Original Meaning

New Life Through the Spirit’s Liberating Work (8:1–4)

“THERE IS NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” takes us back to 5:12–21, where Paul showed how those who belong to Christ escape the “condemnation” (katakrima) that came to all people through Adam’s sin (note that katakrima occurs only in 5:16, 18; 8:1 in the New Testament). Paul continues to use the forensic imagery that is so important to his conception of the gospel. Because we are justified by faith in conjunction with our union with Christ, we escape the sentence of spiritual death that our sins have justly earned. Transferred into the new regime of life, we no longer fear that our sins will ever condemn us.

In verse 2 Paul explains why we need no longer worry about condemnation: “because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” We have encountered two other places in Romans in which Paul opposes one law (nomos) to another law: 3:27 and 7:22–23. In each case scholars are divided over whether Paul intends to oppose one function of the Mosaic law to another function of that same law or whether one or both occurrences of “law” might refer to something besides the Mosaic law (e.g., a principle or authority). In both texts we argued the latter (see comments on 3:27; 7:22–23).

The same is true in this verse. “Law of sin and death” could, considering the argument of Romans 7, refer to the Mosaic law, used by sin to bring death. But Paul has used a similar expression in 7:23 to refer to the authority or power of sin. This is probably what he means here as well. “The law of the Spirit,” then, denotes the authority or power exercised by the Holy Spirit.1 The Spirit exerts a liberating power through the work of Christ that takes us out of the realm of sin and the spiritual death to which sin inevitably leads.

As verse 2 grounds verse 1 (“because”), so verses 3–4 ground verse 2 (“for”). The liberating work of the Spirit takes place “through Christ Jesus.” Paul now elaborates. As he has shown in chapter 7, the Mosaic law was powerless to rescue human beings from the authority of sin and death. It was “weakened by the sinful nature”; that is, its demands could not be met because the people to whom the law was given were in the realm of “flesh” (sarx; NIV “sinful nature”).2 But God in Christ has intervened to do what the law could not.

Paul indulges in a play on the word “flesh” that is obscured in the NIV. The law was weakened “by the flesh”; yet God also “condemned sin in the flesh.” He won the victory over sin in the very realm where it seemed to rule unchallenged: in the “flesh.” In claiming that Christ came “in the likeness of flesh” to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sins, Paul carefully balances Jesus’ full humanity with his sinlessness. Christ did indeed become fully human by taking on “flesh.” But calling that flesh “sinful” might suggest that Christ took on fallen human nature. If so, he would not have been qualified to be our sinless Redeemer. So Paul clarifies by adding the important word “likeness.”

In other words, Christ did not, like every other person since Adam, succumb to the tyranny of flesh. He did not himself sin, nor did he inherit the penalty of sin, namely, death. Paul uses the language of “interchange”: Christ became what we are so that we could become what he is. By “condemning” sin in Christ as our sacrifice, he can now justly avoid “condemning” us who are in Christ.

The purpose of this work of God in Christ is spelled out in verse 4. The NIV translation is misleading. Paul does not claim that the “righteous requirements of the law” are fulfilled in us; he says that “the righteous requirement of the law was fulfilled in us” (the Greek word dikaioma is singular). The difference may not be great if Paul is thinking of the way that the Spirit enables Christians to obey the commandments of the law (note v. 7).3 But the singular word, along with the passive form of “fulfill,” suggests a different idea: God in Christ has fulfilled the entirety of the law’s demand on our behalf.4

Note that Paul’s purpose here is to show how we are no longer condemned. The reason is that we have, in Christ, effectively fulfilled God’s demand expressed in the law. This happens as we “walk in the Spirit.” If Paul is referring here to the way Christians do the law in their own lives, then this expression will be instrumental: We fulfill the law by living in the power of the Spirit. But the expression can, on our view, be a simple definition: The people in whom the law is fulfilled are those who live in the realm of the Spirit.

Bridging Contexts

UNDERSTANDING FLESH (SARX). Sometimes there is justice in life. Whenever I taught Romans over the last couple of decades, I always criticized the NIV translators’ decision to translate sarx (flesh) when Paul uses in it in a negative way as “sinful nature.” I argued that by introducing the word “nature” in these contexts, the translators were setting up a potentially serious misrepresentation of Paul’s understanding of Christian existence.

Three years ago, however, I was appointed to the committee charged with reviewing the NIV translation. One of my first tasks was to suggest a better rendering of sarx. But it wasn’t long before I realized the difficulty faced by the translator here. I thought it might simply be best to use the English word “flesh” in each place where Paul uses sarx. But, as some of my colleagues rightly noted, most English readers think of the term flesh either as the meat on our bones or as sexual sin. Neither is anywhere close to what Paul intends. I tried various other alternatives but could come up with nothing better than “sinful nature.” So the decision came down to this: Should we continue to use “sinful nature,” even though that phrase may give a wrong impression? Or should we stick with “flesh,” even though many English readers may not understand it? The committee elected to stay with “sinful nature,” at least in most places.

This story illustrates and introduces two points relating to this word sarx: the complexity of this word in Paul and the hazards of translation. Both points need brief treatment as we seek to bridge Paul’s context and ours.

(1) Paul’s use of sarx is one of the most debated points in his theology.8 He sometimes uses the word to refer to the physical body as a whole (1 Cor. 6:16; 2 Cor. 7:1; 12:7; Gal. 5:13, 16; Eph. 5:31), as in secular Greek. But the physical element is often lost in Paul when he uses the word to refer to the person generally (see lit. trans. of Rom. 3:20: “No flesh will be justified by works of the law”). The Greeks used sarx in this way, but Paul’s usage is probably strongly influenced by the Old Testament. For sarx translates the Hebrew basar, which often refers to humankind in general (see lit. trans. of Gen. 6:12b: “All flesh has corrupted their ways”).

Particularly important for Paul’s special use of sarx is the way it sometimes connotes in the LXX what is human in distinction from God and the spiritual realm: “All flesh is [NIV all men are] like grass…. The grass withers and the flowers fall … but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). Paul often implies this notion of the “narrowly human” when he uses the word sarx. Many scholars divide Paul’s use of the word into two categories: the neutral and the ethical. But the two categories are rather at different points in a single continuous spectrum.

Even, therefore, when Paul speaks of Abraham as “our forefather according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1) or of Jesus as being “a descendant of David according to the flesh” (1:3, both lit. trans.), Paul implies that what he has said is not the whole story. Abraham is the physical father of the Jews, and that is not in itself negative. But it is ultimately, as he argues in Romans 4, too limited a view of Abraham, for he is also the father of all who believe. Similarly, it is obviously the case that Jesus’ existence in the flesh does not mean he was sinful or that this was a bad state. But, again, more must be said. For Jesus is not only Messiah from a physical, human perspective; he is also “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (1:4, lit. trans.).

