Friday DIVE – October 24, 2025 – Romans 8:5-11

Before we dive into the text for this session … let’s remind ourselves of some things we saw last session …

Romans 8:1

¹ There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,  who^[NU] do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.   

• Why therefore? … Because of what, exactly, is there no condemnation?
  • Note Romans 7:24-25.  O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?  ²⁵ I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!   So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.  
  • Because  Jesus will deliver … there is no condemnation.

Romans 8:2-4

² For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  ³ For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did  by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,  ⁴ that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.  

According to Guzik …

Romans 8:1 tells us we are free from  the guilt of sin.  Romans 8:2 tells us we are free from  the power of sin.

for what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh: The law can do many things.  It can guide us, teach us, and tell us about God’s character.  But the law cannot give energy to our flesh; it can give us the standard, but it can’t give us the power to please God.

“Moses’ law has right but not might; sin’s law has might but not right; the law of the Spirit has both right and might.” (Morris, quoting Manson)

We could not say that Jesus came in sinful flesh, because He was sinless. We could not say that Jesus came in the likeness of flesh, because He really was human, not just like a human. But we can say that Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh because although He was human, He was not sinful in Himself.

ii. He condemned sin in the flesh:  Sin was condemned in the flesh of Jesus as He bore the condemnation we deserved.  Since we are in Christ, the condemnation we deserve passes us over.

that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us:  Because Jesus fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law, and because we are in Christ, we fulfill the law.  The law is fulfilled in us in regard to obedience, because Jesus’ righteousness stands for ours.  The law is fulfilled in us in regard to punishment, because any punishment demanded by the law was poured out upon Jesus.

Paul does not say that we fulfill the righteous requirement of the law.  He carefully says that the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us.  It isn’t fulfilled by us, but in us.

ii. Simply put, Jesus is our substitute.  Jesus was treated as a sinner   so that we can be treated as righteous.

Walking in the Spirit means that the course, the direction, the progress of one’s life is directed by  the Holy Spirit.  It is continued and progressive motion.

According to Barclay …

THE LIBERATION OF OUR HUMAN NATURE ( Romans 8:1-4 )

When Paul is talking of the Christians, he is not using flesh simply in the sense of the body, as we say flesh and blood  … He really means human nature in all its weakness and he means human in its vulnerability to sin.  He means that part of man which gives sin its bridgehead.  He means sinful human nature, apart from Christ, everything that attaches a man to the world instead of to God. To live according to the flesh is to live a life dominated by the dictates and desires of sinful human nature instead of a life dominated by the dictates and the love of God.  The flesh is the lower side of man’s nature.  

The flesh to him was not a physical thing but spiritual. It was human nature in all its sin and weakness; it was all that man is without God and without Christ.  

So Paul says in this passage that there was a time when the Christian was at the mercy of his own sinful human nature.  In that state the law simply became something that moved him to sin and he went from bad to worse, a defeated and frustrated man.  But, when he became a Christian, into his life there came the surging power of the Spirit of God, and, as a result, he entered into victorious living.   

In the second part of the passage Paul speaks of the effect of the work of Jesus on us.  It is complicated and difficult, but what Paul is getting at is this. 

Let us remember that he began all this by saying that every man sinned in Adam.  We saw how the Jewish conception of solidarity made it possible for him to argue that, quite literally, all men were involved in Adam’s sin and in its consequence — death. 

But there is another side to this picture. Into this world came Jesus; with a completely human nature; and he brought to God a life of perfect obedience, of perfect fulfilment of God’s law.  Now, because Jesus was fully a man, just as we were one with Adam, we are now one with him; and, just as we were involved in Adam’s sin, we are now involved in Jesus’ perfection.  In him, mankind brought to God the perfect obedience, just as in Adam mankind brought to God the fatal disobedience.  Men are saved because they were once involved in Adam’s sin but are now involved in Jesus’ goodness.   

That is Paul’s argument, and, to him and to those who heard it, it was completely convincing, however hard it is for us to grasp it.  Because of what Jesus did, there opens out to the Christian a life no longer dominated by the flesh but by that Spirit of God, which fills a man with a power not his own.  The penalty of the past is removed and strength for his future is assured.

Now that we’ve reminded ourselves of the context … Let’s dive in … and see what we can glean from Romans 8:5-11.

Romans 8:5-7

⁵ For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.   ⁶ For to be ^[b]carnally^[fleshly] minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.  ⁷ Because the ^[c]carnal ^[fleshly] mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.  

According to Guzik … 

those who live according to the flesh … those who spend more time doing what their human natures tell them to do … those who spend most of their time thinking about material/earthly things/matters

set their minds on the things of the flesh: Paul gives an easy way for us to determine if we walk in the Spirit or walk in the flesh – to simply see where our mind is set.  The mind is the strategic battleground where the flesh and the Spirit fight.

We shouldn’t think those who set their minds on the things of the flesh are only notorious sinners.  They may be noble people who have good intentions.  Peter meant well when he told Jesus to avoid the cross, but Jesus responded to Peter with these strong words: you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men (Matthew 16:23). (Guzik)

For to be carnally minded is death: When a person is carnally minded, he/she is fleshly-minded … and ends up living according to the flesh (doing what human nature wants).

When a person spends most time thinking about things that please human nature, then that is going to lead to death.  Note Proverbs 14:12:  There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.

