mans true self is enlarged by every bounty that it disposes.
III. Have we not verified the doctrine taught by the Concord philosopher? And in doing so have we not found the strongest reason for believing with Paul that there is a radical difference between the physical and the spiritual world. Do not the body and the spirit belong to different kingdoms? Is there not a higher nature in man which is not subject to the law of the conservation of energy, and of which physical science knows absolutely nothing? And is there not, therefore, reason for believing that the death of the body, which is under physical law, is not the death of the higher nature, which is not under physical law; that the spirit of man may continue to exist after the body has ceased to exist?
1. Man is not wholly mortal, but neither is he wholly immortal. He is flesh as well as spirit. In which of these realms does he chiefly live? Is his ruling love given to the things of the flesh or to the things of the Spirit? If the former is true of him, then the law of his nature is the law of the lower realm. The things on which his heart is chiefly set are things which he can only have by depriving his fellows. The very condition of his life is warfare, and the warfare into which his ruling choice enlists him is fierce and fatal; sooner or later the devourers themselves must be devoured. The minding of the flesh is death.
2. It is a sad and bitter life that any man leads who sets his chief affections on the possessions and goods of the material world. Because he is a spiritual being his ruling choice ought to take a higher range. The gains that are most precious to him are those that fall to him while he is enriching others.
3. It is quite possible for man to carry this spiritual force down into the lower realm, there to subjugate the devourers. It is possible to substitute the principle of communion and combination for the principle of competition in the getting and the using of material things. That, indeed, is the very law of progress in civilisation. And the thousand wars of old will never cease, and the thousand years of peace will never come, till men stop putting their trust in the methods of competition and begin to build the fabric of their industrial and social life on the principle of cooperation--till they walk no longer after the flesh, but after the Spirit. That day will not be hastened by disputing or fighting or legislating, any more than the growing of the grass will be hastened by firing cannon over your lawn, or marching troops across it, or making speeches to it. But you and I, in our time, can have something of the light and glory of it in our homes and in our lives if we will only treasure the truth we have found today. (W. Gladden.)
Spiritual affinity
He that delights in God doth not much delight in anything else. The world appears in an eclipse. The astronomer saith, if it were possible for a man to be lifted up as high as the moon, the earth would seem to him as a little point. If we could be lifted to heaven in our affections, all earthly delights would seem as nothing. When the woman of Samaria had met with Christ, down goes the pitcher; she leaves that behind. He who delights in God, as having tasted the sweetness in Him, doth not much mind the pitcher--he leaves the world behind.
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 5–8. They that are after the flesh. The unconverted.…
5–8. They that are after the flesh. The unconverted. Those still in a state of nature. These are put in contrast with the converted, believers, who are after the Spirit. These classes are easily distinguished. The first obeys the dictates of the flesh; the other obeys the dictates of the Spirit. “The things of the Spirit” are not revealed to us by internal impulses, but by the words of the Spirit, the Holy Scriptures. The indwelling Spirit helps the new man in Christ to keep these words.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Rom_8:5.—The state is indicated in Rom_7:25, when the mind…
CRITICAL NOTES
Rom_8:5.—The state is indicated in Rom_7:25, when the mind can serve the law of God, and only the flesh is subject to the law of sin.
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Rom_8:6. Carnally minded (φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός).—Lust, a figurative expression, occasioned by what precedes.
Rom_8:10. But the spirit is life.—Neither spiritual life nor happiness, but a physico-moral life in the fullest sense.
Rom_8:11.—The Spirit the pledge of our fellowship with the risen One (Phil.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_8:5-13
Depression and elevation.—In this world we reckon up the human race by many gradations. In divine revelation the race is classified under two comprehensive terms. One class mind the things of the flesh, and the other mind the things of the Spirit. The one is carnally minded, and the other is spiritually minded. Godet speaks of the aspiration of the flesh. Surely the carnal mind does not aspire. It reaches out, not towards the higher, but towards the lower. The spiritual mind alone aspires in the true sense of that word. It reaches upwards towards the infinitely pure, good, and beautiful. The work of the carnal mind is depressing, for “to be carnally minded is death.” The result of the spiritual mind is elevation, for “to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Men deem it important to secure the titles and honours of this world; but the highest title and honour is to be spiritually minded Let us seek for divine grace, for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that we may become spiritually minded, and have that more abundant life and ever-increasing peace which is the promised inheritance.
I. Define the two characters.—The carnally minded is not merely the glutton, the drunkard, and the sensualist. A man may be a respectable member of society, and yet be carnally minded; for his thoughts, cares, and aims are confined to this present world. The philosopher who exalts reason, the poet who revels in bright visions, the philanthropist who works from an earthly standpoint merely to ameliorate human woe, the orator who conveys thoughts that breathe in words that burn, the patriot who shows a love of fatherland, may be all carnally minded. They mind the things of the flesh, and their vision is bounded by the things of time and sense. There is no heavenward aspiration. They may be in a state of enmity against God, which is characteristic of the carnal mind. The carnal mind is enmity against the God of love and of wisdom. The creature is in a state of enmity against that Creator who has made the senses to be the avenues of pleasure, who has created a world of beauty to minister to their delight. The fallen creature is in a state of enmity against that Creator who has devised the mediatorial scheme for redemption and salvation. He may not be subject to the law of God. The carnal mind is proud, and will not bow in subjection to the Supreme. Outwardly the man may obey; inwardly he rebels. Divine subjections reach to human volitions. Human subjections are outward and material, while the divine are inward and moral. The carnal mind cannot please God. There is dissimilarity, which causes repulsion. Like attracted to like. The carnal mind cannot walk in fellowship with the spiritual mind of the Eternal. The depraved and the Holy cannot sweetly coalesce. The carnal man is in a condition of guilt. Conscience is uneasy. He cannot please, he does not attempt to please, and he is displeasing to the infinite Justice. The spiritually minded are those whose thoughts, cares, and aims are for the things of the Spirit. This is their general and prevailing characteristic. We are not thus born. The first birth introduces us carnally minded; the second birth constitutes us, in germ at least, spiritually minded. The spiritually-minded man is one whose sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who is an heir of heaven, who seeks so to pass through time as not to lose sight of the things of eternity, who seeks to use this world so as not to abuse. The spiritually minded is one in whom dwells the Spirit of Christ. The divine Spirit animates and elevates the human spirit. The divine Spirit impels to aspiration, and satisfies the upward longings of the yearning human spirit. The two spirits move in blissful union. This is so complete that they are as one spirit. The Spirit of Christ, loving, peaceful, and benign, has taken possession of the human spirit; all disturbers are driven forth, and a beautiful divine kosmos rises out of the repulsive chaos. The spiritually minded are those who please God. How wondrous the suggestion that humanity can touch divinity! How elevating the conception that human doings can affect divine pleasures! Away with the depressing suggestion that man is beneath the notice of the divine! In the beloved Son God is well pleased; and shall He not be pleased, for the Son’s sake and through His work, with all those in whom that Son’s Spirit dwells?
II. Depict the two results.—“Carnally minded is death.” “Spiritually minded is life and peace.” The carnal mind is death, for there is:
1. Paralysis of the powers. Physical sensation has not ceased; the emotional nature is not in a state of complete stupor. The carnally-minded man has his better impulses. Sometimes he is touched and moved by what appear to be divine instincts. But there is a paralysis of the God-apprehending powers of his nature. His soul does not aspire to the true soul-rest. He does not attempt to climb the sublime heights where divine visions are vouchsafed.
2. A creeping corruption. Physical death corrupts. Sin corrupts where it touches. Where sin reigns a corrupt force creeps. Sin spoils our pleasant palaces, defiles the throne, and plucks every jewel from the crown.
