Romans
8:9-11 (NASB)
9However, 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. 10If Christ is in you, though the
body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of
righteousness. 11But 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.
The
Holy Spirit
These verses deal with the life
source of the believer: the Holy Spirit.
There is a great deal of revelation in Scripture about the nature and
work of the Holy Spirit, and there is also a great deal of false teaching and
misunderstanding about this vital power source in the life of the
believer. Some teach that the Spirit is
coming and going in the life of the believer and cannot be counted on. Others teach that we can do something to lose
the Holy Spirit and one point and then regain it at another point. Both of these false errors are in distinct
opposition to the teaching of scripture.
These verses focus on the immense power that is available to the believer
each and every moment because of the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit
that has sealed us. These verses need to
be understood and applied in the life of every single believer in order for us
to grow. This is great news!
Romans
8:9
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.
However
The previous verse revealed a very
important spiritual reality. If someone
is operating out of the basis of the sin nature they can, by no means, please
God. For the unbeliever, this is the
only “life-source” that they have to operate from. There is no second choice. The believer however has a choice to make
every day. We can operate in fellowship
with God with the Holy Spirit as our controlling principle, or we can operate
in broken fellowship with God and will fall either into legalism or
license. The only option that pleases
the Lord is when we are operating in an open and working relationship with Him
through the permanently indwelling Holy Spirit.
What
you are not in, and what you are in
As a believer we are positioned
permanently in Christ. Operating in the
flesh (or the sin nature) should be the exception to our usual manner of
living. While the believer has only one
option (operating in the flesh), the believer is a new creation. The believer is in Christ and now has both
his old sin nature and his new nature (The Holy Spirit). As was discussed in the previous lesson the
believer is spiritual when he or she operates by the power of the Holy Spirit
in fellowship with Him.
Interesting
“ifs”
Conditional sentences are
interesting. When we make an “if/then”
statement in English it nearly always implies the possibility that the “if”
statement is either true or false. This
has caused a great amount of misunderstanding in reading the Bible. The Greek language has four different classes
of conditional sentences. Greek “if”
statements can convey the idea that the “if” statement is true, false, probable
or possible. This is the first kind of
conditional sentence. Thus the “if” is
assumed to be true. Translators, in
reference to this fact, often translate these sentences (correctly) with the
word “since.” This is the case
here. Paul is not suggesting that the
Roman believers who have put their faith in Christ may or may not be indwelt by
the Holy Spirit. He is saying that they are, in fact, indwelt with the Holy
Spirit. A fuller translation would read:
“However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God
dwells in you.”
Anyone
who doesn’t have the Spirit
Paul lays it out on the line. Anyone who does not have the Spirit simply is
not saved. The Holy Spirit isn’t someone
that comes and goes. We don’t “lose the
Spirit” nor do we need to “invite the Spirit in” as some are prone to do. Quite to the contrary, the presence of the
Holy Spirit in our lives is something that is permanent and complete. As Paul wrote to the believers in Ephesus:
13In Him,
you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your
salvation--having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of
promise, 14who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view
to the redemption of God's own possession, to the praise of His glory. Ephesians
1:13-14
Here the reality of the Spirit is
confirmed (just as it is clearly stated in Romans 8). Having placed faith in the gospel the saint
is then permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit.
Permanence is found in each word here.
A seal, in the context of Biblical cultures was a serious affair. No one could break an official seal. In fact, unauthorized tampering with a sealed
document or item carried the death penalty depending on the authority of the
one who placed the seal. A seal implied
ownership, security and destiny. This is
what the Holy Spirit is to the believer.
Not
Belonging
The person who does not have the Holy
Spirit is the person who has not placed faith in Jesus Christ and thus is “none
of His.” The person who has placed faith
in Christ is said to be Christ’s possession, property and responsibility. The same idea is conveyed in John 10:
27"My
sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; 28and I
give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch
them out of My hand. 29" My Father, who has given them to Me,
is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's
hand. John 10:27-29
The Greek in this passage is even more clear than the
English. The sense of this passage is
that the sheep of the Lord cannot perish of their own doing. No person or force can snatch them from His
mighty hand. Neither the believers’ own
failures, nor the powers of darkness, nor any other person can revoke the
indwelling Holy Spirit by whom we are Christ’s possession and the sheep of His
pasture. Praise the Lord!
Romans 8:10
10If Christ is in you,
though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of
righteousness.
Hebrew
Poetry
Paul often wrote with Hebrew poetry
patterns that focus on repetition to make something clear. We might display this poetic repetition as
follows:
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.
The negative is stated and then
“rhymed” with the positive. “If the
Spirit weren’t in you then you wouldn’t be His, but since He IS in you (who
believe) you are His!”
