Romans 8:6-11 Commentary

Parts of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson are somewhat mysterious. Preachers who feel the Spirit prompting us to proclaim its gospel aren’t helped by the fact that by beginning with verse 6 rather than verse 5, this Lesson begins in what seems like the middle of not just a paragraph, but also a thought.

Preachers can admit even Romans 8:6-11’s opening words abound with grammatical mystery. After all, verse 6a contains no active verb such as the “governed” the NIV uses or the “set on” the NRSV inserts. Biblehub.com suggests it literally means “The mind [phronema*] of the flesh [sarkos] death [thanatos].”

What’s more, while the NIV’s verse 5 suggests a sinful mind is one that’s set on sinful desires, this Sunday’s Lesson itself offers no such clarification. All of this provides preachers and liturgists a reason for including at least Romans 8:5 in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reading.

On top of all that, throughout this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson the NIV, NRSV and other translations insert English words the Greek implies but doesn’t actually employ. Preachers may note that while the Spirit can use those supplements to provide some clarity, the inserted words sometimes have the effect of softening some of Paul’s bluntness about human sinfulness.

In this Lenten season Romans 8:6-11 reminds God’s dearly beloved people that the world God so deeply loves was so full of people who gave such free rein to their sinful nature that even the creation itself was adversely affected. That sinful nature, suggests Paul in verse 6, so impacted people’s phronema that those “minds” were death itself. Our minds, absent Christ’s rescue of us, were like “walking dead” minds. While most minds seemed to function reasonably well, the apostle insists sin so negative affected them that he could call them thanatos (“death”).”

At this point preachers might listen for the Spirit’s guidance as we consider exploring and reminding Jesus’ followers of what Paul refers to by sarkos (“flesh”). It isn’t things like human skin, tissue and muscle. By “flesh” the apostle is speaking of our human nature that’s in active rebellion against God and God’s will through its hatred of both God and our neighbor.

Can Jesus’ friends join in admitting verses 6-8 contain hard words? After all, Paul insists sin naturally so poisons our minds that unless Someone rescues us they, along with the rest of us, are on a one-way road to eternal death. Our minds are capable of solving great mysteries and creating great beauty. But unless the Holy Spirit graciously transforms them, they aren’t just dying; they’re already somehow dead.

In his biblical paraphrase The Message, the biblical scholar Eugene Peterson links the sinful mind to a kind of rebellious self-centeredness. Such “obsession with self” is what he calls “a dead end.” Peterson goes on to assert “Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God.”

Yet no matter how exactly God’s people think about “the mind governed by the flesh,” the apostle goes on to insist it is “hostile [ecthra] to God; it does not submit [hypostassetai] to God’s law, nor can it do so” (7). This assertion may bring to mind the debate that currently rages in the United States as to whether it has declared war on Iran.

Paul, by contrast, leaves no room for debate about our sinful nature’s relationship to God. We have, he grieves, declared war on God. People are naturally in a state of hostility towards God. Those God creates in God’s image refuse to subject ourselves to God, God’s will or God’s plans. We, in fact, as the apostle continues in verse 8, “cannot please [oude dynatai] God.” Even Jesus’ followers are naturally incapable of satisfying God by serving God.

So who can rescue not just our minds but also, in fact, our whole selves from the messes we’ve made for ourselves, our neighbors and the creation? By the grace of God working through the Holy Spirit, Christ’s life, death and resurrection changed his friends’ minds. God enlivened our otherwise spiritually dead minds.

Yet in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul doesn’t specifically mention those saving acts. However, he alludes to their impact. In Romans 8 Christ’s saving work is like the wind we can’t see but whose effects on things like trees we can see. The apostle doesn’t show us Christ dying on the cross or rising from the dead. However, he does show the impact of that rescuing work on Jesus’ friends’ minds.

In verse 6 the apostle reminds his readers that while the mind the flesh controls is death, “the mind governed by the Spirit is life [zoe] and peace [eirene].” The contrast Paul draws could hardly be starker. The mind sin controls isn’t dead or even merely dying; it is somehow death.