3. Cessation of the nobler affinities. Sin separated Adam from God. Guilty Adam did not discern the strains of fatherly love in the divine voice. Love has much work to break the spell of sin and win home the prodigal. Sin sends its victims to hiding-places in dark groves, to the far countries of want and wretchedness. Sin is death to all the home feelings. The carnally minded is dead in the finer emotions, the sweeter sensibilities, the divine affinities of his nature. The spiritually minded has:
1. A living peace. A state of quiescence may belong to the solid rock. The Stoic may have killed his emotions; the Fakeer may have reduced himself to the condition of a machine—withered and senseless. But the spiritual mind has a living peace. It is an inward force swaying and gently guiding.
2. A peaceful life. Outward, storms—inward, peace. A lighthouse rocked by the tempest in the rude cradle of the deep; the keepers calmly tending the light which is to cheer the mariner. Paul’s outward man touched and tossed by the rude tempest of persecution; the ego, the sublime personality, was calmly tending the eternal lights.
3. An ever-expanding life. “To be spiritually minded is life.” All other life is poor compared with this. This is more abundant life. This is eternal life. What do we know of life in this death-stricken world? A Samson appears once in the world’s history to give us some notion of physical life. A Solomon and, nearer our own times, a Milton and a Shakespeare tell of the largeness of intellectual life. Jesus Christ unfolds to our view the vast possibilities of the moral life. “To be spiritually minded is life.” It is a large word composed of four letters. Life from the Infinite permeating the finite. Life divine flowing through human valleys where death shadows darken.
4. An enlargement of view. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken the mortal bodies of those who are spiritually minded. There must be greater significance in Paul’s words than we have hitherto comprehended. We read them with a materalistic bias. Can it be that he who allowed his body to be buffeted and torn by persecutors thould hold out as a great prize the doctrine of the resurrection of the mere material nature? Would St. Paul rejoice that a defective body which hampered the workings of a sublime soul was to be raised from the grave? We do not yet know all that is meant by the resurrection of the dead. And we take refuge in the declaration that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. One thing is certain, that there will be a wondrous quickening. Life will triumph over death in miraculous manner. Life in the righteous already triumphs over death. The clergy are good lives on the assurance tables. A smile passes over the countenance of the sceptic. Good living, freedom from care, are the ready explanations. Are they the only class placed under like conditions? They are the only class who seek as a whole, in some measure, to attain a spiritual condition, and in doing so they realise the blessing even of physical life. But what is physical life? How poor its sensations! What is intellectual life? What is spiritual life? The realm glows in beauty where spiritual life abounds.
“Mortifying the deeds of the body.”—We have been sent into this world to live out our lives on the highest level, do all that lies in us towards completing our duty, and also make the most of this present world. But the man has not yet lived who did not find it easier to go down than to rise, who did not discover that it was easier to be soiled with sin than to keep unspotted. There is a throne in every heart; but the heart has not yet throbbed in-which there has not been a battle for the mastery—Satan striving for the throne with God. The text points out at least one fact, that this must be exactly reversed. Satan must have no standing-ground, and God must be king in man’s living temple. We shall find this no easy task. There will be a sharp, painful struggle; an agony will be felt in the soul; and thus we speak of “mortifying the deeds of the body.”
I. What is it to “live after the flesh”?—
1. Some have delighted to call a man “a mass of corruption”—e.g., the Puritan fathers. But have not all men, in some sort or other, some redeeming quality? Say, a splendid morality. But, unhappily, the law of life to such men has come to them, not from the fountain-head direct, but through some vitiated, mud-filled channel. These highly moral men perhaps are positively indifferent about God—their morality is of human conception; and that in one sense is “living after the flesh.”
2. What we are of ourselves, good as it may be, does not make us what we ought to be. If we are all in all to ourselves, if we have our own guide and rule of life, if we have not called God in to our assistance, we are certain not to walk aright. Whenever we do what we like, we are trying to tread the pathway of the Infinite with only finite power to guide us. If that be so, we are bound to have false and inadequate conceptions of life and destiny; and such a course one might call “living after the flesh.”
3. Some are led on by impulse. The flesh is more than spirit, appetite more than reason; passions are more than obligation. Their bodies get more care than their souls. That is “living after the flesh.” In short, a man lives after the flesh who treats the body and bodily interests as everything, and minds not the things of the soul. The body is not the most important part of a man. Beauty no guarantee of goodness.
II. Mark the inevitable struggle for supremacy.—In man there is a continual struggle—flesh against spirit, temporal advancement as against growth in grace, a constant estimate of the value of things, temporal things laying claim to man’s best energies, religious principles too often being put into the background. These are the mistakes of worldly life. Take one special tendency of modern life—the undue exaltation of intellect. The cultivation of the mind a great boon to humanity. It helps the onward sweep of civilisation, lifts men out of serfdom and ignorance into the liberty that becomes a man. But if intellect be placed before true religion, this is “living after the flesh.” This is putting “smaller” before “larger,” making “princelet” wield the sceptre over “emperor.”
III. Mark the plain duty of man.—He must “mortify the deeds of the body.” Its parallel in the Ephesians, “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind,” etc. If we find we are not all we should be, our struggle must be to undergo a thorough change. We are to go over our lives as we should over a garden, carefully, searchingly, pulling the weeds out by the roots, leaving only the good behind. Slay the evil habits, abolish unsafe rules, snap chains that bind us as sin-captives, get out of old ruts and step boldly on the way of life, drive out devils of hypocrisy and expediency, selfish hard-heartedness, and in the spirit of true humility kneel at the cross and claim the merits of the Saviour’s dying love. All that is hard, but it is a part of the mortification.
IV. There is a wrong way of mortification.—
1. Sudden determinations, when arrived at in our strength only, leave us as unsafe as if we went into the thick of the enemy without armour—e.g., a drunkard’s resolution to be sober broken in a few days.
2. The aiming at suffering as a mode of producing a change of heart—e.g., the monkish method of torture for penance.
3. Beecher points to those who, having strayed from virtue, never forget their error, but check every smile with “You remember,” and let the gall from the old bitterness exude on every flower of pleasure. This is not God’s way. He forgets our transgressions. Having repented, and honestly sought forgiveness, forget “those things which are behind,” etc.
V. The right way of mortification.—We have too many pet methods for making peace with God. Mortification of sinful habits not accomplished solely or primarily by bodily penance, but by divine grace. The right way is to go straight to the Saviour, and leave ourselves in His hands, asking God’s help in the struggle. You want peace? Seek it without delay from Him who alone is able to give it, Christ Jesus. Tell Him you have read His compassionate invitation to the labouring and heavy-laden. “Seek Christ Himself, and do not stop short of personal dealings with Him.” He will help you to mortify the sins, and you will find peace.—Albert Lee.
Things of the flesh, good and bad.—“The things of the flesh” are the bodily appetites, sympathies, and propensities. These are its great forces moving its members and its organs.
I. Things of the flesh are good when they are subordinated to the interests of the soul. When they are controlled by a holy intelligence, they are blessed handmaids to the spirit.
II. Things of the flesh are bad when they are allowed to hold empire over the soul. This they do in all unrenewed natures; the curse of humanity is when the body rules the intellect and conscience too. “What shall we eat—what shall we drink?” etc.
Things of the spirit, good and bad.—The things of the spirit are its moral intuitions, rational dictates, intuitive longings, and varied powers of thought and sentiment.
I. These things of the spirit are good when they control the things of the flesh, when they hold the body in absolute subjection, use it as an instrument.
