Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Mind of the Spirit vs. Mind of the Flesh

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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