CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 8:5.—The state is indicated in Romans 7:25, when the mind can serve the law of God, and only the flesh is subject to the law of sin.
Romans 8:6. Carnally minded (φρόνημα τῆς σαρκός).—Lust, a figurative expression, occasioned by what precedes.
Romans 8:10. But the spirit is life.—Neither spiritual life nor happiness, but a physico-moral life in the fullest sense.
Romans 8:11.—The Spirit the pledge of our fellowship with the risen One (Phil.).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:5-13
Depression and elevation.—In this world we reckon up the human race by many gradations. In divine revelation the race is classified under two comprehensive terms. One class mind the things of the flesh, and the other mind the things of the Spirit. The one is carnally minded, and the other is spiritually minded. Godet speaks of the aspiration of the flesh. Surely the carnal mind does not aspire. It reaches out, not towards the higher, but towards the lower. The spiritual mind alone aspires in the true sense of that word. It reaches upwards towards the infinitely pure, good, and beautiful. The work of the carnal mind is depressing, for “to be carnally minded is death.” The result of the spiritual mind is elevation, for “to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Men deem it important to secure the titles and honours of this world; but the highest title and honour is to be spiritually minded Let us seek for divine grace, for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, that we may become spiritually minded, and have that more abundant life and ever-increasing peace which is the promised inheritance.
I. Define the two characters.—The carnally minded is not merely the glutton, the drunkard, and the sensualist. A man may be a respectable member of society, and yet be carnally minded; for his thoughts, cares, and aims are confined to this present world. The philosopher who exalts reason, the poet who revels in bright visions, the philanthropist who works from an earthly standpoint merely to ameliorate human woe, the orator who conveys thoughts that breathe in words that burn, the patriot who shows a love of fatherland, may be all carnally minded. They mind the things of the flesh, and their vision is bounded by the things of time and sense. There is no heavenward aspiration. They may be in a state of enmity against God, which is characteristic of the carnal mind. The carnal mind is enmity against the God of love and of wisdom. The creature is in a state of enmity against that Creator who has made the senses to be the avenues of pleasure, who has created a world of beauty to minister to their delight. The fallen creature is in a state of enmity against that Creator who has devised the mediatorial scheme for redemption and salvation. He may not be subject to the law of God. The carnal mind is proud, and will not bow in subjection to the Supreme. Outwardly the man may obey; inwardly he rebels. Divine subjections reach to human volitions. Human subjections are outward and material, while the divine are inward and moral. The carnal mind cannot please God. There is dissimilarity, which causes repulsion. Like attracted to like. The carnal mind cannot walk in fellowship with the spiritual mind of the Eternal. The depraved and the Holy cannot sweetly coalesce. The carnal man is in a condition of guilt. Conscience is uneasy. He cannot please, he does not attempt to please, and he is displeasing to the infinite Justice. The spiritually minded are those whose thoughts, cares, and aims are for the things of the Spirit. This is their general and prevailing characteristic. We are not thus born. The first birth introduces us carnally minded; the second birth constitutes us, in germ at least, spiritually minded. The spiritually-minded man is one whose sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who is an heir of heaven, who seeks so to pass through time as not to lose sight of the things of eternity, who seeks to use this world so as not to abuse. The spiritually minded is one in whom dwells the Spirit of Christ. The divine Spirit animates and elevates the human spirit. The divine Spirit impels to aspiration, and satisfies the upward longings of the yearning human spirit. The two spirits move in blissful union. This is so complete that they are as one spirit. The Spirit of Christ, loving, peaceful, and benign, has taken possession of the human spirit; all disturbers are driven forth, and a beautiful divine kosmos rises out of the repulsive chaos. The spiritually minded are those who please God. How wondrous the suggestion that humanity can touch divinity! How elevating the conception that human doings can affect divine pleasures! Away with the depressing suggestion that man is beneath the notice of the divine! In the beloved Son God is well pleased; and shall He not be pleased, for the Son’s sake and through His work, with all those in whom that Son’s Spirit dwells?
