Hope Series Week 3 : Day 2
Hope: Devotional series
Week 3: Romans 8:5-16
Day 2:
Welcome to the second day of the third week in our series about Hope. Today, our focus is on Romans 8:8-9 as we continue to consider the significance of the Holy Spirit within us.
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot; and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.”
"There are two types of people in the world, the givers and the takers," my mother used to say. There are many "two types of people" sayings. My favourite one is: There are two types of people - those who divide the world into two types of people and those who know better. For Paul, there really are just two types of people: Those in the flesh and those in the Spirit.
Unfortunately, when we hear these words, our minds sometimes go places Paul didn’t intend.
What did Paul mean by flesh and Spirit?
Paul did not intend to distinguish between the physical and the spiritual. He has other words for that: words like the seen and the unseen. Flesh refers to rebellion against God’s will, using the seen and unseen things God created, for our own desires and pleasures. This results in corruptibility, mortality, and separation from what God intended for us. Being in the flesh means our lives are determined by this condition.
All of humanity starts off in the flesh. Remember, that does not mean being physical. It means in this condition of rebellion towards God. Paul explores this in Romans 5 to 7 where he writes that through Adam's sin, we were all made sinners. We all fell into this condition of being in the flesh.
In these same chapters, Paul writes that even in that condition of animosity towards God and His will, God loved us so much that Christ died for us. Jesus included us in His death so that our fleshly existence could come to an end. This is what we celebrate in baptism. It is difficult to explain, but when Jesus died, our old sinful selves died with Him. And when He was raised from the dead, we were raised with Him into new creation life. That is why Paul can write that we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.
The word "spirit" in these verses mostly refers to the Spirit of God, also called the Spirit of Christ. The Holy Spirit, through whom seen and unseen things came into existence, wants to bring life and peace, as we heard yesterday. Our lives are now determined by the Spirit, firstly working faith that confesses Jesus as Lord, believing that God raised Him from the dead. This is the first sign that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. Now we are called to learn to think in line with the Spirit. This starts with thinking about the reality that we are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit.
Let’s pray: We thank you, Father, for your unconditional love for us. We praise you for making this transition from being in the flesh to being in the Spirit possible in Christ. We trust you, Holy Spirit, to help us bring our thinking into alignment with this new reality. In Jesus name. Amen.