II. These things of the spirit are bad when they are devoted to the things of the flesh. They are often thus devoted; souls are everywhere prostituted to animalism.—Homilist.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_8:5-11
Carnal mind enmity against God.—Frequent thoughts discover rooted affections. Operations of the mind are the indexes, κριτήρια, of a regenerate or unregenerate estate. If about carnal [things], they evidence the bent of the heart to be turned that way, and that worldly objects are dearest to them. If about spiritual, they manifest spiritual objects to be the most grateful to the soul. Carnal thoughts are signs of a languishing and feeble frame, but spiritual discover a well-tempered and complexioned soul; the most refined and elevated thoughts, which have no other groundwork than nature; the highest flights of an unregenerate soul by the wings of the greatest reason. The wisdom and virtues of the heathen were enmity, therefore translated by some sapientia carnis, the wisdom of the flesh. A state of nature is a state of enmity against God. Man is naturally an enemy to the sovereignty and dominion of God. “Not subject to the law of God.” By law I mean not here the moral law only, but the whole will and rule of God, which is chiefly discovered in His law. Every profane man is a natural man, and consequently an enemy. Wicked words are demonstrative, demonstratively denials of God. “Sensual” and “having not the Spirit” are put together. Every unrenewed man, though never so richly endowed with morals, is a natural man. A ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος is one led by the rational dictates of his mind, and σαρκικός is a man led by his sensitive affections. Though you have not outwardly the impurity of the flesh, yet you may flow with a greater impurity of the spirit. Though the interest of particular sins may be contrary to one another, yet they all conspire in a joint league against God. Scelera dissident. Sins are in conflict with one another; covetousness and prodigality, covetousness and intemperance, cannot agree, but they are all in an amicable combination against the interest of God. In betraying Christ Judas was actuated by covetousness, the high priest by envy, Pilate by popularity; but they all shook hands together in the murdering of Christ. And those various iniquities were blended together to make up one lump of enmity. Here is alienation, which is aversion; and enmity, which is opposition; and both seated in the mind, though some expound alienation according to outward, enmity according to inward, estate. But the apostle declares hatred to be complete in those two, alienation and enmity, which is both in mind and works—mind as the seat, works as the issues of it. Enemies in disposition and action, principle, and execution. Sin being the summum malum, the greatest evil, is naturally most opposite to God, who is the summum bonum, the greatest good. We hate God as a sovereign; man cannot endure a superior; he would be uncontrollable. We hate God as a lawgiver, as He is peccati prohibitor. We hate God as a judge, as autor legis and ultor legis, as peccati prohibitor and pœnœ executor. Fear is often the cause of hatred. Guilt makes malefactors tremble at the report of a judge’s coming. When this fear rises high, they hate the very being of God. This rises so high that it aims at the very essence of God, as in Spira’s case, who wished that he could destroy Him. This enmity to God’s law will appear in these ten things:
1. Unwillingness to know the law of God, inquire into it, or think of it.
2. Unwillingness to be determined by any law of God.
3. The violence man offers to those laws which God doth strictly enjoin and which He doth most delight in the performance of.
4. Man hates his own conscience when it puts him in mind of the law of God.
5. Man sets up another law in him in opposition to the law of God.
6. In being at greater pains and charge to break God’s law than is necessary to keep it. Men would rather be sin’s drudges than God’s freemen.
7. In doing that which is just and righteous upon any other consideration rather than of obedience to God’s will, when men will indent with God, and obey Him so far as may comport with their own ends:
(1) out of respect to some human consideration;
(2) out of affection to some base Just, some cursed end;
(3) out of slavish fear.
8. In being more observant of the laws of men than of the law of God. The fear of man is a more powerful curb to retain men in their duty than the fear of God.
9. In man’s unwillingness to have God’s law observed by any. Man would not have God have a loyal subject in the world.
10. In the pleasure we take to see His laws broken by others. Enmity to the mercy of God. God is not wronged more in any attribute by devils and men than in His mercy. This enmity against Christ reflects upon God Himself. Christ tells us often He was sent by God: an affront to an ambassador is an injury to the majesty he represents. Despising the embassy of an angel is an act of enmity against God, much more the despising the embassy of His own Son. Possess your hearts with great admiration of the grace of God towards you, in wounding this enmity in your hearts and changing your state. Inflame thy love to God by all the considerations thou canst possibly muster up. Undo thy former disaffection by a greater ardency of love. Sincerely aim at His glory.—Charnock.
Life a satisfied existence.—“Life,” in Scripture, denotes a fully satisfied existence, in which all the faculties find their full exercise and their true occupation. Man’s spirit, become the abode and organ of the divine Spirit, realises this life with a growing perfection to eternal life. Peace is the inward feeling of tranquillity which accompanies such an existence; it shows itself particularly in the absence of all fear in regard to death and judgment (Rom_8:1). There is no changing the nature of these two states and walks (Rom_8:5), and no arresting the latter in its onward march (Rom_8:6). The way of salvation is to pass from the first to the second, and not to relapse thereafter from the second to the first.—Godet.
Carnal man hates God.—Consider the object of man’s enmity—God. A good man hates evil, all evil, and is the irreconcilable enemy of sin in every form; but as regards the creature of God and his fellow-creature, he hates no man. The carnal mind, which is the characteristic of every unregenerate man, hates not only good men, but the good, holy, and all-perfect God. Indeed, his hatred to good men arises from his enmity against God, which calls forth his dislike to them—his envious revilings, and murderous hatred, as in Cain, who hated and slew his brother: “Wherefore? because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” Few men are willing to admit their enmity against God, however bitterly they vilify His people on account of bearing His image. “Ye shall,” says Jesus, “be hated of all men for My sake.” It is true that they disguise their enmity to Christ under the pretence of hatred to His people’s sins, and especially their hypocrisy. “You pretend,” says one, “to hate hypocrisy only; alas! what a scorn is it for profanity to hate hypocrisy.” Surely it is not because it is a sin, but for the very shadow of piety which it carries. You hate the thing itself so perfectly that you cannot bear the very picture of it. Do not deceive yourselves; the true quarrel is because they do not run to the same excess of riot with you. The principle of your hostility to them is the enmity which God hath put between the two families of Christ and Satan.—Parlane.
Sin the animating principle of the flesh.—Since all men are by nature fallen, all human flesh is by nature the dwelling-place of sin. Through the desires common to all flesh, the spirit of evil rules all men except those whom God has rescued. We cannot distinguish the influence of the flesh from the influence exerted through the flesh by the principle of sin. Hence sin may be looked upon as the animating principle of the flesh. The presence of this one spirit of evil in the many bodies of the unsaved gives additional unity to the idea of flesh. And since the influence of the flesh is always in the same direction, we may look upon the flesh as a living person cherishing always the one purpose of death. Many of the objects desired or disliked by the flesh can be obtained or avoided only by first obtaining other objects. Frequently all our mental and bodily powers are at work to get that which will preserve or indulge the body—e.g., efforts to make money are often put forth for this end. Such efforts really arise from the body; for they are prompted by the needs, desires, and dislikes of the body. I think we shall find that all sin arises thus. Hence the “works of the flesh” include every kind of sin.—Beet.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_8:12-13
Claims of the flesh.—I shall endeavour in the first place to settle the meaning of the terms “flesh” and “spirit” employed in the context, in order to a right conception of the import of the preposition; and in the second place compare and adjust the opposite claims of the flesh and of the spirit.
I. Flesh most properly denotes the body in contradistinction from the soul, the matter of which the corporeal structure is formed: “There is one flesh of men.” And—
II. As all men are possessed of this, it is by an easy figure of speech applied to denote human nature or mankind universally: “The end of all flesh is come before God.”
III. Because the fleshly or corporeal part of our nature may be perceived by the eye, it is sometimes used to denote that in religion which is merely outward and ceremonial. Thus St. Paul says, “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye made perfect by the flesh?” Thus the same apostle speaks of carnal ordinances.
