Romans 8, continued

Last updated on: September 7, 2017 at 12:02 am by Peter Leithart

Romans 8, continued 2017-09-07T00:02:58+06:00 Peter Leithart

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CONTRASTING MINDSETS, Romans 8:5-13
Paul has announced that through the work of Father, Son and Spirit, we who are in Christ have been set free from Sin and Death, and are now capable of keeping the requirement of the Law. Torah aimed at giving life; but that purpose cannot not fulfilled by those who were ?under Torah?Ebecause those ?under Torah?Eare also ?under Sin.?E The life and righteousness that Torah aims at, the formation of a humanity that is living richly, abundantly, righteously before God, that aim can only be achieved through the Spirit and by those who are in the Spirit. Those who are in the flesh are incapable of achieving this end.

By ?flesh?Eand ?Spirit,?EPaul is not talking about two aspects of the individual human, about body and soul. ?Flesh?Eand ?Spirit?Eare two dominating principles for life, two ways of life, two ?cultures?Ewe might say (notice how expansively Paul speaks of ?flesh?Ein Philippians 3; everything he received from Judaism is ?flesh?E. ?Flesh?Ein Paul?s terminology is aligned and allied with Sin, Death, the Old Order, the Old Creation, Adam, the ?elementary principles of the world.?E To live by the flesh is to continue living in that old world. On the other hand, to live in the Spirit is to live in righteousness, in the new creation, in the new Adam, in maturity. Each of these ?regimes?Ecomes with a particular ?mindset,?Ea particular set of aims, beliefs, goals, plans, aspirations, desires. Those who are living in the flesh have their minds filled with certain ideas, but also aspire to certain kinds of accomplishments in life, have fleshly plans and goals and desires. Dittos for those who have the mindset of the Spirit.

According to the TDNT, ?sarx [flesh] is for Paul everything human and earthly, which includes legal righteousness . . . . But since this entices man to put his trust in it, to find security and renown thereby, it takes on for Paul the character of a power which is opposed to the working of the Spirit. The sharpest formulation is in Gal 5:13, 17, where sarx is an independent force superior to man. Paul realises, of course, that this power which entices away from God and His Spirit is not just a power alien to man. It belongs to man himself. The Gnostic answer that the divine core of man has been tragically overpowered by the sinister forces which seduce the senses is not Paul?s answer. OT man regarded himself as flesh when he experienced subjection to sickness and death, to the inscrutability of his destiny, to the hiddenness of God. Paul is aware of the subjection to things which take the place of God for him. But this is not just tragic fate; it is his guilt. The same applies in Rom 8:1?E3 . . . A life orientated to the sarx is also a life which serves the sarx (v. 12) and carries out its thinking (v. 6f.). This is not the thinking of a mythological power. For Paul can just as well regard man himself as the subject of phronein ta tes sarkos. It is the thinking which is proper to pre-Christian man, which rejects God and consequently reaps death. This is also the reason for repudiation of the Law, v. 3. If on this account the Son of God comes en omoiomati sarkos hamartias . . . and God condemns sin en te sarki Paul has in view the corporeality of the earthly Jesus who was crucified. But this embraces man with all his physical and mental functions. Its opposite, then, is not the spiritual; it is God.?E In many places in Paul, ?flesh?Eis set over against Spirit as a description of two contrasting realms, which are eschatologically distinguished. The old world is flesh, and the new life in Christ is the life of the Spirit.

The verb and noun for ?mindset?Eimply pondering, setting one?s mind on something, or even honoring and respecting something. Someone with a mind set on the flesh ponders and sets his hopes and desires on fleshly accomplishment.

The fleshly mindset is destined for frustration. Those who are in flesh cannot please God, and they are hostile to God. That means that they have an infinite obstacle standing between them and their happiness, the achievement of their hopes and desires. They are not, to put it mildly, going to get past that obstacle. The Spirit, by contrast, enables us to do God?s will, to do what God intends, and that means that those who are in the Spirit can achieve what God intends for them to achieve, life and righteousness and peace. There are several things to note here. First, Paul speaks of the Spirit with a rich variety of terms here: He is the Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus. Paul also says that Christ is in us, which means that Christ is in us by the Spirit. We are dwelling places for the Spirit and for Christ, for the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the Father. And the Triune God has become a dwelling place for us. We enter into the mutual-indwelling, the perichoretic life of the Trinity, through the Spirit. That is what it means to have ?no condemnation?E that is what it means to live the life of a justified man.

This indwelling is in contrast to the indwelling of Sin in chapter 7. This is curious: We are, all of us, indwelt by something. In Adam, we are indwelt by Sin that dominates and impels us recklessly toward death; in Christ, we are indwelt by the Spirit Who dominates us and impels us equally recklessly toward life. We are, all of us, temples, containers, houses for something other than we ourselves. This is part of being images of God, the Triune God, each Person of which is a temple, a house for the others. We are created to be indwelt and to indwell. And that indwelling something is what determines our course in life, our desires, our mindset, our ultimate destiny. We are not only ourselves; we are what indwells us. At the same time, we are ?in?Esomething else: Paul shifts back and forth between saying the Spirit is ?in us?Eand saying we are ?in the Spirit.?E There is a perichoretic interpenetration here. Those who are indwelt by the Spirit dwell in the Spirit, and in Christ. We are what indwells us; and we are also what we indwell.