II. Depict the two results.—“Carnally minded is death.” “Spiritually minded is life and peace.” The carnal mind is death, for there is:
1. Paralysis of the powers. Physical sensation has not ceased; the emotional nature is not in a state of complete stupor. The carnally-minded man has his better impulses. Sometimes he is touched and moved by what appear to be divine instincts. But there is a paralysis of the God-apprehending powers of his nature. His soul does not aspire to the true soul-rest. He does not attempt to climb the sublime heights where divine visions are vouchsafed.
2. A creeping corruption. Physical death corrupts. Sin corrupts where it touches. Where sin reigns a corrupt force creeps. Sin spoils our pleasant palaces, defiles the throne, and plucks every jewel from the crown.
3. Cessation of the nobler affinities. Sin separated Adam from God. Guilty Adam did not discern the strains of fatherly love in the divine voice. Love has much work to break the spell of sin and win home the prodigal. Sin sends its victims to hiding-places in dark groves, to the far countries of want and wretchedness. Sin is death to all the home feelings. The carnally minded is dead in the finer emotions, the sweeter sensibilities, the divine affinities of his nature. The spiritually minded has:
1. A living peace. A state of quiescence may belong to the solid rock. The Stoic may have killed his emotions; the Fakeer may have reduced himself to the condition of a machine—withered and senseless. But the spiritual mind has a living peace. It is an inward force swaying and gently guiding.
2. A peaceful life. Outward, storms—inward, peace. A lighthouse rocked by the tempest in the rude cradle of the deep; the keepers calmly tending the light which is to cheer the mariner. Paul’s outward man touched and tossed by the rude tempest of persecution; the ego, the sublime personality, was calmly tending the eternal lights.
3. An ever-expanding life. “To be spiritually minded is life.” All other life is poor compared with this. This is more abundant life. This is eternal life. What do we know of life in this death-stricken world? A Samson appears once in the world’s history to give us some notion of physical life. A Solomon and, nearer our own times, a Milton and a Shakespeare tell of the largeness of intellectual life. Jesus Christ unfolds to our view the vast possibilities of the moral life. “To be spiritually minded is life.” It is a large word composed of four letters. Life from the Infinite permeating the finite. Life divine flowing through human valleys where death shadows darken.
4. An enlargement of view. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken the mortal bodies of those who are spiritually minded. There must be greater significance in Paul’s words than we have hitherto comprehended. We read them with a materalistic bias. Can it be that he who allowed his body to be buffeted and torn by persecutors thould hold out as a great prize the doctrine of the resurrection of the mere material nature? Would St. Paul rejoice that a defective body which hampered the workings of a sublime soul was to be raised from the grave? We do not yet know all that is meant by the resurrection of the dead. And we take refuge in the declaration that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. One thing is certain, that there will be a wondrous quickening. Life will triumph over death in miraculous manner. Life in the righteous already triumphs over death. The clergy are good lives on the assurance tables. A smile passes over the countenance of the sceptic. Good living, freedom from care, are the ready explanations. Are they the only class placed under like conditions? They are the only class who seek as a whole, in some measure, to attain a spiritual condition, and in doing so they realise the blessing even of physical life. But what is physical life? How poor its sensations! What is intellectual life? What is spiritual life? The realm glows in beauty where spiritual life abounds.
“Mortifying the deeds of the body.”—We have been sent into this world to live out our lives on the highest level, do all that lies in us towards completing our duty, and also make the most of this present world. But the man has not yet lived who did not find it easier to go down than to rise, who did not discover that it was easier to be soiled with sin than to keep unspotted. There is a throne in every heart; but the heart has not yet throbbed in-which there has not been a battle for the mastery—Satan striving for the throne with God. The text points out at least one fact, that this must be exactly reversed. Satan must have no standing-ground, and God must be king in man’s living temple. We shall find this no easy task. There will be a sharp, painful struggle; an agony will be felt in the soul; and thus we speak of “mortifying the deeds of the body.”