IV. On account of the deep and universal corruption of human nature, and this corruption displaying itself in a peculiar manner in producing an addictedness to the indulgence of bodily or fleshly appetites, the term “flesh” is frequently used to denote moral corruption or human nature considered as corrupt. It is manifest from the consideration of the context that this is the sense in which it is to be taken here. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—that is, corrupt and sinful.
Secondly, we shall examine and adjust their respective claims, that we may discern to which the preference is due, and come then fully to acquiesce in the decision of the apostle: “Therefore we are debtors; not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” There is an ellipsis in the text which must be supplied from the train of thought in the context. Let us examine the claims of the flesh or of corrupt nature. We may conceive the flesh pleading ancient possession: the pleasures and freedom from restraint attending a compliance with her dictates; the general usage and course of the world which she reminds us has been such in every age.
I. Its claims are founded upon usurpation; they rest on no basis of equity.—It alienates the property from its lawful possessor; it interferes with a prior claim which nothing can fairly defeat. Sin considered as a master does not enter upon a property that is derelict or abandoned by its owner.
1. Let us consider that the Lord is our maker, and we the work of His hands. It is “He that created the heavens, and stretched them out; He that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; He that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein.” The noble powers by which we are so highly distinguished from the inferior parts of the creation—the powers of thought and reason and conscience—are of His production; from Him they are derived, and by Him they are sustained. His right in us is consequently more extensive than it is possible for us to conceive in any other instance, because none else ever gave existence to the smallest particle of dust in the balance; it is incomparably more than that—to which it is compared—of the potter over the clay.
2. If we reflect on the powers with which we are endued, we cannot suppose that they are formed for no other end than the indulgence of carnal appetites, the amassing of riches, the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, or the procuring honours and distinctions from our fellow-worms. We shall be at no loss to perceive a strange disproportion between such powers and such pursuits, and that they cannot be confined to them without descending unspeakably beneath our level without a base forgetfulness of ourselves as well as of God, and a voluntary dereliction of our rank.
3. If God were disposed to relinquish His claim, the usurpation of another master might be yielded to with the more plausible pretence. But this is not the case. If we believe His word, He never means to part with His right over His creatures.
II. Let us next examine the claims of the flesh by what we have already derived from it.—Let us see whether it is such a master as deserves to be served any longer. Of the boasted pleasures it has afforded, say Christians, what remains but a painful and humiliating remembrance? “What fruit had ye in those things of which ye are now ashamed?” Has anything accrued to you from the service of sin which you would wish to renew? Though it might flatter your imagination with the appearance of gold, did it not afterwards “bite as a serpent and sting as an adder”? You were made to fancy that true religion was melancholy, that tenderness of conscience was needless scrupulosity, and that happiness was only to be found in the pleasures and pursuits of this world. It engaged you in the chase of innumerable vanities. You “followed after your lovers, but could not overtake them”; fled from one refuge to another till, to speak in the language of the prophet, “you were wearied in the multitude of your way.” In the meantime, to all pleasant and delightful intercourse with the Father of spirits, to the soothing accents of peace and pardon issuing from Christ, and to all the consolations of piety, you were utter strangers. The more we observe what passes around us with a serious mind, the more we shall be convinced how little men are indebted to the flesh. Look at that young man, the early victim of lewdness and intemperance, who, though in the bloom of life, has “his bones filled with the sins of his youth.” Survey his emaciated cheek, his infirm and withered frame, and his eyes sunk and devoid of lustre; the picture of misery and dejection. Hear his complaint, how he mourns at the last, how his flesh and his body are consumed. Behold that votary of the world, successful as he has been in the pursuit of it, and stained by no flagrant crime. Yet he has lived “without God in the world”; and now his days are drawing to a close he feels himself verging to the grave, and no hope animates, no pleasing reflection cheers him. The only consolation he receives, or rather the only relief of his anguish, is in grasping the treasures he must shortly quit.
III. We shall examine the claims of the flesh by the aspect they bear on our future interests.—Before we engage in the service of a master, it is reasonable to inquire into the advantages he stipulates and the prospects of futurity attendant upon his service. In the ordinary concerns of life we should consider the neglect of such an inquiry chargeable with the highest imprudence. Dreadful is it in this view to reflect on the consequences inseparably annexed to the service of corruption. “If ye live after the flesh,” says the apostle, “ye shall die.” “The wages of sin is death.” The fruits of sin, when brought to maturity, are corruption; his most finished production is death, and the materials on which he works the fabric of that manufacture, if we may be allowed so to speak, consist in the elements of damnation. To such a master we can owe nothing but a decided rejection of his offers, a perpetual abhorrence, and an awful fear of ever being deceived by his stratagems or entangled in his snares.—Robert Hall.
The spirit and the flesh.—These words used, as opposed to each other, in three senses—viz.,
1. Flesh = material part of man; spirit = immaterial part.
2. Flesh = lower nature of man, desires that drag down to hell; spirit = higher nature of man, desires that lift him up towards heaven (not with, without Christ’s grace).
3. Flesh = human nature in its entirety; Spirit = God’s Holy Spirit and the graces inbreathed by Him.
In what senses contrasted here? Not in 1, but in 2 and in 3.
Their tendency: Encouragement of flesh = tendency to death—death here, death hereafter. Examples: Drunkenness, immorality, indolence.
Encouragement of spirit = tendency to life, here and hereafter. Examples: Men who have by God’s grace conquered sin—John Bunyan, John Newton.
Consideration: What is good for eternal life hereafter is, as a rule, productive of life—long, successful, happy, honoured, here.—Dr. Springett.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_8:12-13
The Christian has strength imparted.—We are no longer under any such subjection to the inferior propensities of our nature, as might oblige us to continue under their dominion. From any necessity of this kind we are relieved by the powerful motives to holiness and the effectual aids to acquiring of it which are supplied by the gospel. Had we continued under the law, with no other advantages but those which it furnishes, we must have been debtor to the flesh, as we should have wanted that moral strength which is necessary to free ourselves from its dominion—a strength which mere law cannot supply. But under the gospel this incapacity is removed. By the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us we are enabled to restrain the inordinate tendencies of our nature, and therefore we can no longer plead the weakness of our moral powers as an extenuation of our actual sins. From the Christian every pretence of this kind is taken away, and he is rendered a debtor to the Spirit. He is laid under a sacred obligation to live agreeably to the dictates of the spiritual part of his nature, and to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, by whom he is influenced. This also he must do if he would promote his own interest either in this life or in that which is to come.—Ritchie.