We have to try to bring this broad, Old Testament-based background into our understanding of Paul’s use of sarx to describe the situation outside of Christ. What the apostle seems to mean is a condition, natural to people, in which God and the spiritual realm are left out of account. To be “in the flesh” (7:5; 8:8–9) is to be helplessly trapped in this situation. Thus, people naturally think in a “narrowly human” way (“the mind of the flesh”—8:5–6) and live in a “narrowly human” way (“live [or walk] according to the flesh”—8:4–5). In contrast, Christians, who no longer are in this condition, must not act as if they were. They must cease living “according to the flesh” (8:13).

Paul is again thinking in salvation-historical terms, helping us understand who we are by contrasting the old regime of the flesh from which we have been rescued with the new regime of the Spirit to which we now belong. Only by carefully reading the relevant passages and comparing Paul’s uses of sarx across his writings can we bridge the context from his day to ours.

(2) But bridging the contexts in translation is more difficult. The Italians have a famous saying about translation: Traddutore, traditore: “Translators, traitors.” What they mean is that any attempt to translate a book into another language inevitably fails to capture all the meaning and nuances of the original. Languages differ significantly. What one language expresses elegantly in a single word may not have a single word equivalent in other languages; a wordplay in one language does not work in another because the range of meanings of the words involved is different. Anyone who has tried to translate from one language to another knows just how hard the task can sometimes be and that the translator must always make difficult choices.

The rendering of Paul’s sarx into English is an excellent case in point. One could, of course, argue that the “literal” meaning of the word (“flesh”) should be preserved. But what do we mean by “literal”? Lurking behind this word is a false assumption about the way languages work, namely, that every word has a simple equivalent in another language that the translator can simply plug in. A lot of people who ask me what is the “most literal” translation of the Bible seem to have this impression of language.

But things are not that simple. Words have different meanings, and other languages often use different words to translate those meanings. I can use “bit” to refer to the implement I put in a horse’s mouth and to describe how powerful my computer is. Other languages undoubtedly have different words for these two meanings of a single English word. Imagine the confusion if I insisted on translating the English word “bit” with a single word in these other languages!

But let’s return to flesh. When one looks in an English dictionary, the meanings given for this word are: (1) “the soft parts of the body of an animal …”; (2) “edible parts of an animal …”; (3) (a) “the physical being of man”; (b) “human nature.”9 None of these is quite what Paul means by sarx. The last is the closest, but would the normal English reader know a meaning that comes so far down the list of definitions? Moreover, if the translator chooses to use “flesh” for every occurrence of sarx in Paul, the English reader might think that Christ came “in the flesh” in just the way that people apart from Christ are “in the flesh,” thereby eliminating either the sinlessness of Christ or the sinfulness of people.

I think it fair to say, then, that no good solution to the problem of translating sarx into English exists. The translator has to decide which of the alternatives has fewest problems, which gets closest to what Paul seems to intend. English readers of the Bible should not despair: Good translation gets the message of the Bible over clearly enough. But English readers should also understand that even the best translation will often not quite get the meaning of the original. Comparing other translations and the use of commentaries and other reference materials can do a lot to overcome the inevitable deficiency of an English translation.

Contemporary Significance

THE TRINITY IN ROMANS 8:1–13. Most students of the Bible know that one of the great distinguishing doctrines of the Christian church—the Trinity—is never explicitly taught in the Bible. The famous formulation about God as the “three in one,” three persons within a single Godhead, is not found in the Scripture. The closest we get are formulations such as Matthew 28:19, where Jesus commands his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Why, then, does the Christian church hold this doctrine? Because we are convinced that the Trinitarian formulation is the only way to do justice to what the entire Bible teaches about God: Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. “There is one God” is clearly taught in the New Testament as well as the Old (e.g., Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4–6; James 2:19). But equally clear is the teaching that Jesus is God (e.g., John 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8) and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can account for the claims made in all these texts.

Another, less direct, witness to the Trinity are the many passages that fall into a Trinitarian pattern. The New Testament writers, perhaps before they had even formally worked out the conception of the Trinity, were writing about God in ways that showed they were assuming such a view. Romans 8:1–13 affords two of the clearest examples of this consciousness. (1) Note how Paul involves Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption (vv. 2–3). God the Father sends his Son to condemn sin (v. 3), and the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that action to release us from sin and death. Salvation is the work of the Triune God. All three persons are active in rescuing us from sin and bringing us into the new life. Our thanksgiving and worship, therefore, are appropriately directed to all three persons. Many of the great hymns of the faith reflect this Trinitarian structure.

(2) Note also how Paul varies the way he talks about God’s work in our hearts in verses 9–10: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” What takes up his dwelling in us is first the “Spirit of God,” then the “Spirit of Christ,” then, finally, “Christ.” Paul does not mean that the Spirit and Christ are two names for the same person or that they are interchangeable. Rather, both are involved so intimately in the work of God in our lives that he can shift virtually unconsciously from one to the other.

Theological metaphors once again. In the Bridging Contexts section of 3:21–26, we noted how biblical writers use various metaphors to capture theological truth. Romans 8:9 illustrates the point once more, though the NIV obscures this fact somewhat. Let us therefore start with a literal rendering: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to him.” Note how Paul can shift within these two verses from the metaphor of our being “in” the Spirit to the metaphor of the Spirit being “in” us. Neither, of course, is ontologically true. But both are pictures of a theological truth: The believer is under the dominance of God’s Spirit.

How easily we can use the metaphors of Scripture and not always understand them was brought home to me forcefully one day when I got home from work to find my son David, then about five years old, rushing up to me, exclaiming excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy, I just asked Jesus into my tummy!” A metaphor such as “asking Jesus into the heart” can become such a cliché that it ceases to have significance. We miss the truth that the metaphor is designed to point to.

The importance of our mind-set. In discussing verse 6, we suggested that the Greek word phronema that Paul uses there might best be rendered “mind-set.” Note how the NIV translates the cognate verb (phroneo) in verse 5: “have their minds set on.” These two Greek words are distinctively Pauline. Twenty-three of the twenty-six New Testament occurrences of phroneo are found in Paul (Rom. 8:5; 11:20; 12:3, 16; 14:6; 15:5; 1 Cor. 13:11; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:10; Phil. 1:7; 2:2, 5; 3:15, 19; 4:2, 10; Col. 3:2; see also Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33; Acts 28:22), and all four New Testament occurrences of phronema come in this chapter (vv. 6 [2x], 7, 27). These words include intellectual activity (“thinking” in the narrow sense), but go beyond it to involve the will also. The phronema is our fundamental orientation, the convictions and heart attitude that steers the course of our life.

As such, having the “mind-set” of the Spirit is the crucial “middle” step between existence in the sphere of the Spirit (v. 9) and living according to the Spirit (v. 4b). Cultivating a Spirit-led, Spirit-filled disposition of heart and mind is necessary if we are to live in a way that pleases God.

These verses, therefore, raise a fundamental question: How are we forming our “minds”? What are we putting in them? What are we exposing them to? Christians who read nothing but the latest novels, watch nothing but network television, and talk to nobody but unbelievers are never going to form the mind-set of the Spirit. All the input comes from one direction, reflecting the value system of the “flesh.” No wonder we so often think and act in “fleshly” ways!