I. What is it to “live after the flesh”?—
1. Some have delighted to call a man “a mass of corruption”—e.g., the Puritan fathers. But have not all men, in some sort or other, some redeeming quality? Say, a splendid morality. But, unhappily, the law of life to such men has come to them, not from the fountain-head direct, but through some vitiated, mud-filled channel. These highly moral men perhaps are positively indifferent about God—their morality is of human conception; and that in one sense is “living after the flesh.”
2. What we are of ourselves, good as it may be, does not make us what we ought to be. If we are all in all to ourselves, if we have our own guide and rule of life, if we have not called God in to our assistance, we are certain not to walk aright. Whenever we do what we like, we are trying to tread the pathway of the Infinite with only finite power to guide us. If that be so, we are bound to have false and inadequate conceptions of life and destiny; and such a course one might call “living after the flesh.”
3. Some are led on by impulse. The flesh is more than spirit, appetite more than reason; passions are more than obligation. Their bodies get more care than their souls. That is “living after the flesh.” In short, a man lives after the flesh who treats the body and bodily interests as everything, and minds not the things of the soul. The body is not the most important part of a man. Beauty no guarantee of goodness.
II. Mark the inevitable struggle for supremacy.—In man there is a continual struggle—flesh against spirit, temporal advancement as against growth in grace, a constant estimate of the value of things, temporal things laying claim to man’s best energies, religious principles too often being put into the background. These are the mistakes of worldly life. Take one special tendency of modern life—the undue exaltation of intellect. The cultivation of the mind a great boon to humanity. It helps the onward sweep of civilisation, lifts men out of serfdom and ignorance into the liberty that becomes a man. But if intellect be placed before true religion, this is “living after the flesh.” This is putting “smaller” before “larger,” making “princelet” wield the sceptre over “emperor.”
III. Mark the plain duty of man.—He must “mortify the deeds of the body.” Its parallel in the Ephesians, “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind,” etc. If we find we are not all we should be, our struggle must be to undergo a thorough change. We are to go over our lives as we should over a garden, carefully, searchingly, pulling the weeds out by the roots, leaving only the good behind. Slay the evil habits, abolish unsafe rules, snap chains that bind us as sin-captives, get out of old ruts and step boldly on the way of life, drive out devils of hypocrisy and expediency, selfish hard-heartedness, and in the spirit of true humility kneel at the cross and claim the merits of the Saviour’s dying love. All that is hard, but it is a part of the mortification.
IV. There is a wrong way of mortification.—
1. Sudden determinations, when arrived at in our strength only, leave us as unsafe as if we went into the thick of the enemy without armour—e.g., a drunkard’s resolution to be sober broken in a few days.
2. The aiming at suffering as a mode of producing a change of heart—e.g., the monkish method of torture for penance.
3. Beecher points to those who, having strayed from virtue, never forget their error, but check every smile with “You remember,” and let the gall from the old bitterness exude on every flower of pleasure. This is not God’s way. He forgets our transgressions. Having repented, and honestly sought forgiveness, forget “those things which are behind,” etc.
V. The right way of mortification.—We have too many pet methods for making peace with God. Mortification of sinful habits not accomplished solely or primarily by bodily penance, but by divine grace. The right way is to go straight to the Saviour, and leave ourselves in His hands, asking God’s help in the struggle. You want peace? Seek it without delay from Him who alone is able to give it, Christ Jesus. Tell Him you have read His compassionate invitation to the labouring and heavy-laden. “Seek Christ Himself, and do not stop short of personal dealings with Him.” He will help you to mortify the sins, and you will find peace.—Albert Lee.
Things of the flesh, good and bad.—“The things of the flesh” are the bodily appetites, sympathies, and propensities. These are its great forces moving its members and its organs.
