ROMANS 8:1-17

Alexander Whyte, a famous Scottish minister, told his congregation, “You'll not get out of Romans 7 while I am your preacher.” I'm a not-so-famous Scotch-Irish teacher but I am going to say the something similar: “You can't get out of Romans 7 quite yet while I am your teacher.”

J. I. Packer said that Romans 8 is like the summit of Mt. Everest. It is the highpoint of the book, but you cannot appreciate it until you realize how far you have come from Romans 1-7.

Romans 7:21-25 Let's briefly review this last part of Chapter 7 as background.

Verse 21: “Law”: not the Mosaic Law but a general principle of behavior controlling Paul's life.

Verse 23: Screwtape says to his nephew Wormwood as they are trying to tempt a soldier: “His faculties and powers were enemy-occupied territory.” (C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters) Lewis compares the two types of wars and shows how Satan can change his strategy when one type of attack fails.

Verse 24: “Body of death” may mean this mass of sin. Or it may refer to the physical body in which the law of sin is operative and leads to death. One translation refers to it as “doomed body.” That condition prevails as long as we occupy these mortal bodies.

Verses 24-25a: It is sometimes too easy for us to take our Christian victory for granted. Paul here expresses with great feeling the depths and heights of human emotion. Both are cries of a mature believer. Paul's shout recognizes that only in Christ can the struggle against evil be won since Christ's death conquered evil. John Stott: “I do not myself believe that the Christian ever, in this life, passes for good and all out of the one cry into the other.”

Verse 25b. “I myself” makes it clear that Paul is not avoiding responsibility by saying that the flesh is responsible.

“Mind” means the higher mental part of a man which initiates thoughts and puts them into action, as opposed to the mere physical component: the same as “inmost man” of v. 22.

Some would like to delete this last sentence and others move it to a place earlier in the chapter because it seems like an anticlimax. It recognizes that life on earth for the Christian will be one of inner conflict, a thought further developed in the next chapter (read Romans 8:22-23). It reminds us that the struggle is not over even though we are assured of the ultimate victory.

One component left out of this whole chapter is the Holy Spirit. That will also be covered in the next chapter. In Chapter 7 the conflict is viewed as one between the mind and the flesh. In Romans 8 it will be viewed from a different perspective as between the Holy Spirit and the flesh, with the Holy Spirit coming to the aid of the mind. In the first 17 verses of that chapter “Spirit” appears 15 times and “flesh” 13 times.

Before beginning Romans 8, read II Peter 3:15-16. Much of the problem in understanding these passages is not cultural, historical, geographical, grammatical or literary but arises from different word definitions. The key terms appearing in Romans 8 generally appear as contrasts, and do not occur in a vacuum.

Flesh (sarx) vs. Spirit (pneuma)

1. Hellenistic and Gnostic Dualism

flesh = body (sinful)

spirit = higher principle (good)

2. Rabbinical Doctrine (Two natures struggle for control and the strongest one wins. Thus, man unaided has the power to be good.)

flesh = evil intentions

spirit = good inclinations

3. Rudolf Bultmann (But Paul's sins of the flesh include “spiritual” sins such as idolatry and sorcery.)

flesh = realm of earthly, external existence

spirit = realm of the eternal

4. Usual Meaning by Paul

flesh = unregenerate man

spirit = Holy Spirit

Other meanings:

flesh: bodily tissue, physical body as a whole (II Corinthians 4:10-11 and in the last usage in Romans 8:3), man in reference to his origins (Romans 9:3,8), man in terms of his outward conditions and relationships (II Corinthians 5:16), human nature.

spirit (there was no capitalization in the original Greek): a power or influence (8:15), a disposition or frame of mind (8:15), a component of man's make-up (8:16)

Three-fold nature: spirit, soul, and body (I Thessalonians 5:23). But many commentators feel that spirit/soul is describing the same immaterial part of man in its higher and lower forms.

Two-fold nature (elsewhere in Paul, for example Romans 8:10): spirit and body (Look at Hebrews 4:12: “piercing even the division between soul and spirit.)