Further, Paul describes the inability of the flesh here as an inability to ?please God?Eand to ?submit to the law of God.?E The implication, as NT Wright points out, is that those who are in the Spirit can please God, and also that they are able to submit to and fulfill the law of God, the Torah. Spirit and Torah are not at odds in the least. Those who are in the Spirit are in complete agreement with Torah.

The goal toward which the Spirit pushes us it the life of the resurrection. The logic of vv 10-11 is intriguing: Christ in us, and even though sin?s effect is not removed (we die), yet the Spirit is life because of righteousness. This is the Spirit of God, not the human spirit, and the Spirit of Christ brings life because of righteousness. Whose righteousness is this? Is the Spirit life for us because of the righteous work of Jesus (Rom 5)? Is the Spirit life for us because of the righteousness, the covenant-loyalty of God the Father? Or is the Spirit life because we have received a gift of righteousness through the righteousness of Jesus and the covenant faithfulness of God? It doesn?t appears to be necessary to make a choice here. Life comes to us through righteousness in all these senses. Our justification is a ?justification unto life?E(Rom 5), which involves necessarily a gift of the Spirit who is the Lord of life. Christ?s righteous act undoes the act of Adam, and brings life instead of death. And all this is backed up by the fixed purpose of God to keep His promises and realize righteousness in creation.

Then v 11 talks about the resurrection through the Spirit; so the Spirit is life to us because of righteousness, and the reason why we are raised is the same reason Jesus was raised, as a vindication of His righteousness. As Brendan Byrne puts it, ?God vindicated the personal righteousness of Jesus ?Ehis ?obedience unto death?E?E- by raising him from the dead. His resurrection was, the

n, the outward, bodily shape of his ?justification?Eby God. Believers do not have any personal righteousness in this sense; it is as sinners that they are grasped by grace. But ?in Christ?Ethe indwelling Spirit fulfills in them the righteousness required for salvation. They can have, then, the confident hope that the God who was faithful to Jesus, raising him from the dead in vindication of his personal righteousness, will raise also ?their mortal bodies?Ebecause of the righteousness created and preserved in them by the Spirit?E God, who has intervened at such cost to create righteousness (8:3-4), will most certainly see the work through to resurrection.?E Wright comments: ?We look back here all the way to Abraham, who in chap. 4 believed precisely in the life-giving power of God upon which the covenant depended, the covenant to which God has now been faithful in Jesus the Messiah.?E

This section concludes with an exhortation based on the indicatives that Paul has been unpacking. Because the Spirit dwells in us, we are not under obligation to the flesh; we owe nothing to the flesh. Concerning the notion of ?obligation?Eor ?debt?Ein places like Romans 13 and 15, the TDNT says, ?apostolic preaching, though it contains [imperatives], unfolds the obligations which follow from the basic Christian facts and total Christian thinking. In the main the obligation in these apostolic references is an obligation towards men which is deduced and which follows from the experienced or preceding act of God the Saviour. In many instances the sentence construction indicates the connection between human obligation and the experienced act of salvation. From this it may also be seen that NT opheilein does not lead into externally imposed legalism, but that the Christian commitment, the NT imperative, develops out of salvation already known.?E The obligation that Paul talks about arises from the act of God in delivering us. It is an imperative to live according to the Spirit, but it is an imperative based on an accomplished fact, the condemnation of sin in the flesh of Jesus and our deliverance from Sin and Death through the invading power of the Spirit. We may still live in the flesh, and we definitely sin. But we are not under the LORDSHIP of sin, and have no need to render homage to the flesh or to sin.

The paradoxical character of the Christian life is well-put in v 13: There is one way that leads to life and another that leads to death, but paradoxically, the way that leads to life is the way of death, and the way that leads to death is the way of life. This is the paradox of the gospel: as Jesus said, whoever wants to enter into life has to die; whoever preserves his life loses it, but whoever loses his life finds it. Notice that the deeds of the body are being put to death by the Spirit (v. 13). This has a couple of interesting implications. It means, first, that the Spirit of God is a killer. We think of the Spirit as Comforter, and rightly so; but here the Spirit is a weapon against the flesh. This fits with the basic meaning of RUACH, the Hebrew term for Spirit, which Sinclair Ferguson describes as the ?violence of God.?E Receiving the Spirit means that violence is going to be done to our old mindset, desires, patterns of life, etc. Second, the fact that we put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit means that we are incapable of killing the deeds of the body ourselves. It takes a divine act of killing to kill the body. Paul says elsewhere that various bodily disciplines are not sufficient to overcome the flesh. The Spirit alone is sufficient. And the Spirit operates through the Word, Sacrament, prayer, singing, feasting and fellowship. These practices, rather than fasting and flagellation, form the principal ?ascesis?Eof the NT (though fasting and other self-afflictions are not ruled out), and they form the Christian ascesis because they are means by which the Spirit ministers to us.