“If”
again
Here again we see a similar
construction that can be more clearly translated since. Paul is making the statement to further
dispel the idea that the negative statement “were the Spirit NOT in a person
(note Paul uses the word “anyone” when talking about the absence of the spirit
and “you” –plural- when he talks about the person who IS sealed with the
Spirit”. Paul’s point is clear – If you
have placed your faith in Christ, then the Spirit is in you.
The
Body
Though our physical body will have an
end (either at death or the Rapture), our spirit lives because of
righteousness. Going back to Romans 3,
Paul wrote:
21But now
apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being
witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 22even the righteousness of
God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no
distinction; 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, 24being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption
which is in Christ Jesus; 25whom God displayed publicly as a
propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His
righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins
previously committed; 26for the demonstration, I say, of His
righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier
of the one who has faith in Jesus. Romans 3:21-26
As we see repeated here, the believer
is continually dependent on the only true righteousness that is available – Christ’s
righteousness. There is no point in our
lives that we will be able to look to God and say, “Look what great things I
have done for you.” At every moment the
only truly righteous actins that we are able to produce are those that we do
while resting in Him. Paul echo’s this
sentiment in Galatians 2:20-21:
20"I
have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ
lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the
Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. 21I do not
nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then
Christ died needlessly." Galatians 2:20-21
The point is plain – we continually have spiritual life
(connection to God in relationship) because of the righteousness of Jesus
Christ and our identification with Him.
There will never be any other source of life for the believer.
Romans
8:11
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.
Note: “if” is again “since” here.
Which
Spirit is that?
Note the ways in which the Holy
Spirit is referred to. In these verses
He is called the Spirit, the Spirit of God, and “the Spirit of Him who raised
Jesus” that is the Father. So we see
here, a clear demonstration of the Trinity.
Jesus and the Father are displayed equally as the source and identification
of the Holy Spirit, who is sent forth from both the Father and Christ together.
Identification,
Identification, Identification
These chapters are so very clearly
about our identification with Christ. It
is odd that the truth surrounding our Spiritual birth (by grace through faith
in Jesus Christ) is often understood by students of the Bible, yet the
understanding of our identification with Jesus Christ is entirely missed, even
though our identification with Christ is mentioned as many times in Scripture
as the reality of our new birth! These
chapters are chiefly concerning our identification with Jesus Christ in His
death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating as the chief means of our
sanctification (or our growth in Christ).
So it is very important to our development in the Lord.
Raised
Jesus from the Dead
Here our spiritual life is again
equated with the death, burial and resurrection of the One in whom we placed
our faith. In mentioning the historical
fact that the Holy Spirit raised Christ from the dead Paul is relating that the
same spiritual reality is accomplished in all who have believed. These words echo Paul’s words in Romans 6:
3Or do you
not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been
baptized into His death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Him
through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through
the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For
if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we
shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this,
that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might
be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for
he who has died is freed from sin. Romans 6:3-7
Outsourcing our
Labors
While our earthly bodies offered no
hope of attaining Eternal Life, and while our Sin Nature could never achieve
the approval of God our lives in the body are not a hopeless waste of
time. They are not a waste of time
because of the provision of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is here the conduit of
Spiritual Life in the believer. We find
that the Holy Spirit is the one who is constantly giving us life, but there is
more! We find that here the future promise
is equally sure. There is no fear in
death for the believer because it is this same Holy Spirit that will resurrect
us to our perfect new life, with new bodies that have no indwelling sin nature. This is a wonderful blessing that leaves us
with no cause for worry or for fear. We
can look forward to a resurrection like the resurrection of Jesus Christ
because we are indwelt with that same Spirit.
This is a great and powerful comfort to believers in the face of the
physical death that is before each of us, unless the rapture comes first!
Conclusion
The Holy Spirit, writing through
Paul, very clearly wants us to understand with crystal clarity how our lives
are to be lived. At any given moment we
can find out what we are to be doing. We
are to be beholding Christ, through the Spirit that indwells us. If we are walking in the flesh we need to
agree with Him that we are not walking in the right source, and continue in
fellowship with the Holy Spirit. Paul
stated this clearly in Ephesians 1:18-21:
18I pray
that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is
the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in
the saints, 19and what is the surpassing greatness of His power
toward us who believe. These are in accordance with the working of the strength
of His might 20which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him
from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21far
above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is
named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
Paul repeatedly states that this
powerful Holy Spirit that has indwelt us, and identified us with Jesus Christ
in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension and seating, is our life
source. We are to be in constant
communication and fellowship with Him.
And the only reason that this need can be fulfilled in our lives is
because Christ died on a cross for us.
Paying for our sins, separating us from our sin nature, and giving us
life.
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