I. Things of the flesh are good when they are subordinated to the interests of the soul. When they are controlled by a holy intelligence, they are blessed handmaids to the spirit.
II. Things of the flesh are bad when they are allowed to hold empire over the soul. This they do in all unrenewed natures; the curse of humanity is when the body rules the intellect and conscience too. “What shall we eat—what shall we drink?” etc.
Things of the spirit, good and bad.—The things of the spirit are its moral intuitions, rational dictates, intuitive longings, and varied powers of thought and sentiment.
I. These things of the spirit are good when they control the things of the flesh, when they hold the body in absolute subjection, use it as an instrument.
II. These things of the spirit are bad when they are devoted to the things of the flesh. They are often thus devoted; souls are everywhere prostituted to animalism.—Homilist.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:5-11
Carnal mind enmity against God.—Frequent thoughts discover rooted affections. Operations of the mind are the indexes, κριτήρια, of a regenerate or unregenerate estate. If about carnal [things], they evidence the bent of the heart to be turned that way, and that worldly objects are dearest to them. If about spiritual, they manifest spiritual objects to be the most grateful to the soul. Carnal thoughts are signs of a languishing and feeble frame, but spiritual discover a well-tempered and complexioned soul; the most refined and elevated thoughts, which have no other groundwork than nature; the highest flights of an unregenerate soul by the wings of the greatest reason. The wisdom and virtues of the heathen were enmity, therefore translated by some sapientia carnis, the wisdom of the flesh. A state of nature is a state of enmity against God. Man is naturally an enemy to the sovereignty and dominion of God. “Not subject to the law of God.” By law I mean not here the moral law only, but the whole will and rule of God, which is chiefly discovered in His law. Every profane man is a natural man, and consequently an enemy. Wicked words are demonstrative, demonstratively denials of God. “Sensual” and “having not the Spirit” are put together. Every unrenewed man, though never so richly endowed with morals, is a natural man. A ψυχικὸς ἄνθρωπος is one led by the rational dictates of his mind, and σαρκικός is a man led by his sensitive affections. Though you have not outwardly the impurity of the flesh, yet you may flow with a greater impurity of the spirit. Though the interest of particular sins may be contrary to one another, yet they all conspire in a joint league against God. Scelera dissident. Sins are in conflict with one another; covetousness and prodigality, covetousness and intemperance, cannot agree, but they are all in an amicable combination against the interest of God. In betraying Christ Judas was actuated by covetousness, the high priest by envy, Pilate by popularity; but they all shook hands together in the murdering of Christ. And those various iniquities were blended together to make up one lump of enmity. Here is alienation, which is aversion; and enmity, which is opposition; and both seated in the mind, though some expound alienation according to outward, enmity according to inward, estate. But the apostle declares hatred to be complete in those two, alienation and enmity, which is both in mind and works—mind as the seat, works as the issues of it. Enemies in disposition and action, principle, and execution. Sin being the summum malum, the greatest evil, is naturally most opposite to God, who is the summum bonum, the greatest good. We hate God as a sovereign; man cannot endure a superior; he would be uncontrollable. We hate God as a lawgiver, as He is peccati prohibitor. We hate God as a judge, as autor legis and ultor legis, as peccati prohibitor and pœnœ executor. Fear is often the cause of hatred. Guilt makes malefactors tremble at the report of a judge’s coming. When this fear rises high, they hate the very being of God. This rises so high that it aims at the very essence of God, as in Spira’s case, who wished that he could destroy Him. This enmity to God’s law will appear in these ten things:
1. Unwillingness to know the law of God, inquire into it, or think of it.
2. Unwillingness to be determined by any law of God.
3. The violence man offers to those laws which God doth strictly enjoin and which He doth most delight in the performance of.
4. Man hates his own conscience when it puts him in mind of the law of God.
5. Man sets up another law in him in opposition to the law of God.
6. In being at greater pains and charge to break God’s law than is necessary to keep it. Men would rather be sin’s drudges than God’s freemen.