If we are serious about progressing in the Christian life, we must seek every day to feed our minds with spiritual food. Too easily our “quiet times” can degenerate into routine exercises in which the mind is hardly involved. We read Scripture, but we don’t really seek to engage it by asking what it means or how it applies to us. We pray, but we follow the same pattern every day. Our daily times with the Lord can be one way in which we develop the mind-set of the Spirit, but only if the mind is really involved.

God’s gift and our obligation. The juxtaposition of verses 1 and 13 is jarring. In the former, Paul boldly proclaims that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But in the latter he warns, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” How can both be true? If there truly is “no condemnation” for believers, then how can we warn believers that they may die if they live the wrong way? Has God secured our eternal life once for all? Or is it still up to us to earn that eternal life?

Theologians have answered these questions in very different ways, and their views have filtered down to Christians. The result is that people have very different ideas about the Christian life and how to lead it. What is important is to maintain a careful balance between what God gives us in Christ and what we must do in response to that gift.

A few interpreters have tried to avoid the tension between these verses altogether by particular readings of verse 13. Some think that the people Paul addresses (“you”) may be church attenders who do not really know the Lord. But how can Paul then urge them to use the Spirit to fight sin? Others think that “death” and “life” in the verse are physical only. But it is nonsense for Paul to suggest that physical death, the fate all who do not live until the Lord returns, will be the penalty only for Christians who live according to the flesh. The “death” Paul warns about and the “life” he promises are spiritual, not physical. Paul affirms that his Christian readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh.

But how then does the need to put sin away from us relate to the promise of verse 1? Here two basic theological traditions part company. Calvinists and Arminians are agreed that the believer must progress in the battle against sin if he or she is to attain eternal life. But the Arminian believes that a regenerate person might, indeed, be so lured by the flesh that he or she fails to progress in the Christian life. At some point, then, that person might cease to be “in Christ.” Thus, the promise of verse 1 no longer applies to that person. The Calvinist, by contrast, believes that the influence of the Spirit in a believer’s life is so dominant that he or she can never reach the point of falling permanently into a lifestyle of sin and so forfeit the promise of “no condemnation.”

Each of these theological traditions, in other words, focuses on different sides of the truth Paul presents in these verses. The Calvinist does full justice to verse 1 with its ringing promise of “no condemnation”; the Arminian does full justice to the warning of verse 13. Both words need to be heard if we are to maintain a balance in our Christian walk. Security without responsibility breeds passivity, but responsibility without security leads to anxiety.

I have counseled both types of Christians. During an interim pastorate, I got to know an elder in the church. He proclaimed himself a strong Calvinist and delighted to discuss Reformed theology. I eventually discovered that he was having sex outside his marriage. But he was not worried about it; he was eternally secure in Christ. I also remember counseling a young woman who was extremely performance oriented. She brought this attitude into her Christianity and was eternally in despair because she had not lived up to the Lord’s expectations of her. She could not grasp her security in Christ—that Christ had taken her sins so that her performance was no longer the basis for her acceptance.

The truth question cannot be evaded. We need to preserve security and responsibility in balance. But how do we combine them in a way that is both coherent and true to Scripture? When push comes to shove, I myself think the strength of the assurances Paul gives to justified believers in this part of Romans (see esp. 5:9–10, 21; 8:1–4, 10–11, 28–30, 31–39) favors the Calvinist interpretation. No true believer can ever suffer condemnation. The verdict of innocence has already been proclaimed in the divine court, and it cannot be changed. But precisely because I take this view, I bend over backwards to do justice to the responsibility side of biblical teaching. As John Murray, a Calvinist himself, says, “The believer’s once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.”10

The Spirit’s presence in our lives inevitably produces fruit pleasing to God. Thus, we are secure. But the Spirit does not do his work apart from our response. I like the careful balance Paul achieves in verse 13: “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body” (italics added). Paul puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders: You need to put sin to death. But at the same time, he makes it clear that we can only do it through the Spirit.

Original Meaning

Life in the Spirit Versus Death in the Flesh (8:5–8)

AT THE END of verse 4, Paul introduces a contrast that governs these next four verses: “the sinful nature” versus the Spirit. “Sinful nature” is the NIV rendering of the Greek word sarx (flesh), when this word refers to the sinful tendencies of human beings. But the variety of constructions in which sarx occurs in these verses forces translators to use several different paraphrases. We prefer, for the sake of continuity of argument, to use the more literal “flesh” throughout (see footnote 2; also Bridging Contexts section).

In verses 5–8, then, Paul presents a series of contrasts between flesh and Spirit. His overall intention is clear: to show that sarx brings death while the Spirit brings life (v. 6). Paul leads up to this key claim by tracing people’s manner of life to their underlying way of thinking. In verse 4, he has used the antithesis of “living” (lit., “walking”) by the flesh/Spirit. The beginning of verse 5 picks up this same idea with a slightly different Greek construction (simply “according to the flesh/Spirit”). The lifestyle of the flesh flows from a mind oriented to the flesh, whereas the lifestyle of the Spirit comes from a mind oriented to the Spirit. And “the mind of the flesh is death” whereas the “mind of the Spirit [brings] life and peace.”

“Mind” translates phronema, which can be rendered “mind-set”; it denotes the basic direction of a person’s will (this noun occurs only in Romans 8 in the New Testament [vv. 6, 7, 27], though note the use of the cognate verb in Phil. 1:7; 2:2, 5; 3:15, 19; 4:5). Romans 8:7–8 explains why “the mind of the flesh” brings death. The orientation of the will reflects the values of this world as “hostile to God,” revealed in the fact that people who have that will cannot obey God’s law (v. 7). Thus, people who are “in the flesh [NIV controlled by the sinful nature] cannot please God” (v. 8).

Bridging Contexts

UNDERSTANDING FLESH (SARX). Sometimes there is justice in life. Whenever I taught Romans over the last couple of decades, I always criticized the NIV translators’ decision to translate sarx (flesh) when Paul uses in it in a negative way as “sinful nature.” I argued that by introducing the word “nature” in these contexts, the translators were setting up a potentially serious misrepresentation of Paul’s understanding of Christian existence.

Three years ago, however, I was appointed to the committee charged with reviewing the NIV translation. One of my first tasks was to suggest a better rendering of sarx. But it wasn’t long before I realized the difficulty faced by the translator here. I thought it might simply be best to use the English word “flesh” in each place where Paul uses sarx. But, as some of my colleagues rightly noted, most English readers think of the term flesh either as the meat on our bones or as sexual sin. Neither is anywhere close to what Paul intends. I tried various other alternatives but could come up with nothing better than “sinful nature.” So the decision came down to this: Should we continue to use “sinful nature,” even though that phrase may give a wrong impression? Or should we stick with “flesh,” even though many English readers may not understand it? The committee elected to stay with “sinful nature,” at least in most places.

