In Romans 8:5 Paul told us that walking according to the
Spirit means setting ones mind on the things of the Spirit, whereas
setting ones mind on the things of the flesh means setting ones mind
on the things of the flesh. Last time I gave you a list of examples
for each category. Verse 4 has told us that the righteousness of the
law will be fulfilled in us if we walk according to the Spirit and
set our minds on the things of the Spirit.
Now in verse 6, Paul makes a stunning statement. He says
that to be fleshly minded is death but to be spiritually minded is
life and peace. The fleshly mind is at enmity with God and cannot
please God. In verse 13 he says, “If you live according to the
flesh you will die.” That means if my normal mode of life is to
have a mind set on the kind of things in the flesh list I shared with
you last time, I will die. He had written back in chapter 6 that if I
yield the parts of my body to sin and disobedience, the result of
that will be further disobedience will ultimately result in eternal
death (Romans 6:16-23). He wrote the Galatian Christians and told
them that they would reap what they sow and then he gave them two
examples. He said that they could either sow to the flesh or they
could sow to the spirit. If they sowed to the flesh, they would reap
corruption (Galatians 6:7-8).
So this is a pretty strong warning to me. Yielding
myself to the things of the flesh, to the kind of things I listed for
you earlier, puts me on the road that leads ultimately to my eternal
ruin. I for one do not want to be on that road! So it behooves me to
be setting my mind on the things of the Spirit which results in life.
He says in Romans 8:13 that if we through the Spirit put
to death the deeds of the body, we will live. That is the answer
right there. Christians have within them the Spirit of God as well as
their own revived spirit and so we are to use the power of the Spirit
within us to put to death the deeds of the body and in so doing, we
will live.
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