What do we understand by “flesh”?—Some by “flesh” understand the state under the law; others, more properly, “corrupted nature.” Ye shall die without hopes of a better life. But if you mortify the deeds of the body—the deeds of the body of sin, which is elsewhere called the body of death; the first motions to sin and passionate compliances with sin, which are the springs of corrupt actions (corrupt nature is called a body here, morally, not physically; it consisteth of divers vices, as a body of divers members)—“ye shall live”; ye shall live more spiritually and comfortably and eternally hereafter. In the words we may observe a threatening and a promise. In the promise there is the condition and the reward. In the condition, the act: mortify. The object: the deeds of the body. The cause: the body. The effects: the deeds. The agents: ye and the Spirit. The principal, the Spirit; the less principal, ye; both conjoined in the work: ye cannot do it without the Spirit, and the Spirit will not do it without your concurrence with Him and your industry in following His motions. Sin is active in the soul of an unregenerate man. His heart is sin’s territory; it is there as in its throne before the Spirit comes. Mortification supposes life before in the part mortified. Mortification must be universal; not one deed, but deeds, little and great, must fall under the edge—the brats must be dashed against the wall. Man must be an agent in this work. We have brought this rebel into our souls, and God would have us make, as it were, some recompense by endeavouring to cast it out; as in the law, the father was to fling the first stone against a blasphemous son. We must engage in the duel, but it is the strength of the Spirit only can render us victorious. The duty is ours, but the success is from God. Heaven is a place for conquerors only. The way to eternal life is through conflicts, inward with sin, outward with the world. There must be a combat before a victory, and a victory before a triumph. An unmortified frame is unsuitable to a state of glory. There must be a meetness for a state of glory before there be an entrance into it. Vessels of glory must be first seasoned with grace. Conformity to Christ is to fit us for heaven. Unmortified sin is against the whole design of the gospel and death of Christ, as though the death of Christ were intended to indulge us in sin, and not to redeem us from it. That sin should die was the end of Christ’s death; rather than sin should not die, Christ would die Himself. Implore the help of the Spirit. Listen to the convictions of the Holy Spirit. Plead the death of Christ. Let us often think of divine precepts. Let us be jealous of our own hearts.—Charnock.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Rom_8:6. Dr. Carey and the merchant.—The soul of the Christian is at anchor; and so he is freed from the cares of fame, or of fortune, or of any other interest upon earth. And with a mind engrossed by that which is spiritual, and without room in it for the anxieties of what is seen and temporal, he in as far as these anxieties are concerned is at peace. This topic may be illustrated from a recorded conversation between Dr. Carey the missionary at Serampore and a wealthy merchant in Calcutta. One of his clerks had determined to give up all the prospects and emoluments of a lucrative situation, and henceforth devote himself to the work of evangelising the heathen. His employer, to whom this looked a very odd resolution, called on Dr. Carey, and inquired from him the terms and the advantages and the preferments of this new life to which a very favourite servant, whom he was exceedingly loath to part with, was now on the eve of betaking himself; and was very startled to understand that it was altogether a life of labour, and that there was no earthly remuneration whatever, that bevond those things which are needful for the body there was not an enjoyment within the power or purchase of money which any one of them thought of aspiring after, that with hearts set on their own eternity and the eternity of their fellow-creatures they had neither time nor space for the working of this world’s ambition. There is a very deep interest in such a dialogue between a devoted missionary and a busy, active, aspiring merchant; but the chief interest of it lay in the confession of the latter, who seems to have been visited with a glimpse of the secret of true happiness, and that after all he himself was not on the way to it; whose own experience told him that, prosperous as he was, there was a plague in his very prosperity that marred his enjoyment of it; that the thousand crosses and hazards and entanglements of mercantile adventure had kept him perpetually on the rack, and rifled his heart of all those substantial sweets by which alone it can be purely and permanently gladdened. And from him it was indeed an affecting testimony when, on contrasting his own life of turmoil and vexation and checkered variety with the simple but lofty aims and settled dependence and unencumbered, because wholly unambitious, hearts of these pious missionaries, he fetched a deep sigh, and said that it was indeed a most enticing cause.—Dr. Chalmers.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 5. “For those who are according to the flesh…
5. “For those who are according to the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and those who are of the Spirit the things of the Spirit.” God is calling all to heaven; and Satan, the “god of this world” (2Co 4:4), is offering us this world as he did Jesus. The body is earthy and destined soon to go back to it. We have our choice to live for this world or heaven. We get just what we live for. If we live for this world, we leave soon, and are liable to at any moment, unprepared for heaven. Hence Satan, whose subjects we are, takes us to hell. The divine order is, first God, then the human spirit, then the mind or soul, and finally the body. Satan reverses the order, putting the body first, then the mind, and the immortal spirit is neglected altogether. In that case you have the world here and hell hereafter. Man is a three-story building, consisting of body, mind and spirit. The latter. i. e., the third story, is where our King erects His throne. when we are true, ruling the mind through the spirit, the body through the mind and our life through the body Satan reverses the divine order in the human spirit down in the mud then the mind, and finally the body, i. e. the hog element of our nature, on top. The sins of your body make you hoggish; those of your mind make you worldly; while the sins of your spirit make you devilish. There is a fearful liability that the degradation of your immortal spirit may pass the susceptibility of spiritual influence, in which case Satan succeeds in utterly blowing off the third story of humanity, sealing your doom in hell and diabolizing you forever. These are those who commit the unpardonable sin.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Subdivision 4. (Rom 8:5-27.)
Subdivision 4. (Rom 8:5-27.)
The walk in the Spirit.
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The principles of a walk in the Spirit are now set before us. As already said, we shall still find the flesh present and in opposition. Conflict there is still, but captivity no more, and even conflict is, if I may say so, no more the normal condition of the Christian in this respect. Enjoying my own things, I find a sphere into which flesh cannot and will not enter. It was not in the third heavens that the apostle needed a thorn for the flesh: it was when he came down out of them. And true it is that we thus find ourselves in conflict, how much I need not say, but the Spirit of God has not set before us, as it were, the duty of conflict with the flesh or with its lusts. We are to "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." That is not the same as warring with them. If we are entangled, if our eyes have been allowed to rest upon something not of God, which has attracted them, then indeed there will be of necessity a struggle, but the being entangled was not a necessity, and it is a totally different thing to be reckoning oneself dead to sin and to be fighting it. We fight it when we have allowed it, when we have not been reckoning ourselves dead to it. There is, of course, a conflict with sin in the world around, a conflict which the Lord Himself had of necessity, because of what He was, but of which we are not speaking here. "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood," says the apostle to the Hebrews, "fighting against sin;" but that, of course, is not the, sin in us, it is the sin which characterizes the world around us, the corruption which is in it through lust.
1. The first thing, therefore, that is now put before us is the governing power. "They that are according to flesh, mind the things of the flesh, and they that are according to Spirit, the things of the Spirit." The flesh seeks what is according to its mind, and the Spirit seeks what is according to His mind; but notice now, that these two are two companies. "They that are according to flesh" cannot, of course, be confounded with those that are according to the Spirit. The Spirit is for the Christian the One who has come to possess us in Christ’s name and for Him; and in Him we find a power which is not of ourselves, and which leaves us still and all the way through, in conscious weakness. This is a great necessity for us, that the power should be power which is fully available for us and yet which is not our own, for the realization of which we have to lean upon Another. It is when we are weak, then we are strong. The sense of weakness is most helpful to us every way. It not only checks all self-complacent thoughts, but it makes us realize in the strength which is constantly ministered to us, the continual care and love of God. We can promise ourselves nothing even yet as to ourselves, and we need not promise anything. We need only the assurance that the love which holds us fast has all things in its control, and that in Christ there is fulness for us from which we can draw at all times. Thus, as has already been said, the "I myself" has really disappeared. The knowledge of the new man is that Christ is all. Faith does not know itself, and its object is never self.
2. The opposition between the two, the Spirit and the flesh, is now put before us. "The mind of the flesh," not "the carnal mind" as if it were a fleeting condition, but what the flesh is in its character at all times, "is death." "The mind of the flesh is enmity against God"; that is death truly. Death is separation from the source of life, and the flesh is willingly separate. Thus then, it "is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be," and "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." "In the flesh" we find here, therefore, to be a spiritual condition, although it is related to the old creation place out of which we have passed. One who is in Christ cannot be in the flesh. On the other hand, the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. How blessed a thing is such peace! At one with God, everything else is at one with us. All things of necessity, therefore, "work together for good to them that love" Him. "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
3. But immediately we are assured, "ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you." This which has put us in the condition here is not to be looked at as if it were possible to be absent from the child of God. We are immediately warned "if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." There are no Christians that are not Christ’s, and here, in fact, we are assured that the Spirit of God is found in all who are such. He is the seal upon those who belong to God.
