"Flesh and Spirit"

F. F. BRUCE



Rom 8:6-15

"For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-- for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"

"To be “in the Spirit” is for Paul the opposite of being “in the flesh”. All believers, according to him, are “in the Spirit”: “you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit”, he tells the Roman Christians, “if the Spirit of Christ really dwells in you. Any one who has not the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (Romans 8:9). The two following sentences begin with the conditional clauses, “But if Christ is in you . . .” (Romans 8:10) and “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you . . .” (Romans 8:11). It appears, then, that there is no difference between the indwelling of the Spirit and the indwelling of the risen Christ, so far as the believer’s experience is concerned, although this does not mean that Paul identified the risen Christ and the Spirit outright. There is a dynamic equivalence between them,²⁴ but they are nevertheless distinguished. The Spirit conveys the resurrection life of Christ to believers (which may be a further reason for his being called the Spirit of Christ), and in doing so he conveys the assurance that they in their turn will rise in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection — the assurance that “he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). This is one of the most distinctive Pauline insights regarding the Spirit: it is because of this that he describes the Spirit as the “first fruits” of the resurrection life (Romans 8: 23), the “seal” and “guarantee” — the arrhabōn or initial down-payment — of the heritage of glory into which they will then be ushered (2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:13f.).²⁵ The Spirit not only makes the benefits of Christ’s saving work effective in them, but also enables them to appropriate and enjoy in advance the benefits of the age to come."

(At the time of this writing, F.F. Bruce was Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester, England and editor of The Evangelical Quarterly. The excerpt is taken from his book, Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free, (Eerdmans: 1977, Chapter 19).