The mind God graces with the Spirit, by contrast, is not just lively and peaceful; it is also somehow zoe (“life”) and eirene (“peace”). So to a world that’s so shrouded in and in love with death and hostility, not just the Spirit but also God’s adopted children in whom the Spirit lives are lively and peaceful gifts.

Christians with whom God has graced the Spirit are in what Paul calls “the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in” us (9b). The Greek includes no word that might be translated as “realm.” It, instead, twice uses the preposition en. The NIV and most other English translations basically translate that as “in the realm” or “under the control” of either our sinful nature Paul calls our “flesh” or “the Spirit of Christ.” That means that those in whom the Spirit makes the Spirit’s home want to let the Spirit control every part of us, including our words, actions and even minds.

The apostle goes on to write in verse 10, although our “body [soma] is subject to death [nekron] because of [dia] sin [hamartian], the Spirit gives life [zoe] because of righteousness [dikaiosynen].” Preachers might let the Spirit help us note a couple of things about this theologically loaded assertion.

Paul inserts no Greek noun or adjective that means “subject to” into verse 10. He simply asserts the sinful mind is death and Spirit-filled mind is life. This may have the effect of reminding God’s dearly beloved people that we have no excuse for the havoc our sinful minds wreak and can take no credit for having minds the Spirit infuses with life. Our sinful minds are death. Our Spirit-filled minds are life.

In verse 10 Paul also continues to point to the stark contrast between the sinful and spiritual mind, as well as life and death. There is no middle or third way for God’s image-bearers. We’re either marching toward death or letting the Spirit move us to life.

In verse 10, what’s more, Paul insists the Spirit gives life because of dikaiosynen (“righteousness”). Yet he doesn’t make clear to whose righteousness he refers. Preachers stay on safe ground when we profess Jesus was the perfectly righteous Son of God. We can also remind God’s adopted children that because of Christ’s saving life, death and resurrection God now both views and treats God’s people as though we were as righteous as our adopted Elder Brother was.

The Spirit graces verse 11 with a decidedly eschatological “flavor.” “If the Spirit of him who raised [egeirantos] Jesus from the dead [nekron] lives in you,” Paul professes there, “he who raised [egeiras] Christ from the dead will also give life [zoopoiesei] to your mortal [thneta] bodies [somata] because of his Spirit who lives in you.”

Eugene Peterson’s The Message sees this gift of a resurrected life as something God grants to God’s dearly beloved people even before our bodies die. It paraphrases verse 11 as meaning, “When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life.” Though Christians’ mortal bodies begin dying the moment they’re conceived, the Spirit who dwells in Jesus’ friends graces us with the beginnings of a Christ-like life.

That Christ-like life, however, will be most manifest when Christ returns to zoopoiesei (“raise”) our bodies to life and give them a home in the new earth and heaven. Those resurrection bodies will no longer be dead in any sense of the word. They will, instead, be characterized and filled with life and peace.

Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue’s Khosru is an Iranian refugee who attends school in Oklahoma. His description of a Persian rugs’ flaw sounds a bit like Paul’s description of the mind of death. Khosru writes about Persian rugs: “No matter which grade or pattern — no matter even if the greatest grandmother in the whole world wove it — every rug has a Persian flaw.

“The artisans of Kashan and Isfahan and Tabriz and Mashhad knew that only God was perfect — the only one who could listen to and speak the perfect truth. To remind themselves, and to show their humility, they would purposefully include one missed knot in every rug, one imperfection.”

Khosru further muses, “I think it’s pretty funny that people would mistake themselves for perfect if they didn’t include a hole in a rug. But that’s the whole point of the Persian flaw — it’s there to remind you of all the flaws, and even the flaw that makes you unable to see them in the first place.”

[Note: For the Year A Season of Lent and leading up to Easter, CEP has, in addition to these weekly sermon commentaries, a special Lent and Easter Resource Page with links to whole sermons, commentary on Lenten texts, and more.]