This story illustrates and introduces two points relating to this word sarx: the complexity of this word in Paul and the hazards of translation. Both points need brief treatment as we seek to bridge Paul’s context and ours.

(1) Paul’s use of sarx is one of the most debated points in his theology.8 He sometimes uses the word to refer to the physical body as a whole (1 Cor. 6:16; 2 Cor. 7:1; 12:7; Gal. 5:13, 16; Eph. 5:31), as in secular Greek. But the physical element is often lost in Paul when he uses the word to refer to the person generally (see lit. trans. of Rom. 3:20: “No flesh will be justified by works of the law”). The Greeks used sarx in this way, but Paul’s usage is probably strongly influenced by the Old Testament. For sarx translates the Hebrew basar, which often refers to humankind in general (see lit. trans. of Gen. 6:12b: “All flesh has corrupted their ways”).

Particularly important for Paul’s special use of sarx is the way it sometimes connotes in the LXX what is human in distinction from God and the spiritual realm: “All flesh is [NIV all men are] like grass…. The grass withers and the flowers fall … but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). Paul often implies this notion of the “narrowly human” when he uses the word sarx. Many scholars divide Paul’s use of the word into two categories: the neutral and the ethical. But the two categories are rather at different points in a single continuous spectrum.

Even, therefore, when Paul speaks of Abraham as “our forefather according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1) or of Jesus as being “a descendant of David according to the flesh” (1:3, both lit. trans.), Paul implies that what he has said is not the whole story. Abraham is the physical father of the Jews, and that is not in itself negative. But it is ultimately, as he argues in Romans 4, too limited a view of Abraham, for he is also the father of all who believe. Similarly, it is obviously the case that Jesus’ existence in the flesh does not mean he was sinful or that this was a bad state. But, again, more must be said. For Jesus is not only Messiah from a physical, human perspective; he is also “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (1:4, lit. trans.).

We have to try to bring this broad, Old Testament-based background into our understanding of Paul’s use of sarx to describe the situation outside of Christ. What the apostle seems to mean is a condition, natural to people, in which God and the spiritual realm are left out of account. To be “in the flesh” (7:5; 8:8–9) is to be helplessly trapped in this situation. Thus, people naturally think in a “narrowly human” way (“the mind of the flesh”—8:5–6) and live in a “narrowly human” way (“live [or walk] according to the flesh”—8:4–5). In contrast, Christians, who no longer are in this condition, must not act as if they were. They must cease living “according to the flesh” (8:13).

Paul is again thinking in salvation-historical terms, helping us understand who we are by contrasting the old regime of the flesh from which we have been rescued with the new regime of the Spirit to which we now belong. Only by carefully reading the relevant passages and comparing Paul’s uses of sarx across his writings can we bridge the context from his day to ours.

(2) But bridging the contexts in translation is more difficult. The Italians have a famous saying about translation: Traddutore, traditore: “Translators, traitors.” What they mean is that any attempt to translate a book into another language inevitably fails to capture all the meaning and nuances of the original. Languages differ significantly. What one language expresses elegantly in a single word may not have a single word equivalent in other languages; a wordplay in one language does not work in another because the range of meanings of the words involved is different. Anyone who has tried to translate from one language to another knows just how hard the task can sometimes be and that the translator must always make difficult choices.

The rendering of Paul’s sarx into English is an excellent case in point. One could, of course, argue that the “literal” meaning of the word (“flesh”) should be preserved. But what do we mean by “literal”? Lurking behind this word is a false assumption about the way languages work, namely, that every word has a simple equivalent in another language that the translator can simply plug in. A lot of people who ask me what is the “most literal” translation of the Bible seem to have this impression of language.

But things are not that simple. Words have different meanings, and other languages often use different words to translate those meanings. I can use “bit” to refer to the implement I put in a horse’s mouth and to describe how powerful my computer is. Other languages undoubtedly have different words for these two meanings of a single English word. Imagine the confusion if I insisted on translating the English word “bit” with a single word in these other languages!

But let’s return to flesh. When one looks in an English dictionary, the meanings given for this word are: (1) “the soft parts of the body of an animal …”; (2) “edible parts of an animal …”; (3) (a) “the physical being of man”; (b) “human nature.”9 None of these is quite what Paul means by sarx. The last is the closest, but would the normal English reader know a meaning that comes so far down the list of definitions? Moreover, if the translator chooses to use “flesh” for every occurrence of sarx in Paul, the English reader might think that Christ came “in the flesh” in just the way that people apart from Christ are “in the flesh,” thereby eliminating either the sinlessness of Christ or the sinfulness of people.

I think it fair to say, then, that no good solution to the problem of translating sarx into English exists. The translator has to decide which of the alternatives has fewest problems, which gets closest to what Paul seems to intend. English readers of the Bible should not despair: Good translation gets the message of the Bible over clearly enough. But English readers should also understand that even the best translation will often not quite get the meaning of the original. Comparing other translations and the use of commentaries and other reference materials can do a lot to overcome the inevitable deficiency of an English translation.

Contemporary Significance

THE TRINITY IN ROMANS 8:1–13. Most students of the Bible know that one of the great distinguishing doctrines of the Christian church—the Trinity—is never explicitly taught in the Bible. The famous formulation about God as the “three in one,” three persons within a single Godhead, is not found in the Scripture. The closest we get are formulations such as Matthew 28:19, where Jesus commands his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Why, then, does the Christian church hold this doctrine? Because we are convinced that the Trinitarian formulation is the only way to do justice to what the entire Bible teaches about God: Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. “There is one God” is clearly taught in the New Testament as well as the Old (e.g., Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4–6; James 2:19). But equally clear is the teaching that Jesus is God (e.g., John 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8) and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can account for the claims made in all these texts.

Another, less direct, witness to the Trinity are the many passages that fall into a Trinitarian pattern. The New Testament writers, perhaps before they had even formally worked out the conception of the Trinity, were writing about God in ways that showed they were assuming such a view. Romans 8:1–13 affords two of the clearest examples of this consciousness. (1) Note how Paul involves Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption (vv. 2–3). God the Father sends his Son to condemn sin (v. 3), and the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that action to release us from sin and death. Salvation is the work of the Triune God. All three persons are active in rescuing us from sin and bringing us into the new life. Our thanksgiving and worship, therefore, are appropriately directed to all three persons. Many of the great hymns of the faith reflect this Trinitarian structure.

(2) Note also how Paul varies the way he talks about God’s work in our hearts in verses 9–10: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” What takes up his dwelling in us is first the “Spirit of God,” then the “Spirit of Christ,” then, finally, “Christ.” Paul does not mean that the Spirit and Christ are two names for the same person or that they are interchangeable. Rather, both are involved so intimately in the work of God in our lives that he can shift virtually unconsciously from one to the other.

Theological metaphors once again. In the Bridging Contexts section of 3:21–26, we noted how biblical writers use various metaphors to capture theological truth. Romans 8:9 illustrates the point once more, though the NIV obscures this fact somewhat. Let us therefore start with a literal rendering: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to him.” Note how Paul can shift within these two verses from the metaphor of our being “in” the Spirit to the metaphor of the Spirit being “in” us. Neither, of course, is ontologically true. But both are pictures of a theological truth: The believer is under the dominance of God’s Spirit.