When our minds are set on the things of the flesh (carnally minded) we bring death into our lives. But walking in the Spirit brings life and peace.

i. We must, however, guard against a false spirituality and see that Paul means the flesh insofar as it is an instrument in our rebellion against God.  Paul is not talking about normal physical and emotional needs we may think about, only the sinful gratification of those needs.

because the carnal mind is enmity against God:  The flesh battles against God because it does not want to be crucified and surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ.  It does not want to live out Galatians 5:24: those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  In this battle to tame the flesh, the law is powerless.

Paul didn’t say that the carnal mind was at enmity with God – he put it even stronger than that. The carnal mind is enmity against God. “It is not black, but blackness; it is not at enmity, but enmity itself; it is not corrupt, but corruption; it is not rebellious, it is rebellion; it is not wicked, it is wickedness itself.  The heart, though it be deceitful, is positively deceit; it is evil in the concrete, sin in the essence, it is the distillation, the quintessence of all things that are vile; it is not envious against God, it is envy; it is not at enmity, it is actual enmity.” (Spurgeon)

it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be: We can try to do good in life without being subject to the law of God.  We may hope to put God “in debt” to us by good works, thinking God owes us. But it doesn’t work.  In the flesh, we cannot please God, even if the flesh does religious things that are admired by men.

Romans 8:8

⁸ So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  

• The operative word, for me, in that sentence is cannot.
  • Paul did NOT say they may not (which is about permission) … He said they cannot (which is about ability).
  • Man in the flesh is not able to please God (by keeping the law or whatever).

Romans 8:9

⁹ But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. 

According to Guzik …

This verse is telling us how Christians are empowered to please God … it is by living in the Spirit.

you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you: Because  the Holy Spirit is given to each believer when they are born again, every Christian has within themselves a principle higher and more powerful than the flesh. (Guzik)

Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His: This means every believer has the Holy Spirit.  It is a misnomer to divide Christians among the “Spirit-filled” and the “non-Spirit-filled.”  If a person is not filled with the Holy Spirit, they are not a Christian at all. (Guzik)

However, many do miss out on living the Christian life in the constant fullness of the Spirit because they are not constantly being filled with the Holy Spirit as Paul commanded in Ephesians 5:18.  They have no experience of what Jesus spoke about when He described rivers of living water flowing from the believer (John 7:37-39).

• How does one know that they have the Spirit?
  • Ask these questions:
    • Has the Spirit led you to Jesus?
    • Has the Spirit put in you the desire to honor Jesus?
    • Is the Spirit leading you to be more like Jesus?
    • Is the Spirit at work in your heart?

Romans 8:10-11

¹⁰ And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  ¹¹ But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also  give life  to your mortal bodies  ^[d]through ^{[because of]} His Spirit  who dwells in you.    

According to Guzik …

And if the Spirit of Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin:

• • When Paul says “if the Spirit of Christ is in you” , the “if” is being used sort of rhetorically — so Paul’s statement should be better be understood as “because the Spirit of Christ is in you ….”
  • Therefore, because Jesus lives in us, the old man (body) is dead, but the Spirit lives and reigns, and will live out His salvation even through our mortal bodies through resurrection.  
  • Not only are we in Christ (Romans 8:1), but He also is in you, and because God cannot abide a sinful home, the body (old man) had to die when Jesus came in.

According to Barclay …

THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF LIFE ( Romans 8:5-11 )

Paul is drawing a contrast between two kinds of life.

(i) There is the life which is dominated by sinful human nature; whose focus and centre is self; whose only law is its own desires; which takes what it likes where it likes.  In different people that life will be differently described.  It may be passion-controlled, or lust-controlled, or pride-controlled, or ambition-controlled.  Its characteristic is its absorption in the things that human nature without Christ sets its heart upon.

(ii) There is the life that is dominated by the Spirit of God.  As a man lives in the air, he lives in Christ, never separated from him (See Acts 17:28).  As he breathes in the air and the air fills him, so Christ fills him (See John 14:20).  He has no mind of his own; Christ is his mind.  He has no desires of his own; the will of Christ is his only law.  He is Spirit-controlled, Christ-controlled, God-focused.

These two lives are going in diametrically opposite directions.

• • The life that is dominated by the desires and activities of sinful human nature is on the way to death. 
    • In the most literal sense, there is no future in it — because it is getting further and further away from God.  To allow the things of the world completely to dominate life is self extinction; it is spiritual suicide. 
    • By living it, a man is making himself totally unfit ever to stand in the presence of God.  He is hostile to him, resentful of his law and his control.  God is not his friend but his enemy, and no man ever won the last battle against him.
  • The Spirit-controlled life, the Christ-centred life, the God-focused life is daily coming nearer heaven even when it is still on earth. 
    • It is a life which is such a steady progress to God that the final transition of death is only a natural and inevitable stage on the way. 
    • It is like Enoch who walked with God and God took him.  As the child said: “Enoch was a man who went on walks with God — and one day he didn’t come back.”

No sooner has Paul said this than an inevitable objection strikes him.  Someone may object: “You say that the Spirit-controlled man is on the way to life; but in point of fact every man must die.  Just what do you mean?”  Paul’s answer is this.  All men die because they are involved in the human situation. Sin came into this world and with sin came death, the consequence of sin.  Inevitably, therefore, all men die; but the man who is Spirit-controlled and whose heart is Christ-occupied, dies only to rise again.  Paul’s basic thought is that the Christian is indissolubly one with Christ.  Now Christ died and rose again; and the man who is one with Christ is one with death’s conqueror and shares in that victory.  The Spirit controlled, Christ-possessed man is on the way to life; death is but an inevitable interlude that has to be passed through on the way.