The word is not found here: we must look for it in Ephesians; but the idea is clearly expressed. A seal is the mark put upon what is one’s own, with the idea of inviolability attaching to it. The 144,000 sealed out of all the tribes of Israel in the book of Revelation are a sample of this. They are sealed on their foreheads, and we find afterwards that the Name of the Lamb and of His Father is written there, evidently the effect of the sealing. This Name is their preservative from the power of the locusts in the ninth chapter. "Seals were employed," says Kitto, "not for the purpose of impressing a device on wax, but in place of a sign manual to stamp the name of the owner upon any document to which he determined to fix it." The Lord expressly speaks of the descent of the Spirit upon Himself as His being sealed of God the Father. It was then, we know, that His being the Son was fully declared. The seal was the witness of emphatic approbation. In us it is also the token of sonship. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God, but with us there cannot, of course, be the approbation of a condition in us, but rather of Him in whom we are recognized as standing before God. Thus, it is not by sealing that we are made to be in Christ. We must be in Christ in order to be sealed. God could not put His seal upon the least evil, the least taint of sin. We are in Christ, moreover, as the apostle says in the epistle to the Corinthians, by new creation. "If any one be in Christ, it is new creation"; and he adds, as what connects itself with it: "Old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." As soon as ever the work begins in us, we belong to that new creation which abides in the value of its blessed Head before God; and thus alone could it be said that "old things are passed away." In Ephesians we find also that we are "created in Christ Jesus." Creation speaks of the divine work in us from the very beginning.
It is, however, said that in this case, the "none of His" should be rather "not of Him," which is confessedly the literal rendering; and that this refers to a condition not attained by all in whom divine work has begun. The way ill which simple belonging to Christ would be expressed, it is said, would be, "He is not to Him" instead of "of Him"; but in the second chapter of the second epistle to Timothy, we find the same expression exactly where most certainly the whole extent of those belonging to Him is intended to be expressed. "The Lord knoweth them that are His," "those that are of Him"; where, amid all the confusion of a day in which profession and reality are inextricably confused for us, the Lord yet unfailingly recognizes His own. Thus, in every way, it is clear that the seal marks out those who are children of God, and that therefore it can be fully said that if any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. There is no middle condition, however confused the experience may be, or dull the faith in a child of God.
Let us notice the way in which the Spirit is set before us here. First, it is the Spirit of God that dwells in us. Divine power thus keeps us for Him; but next, we have the Spirit of Christ, the One who glorifies Christ and who produces in us also a likeness to Him. Following this, we have, "If Christ be in you"; for the Spirit, in fact, as glorifying Christ, does not testify of Himself. It is not, therefore, the Spirit in you, but Christ in you. This, however, is the expression of life itself, as we have already seen abundantly in the Gospel of John. The Lord’s parable of the vine and the branches conveys to us fully the relation between one in Christ and Christ in him The branch is in the vine; as a consequence, the sap is in the branch. The sap is the life derived from the vine stock. So here, "Christ in you" is the expression of life; but then to this the Spirit alone gives its proper energy. We have already seen this fully in the experience of the seventh chapter, where, although life in fact is, yet it is not in its proper power. Thus, it is said here, that the Spirit is life. As we have seen all the way through here, the "I myself," as it were, drops out. It is the Spirit who is the governing power, the Leader; and the attitude of faith is that of entire dependence upon Him.
"If Christ be in you," then, the apostle says, "the body still is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." The body has not yet the effect of redemption manifested in it. It is not yet quickened. Quickening is to come. "If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies on account of His Spirit who dwelleth in you." That is the redemption for which we wait. In the meanwhile, the body is to be reckoned simply as an instrument in the hands of the spiritual man. If it manifests its individual life that will be seen, and so the apostle speaks directly of our mortifying the deeds of the body. Not that the body and the flesh are the same thing: the flesh may include, as we have seen, spirit and soul, the whole man; and moreover, necessarily describes an evil condition. The body is not in itself evil, and spite of the condition in which it is yet found, it is in the body that the Spirit of God dwells. (See 1Co 6:19.) Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. We see fully how the work of Christ enables thus the taking up of that in which there is not yet the power of redemption. This will reflect again upon the experience that we have had in the previous chapter. If the Spirit can dwell in a body that is dead and that clearly through the work of Christ alone, in the same way the Spirit can dwell surely in one who is not yet in the mind of the Spirit, who needs to be delivered from the power of evil, the law of sin in his members. But "the body is dead on account of sin, while the Spirit is life on account of righteousness," -evidently the righteousness which the Spirit produces. Nothing but that which is righteous before God could possibly be counted "life." We go on to the coming of Christ for the deliverance: "He who raised up Christ from among the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies on account of His Spirit who dwelleth in you." The pledge has been given us in Christ’s own resurrection. Notice, however," that it is not exactly resurrection as to ourselves that is spoken of. Our "mortal bodies" implies a stage of the living and not of the dead, and quickening is that which delivers them from the state of mortality. The reason of this is plain. We are not taught, as people commonly put it, that we must all die. On the contrary, our proper state is to be waiting for the Lord. Thus here, the quickening of the mortal body refers distinctly to those who shall be living when He comes, and for them the Spirit who already dwells in the body, makes good His title to it in the most absolute way. The Spirit is, as we see all through, the earnest of that which is to come. Here then, is the complete answer to the question: "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Complete deliverance is what we wait for and yet that does not in the least imply any necessity of sin in the present time. The presence of the Spirit in us is, of course, fulness of power over it, and the delivered man who is in the power of the Spirit works out the righteousness of the law. Whatever we may have to say with regard to ourselves, in fact, we have ever the responsibility of walking in the power of the Spirit, and therefore, as those free from the power of sin.
4. The practical test is now found here again. As we have seen, it is freedom that tests, not bondage. The slave does his master’s will; the freeman does his own; and yet even in the state of bondage which has been described to us, the will of the converted man is testified to be for God and good. Freedom is the only thing that is needed by him. The heart to serve God and to please Him he already has. Thus, amongst the professing people of God, freedom, as already said, is the test of reality. There is a way of life and a way of death. The gospel does not alter that, but, on the contrary confirms it. "So, then, brethren, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if ye live according to the flesh, ye are on the way to die." That is spoken absolutely: we have no need to qualify it in the least. If a man lives "according to the flesh," it does not say, "acts" at a given time, but if he lives, if that is the tenor of his life, "according to the flesh," then he is on the road to death. On the other hand, if a man has the Spirit, by the Spirit he mortifies the deeds of the body. The body is held for dead. It is used and can be fully used for God. There is not the least thought of asceticism in the apostle’s language here. God has no pleasure in a man’s ill-treating his body. On the contrary, it is meant to be maintained in vigor for the Lord who owns it, and yet it is to be the mere dead instrument, so to speak, of Another’s will. "If ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." There is no other way. That marks out, as alone this can mark out, the sons of God.
But, notice the beautiful difference between what is said here upon the one side and upon the other. If men live according to the flesh, they are on the way to death. It does not say that they will die. God’s grace is always free to come in, but then if it comes in it takes one off the road to death; it does not speak in such a manner as if sin were of no consequence. On the other hand, if, by the Spirit, you mortify the deeds of the body, not, you are on the way to life, because there is no uncertainty about the result, but "you shall live." Of course, the full and final result is intended there. We live at the present time and we shall go on to live forever. Thus then, the sons of God are marked out. We are called to enforce the condition which the apostle has made so absolute, whatever we may speak of grace or of faith, -and we cannot enforce these too absolutely when we are speaking of them, -yet, on the other hand, we must be just as absolute as to the way of life and the way of death. We have no right, whatever the profession may be, to consider any one as a son of God whose life does not mark him out as devoted to God.