How easily we can use the metaphors of Scripture and not always understand them was brought home to me forcefully one day when I got home from work to find my son David, then about five years old, rushing up to me, exclaiming excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy, I just asked Jesus into my tummy!” A metaphor such as “asking Jesus into the heart” can become such a cliché that it ceases to have significance. We miss the truth that the metaphor is designed to point to.

The importance of our mind-set. In discussing verse 6, we suggested that the Greek word phronema that Paul uses there might best be rendered “mind-set.” Note how the NIV translates the cognate verb (phroneo) in verse 5: “have their minds set on.” These two Greek words are distinctively Pauline. Twenty-three of the twenty-six New Testament occurrences of phroneo are found in Paul (Rom. 8:5; 11:20; 12:3, 16; 14:6; 15:5; 1 Cor. 13:11; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:10; Phil. 1:7; 2:2, 5; 3:15, 19; 4:2, 10; Col. 3:2; see also Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33; Acts 28:22), and all four New Testament occurrences of phronema come in this chapter (vv. 6 [2x], 7, 27). These words include intellectual activity (“thinking” in the narrow sense), but go beyond it to involve the will also. The phronema is our fundamental orientation, the convictions and heart attitude that steers the course of our life.

As such, having the “mind-set” of the Spirit is the crucial “middle” step between existence in the sphere of the Spirit (v. 9) and living according to the Spirit (v. 4b). Cultivating a Spirit-led, Spirit-filled disposition of heart and mind is necessary if we are to live in a way that pleases God.

These verses, therefore, raise a fundamental question: How are we forming our “minds”? What are we putting in them? What are we exposing them to? Christians who read nothing but the latest novels, watch nothing but network television, and talk to nobody but unbelievers are never going to form the mind-set of the Spirit. All the input comes from one direction, reflecting the value system of the “flesh.” No wonder we so often think and act in “fleshly” ways!

If we are serious about progressing in the Christian life, we must seek every day to feed our minds with spiritual food. Too easily our “quiet times” can degenerate into routine exercises in which the mind is hardly involved. We read Scripture, but we don’t really seek to engage it by asking what it means or how it applies to us. We pray, but we follow the same pattern every day. Our daily times with the Lord can be one way in which we develop the mind-set of the Spirit, but only if the mind is really involved.

God’s gift and our obligation. The juxtaposition of verses 1 and 13 is jarring. In the former, Paul boldly proclaims that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But in the latter he warns, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” How can both be true? If there truly is “no condemnation” for believers, then how can we warn believers that they may die if they live the wrong way? Has God secured our eternal life once for all? Or is it still up to us to earn that eternal life?

Theologians have answered these questions in very different ways, and their views have filtered down to Christians. The result is that people have very different ideas about the Christian life and how to lead it. What is important is to maintain a careful balance between what God gives us in Christ and what we must do in response to that gift.

A few interpreters have tried to avoid the tension between these verses altogether by particular readings of verse 13. Some think that the people Paul addresses (“you”) may be church attenders who do not really know the Lord. But how can Paul then urge them to use the Spirit to fight sin? Others think that “death” and “life” in the verse are physical only. But it is nonsense for Paul to suggest that physical death, the fate all who do not live until the Lord returns, will be the penalty only for Christians who live according to the flesh. The “death” Paul warns about and the “life” he promises are spiritual, not physical. Paul affirms that his Christian readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh.

But how then does the need to put sin away from us relate to the promise of verse 1? Here two basic theological traditions part company. Calvinists and Arminians are agreed that the believer must progress in the battle against sin if he or she is to attain eternal life. But the Arminian believes that a regenerate person might, indeed, be so lured by the flesh that he or she fails to progress in the Christian life. At some point, then, that person might cease to be “in Christ.” Thus, the promise of verse 1 no longer applies to that person. The Calvinist, by contrast, believes that the influence of the Spirit in a believer’s life is so dominant that he or she can never reach the point of falling permanently into a lifestyle of sin and so forfeit the promise of “no condemnation.”

Each of these theological traditions, in other words, focuses on different sides of the truth Paul presents in these verses. The Calvinist does full justice to verse 1 with its ringing promise of “no condemnation”; the Arminian does full justice to the warning of verse 13. Both words need to be heard if we are to maintain a balance in our Christian walk. Security without responsibility breeds passivity, but responsibility without security leads to anxiety.

I have counseled both types of Christians. During an interim pastorate, I got to know an elder in the church. He proclaimed himself a strong Calvinist and delighted to discuss Reformed theology. I eventually discovered that he was having sex outside his marriage. But he was not worried about it; he was eternally secure in Christ. I also remember counseling a young woman who was extremely performance oriented. She brought this attitude into her Christianity and was eternally in despair because she had not lived up to the Lord’s expectations of her. She could not grasp her security in Christ—that Christ had taken her sins so that her performance was no longer the basis for her acceptance.

The truth question cannot be evaded. We need to preserve security and responsibility in balance. But how do we combine them in a way that is both coherent and true to Scripture? When push comes to shove, I myself think the strength of the assurances Paul gives to justified believers in this part of Romans (see esp. 5:9–10, 21; 8:1–4, 10–11, 28–30, 31–39) favors the Calvinist interpretation. No true believer can ever suffer condemnation. The verdict of innocence has already been proclaimed in the divine court, and it cannot be changed. But precisely because I take this view, I bend over backwards to do justice to the responsibility side of biblical teaching. As John Murray, a Calvinist himself, says, “The believer’s once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.”10

The Spirit’s presence in our lives inevitably produces fruit pleasing to God. Thus, we are secure. But the Spirit does not do his work apart from our response. I like the careful balance Paul achieves in verse 13: “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body” (italics added). Paul puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders: You need to put sin to death. But at the same time, he makes it clear that we can only do it through the Spirit.

Original Meaning

Assurance of Future, Resurrection Life (8:9–11)

PAUL SIGNALS A shift in direction by turning directly to his readers: “You, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit.” Paul’s “two-regime” theological framework is evident here. What he says, literally, is that “you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.” Flesh and Spirit are two of the main powers belonging, respectively, to the old regime and the new (see 7:5–6). By God’s grace in Christ, Christians have been taken out of the realm dominated by “flesh”—the narrowly human outlook that leads to sin—and placed in the realm dominated by God’s Holy Spirit. It is clear, then, that the “in flesh”/“in Spirit” language is metaphorical—a way of indicating that people are dominated by one or the other of these forces.

This becomes even clearer at the end of verse 9, where Paul shifts to the opposite metaphorical concept: We are “in the Spirit” if the Spirit “lives in” us. In whom does the Spirit live? In every person who is genuinely a Christian. Not to have the Spirit of Christ is not to belong to Christ at all. The New Testament teaches that the gift of the Holy Spirit is an automatic benefit for anyone who knows Christ (see comments on 6:1–14). We must, then, give full force to the indicative mode of verse 9: Every Christian really is “in the Spirit”—under his domination and control. We may not always reflect that domination (see 8:12–13), but it is a fundamental fact of our Christian existence and the basis for a life of confidence and obedience to the Lord.