HEIRS OF GOD, Romans 8:14-17
With verse 14, Paul introduces a couple of new images into the mix. First, instead of talking about the Spirit ?dwelling?Ein us (a tabernacle/temple image), he says that we are being ?led?Eby the Spirit of God. Clearly, we are being led from death to life (v. 13). The image is drawn from a different part of the exodus story, the story of Israel?s wilderness wanderings, when the people of God were led from the death of Egypt to abundant life in the promised land by the Spirit-glory. Second, and consistently with this, Paul says that those who have received the Spirit and are being led by the Spirit are the true ?sons of God.?E Adam was God?s Son, and as the new Adamic race, Israel was God?s son (Ex 4:22-23). Those who are led by the Spirit are the true Israel, delivered by the true Passover lamb, making their way through the wilderness to the true Promised Land. Romans 8 is often read as pure ?ordo salutis,?Ea chapter about individual redemption. But the fact that Paul speaks of Christians as ?sons of God?Eshows that he is still thinking of the Jew-Gentile question that has been a central theme of the letter throughout. He is still addressing the question that he raised in chapter 4: Who are the true sons of Abraham? Here, he says that the true sons of Abraham, the true Exodus people, are those who have the Spirit of Christ. We have become children of Abraham, and of the Father, by the work of the Son and Spirit. The TDNT notes that even Israel?s sonship was a matter of grace: ?This is true already of Israel?s sonship in Rom 9:4, where God?s covenants and promises seem to be associated with it and where the main point in what follows is that sonship be understood not as an assured sonship by natural descent or merit but as a sonship always dependent on God?s free grace and to be received in faith.?E

Verse 15 makes this point even clearer. Paul has written about contrasting ?laws?Ein verse 2, the Torah as it functions in the sphere of the old flesh and the Torah as it functions in the sphere of the Spirit. In verse 15, he speaks of two ?spirits,?Ebut the contrast is similar. The two phrases are neatly and precisely parallel:

spirit of slavery to fear
Spirit of adoption to cry out

The exodus story is in the background, with Paul associating the old life with ?slavery?Ein Egypt. And in context, Paul is thinking of the old life under the dominion of Sin and Death as being under a spirit of slavery, with the product being fear. The Old Covenant was a covenant for minors, and so long as we are in minority we are no better than slaves (Galatians 3-4). Those who have refused Christ Jesus and therefore are without His Spirit are still laboring under this slavery and fear. They are not the true Israel, but are still in Egypt. The true Israel is the people who have received the Spirit of adoption, and are sons by the Spirit of the Son, who have cried out (as Israel did in Egypt) for deliverance. The Trinitarian act in the atonement (the Father condemning sin in the flesh of His Son, so that the Spirit can be given) is matched by a Trinitarian structure in our experience of redemption: We are sons by the Spirit of sonship, which is the Spirit of Christ, so that we speak to the Father in the same terms that the Son speaks to the Father. This is the chiasm of redemption: The Father sent the Son to secure the Spirit, and the Spirit fills and leads us to make us sons through the Son to the Father.

(Is it possible that the ?spirit of slavery?Eis the Holy Spirit, analogous to the way the ?law of sin and death?Eis Torah? Perhaps. After all, Paul talks a few verses later about God as the one who has ?subjected [creation] to futility?E[v. 20]. The finger/Spirit of God wrote the law on the tablets of stone, and thus instituted the ministry of condemnation and fear [2 Cor 3]. The Spirit dwelt among Israel during the wilderness wanderings, but that was not necessarily a cause for joy. Instead, the Spirit broke out in wrath against the people over and over again. The Spirit stood as a witness against Israel. But now that God has cond
emned sin in flesh, and the Spirit of the resurrection has been poured out, the Spirit comes as the Spirit of adoption and not as the Spirit of slavery.)

In the OT, the Spirit is a witness-bearer, and Jesus also talks about the work of the Spirit as a matter of bearing witness (John 15:26-27). Paul?s point appears to be that the Spirit comes alongside the human spirit and confirms it, so that there is a ?double witness?Eestablishing the fact that we are sons of God. But this seems odd. Would Paul say that we have, independently of the Spirit, a sense of being children of God? In the light of the preceding verses, it seems not. The reason our Spirit witnesses that we are sons of God is precisely that we?ve received the Spirit of adoption. So, the Spirit that ?bears witness with?Ein verse 16 seems to be doubling His own witness, since ?our spirit?Ehas come to a consciousness of sonship only by the Spirit of adoption. The Spirit is thus confirmation of Himself.

Paul then moves on to describe the implications of adoption, the fact that we are heirs, heirs of the glory of God in Christ. We?ll look at this next time.

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