7. In doing that which is just and righteous upon any other consideration rather than of obedience to God’s will, when men will indent with God, and obey Him so far as may comport with their own ends:
(1) out of respect to some human consideration;
(2) out of affection to some base Just, some cursed end;
(3) out of slavish fear.
8. In being more observant of the laws of men than of the law of God. The fear of man is a more powerful curb to retain men in their duty than the fear of God.
9. In man’s unwillingness to have God’s law observed by any. Man would not have God have a loyal subject in the world.
10. In the pleasure we take to see His laws broken by others. Enmity to the mercy of God. God is not wronged more in any attribute by devils and men than in His mercy. This enmity against Christ reflects upon God Himself. Christ tells us often He was sent by God: an affront to an ambassador is an injury to the majesty he represents. Despising the embassy of an angel is an act of enmity against God, much more the despising the embassy of His own Son. Possess your hearts with great admiration of the grace of God towards you, in wounding this enmity in your hearts and changing your state. Inflame thy love to God by all the considerations thou canst possibly muster up. Undo thy former disaffection by a greater ardency of love. Sincerely aim at His glory.—Charnock.
Life a satisfied existence.—“Life,” in Scripture, denotes a fully satisfied existence, in which all the faculties find their full exercise and their true occupation. Man’s spirit, become the abode and organ of the divine Spirit, realises this life with a growing perfection to eternal life. Peace is the inward feeling of tranquillity which accompanies such an existence; it shows itself particularly in the absence of all fear in regard to death and judgment (Romans 8:1). There is no changing the nature of these two states and walks (Romans 8:5), and no arresting the latter in its onward march (Romans 8:6). The way of salvation is to pass from the first to the second, and not to relapse thereafter from the second to the first.—Godet.
Carnal man hates God.—Consider the object of man’s enmity—God. A good man hates evil, all evil, and is the irreconcilable enemy of sin in every form; but as regards the creature of God and his fellow-creature, he hates no man. The carnal mind, which is the characteristic of every unregenerate man, hates not only good men, but the good, holy, and all-perfect God. Indeed, his hatred to good men arises from his enmity against God, which calls forth his dislike to them—his envious revilings, and murderous hatred, as in Cain, who hated and slew his brother: “Wherefore? because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” Few men are willing to admit their enmity against God, however bitterly they vilify His people on account of bearing His image. “Ye shall,” says Jesus, “be hated of all men for My sake.” It is true that they disguise their enmity to Christ under the pretence of hatred to His people’s sins, and especially their hypocrisy. “You pretend,” says one, “to hate hypocrisy only; alas! what a scorn is it for profanity to hate hypocrisy.” Surely it is not because it is a sin, but for the very shadow of piety which it carries. You hate the thing itself so perfectly that you cannot bear the very picture of it. Do not deceive yourselves; the true quarrel is because they do not run to the same excess of riot with you. The principle of your hostility to them is the enmity which God hath put between the two families of Christ and Satan.—Parlane.
Sin the animating principle of the flesh.—Since all men are by nature fallen, all human flesh is by nature the dwelling-place of sin. Through the desires common to all flesh, the spirit of evil rules all men except those whom God has rescued. We cannot distinguish the influence of the flesh from the influence exerted through the flesh by the principle of sin. Hence sin may be looked upon as the animating principle of the flesh. The presence of this one spirit of evil in the many bodies of the unsaved gives additional unity to the idea of flesh. And since the influence of the flesh is always in the same direction, we may look upon the flesh as a living person cherishing always the one purpose of death. Many of the objects desired or disliked by the flesh can be obtained or avoided only by first obtaining other objects. Frequently all our mental and bodily powers are at work to get that which will preserve or indulge the body—e.g., efforts to make money are often put forth for this end. Such efforts really arise from the body; for they are prompted by the needs, desires, and dislikes of the body. I think we shall find that all sin arises thus. Hence the “works of the flesh” include every kind of sin.—Beet.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 8:12-13
Claims of the flesh.—I shall endeavour in the first place to settle the meaning of the terms “flesh” and “spirit” employed in the context, in order to a right conception of the import of the preposition; and in the second place compare and adjust the opposite claims of the flesh and of the spirit.