5. But then the spirit of all this has to be carefully kept in mind. What the apostle has said might tend to produce a spirit of bondage -the fear of the result, of the issue, in unestablished souls, -but he says: "Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear." Legality is not at all what is implied here, and it does not and cannot produce the holiness which it claims and seeks; nor can it secure for itself the final result. Take our Lord’s words, for instance, in proof of this. "Whosoever will save His life shall lose it, but whosoever will lose his life for My sake, the same shall save it." There is the condition, the marking out, as here, of the way of life and the way of death. But it is not simply, whosoever will lose his life shall save it, but "whosoever will lose his life for My sake." Clearly that is not the legal principle. As long as a man doubts his final security, he will, of necessity, be working for himself, but that is not "for My sake." The legal gospel, whatever spice of legality may come into it, is so far unholy, and can be nothing but unholy. We live as Christians, not to ourselves, but to Him who died for us and rope again"; but there is a religious way of living to one’s self which is just as fully that as any course of sin and self-indulgence. Thus here, therefore, we are expressly told that there is no spirit of fear for the Christian, but, on the other hand, we have received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry, "Abba, Father." It is the heart renewed and realizing the power of the grace of God which "teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world." The witness of the Spirit with our spirit, therefore, is dwelt upon here. A double witness; there is the witness of our own spirit, and that is implied, here in the first place. The spirit of man is that which makes him an intelligent being. "No one knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him." Here, therefore, the testimony of the Word, as understood and received is that which is really implied. The apostle has been in the fullest way unfolding to us this testimony, and we are not left merely, as it were, to reasoning out things; we are not left merely to our own intelligence in the matter; nor even simply to faith. We need that which is more powerful than this, and we have it in that witness of the Spirit with our spirit, which indeed, we may be little able to distinguish from the witness produced by faith in the gospel, but which gives divine power to this witness. The witness of the Spirit in this way produces a full consciousness of what God is to us, while, at the same time it is founded and must be founded upon the word of God itself. We must have the Word in proof, or we are entitled to nothing. The Spirit of God acts from and with the Word, never sets it aside, and therefore whatever "feeling" there may be, as people are accustomed to say, all this can be questioned. If it is not justified by the word of God itself, it will not do to talk of the witness of the Spirit. The two, therefore, come together, the Spirit of God and our spirit. Faith receives God’s testimony in the Word, and the Spirit of God joins to this a divine power which otherwise it would not have. We cry, "Abba, Father"; we serve with the joyful consciousness that we serve as children, -the most absolute service that can possibly be; for the Father has entire claim to His child; but at the same time where there is, as in this case there must of necessity be, the true affection of children, the service is itself liberty.
Thus then, the Spirit bears witness that we are the children of God; but immense consequences follow. If children, we are heirs. As with regard to God, this might be even thought to be out of place. We inherit from our parents that which is left us when they pass away; but God never passes away. How are we to be His heirs? Only He, Himself, could have inspired such a thought as this. If we want to realize what it means, we have a beautiful example of it in the case of Israel, whose land is expressly claimed to be God’s land. They are to be pilgrims and sojourners with Him, thus put into possession on His part, to hold that which is nevertheless His. How perfect the security that is given in this way to their possession of it! When they shall hold it after this manner, how impossible for them to lose it again, and even now the land being God’s renders it absolutely impossible that any failure on their part can disturb His purposes with regard to it. They might forfeit it. If it were left to them, they surely would, altogether; but God cannot forfeit it, and if He puts them in possession of that which is His own, then they have an unfailing right to that possession. So with regard to our higher and more wonderful inheritance. We are heirs of God. The things that He has created, He has not created for Himself. He has no need of them. His whole heart goes with the gift of them to His people, yet so that in the sense in which we have spoken, the things inherited remain always God’s, while we possess and enjoy them fully. There is another thing added here. We are joint heirs with Christ. How wonderfully does this certify to us the extent of the inheritance! Christ is the heir of all things, and to be joint heirs with Christ gives, as one may say, the thought of a limitless inheritance; but not merely so, it assures us of the perfect way in which Christ abides still and ever the Man Christ Jesus. He means to associate us with Himself for ever. The joy of the inheritance will be the joy of being associated with Christ in it.
But then immediately there comes in what may seem to be a condition; "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him." Suffering then is necessary to glory, but surely not in any sense as a legal condition, -the suffering with Him, not mere suffering in itself, but suffering with Him, suffering as He suffered in the world which was contrary to Him entirely, suffering because of the knowledge of God and joy in Him which were His ever, in view of evil and all its consequences: this, on our part, is the necessary training for that association with Him, of which our being joint heirs speaks. We are preparing to have fully His mind, learning in the midst of evil, learning what evil is in its Ml character even in ourselves, as we have already seen. In ourselves we are brought into the closest possible connection with it, surely that we may realize forever its nature, that we may hate it as God hates it, and that we may be fully competent to walk with Him who has solved in His own person the whole question of good and evil, and who is the glorious Conqueror over sin by suffering. Thus then, our present lives have a meaning with reference to the future which we must never lose sight of. The suffering by the way is part of our very need, in order that we may be fit for the coming glory. But, as already said, we must not think of this as mere suffering, but, as with Christ Himself, that which was most truly such to Him sprang out of the very joy that He had in God (we are not speaking of atonement now, or that which was necessary for it), -so for us, suffering must have this character. It must put us ever in fellowship with Him in order to be of any value.
6. Immediately upon this, the apostle goes on to speak more at large of the character of the present time for us. It is a time of travail. Creation itself is groaning in the bondage of corruption. It waits for liberty. It waits for the manifestation of the sons of God. Connected with man as its head, the fall of man has brought about this groaning condition. Notice that in himself man is a microcosm. He has the soul of the beast. He has the very dust of the earth in him. He is linked in the fullest possible way with creation throughout, and how blessed it is to realize that in this way Christ, in taking humanity, has linked Himself even, one may say, with the very material universe. How this assures us that it cannot lie under the condition which the fall has produced. There is yet to be a liberty for it. The liberty of grace it could not enjoy, but the liberty of the glory it shall enjoy.
The typical character which we find everywhere in nature connects itself with all this. It is a remarkable thing that even before man was upon the earth, death seems to have reigned in it, and that this for the lower creation is in no wise (chronologically) the effect of the fall. Man was created in a world which, so to Speak, prophesied of that fall itself and was prepared for him by the goodness of God in view of it. Thus, if you look at nature, you will find not a condition such as we would imagine. Strife and evil (not moral evil, surely) are in every part of it; and thus alone could it present to man the lessons which he needs, but of which, alas, he is so little heedful. The witness of Christ in creation comes in in this connection. God has given us, in the most abundant way thus, a testimony of nature itself, which does not leave out His purposes of grace, but, on the contrary, bears fullest. witness to them. Natural theology has been, alas, but too much divorced from this. Nature has been supposed simply to bear witness in the characters of design which are everywhere in it, of a Maker, a Creator. A Saviour has been supposed to be what lies beyond its testimony; but thus it has been made, if one may so say, more pagan than Christian. How could God Himself be rightly expressed in it, if Christ be not expressed? But this, as already said, involves the very evil and strife winch we find in it. God has in all this, wrought for us, and nature is linked with us in its present groanings, as it will by and by be linked with us also in its redemption.