In an effort to maintain balance that is typical of Romans, Paul goes on to comment about a situation in which the Spirit’s dominance might not be so obvious: the believer’s continued existence in a physical body that is doomed to die and is still all too susceptible to the influence of sin. Yes, Paul says, even with Christ in us, our bodies are still “dead because of sin.” Physical death is a penalty for sin that must still be carried out. Yet the Christian can take confidence because “your spirit is alive because of righteousness.”

According to the NIV translation in verse 10, it is the human “spirit” (small “s”) that has been given new spiritual life. The contrast between pneuma (“spirit”) and soma (“body”) might favor this rendering.5 But pneuma consistently refers to the Holy Spirit in this chapter, and the Greek word behind “alive” is not an adjective, but a noun: zoe, “life.” Furthermore, the word “your” in “your spirit” does not occur in the Greek. Probably, then, Paul refers here to the Holy Spirit, the power of “life” that has come to reside in every believer.6 It is because of this power of life within us that we can be certain of future resurrection. Our bodies may be doomed to die, but the Spirit, the Spirit of life, the Spirit of the God who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead, dwells within us and guarantees that our bodies will not end in the grave. God, through the Spirit, will give life to those bodies again.7

Bridging Contexts

UNDERSTANDING FLESH (SARX). Sometimes there is justice in life. Whenever I taught Romans over the last couple of decades, I always criticized the NIV translators’ decision to translate sarx (flesh) when Paul uses in it in a negative way as “sinful nature.” I argued that by introducing the word “nature” in these contexts, the translators were setting up a potentially serious misrepresentation of Paul’s understanding of Christian existence.

Three years ago, however, I was appointed to the committee charged with reviewing the NIV translation. One of my first tasks was to suggest a better rendering of sarx. But it wasn’t long before I realized the difficulty faced by the translator here. I thought it might simply be best to use the English word “flesh” in each place where Paul uses sarx. But, as some of my colleagues rightly noted, most English readers think of the term flesh either as the meat on our bones or as sexual sin. Neither is anywhere close to what Paul intends. I tried various other alternatives but could come up with nothing better than “sinful nature.” So the decision came down to this: Should we continue to use “sinful nature,” even though that phrase may give a wrong impression? Or should we stick with “flesh,” even though many English readers may not understand it? The committee elected to stay with “sinful nature,” at least in most places.

This story illustrates and introduces two points relating to this word sarx: the complexity of this word in Paul and the hazards of translation. Both points need brief treatment as we seek to bridge Paul’s context and ours.

(1) Paul’s use of sarx is one of the most debated points in his theology.8 He sometimes uses the word to refer to the physical body as a whole (1 Cor. 6:16; 2 Cor. 7:1; 12:7; Gal. 5:13, 16; Eph. 5:31), as in secular Greek. But the physical element is often lost in Paul when he uses the word to refer to the person generally (see lit. trans. of Rom. 3:20: “No flesh will be justified by works of the law”). The Greeks used sarx in this way, but Paul’s usage is probably strongly influenced by the Old Testament. For sarx translates the Hebrew basar, which often refers to humankind in general (see lit. trans. of Gen. 6:12b: “All flesh has corrupted their ways”).

Particularly important for Paul’s special use of sarx is the way it sometimes connotes in the LXX what is human in distinction from God and the spiritual realm: “All flesh is [NIV all men are] like grass…. The grass withers and the flowers fall … but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). Paul often implies this notion of the “narrowly human” when he uses the word sarx. Many scholars divide Paul’s use of the word into two categories: the neutral and the ethical. But the two categories are rather at different points in a single continuous spectrum.

Even, therefore, when Paul speaks of Abraham as “our forefather according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1) or of Jesus as being “a descendant of David according to the flesh” (1:3, both lit. trans.), Paul implies that what he has said is not the whole story. Abraham is the physical father of the Jews, and that is not in itself negative. But it is ultimately, as he argues in Romans 4, too limited a view of Abraham, for he is also the father of all who believe. Similarly, it is obviously the case that Jesus’ existence in the flesh does not mean he was sinful or that this was a bad state. But, again, more must be said. For Jesus is not only Messiah from a physical, human perspective; he is also “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (1:4, lit. trans.).

We have to try to bring this broad, Old Testament-based background into our understanding of Paul’s use of sarx to describe the situation outside of Christ. What the apostle seems to mean is a condition, natural to people, in which God and the spiritual realm are left out of account. To be “in the flesh” (7:5; 8:8–9) is to be helplessly trapped in this situation. Thus, people naturally think in a “narrowly human” way (“the mind of the flesh”—8:5–6) and live in a “narrowly human” way (“live [or walk] according to the flesh”—8:4–5). In contrast, Christians, who no longer are in this condition, must not act as if they were. They must cease living “according to the flesh” (8:13).

Paul is again thinking in salvation-historical terms, helping us understand who we are by contrasting the old regime of the flesh from which we have been rescued with the new regime of the Spirit to which we now belong. Only by carefully reading the relevant passages and comparing Paul’s uses of sarx across his writings can we bridge the context from his day to ours.

(2) But bridging the contexts in translation is more difficult. The Italians have a famous saying about translation: Traddutore, traditore: “Translators, traitors.” What they mean is that any attempt to translate a book into another language inevitably fails to capture all the meaning and nuances of the original. Languages differ significantly. What one language expresses elegantly in a single word may not have a single word equivalent in other languages; a wordplay in one language does not work in another because the range of meanings of the words involved is different. Anyone who has tried to translate from one language to another knows just how hard the task can sometimes be and that the translator must always make difficult choices.

The rendering of Paul’s sarx into English is an excellent case in point. One could, of course, argue that the “literal” meaning of the word (“flesh”) should be preserved. But what do we mean by “literal”? Lurking behind this word is a false assumption about the way languages work, namely, that every word has a simple equivalent in another language that the translator can simply plug in. A lot of people who ask me what is the “most literal” translation of the Bible seem to have this impression of language.

But things are not that simple. Words have different meanings, and other languages often use different words to translate those meanings. I can use “bit” to refer to the implement I put in a horse’s mouth and to describe how powerful my computer is. Other languages undoubtedly have different words for these two meanings of a single English word. Imagine the confusion if I insisted on translating the English word “bit” with a single word in these other languages!

But let’s return to flesh. When one looks in an English dictionary, the meanings given for this word are: (1) “the soft parts of the body of an animal …”; (2) “edible parts of an animal …”; (3) (a) “the physical being of man”; (b) “human nature.”9 None of these is quite what Paul means by sarx. The last is the closest, but would the normal English reader know a meaning that comes so far down the list of definitions? Moreover, if the translator chooses to use “flesh” for every occurrence of sarx in Paul, the English reader might think that Christ came “in the flesh” in just the way that people apart from Christ are “in the flesh,” thereby eliminating either the sinlessness of Christ or the sinfulness of people.

