Romans 8:1-11 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson brings to mind a ceramic plate that I received for serving on the Calvin University’s Board of Trustees’ Student Life Committee. Its multi-layered motto of Calvin’s Student Life ministry surrounds a lovely image of the symbol of the Spirit that is a dove whose wings are outstretched.

The plate reads “Learning to love the things God loves.” That phrase echoes, among other passages, Romans 8:5’s “Those who live in accordance with [kata*] the Spirit have their minds [phronousin] set on what the Spirit desires.”

But not long after I received that plate someone accidentally broke it. While we were able to repair it, it still bears the visible scars of its fall. Those flaws in some ways remind me of how difficult it can be to love the things the Spirit loves. Sin still has the power to tempt God’s dearly beloved people to love not what God but sin and Satan love.

Romans 8 is arguably among the most meaningful chapters in the entire Bible. However, it picks up, carries forward and reflects the ongoing conflict between God and sin. Christ defeated sin at Calvary’s cross. But it’s as if sin didn’t yet get that message. It still wreaks havoc not just in God’s beloved world, but also in God’s adopted children.

“There is,” it’s as if Paul shouts in verse 1, “no [ouden] condemnation [katakrima] for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Those who have received God’s amazing grace with our faith don’t have to fear hearing God solemn, “I never knew you.” The apostle insists people whom God has graciously united to Jesus Christ no longer need to live under what The Message paraphrases as the “continuous, low-lying black cloud” that is the worry that God will eternally reject us.

After all, “through Christ the law [nomos] of the Spirit who gives life [zoes] has set [us] free [eleutherosen] from the law of sin [hamartias] and death [thanatou]” (2). While the Scriptures employ the term nomos (“law”) in a number of ways, here the apostle seems to use it as a word for power. So as the New Living Translation of the Bible (NLT) paraphrases verse 2, Paul insists, “the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.”

But, of course, sin still “flexes its muscles,” even in Christians’ lives. In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul repeatedly refers to that persistence by referring to, among other things, “the flesh” [tes sarkos]. While the Greek word can be used to describe human or animal flesh, the apostle appears to have something slightly different in mind here. The NLT and Message both paraphrase sarkos as “the sinful nature.” So “the flesh” seems to reflect human’s natural slavery to sin, Satan and death.

In verse 4 Paul grieves how God’s image bearers naturally “live according to the flesh [kata sarka].” Without the redeeming work of Christ and transforming work of the Spirit humans let sin, Satan and death control our lives.

In fact, the apostle goes on to imply, sometimes even Jesus’ own friends, in the words of verse 5, “live according to the flesh [and] have their minds [phronousin] set on what the flesh desires.” We voluntarily trade in God’s loving supervision of our lives for sin and Satan’s despotic control over them.

Those who choose to remain enslaved to that deadly slavery are “hostile [echthra] to God, [they] don’t submit [ouch hypostassetai] to God’s law, nor can [dynatai] [they] do so” (7). According to verse 8, by nature those whom God creates in God’s image quite simply “cannot please [aresai ou] God.”

In fact, Paul insists “the mind governed by the flesh [tes sarkos] is death [thanatos]” (6). In other words, giving free reign to our sinful human nature doesn’t just lead to spiritual death. It is death itself. Those who let sin and Satan control our lives are like walking dead people. Our hearts may still beat, and our brains may still function. But we are naturally already dead in the most important ways.

Wise preachers might prayerfully choose to let the Spirit direct us in two ways regarding this grim assessment of human nature. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson graphically points to the horrific and ghastly plight from which God graciously rescues us in Jesus Christ. Jesus’ followers naturally let sin, Satan and death dictate our every moment. We are by nature not indifferent or even neutral but hostile toward God. No matter how hard even God’s dearly beloved people try to please God, we are naturally incapable of doing so.

Our neighbors who haven’t yet received God’s grace with their faith in Jesus Christ remain in that spiritual quicksand. The Spirit may restrain their most sinful behaviors. The Spirit may even equip them to be nice people. But our unbelieving neighbors are, quite simply, so hostile to God that they are incapable of satisfying God. This puts their whole being into eternal danger.

Christians sometimes like to argue about the necessity of sharing by word and deed the gospel of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. Romans 8 calls us to reconsider our ambivalence about it. Paul reminds us those who haven’t yet received God’s grace aren’t just failing to live in the ways for which God created us. They’re also condemned inmates on spiritual death row whose appeals may be rapidly running out.

Thanks be to God, then, that God has graciously set us free. Because for Jesus’ sake God has granted Christians clemency, we are no longer on spiritual death row. Even God’s adopted children can’t be good enough at obeying the law (3) in order to free ourselves. However, the Spirit has freed us from the prison sin, Satan and death erected and in which we naturally live.

All of this happened, sings Paul in verse 3, because God graciously sent God’s “own son in the likeness [homoiomati] of sinful flesh [sarkos hamartias] to be a sin offering.” God’s only natural Son, Jesus Christ, gave up the heavenly realm’s glory in order to take on humanity’s comparative inglory. The One we call Jesus became like us in every conceivable way except that he remained perfectly obedient in order to rescue God’s disobedient people.

In verses 5-11 Paul goes on to list some of the results of that gracious work of rescue. It’s not just that, as we’ve already noted, “those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires” (5). It’s also that, according to verse 6, “the mind [phronema] governed by the Spirit is life [zoe] and peace [eirene].” The Spirit’s gracious leading doesn’t just eventually lead to life and peace. The Spirit also graces Jesus’ friends with the way of living for which God created us that includes a life at peace with both God and our neighbor.

As a result, the apostle continues in verse 10, “If Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death [nekron] because of sin [hamartian], the Spirit gives life because of righteousness [dikaiosynen].” Because Christians may misunderstand parts of this profession. preachers may prayerfully choose to parse this out.

We may note the nekron (“death”) to which this verse refers has a double meaning. Our bodies are subject to physical death. Unless Christ returns first, all of us will eventually die. But Paul may have more centrally in mind the spiritual death that is our natural alienation from God and our neighbor. Even Jesus’ closest friends remain vulnerable to the temptation to fall back into our deathly ways.

What’s more, the dikaiosynen (“righteousness”) by which we gain life is not our own. Even God’s image-bearers whom God has graciously rescued can’t be good enough to make us acceptable to God. The righteousness that earns God’s acceptance of us is Christ’s alone. God views and treats us as God’s adopted children not because of our obedience, but because of Christ’s.

Paul emphasizes the Trinitarian nature of God’s redeeming work by bracketing verse 11 with a reference to “the Spirit of him who raised [egeirantos] Jesus from the dead living in” us. That Spirit, promises the apostle, “will also give life [zoopoiesei] to our mortal bodies [thneta somata].” The life the Spirit already gives to Jesus’ followers will be given and enjoyed most fully at the return of Jesus. Our bodies will die unless Jesus comes back first. But the Spirit will graciously raise them and completely restore them so they’re fit to enjoy the glory of God’s presence in the new earth and heaven.

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

Illustration

The famous Jewish refugee Anne Frank wrote in her diary about her diary. It hints that she expected to die before she got old. In her entry she noted, “I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for giving me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me.”