I. Flesh most properly denotes the body in contradistinction from the soul, the matter of which the corporeal structure is formed: “There is one flesh of men.” And—
II. As all men are possessed of this, it is by an easy figure of speech applied to denote human nature or mankind universally: “The end of all flesh is come before God.”
III. Because the fleshly or corporeal part of our nature may be perceived by the eye, it is sometimes used to denote that in religion which is merely outward and ceremonial. Thus St. Paul says, “Having begun in the Spirit, are ye made perfect by the flesh?” Thus the same apostle speaks of carnal ordinances.
IV. On account of the deep and universal corruption of human nature, and this corruption displaying itself in a peculiar manner in producing an addictedness to the indulgence of bodily or fleshly appetites, the term “flesh” is frequently used to denote moral corruption or human nature considered as corrupt. It is manifest from the consideration of the context that this is the sense in which it is to be taken here. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”—that is, corrupt and sinful.
Secondly, we shall examine and adjust their respective claims, that we may discern to which the preference is due, and come then fully to acquiesce in the decision of the apostle: “Therefore we are debtors; not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.” There is an ellipsis in the text which must be supplied from the train of thought in the context. Let us examine the claims of the flesh or of corrupt nature. We may conceive the flesh pleading ancient possession: the pleasures and freedom from restraint attending a compliance with her dictates; the general usage and course of the world which she reminds us has been such in every age.
I. Its claims are founded upon usurpation; they rest on no basis of equity.—It alienates the property from its lawful possessor; it interferes with a prior claim which nothing can fairly defeat. Sin considered as a master does not enter upon a property that is derelict or abandoned by its owner.
1. Let us consider that the Lord is our maker, and we the work of His hands. It is “He that created the heavens, and stretched them out; He that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; He that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein.” The noble powers by which we are so highly distinguished from the inferior parts of the creation—the powers of thought and reason and conscience—are of His production; from Him they are derived, and by Him they are sustained. His right in us is consequently more extensive than it is possible for us to conceive in any other instance, because none else ever gave existence to the smallest particle of dust in the balance; it is incomparably more than that—to which it is compared—of the potter over the clay.
2. If we reflect on the powers with which we are endued, we cannot suppose that they are formed for no other end than the indulgence of carnal appetites, the amassing of riches, the enjoyment of sensual pleasures, or the procuring honours and distinctions from our fellow-worms. We shall be at no loss to perceive a strange disproportion between such powers and such pursuits, and that they cannot be confined to them without descending unspeakably beneath our level without a base forgetfulness of ourselves as well as of God, and a voluntary dereliction of our rank.
3. If God were disposed to relinquish His claim, the usurpation of another master might be yielded to with the more plausible pretence. But this is not the case. If we believe His word, He never means to part with His right over His creatures.