I think it fair to say, then, that no good solution to the problem of translating sarx into English exists. The translator has to decide which of the alternatives has fewest problems, which gets closest to what Paul seems to intend. English readers of the Bible should not despair: Good translation gets the message of the Bible over clearly enough. But English readers should also understand that even the best translation will often not quite get the meaning of the original. Comparing other translations and the use of commentaries and other reference materials can do a lot to overcome the inevitable deficiency of an English translation.

Contemporary Significance

THE TRINITY IN ROMANS 8:1–13. Most students of the Bible know that one of the great distinguishing doctrines of the Christian church—the Trinity—is never explicitly taught in the Bible. The famous formulation about God as the “three in one,” three persons within a single Godhead, is not found in the Scripture. The closest we get are formulations such as Matthew 28:19, where Jesus commands his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Why, then, does the Christian church hold this doctrine? Because we are convinced that the Trinitarian formulation is the only way to do justice to what the entire Bible teaches about God: Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. “There is one God” is clearly taught in the New Testament as well as the Old (e.g., Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4–6; James 2:19). But equally clear is the teaching that Jesus is God (e.g., John 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8) and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can account for the claims made in all these texts.

Another, less direct, witness to the Trinity are the many passages that fall into a Trinitarian pattern. The New Testament writers, perhaps before they had even formally worked out the conception of the Trinity, were writing about God in ways that showed they were assuming such a view. Romans 8:1–13 affords two of the clearest examples of this consciousness. (1) Note how Paul involves Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption (vv. 2–3). God the Father sends his Son to condemn sin (v. 3), and the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that action to release us from sin and death. Salvation is the work of the Triune God. All three persons are active in rescuing us from sin and bringing us into the new life. Our thanksgiving and worship, therefore, are appropriately directed to all three persons. Many of the great hymns of the faith reflect this Trinitarian structure.

(2) Note also how Paul varies the way he talks about God’s work in our hearts in verses 9–10: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” What takes up his dwelling in us is first the “Spirit of God,” then the “Spirit of Christ,” then, finally, “Christ.” Paul does not mean that the Spirit and Christ are two names for the same person or that they are interchangeable. Rather, both are involved so intimately in the work of God in our lives that he can shift virtually unconsciously from one to the other.

Theological metaphors once again. In the Bridging Contexts section of 3:21–26, we noted how biblical writers use various metaphors to capture theological truth. Romans 8:9 illustrates the point once more, though the NIV obscures this fact somewhat. Let us therefore start with a literal rendering: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to him.” Note how Paul can shift within these two verses from the metaphor of our being “in” the Spirit to the metaphor of the Spirit being “in” us. Neither, of course, is ontologically true. But both are pictures of a theological truth: The believer is under the dominance of God’s Spirit.

How easily we can use the metaphors of Scripture and not always understand them was brought home to me forcefully one day when I got home from work to find my son David, then about five years old, rushing up to me, exclaiming excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy, I just asked Jesus into my tummy!” A metaphor such as “asking Jesus into the heart” can become such a cliché that it ceases to have significance. We miss the truth that the metaphor is designed to point to.

The importance of our mind-set. In discussing verse 6, we suggested that the Greek word phronema that Paul uses there might best be rendered “mind-set.” Note how the NIV translates the cognate verb (phroneo) in verse 5: “have their minds set on.” These two Greek words are distinctively Pauline. Twenty-three of the twenty-six New Testament occurrences of phroneo are found in Paul (Rom. 8:5; 11:20; 12:3, 16; 14:6; 15:5; 1 Cor. 13:11; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:10; Phil. 1:7; 2:2, 5; 3:15, 19; 4:2, 10; Col. 3:2; see also Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33; Acts 28:22), and all four New Testament occurrences of phronema come in this chapter (vv. 6 [2x], 7, 27). These words include intellectual activity (“thinking” in the narrow sense), but go beyond it to involve the will also. The phronema is our fundamental orientation, the convictions and heart attitude that steers the course of our life.

As such, having the “mind-set” of the Spirit is the crucial “middle” step between existence in the sphere of the Spirit (v. 9) and living according to the Spirit (v. 4b). Cultivating a Spirit-led, Spirit-filled disposition of heart and mind is necessary if we are to live in a way that pleases God.

These verses, therefore, raise a fundamental question: How are we forming our “minds”? What are we putting in them? What are we exposing them to? Christians who read nothing but the latest novels, watch nothing but network television, and talk to nobody but unbelievers are never going to form the mind-set of the Spirit. All the input comes from one direction, reflecting the value system of the “flesh.” No wonder we so often think and act in “fleshly” ways!

If we are serious about progressing in the Christian life, we must seek every day to feed our minds with spiritual food. Too easily our “quiet times” can degenerate into routine exercises in which the mind is hardly involved. We read Scripture, but we don’t really seek to engage it by asking what it means or how it applies to us. We pray, but we follow the same pattern every day. Our daily times with the Lord can be one way in which we develop the mind-set of the Spirit, but only if the mind is really involved.

God’s gift and our obligation. The juxtaposition of verses 1 and 13 is jarring. In the former, Paul boldly proclaims that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But in the latter he warns, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” How can both be true? If there truly is “no condemnation” for believers, then how can we warn believers that they may die if they live the wrong way? Has God secured our eternal life once for all? Or is it still up to us to earn that eternal life?

Theologians have answered these questions in very different ways, and their views have filtered down to Christians. The result is that people have very different ideas about the Christian life and how to lead it. What is important is to maintain a careful balance between what God gives us in Christ and what we must do in response to that gift.

A few interpreters have tried to avoid the tension between these verses altogether by particular readings of verse 13. Some think that the people Paul addresses (“you”) may be church attenders who do not really know the Lord. But how can Paul then urge them to use the Spirit to fight sin? Others think that “death” and “life” in the verse are physical only. But it is nonsense for Paul to suggest that physical death, the fate all who do not live until the Lord returns, will be the penalty only for Christians who live according to the flesh. The “death” Paul warns about and the “life” he promises are spiritual, not physical. Paul affirms that his Christian readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh.

But how then does the need to put sin away from us relate to the promise of verse 1? Here two basic theological traditions part company. Calvinists and Arminians are agreed that the believer must progress in the battle against sin if he or she is to attain eternal life. But the Arminian believes that a regenerate person might, indeed, be so lured by the flesh that he or she fails to progress in the Christian life. At some point, then, that person might cease to be “in Christ.” Thus, the promise of verse 1 no longer applies to that person. The Calvinist, by contrast, believes that the influence of the Spirit in a believer’s life is so dominant that he or she can never reach the point of falling permanently into a lifestyle of sin and so forfeit the promise of “no condemnation.”