Below are a number of quotations from prominent commentators attempting to define the word “flesh:”

1. The whole personality of man as organized in the wrong direction, as directed to earthly pursuits rather than the service of God. (New Bible Commentary)

2. The evil intentionality and sphere in which man is hopelessly caught unless he is saved by the Spirit and grace. (Marcus Barth)

3. Man at his weakest and most vulnerable. (Victor Hamilton)

4. Human nature as controlled and directed by sin. (John Murray)

5. Human nature regarded as the seat and vehicle of sinful desire. (William Hendricksen)

6. The outlook oriented towards the self, that which pursues its own ends in self-sufficient independence of God. (Anthony Thiselton)

7. Fragile, mortal humanness severed from God's life and ultimate meaning. (N. R. Needham)

8. The entire man who is not reborn is flesh, even in his spirit. (Martin Luther)

9. Seeing nothing beyond the here and now, wrapped up in the things one wants or has set one's seal of approval on. (Leon Morris)

With that long introduction, we are now ready to tackle Chapter 8.

Romans 8:1-4

Verse 1: “Condemnation” is strong word in Greek implying punishment or doom.

“No condemnation” expresses the condition at the Final Judgment, not the present struggles described at the end of Chapter 7.

KJV adds at end “who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.”

Verse 2: “Me” = “you” or “us” in other manuscripts.

Verses 2-3: Law = principle in v. 2 and Mosaic law in v. 3.

Verse 3: “Weakness” here is not a relative quantity, but an absolute. It doesn't mean that the law was weak, but that it was powerless, totally incapable to save us and not designed to do so.

“Likeness of sinful flesh” is carefully worded by Paul to guard against two opposite heresies. He doesn't say “in sinful flesh” (i.e., Christ was wholly human) or “in the likeness of flesh” (i.e. Christ is wholly divine). This phrase teaches His identity with humanity without being identified with our sinful nature.

The Greek reads literally “For sin.” But NIV has “as a sin offering,” echoing the Septuagint's use of the phrase applied to sacrifices for sin.

Verse 4: “Walk according to” This is the first of many phrases denoting our identification with either the Spirit or the flesh. Others are: “live according to (v. 5), “in the” (v. 8), “debtors to” (v. 12), and “led by” (v. 14).

Romans 8:5-8

Another description of identification appears in these verses. The verb phronema (“set one's mind on”) appears only here in the whole Bible. It denotes not just an attitude of mind; it means aiming at or striving for something. Several commentators point out that there is a close relationship seen in these verses between what one thinks and how one acts.

Verse 6: “Death” is ultimate separation from God while “life and peace” is fellowship with God.

Verse 7. “It is not just being slightly uncooperative, this is downright hostility.” (Leon Morris)

Romans 8:9-11

These verses express an incipient trinitarianism with interchangeable phrases “Spirit of God” and “Spirit of Christ” (v. 9) and “Christ..in you” and “the Spirit in you” (vv. 10-11).

Gordon Fee notes that whenever “Spirit of Christ” is used by Paul, it refers to the work of Christ. He says that in Chapter 8 Paul is tying together the work of Christ in Romans 6 with that of the Spirit in Chapter 8. Two other times Paul distinguishes a believer from a non-believer by whether he has the Spirit (I Corinthians 2:12-14; 12:3). Without the Spirit, a person does not comprehend the work of Christ and cannot confess him as Lord.

Verse 10: “Dead” = doomed to die.

Verse 11: Promise of spiritual life now and a resurrected body later.

Romans 8:12-13

Verse 12: The sentence here breaks off in the middle and implies that we are debtors to the Spirit. It starts out with a strong expression which in the Greek is literally “wherefore therefore.” It is a deduction from the theological truths that preceded in order to give an application in living.

Verse 13: John Murray: “A believer's once-for-all death to the law and sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members: it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.” You might want to read that sentence over again for emphasis.

Romans 8:14-15a

These images of being led by the Spirit (pillar of cloud?) and falling back into slavery may be drawn from the Exodus experience. (Remember the cries of the Israelites in the desert longing to be back in Egypt.) “Led” doesn't refer to a mystical experience of being led by inward voices or visions, but to not living after the way of the flesh, as made clear in verse 13.

Romans 8:15b-17

Abba is an Aramaic word for Daddy. There is an indication that the Lord's Prayer was given originally in Aramaic and started out with “Abba.” Paul may be stating that Christ, in giving this prayer to his followers gave them the permission to address God in this familiar form. See Galatians 4:6. The same verb translated as “cry” appears in both passages.

Verse 17a: The background may be Greek and Roman adoption procedures of the time period (unknown in Jewish law and tradition). These were carried out in the presence of witnesses such as in these verses and gave the same rights to adopted children as biological children had.

Verse 17b: The promise of glorification comes, as we have seen in earlier passages in Paul, together with the promise of suffering.