II. Let us next examine the claims of the flesh by what we have already derived from it.—Let us see whether it is such a master as deserves to be served any longer. Of the boasted pleasures it has afforded, say Christians, what remains but a painful and humiliating remembrance? “What fruit had ye in those things of which ye are now ashamed?” Has anything accrued to you from the service of sin which you would wish to renew? Though it might flatter your imagination with the appearance of gold, did it not afterwards “bite as a serpent and sting as an adder”? You were made to fancy that true religion was melancholy, that tenderness of conscience was needless scrupulosity, and that happiness was only to be found in the pleasures and pursuits of this world. It engaged you in the chase of innumerable vanities. You “followed after your lovers, but could not overtake them”; fled from one refuge to another till, to speak in the language of the prophet, “you were wearied in the multitude of your way.” In the meantime, to all pleasant and delightful intercourse with the Father of spirits, to the soothing accents of peace and pardon issuing from Christ, and to all the consolations of piety, you were utter strangers. The more we observe what passes around us with a serious mind, the more we shall be convinced how little men are indebted to the flesh. Look at that young man, the early victim of lewdness and intemperance, who, though in the bloom of life, has “his bones filled with the sins of his youth.” Survey his emaciated cheek, his infirm and withered frame, and his eyes sunk and devoid of lustre; the picture of misery and dejection. Hear his complaint, how he mourns at the last, how his flesh and his body are consumed. Behold that votary of the world, successful as he has been in the pursuit of it, and stained by no flagrant crime. Yet he has lived “without God in the world”; and now his days are drawing to a close he feels himself verging to the grave, and no hope animates, no pleasing reflection cheers him. The only consolation he receives, or rather the only relief of his anguish, is in grasping the treasures he must shortly quit.
III. We shall examine the claims of the flesh by the aspect they bear on our future interests.—Before we engage in the service of a master, it is reasonable to inquire into the advantages he stipulates and the prospects of futurity attendant upon his service. In the ordinary concerns of life we should consider the neglect of such an inquiry chargeable with the highest imprudence. Dreadful is it in this view to reflect on the consequences inseparably annexed to the service of corruption. “If ye live after the flesh,” says the apostle, “ye shall die.” “The wages of sin is death.” The fruits of sin, when brought to maturity, are corruption; his most finished production is death, and the materials on which he works the fabric of that manufacture, if we may be allowed so to speak, consist in the elements of damnation. To such a master we can owe nothing but a decided rejection of his offers, a perpetual abhorrence, and an awful fear of ever being deceived by his stratagems or entangled in his snares.—Robert Hall.
The spirit and the flesh.—These words used, as opposed to each other, in three senses—viz.,
1. Flesh = material part of man; spirit = immaterial part.
2. Flesh = lower nature of man, desires that drag down to hell; spirit = higher nature of man, desires that lift him up towards heaven (not with, without Christ’s grace).
3. Flesh = human nature in its entirety; Spirit = God’s Holy Spirit and the graces inbreathed by Him.
In what senses contrasted here? Not in 1, but in 2 and in 3.
Their tendency: Encouragement of flesh = tendency to death—death here, death hereafter. Examples: Drunkenness, immorality, indolence.
Encouragement of spirit = tendency to life, here and hereafter. Examples: Men who have by God’s grace conquered sin—John Bunyan, John Newton.
Consideration: What is good for eternal life hereafter is, as a rule, productive of life—long, successful, happy, honoured, here.—Dr. Springett.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Romans 8:12-13
The Christian has strength imparted.—We are no longer under any such subjection to the inferior propensities of our nature, as might oblige us to continue under their dominion. From any necessity of this kind we are relieved by the powerful motives to holiness and the effectual aids to acquiring of it which are supplied by the gospel. Had we continued under the law, with no other advantages but those which it furnishes, we must have been debtor to the flesh, as we should have wanted that moral strength which is necessary to free ourselves from its dominion—a strength which mere law cannot supply. But under the gospel this incapacity is removed. By the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us we are enabled to restrain the inordinate tendencies of our nature, and therefore we can no longer plead the weakness of our moral powers as an extenuation of our actual sins. From the Christian every pretence of this kind is taken away, and he is rendered a debtor to the Spirit. He is laid under a sacred obligation to live agreeably to the dictates of the spiritual part of his nature, and to the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, by whom he is influenced. This also he must do if he would promote his own interest either in this life or in that which is to come.—Ritchie.
