Romans 8:12 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Therefore, brethren As if he had said, Since we have received such benefits, and expect still more and greater, we are debtors We are under obligations; not to the flesh Not to our animal appetites and passions; we have formerly given them more than their due, and we owe our natural corruption no service; to live after the flesh The desires and inclinations of which we ought not to follow; but we are under an indispensable obligation to be more and more holy. Or, as Dr. Doddridge paraphrases the verse, “Since it is certain the gratifications of the flesh can do nothing for us like that which will be done at the resurrection; and since all present enjoyments are mean and worthless when compared with that; here is a most substantial argument for that mortification and sanctity which the gospel requires. And it necessarily follows that we are debtors to the Spirit, which gives us such exalted hopes, and not unto the flesh, that we should live after the dictates, desires, and appetites thereof.” “To be a debtor,” says Dr. Macknight, “is to be under a constraining obligation, Romans 1:14. The apostle's meaning is, Since men are under the gracious dispensation of the gospel, which furnishes them with the most powerful assistances for correcting the depravity of their nature, and for performing good actions, they are under no necessity, either moral or physical, to gratify the lusts of the flesh, as they would be, if, in their present weakened state, they had no advantages but what they derived from mere law,” the law of Moses, or law of nature. “Further, we are under no obligation to live according to the flesh, as it offers no pleasures of any consequence to counterbalance the misery which God will inflict on all who live according to it.” For if ye Though professing Christians, and even eminent for a high and distinguishing profession; live after the flesh Be governed by your animal appetites, and corrupt nature; (see on Romans 8:4-9;) ye shall die Shall perish by the sentence of a holy and just God, no less than if you were Jews or heathen. But if ye through the Spirit Through his enlightening, quickening, and sanctifying influences, and the exercise of those graces which by regeneration he has implanted in your souls; do mortify Resist, subdue, and destroy; Gr. θανατουτε, make dead; the deeds of the body Or of the flesh, termed, Galatians 5:19, the works of the flesh: and including, not only evil actions, but those carnal affections and inclinations, whence all the corrupt deeds arise, wherein the body or flesh is concerned; ye shall live The life of faith, love, and obedience, more abundantly here, and the life of glory hereafter. Here we have the fourth motive to holiness: the Spirit of God dwelling in believers, to enable them to mortify their corrupt passions and tempers.