"For we, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption," that is, the full manifestation of what we are as sons of God, now hidden. That involves the body being glorified. We wait, therefore, for the adoption, that is, the redemption of the body. The firstfruits of the Spirit would seem to imply that after all what we possess in this way is but a pledge in anticipation of that which is to come, and we who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, on that very account, are made to groan. The hope we have of a condition so different from the present makes us only the more groan over the present. Our salvation is in hope, as to the full character of it. Of course, there is a salvation of which we can say already that God hath saved us. If it be a question simply of guilt and condemnation, then we are already completely saved; but salvation is very commonly looked at in a very different way from this, and it implies deliverance of the body itself and the fulfilment of all God’s purposes as to us. We are saved now in hope, but then that means that we have not got before us that which we hope for. If we behold it, how can we still hope for it? "If we hope for what we behold not, then do we with patience wait for it." How beautiful a thought it is that this hope is so perfect, there is such complete assurance with regard to it, that the not having it only produces patience in us -not doubt, but patience! All human hopes may possibly disappoint, but die hope which God has given us is as sure as if we already possessed it. We wait with patience, and the patience itself is holy discipline for us. We wait upon His will, but all that He can give us in the way of assurance is already ours.
7. We have now finally, in this part, the Spirit Himself entering into this groaning condition. The Spirit joins His help to our infirmity. In such a condition of trial and sorrow, our weakness is made fully evident, but that only opens to us more the heart of God and produces in us a healthful dependence upon Him every step of the way. Notice, therefore, that in connection with the Spirit helping our infirmities, prayer is that upon which the apostle dwells. Prayer is the expression of dependence. It is the expression of the creature-place which we have with God. It is the expression, also, if it be that which can rightly be called prayer, of our confidence in God. Prayer is thus, as one may say, a large part of the Christian life, or rather, it is that which links itself with every part of it. If the Lord, in the sermon on the mount, would give us a special example of righteousness Godward, He illustrates this by prayer; but the very prayer itself manifests our infirmity. We do not know even what to pray for as we ought. How blessed to know that here we have a divine Intercessor; as we have Christ before God for us, so we have the Spirit of God in us, and He makes intercession for us according to God. The prayer that He makes is, of course, absolutely according to God; yet as wrought in our hearts it may be on that very account simply a groaning which cannot be uttered intelligibly, -a wonderful thing to realize that these groanings which are the evidence of our own infirmity may, nevertheless, be the fruit of the Spirit within us; that in the ear of God they may speak intelligently, and in absolute accordance with His mind concerning us. We do not know what to pray for, and yet we pray; and God who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, little as we may know it and blunder as we may. "He maketh intercession for the saints according to God." That does not mean simply that it is God’s will that He should make the intercession, as our common version might lead some to suppose, but that the intercession itself, as being; His, is of necessity in complete accordance with His thought and character. We are not, however, to suppose by all this, that the Spirit’s prayer is simply groaning. The groaning accompanies the prayer and is part of the prayer. "With groanings that cannot be uttered." Nevertheless, these groanings express, as it were, after all, that which is higher in character, it may be, than the very prayers themselves, however intelligent. Our intelligence fails to accompany them. They go beyond it. But if they go beyond it, all the more they express the power of the Spirit in them -of Him who has come to join His help to our infirmities, and to carry us along the lighted road which leads to God.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain For they that are after the flesh mind the…
For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit . [For they that live carnal lives indulge the lustful, evil desires of the flesh; but they that live after the Spirit set their minds on those heavenly things of the present and future which are revealed to man by the Spirit. Those who daily strive to lead the latter life may hopefully look to God to forgive their shortcoming and temporary failure.]
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The difference between the carnal mind and the spiritual…
The difference between the carnal mind and the spiritual mind:
v. 5. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
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v. 6. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace,
v. 7. because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither, indeed, can be.
v. 8. So, then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
v. 9. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
v. 10. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
v. 11. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.
In this section there is a further illustration and amplification of the contrast between flesh and Spirit and between those that are devoted to either. Those that are after the flesh, that have the moral nature and essence of the flesh, have their entire mind taken up with the things of the flesh; the interests of the flesh engage their entire attention. All their imagination, their lusts and desires are centered upon the gratification of sensual, worldly thoughts and ideas, Gal 5:24. But those that have the nature of the Spirit, that are born anew out of the Spirit, have only one aim, namely, that of performing the works of the Spirit and bringing forth His fruits, Gal 5:22. For the thinking of the flesh, the object and goal of the imagination of the natural, sinful heart, is death. The carnal joys and pleasures of man will finally result in death, in eternal death. But the thinking of the Spirit, the result of the Spirit’s desiring, the object upon which the anxious longing of the Spirit is centered, as He lives in the mind of regenerated man, is life and peace. The spiritual life of a Christian, as manifested in all its thinking, is not the cause of the life in peace with God, of the realization of the reconciliation with God, but this life and peace is given by God to the spiritual life. This contrast between flesh and Spirit is emphasized from another side: Because the mind, the disposition, of the flesh is enmity toward God. The flesh finds the goal of its thinking to consist in eternal death because of its hostility to God, the Fountain of life. The people that follow the dictates of their flesh deliberately choose the works of the flesh, because they are evil, opposed to God and His holy will. To the Law of God the flesh will not yield obedience, the very idea of doing so being foreign to its nature. The contrast between the flesh, the sinful nature of man, and the pure and holy Law of God is so great that an agreement is out of the question: the chasm between them cannot be bridged. Those that are in the flesh, that bear in themselves the nature, the peculiarity of the flesh, cannot please God. The essence of the carnal mind is rebellion and hatred against God, and this disposition cannot be shown in any other way but by a deliberate expression of this tendency in acts which are displeasing to the Lord. The Christians are thoroughly distinct from people that exhibit such hostility toward God: You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit; the Spirit of God that lives in the believers is their sphere of life and activity, in Him they live and move. And they cannot but be under the rule and guidance of the Spirit, if the Spirit indeed, truly, lives in them. The entire life and bearing of the Christians is in full accord with the demands of the true spiritual life, because that is the natural, the inevitable result and consequence of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. It is necessary to stress this point; for if anyone have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. A person must be regenerated in truth, and not merely in appearance; he must actually have received the Spirit of Christ and have this Spirit dwelling in Him, otherwise Christ will not acknowledge him as one of His own. Note that the Spirit is here called the Spirit of Christ, that Christ is therefore placed on an equality with the Father as the One from whom the Spirit proceeds.
And now the apostle presents his conclusion: If, however, Christ is in you, if He is the impelling power of your lives, brought into your hearts by the work of His Spirit, Joh 14:16-18; Joh 14:23, then the body indeed, the instrument of sin, is dead, that is, subject to death on account of sin from the first moment of its existence; but the spirit, the human spirit regenerated and renewed, the new man, is life because of righteousness. The spirit, the soul of man, having received the perfect righteousness of Christ in justification, has the spiritual life which will secure for it immortal and blessed existence. By faith in Christ the Christians become partakers of eternal life So it is implied here also that the supreme blessing of eternity is based upon Christ only, in order that no one might have any reason for boasting. And we not only have the pledge of immortal life in and through Christ, so far as our soul is concerned, but we have the assurance also that our bodies will rise again: If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead live in you, then He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will quicken, will return to life your dead bodies through the Spirit that has His dwelling in you. The life which we have in our soul by faith will finally result in a complete triumph over death. Note how appropriate this description of God is in this connection Mark also that the three persons of the Godhead are here mentioned as taking part in the final resurrection of the dead, just as they all have been active in the conversion of man. The same God that raised up Jesus from the dead, thus proving that He is the Source, the almighty Fountain of life, will make alive, will give life to, our dead bodies; and this work He will perform through His Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Son Christ is the Mediator of our salvation, having died and risen again for our sakes, having prepared for us the life of glorification. Our resurrection and glorification has its basis in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Thus the spiritual life of the Christians, the Spirit of God and of Christ that lives in the Christians, has for its goal eternal life, with the glorification of our bodies.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 8:5 think about sinful things: This phrase describes the…
8:5 think about sinful things: This phrase describes the general nature of a person’s will, not just the mental process of thought (see also 12:3; 15:5; Phil 2:2, 5).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.