What do we understand by “flesh”?—Some by “flesh” understand the state under the law; others, more properly, “corrupted nature.” Ye shall die without hopes of a better life. But if you mortify the deeds of the body—the deeds of the body of sin, which is elsewhere called the body of death; the first motions to sin and passionate compliances with sin, which are the springs of corrupt actions (corrupt nature is called a body here, morally, not physically; it consisteth of divers vices, as a body of divers members)—“ye shall live”; ye shall live more spiritually and comfortably and eternally hereafter. In the words we may observe a threatening and a promise. In the promise there is the condition and the reward. In the condition, the act: mortify. The object: the deeds of the body. The cause: the body. The effects: the deeds. The agents: ye and the Spirit. The principal, the Spirit; the less principal, ye; both conjoined in the work: ye cannot do it without the Spirit, and the Spirit will not do it without your concurrence with Him and your industry in following His motions. Sin is active in the soul of an unregenerate man. His heart is sin’s territory; it is there as in its throne before the Spirit comes. Mortification supposes life before in the part mortified. Mortification must be universal; not one deed, but deeds, little and great, must fall under the edge—the brats must be dashed against the wall. Man must be an agent in this work. We have brought this rebel into our souls, and God would have us make, as it were, some recompense by endeavouring to cast it out; as in the law, the father was to fling the first stone against a blasphemous son. We must engage in the duel, but it is the strength of the Spirit only can render us victorious. The duty is ours, but the success is from God. Heaven is a place for conquerors only. The way to eternal life is through conflicts, inward with sin, outward with the world. There must be a combat before a victory, and a victory before a triumph. An unmortified frame is unsuitable to a state of glory. There must be a meetness for a state of glory before there be an entrance into it. Vessels of glory must be first seasoned with grace. Conformity to Christ is to fit us for heaven. Unmortified sin is against the whole design of the gospel and death of Christ, as though the death of Christ were intended to indulge us in sin, and not to redeem us from it. That sin should die was the end of Christ’s death; rather than sin should not die, Christ would die Himself. Implore the help of the Spirit. Listen to the convictions of the Holy Spirit. Plead the death of Christ. Let us often think of divine precepts. Let us be jealous of our own hearts.—Charnock.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 8
Romans 8:6. Dr. Carey and the merchant.—The soul of the Christian is at anchor; and so he is freed from the cares of fame, or of fortune, or of any other interest upon earth. And with a mind engrossed by that which is spiritual, and without room in it for the anxieties of what is seen and temporal, he in as far as these anxieties are concerned is at peace. This topic may be illustrated from a recorded conversation between Dr. Carey the missionary at Serampore and a wealthy merchant in Calcutta. One of his clerks had determined to give up all the prospects and emoluments of a lucrative situation, and henceforth devote himself to the work of evangelising the heathen. His employer, to whom this looked a very odd resolution, called on Dr. Carey, and inquired from him the terms and the advantages and the preferments of this new life to which a very favourite servant, whom he was exceedingly loath to part with, was now on the eve of betaking himself; and was very startled to understand that it was altogether a life of labour, and that there was no earthly remuneration whatever, that bevond those things which are needful for the body there was not an enjoyment within the power or purchase of money which any one of them thought of aspiring after, that with hearts set on their own eternity and the eternity of their fellow-creatures they had neither time nor space for the working of this world’s ambition. There is a very deep interest in such a dialogue between a devoted missionary and a busy, active, aspiring merchant; but the chief interest of it lay in the confession of the latter, who seems to have been visited with a glimpse of the secret of true happiness, and that after all he himself was not on the way to it; whose own experience told him that, prosperous as he was, there was a plague in his very prosperity that marred his enjoyment of it; that the thousand crosses and hazards and entanglements of mercantile adventure had kept him perpetually on the rack, and rifled his heart of all those substantial sweets by which alone it can be purely and permanently gladdened. And from him it was indeed an affecting testimony when, on contrasting his own life of turmoil and vexation and checkered variety with the simple but lofty aims and settled dependence and unencumbered, because wholly unambitious, hearts of these pious missionaries, he fetched a deep sigh, and said that it was indeed a most enticing cause.—Dr. Chalmers.