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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadSpurgeon Verse Expositions - Romans 8:1 - 8:14
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This wonderful chapter is the very cream of the cream of Holy Scripture. What a grand key-note the apostle strikes in the first verse !
Rom_8:1. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
“No condemnation” — that is the first note of the chapter. In the last verse it is “no separation.” What glorious music there is here, — no condemnation to those who are in Christ, no separation of them from Christ! Happy are the people who have a share in this double blessing, and unhappy are the men and women who know nothing of it. We will read it again: “There is therefore now no condemnation, “There is a great deal of accusation, and a great deal more of tribulation, but there is no condemnation not the least hint of it. Some condemnation we might have expected, but “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.”
Rom_8:2. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.
I have broken away from its thralldom; the new law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the law of grace has set me free from the domination of the law of sin and death. Happy is the free man who is thus liberated by the grace of God.
Rom_8:3. For what the law could not do, —
God has done by his grace: “ What the law could not do,” —
Rom_8:3. In that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, —
Or, as the marginal reading renders it, “by a sacrifice for sin,” —
Rom_8:3-5. Condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh;
Unregenerate men, the men who remain in the state in which they were born, the men who allow their lower nature to have the predominance, “they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh.” That is all that they care about, all that they think about, all that they toil for, all that they really “mind.”
Rom_8:5. But they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
Those in whom there is a new life begotten by the Holy Ghost — these mind the things of the Spirit. Each nature seeks its own things, — the flesh seeks the things of the flesh, the spirit seeks the things of the Spirit. Judge ye, my hearers, to which case ye belong by this test, — for what are you living? That which you live for is the true index of your nature. Do you mind spiritual things or the things of the flesh?
Rom_8:6-7. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
The old nature never will obey the law of God; it never can do so. What then is to be done with it? Improve it? Nay, my brethren, the only thing to be done with it is to let it die, and then to bury it. In baptism you have a most significant symbol of what is to be done with the flesh; you are to treat it as a dead thing, and therefore to bury it. Let the old life be crucified and put to death with Christ, and let the new life take its place.
Rom_8:8. So then they that are in the flesh —
Those who are still in the old nature, living for it, living to it, —
Rom_8:8. Cannot please God.
Men may wash this old nature, they may clothe it, they may decorate it, they may educate it, but there is no evolution which can produce grace out of nature. The child of nature may be finely dressed, but it is a dead child however gaudily it is attired. There is a vital eternal difference between the old nature and the new.
Rom_8:9. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
Ye saints of Rome to whom Paul was writing, and ye who believe in Christ now: “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”
Rom_8:9. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
If Christ’s Spirit has not quickened you, you do not belong to Christ. Some ministers preach a very general sort of gospel in which everybody has a share, but the Bible knows nothing of that sort of gospel. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.” Do you know what it is to have the Spirit of Christ ? If not, my hearer, do not deceive yourself you are none of his. “If any man” — be he prince or magistrate, a member of Parliament or a doctor of divinity, — “ if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
Rom_8:10. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Hence the body suffers, the body is sick, the body decays, the body is under the dominion of death because of sin, but the Spirit is full of life because of righteousness.
Rom_8:11. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
You believers may have a good hope concerning your bodies: “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” Wait a while, therefore; what God has done for your souls he will in due time do for your bodies also. This should make you long for the day of Christ’s appearing, as Paul says in the 23rd verse of this chapter, “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” when Christ shall appear, and we shall be raised — “From beds of dust and silent clay,” —the body itself born a second time, regenerate like the soul.
Rom_8:12. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
We owe the flesh nothing; I mean the law of sin in our members, we owe nothing to that. It has been a curse and a plague to us; we are not debtors to the flesh, so we must not “live after the flesh.”
Rom_8:13. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die:
If you live simply to gratify your ambition, if you live for avarice, if you live to please yourself, if you live for any earthly object which can be comprised under the term “after the flesh,” you will certainly be disappointed, for you will die, and your hope will die with you.
Rom_8:13. But if ye through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
If you seek, by the Holy Spirit’s power, to kill sin, if you try to crush all sinful desires, if you keep evil with a rope about its neck, if you mortify it put it to death, then you shall live. Holiness is the mode of the Christian; life, sin is the way of the sinner’s death
Rom_8:14. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.