Each of these theological traditions, in other words, focuses on different sides of the truth Paul presents in these verses. The Calvinist does full justice to verse 1 with its ringing promise of “no condemnation”; the Arminian does full justice to the warning of verse 13. Both words need to be heard if we are to maintain a balance in our Christian walk. Security without responsibility breeds passivity, but responsibility without security leads to anxiety.

I have counseled both types of Christians. During an interim pastorate, I got to know an elder in the church. He proclaimed himself a strong Calvinist and delighted to discuss Reformed theology. I eventually discovered that he was having sex outside his marriage. But he was not worried about it; he was eternally secure in Christ. I also remember counseling a young woman who was extremely performance oriented. She brought this attitude into her Christianity and was eternally in despair because she had not lived up to the Lord’s expectations of her. She could not grasp her security in Christ—that Christ had taken her sins so that her performance was no longer the basis for her acceptance.

The truth question cannot be evaded. We need to preserve security and responsibility in balance. But how do we combine them in a way that is both coherent and true to Scripture? When push comes to shove, I myself think the strength of the assurances Paul gives to justified believers in this part of Romans (see esp. 5:9–10, 21; 8:1–4, 10–11, 28–30, 31–39) favors the Calvinist interpretation. No true believer can ever suffer condemnation. The verdict of innocence has already been proclaimed in the divine court, and it cannot be changed. But precisely because I take this view, I bend over backwards to do justice to the responsibility side of biblical teaching. As John Murray, a Calvinist himself, says, “The believer’s once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.”10

The Spirit’s presence in our lives inevitably produces fruit pleasing to God. Thus, we are secure. But the Spirit does not do his work apart from our response. I like the careful balance Paul achieves in verse 13: “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body” (italics added). Paul puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders: You need to put sin to death. But at the same time, he makes it clear that we can only do it through the Spirit.

Original Meaning

Our Obligation (8:12–13)

MOST COMMENTARIES AND translations put a major break between verses 11 and 12 and put verses 12–13 in a paragraph with verses 14–17. But verses 12–13 are not the introduction to the “children of God” theme of verses 14–17; they are the conclusion to Paul’s teaching about life in Christ through the Spirit (8:1–11). The “Spirit of life” (v. 2) sets us free from condemnation so that we can now enjoy new life, and because “the Spirit is life” (cf. v. 10) we are also assured of eternal life in a resurrected body. But God’s gift of new life through his Spirit carries with it an obligation. That obligation is not to “the flesh” (sarx; NIV sinful nature), that power of the old regime from which we have been delivered. It is to the Spirit, the power of the new regime.

To be sure, Paul does not state this positive side of our obligation. He breaks off his sentence at the end of verse 12 to emphasize the importance of our obligation in verse 13. We will ultimately inherit the new eternal life God has promised us only if we actively use the Spirit to “put to death the misdeeds of the body.” Continuing to live “according to the flesh” means that we will suffer spiritual death. The tension between the “indicative” of what God gives us and the “imperative” of what we must do comes to a head here. We will say more about this tension in the Contemporary Significance section.

Three points can be made briefly here. (1) Paul is serious about the need for us to put into effect the new life God gives us. Our response is not optional; it is necessary. (2) However, this response is itself empowered by the Spirit. We cannot stop committing sins in our own power; it can only be done “by the Spirit.” (3) Paul never suggests that the inheritance of future life requires that we stop sinning altogether. What he demands in this verse is clear, long-term, progress in becoming less like the world (i.e., “the flesh”) and more like Christ.

Bridging Contexts

UNDERSTANDING FLESH (SARX). Sometimes there is justice in life. Whenever I taught Romans over the last couple of decades, I always criticized the NIV translators’ decision to translate sarx (flesh) when Paul uses in it in a negative way as “sinful nature.” I argued that by introducing the word “nature” in these contexts, the translators were setting up a potentially serious misrepresentation of Paul’s understanding of Christian existence.

Three years ago, however, I was appointed to the committee charged with reviewing the NIV translation. One of my first tasks was to suggest a better rendering of sarx. But it wasn’t long before I realized the difficulty faced by the translator here. I thought it might simply be best to use the English word “flesh” in each place where Paul uses sarx. But, as some of my colleagues rightly noted, most English readers think of the term flesh either as the meat on our bones or as sexual sin. Neither is anywhere close to what Paul intends. I tried various other alternatives but could come up with nothing better than “sinful nature.” So the decision came down to this: Should we continue to use “sinful nature,” even though that phrase may give a wrong impression? Or should we stick with “flesh,” even though many English readers may not understand it? The committee elected to stay with “sinful nature,” at least in most places.

This story illustrates and introduces two points relating to this word sarx: the complexity of this word in Paul and the hazards of translation. Both points need brief treatment as we seek to bridge Paul’s context and ours.

(1) Paul’s use of sarx is one of the most debated points in his theology.8 He sometimes uses the word to refer to the physical body as a whole (1 Cor. 6:16; 2 Cor. 7:1; 12:7; Gal. 5:13, 16; Eph. 5:31), as in secular Greek. But the physical element is often lost in Paul when he uses the word to refer to the person generally (see lit. trans. of Rom. 3:20: “No flesh will be justified by works of the law”). The Greeks used sarx in this way, but Paul’s usage is probably strongly influenced by the Old Testament. For sarx translates the Hebrew basar, which often refers to humankind in general (see lit. trans. of Gen. 6:12b: “All flesh has corrupted their ways”).

Particularly important for Paul’s special use of sarx is the way it sometimes connotes in the LXX what is human in distinction from God and the spiritual realm: “All flesh is [NIV all men are] like grass…. The grass withers and the flowers fall … but the word of our God stands forever” (Isa. 40:6–8). Paul often implies this notion of the “narrowly human” when he uses the word sarx. Many scholars divide Paul’s use of the word into two categories: the neutral and the ethical. But the two categories are rather at different points in a single continuous spectrum.

Even, therefore, when Paul speaks of Abraham as “our forefather according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1) or of Jesus as being “a descendant of David according to the flesh” (1:3, both lit. trans.), Paul implies that what he has said is not the whole story. Abraham is the physical father of the Jews, and that is not in itself negative. But it is ultimately, as he argues in Romans 4, too limited a view of Abraham, for he is also the father of all who believe. Similarly, it is obviously the case that Jesus’ existence in the flesh does not mean he was sinful or that this was a bad state. But, again, more must be said. For Jesus is not only Messiah from a physical, human perspective; he is also “Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness” (1:4, lit. trans.).

We have to try to bring this broad, Old Testament-based background into our understanding of Paul’s use of sarx to describe the situation outside of Christ. What the apostle seems to mean is a condition, natural to people, in which God and the spiritual realm are left out of account. To be “in the flesh” (7:5; 8:8–9) is to be helplessly trapped in this situation. Thus, people naturally think in a “narrowly human” way (“the mind of the flesh”—8:5–6) and live in a “narrowly human” way (“live [or walk] according to the flesh”—8:4–5). In contrast, Christians, who no longer are in this condition, must not act as if they were. They must cease living “according to the flesh” (8:13).

Paul is again thinking in salvation-historical terms, helping us understand who we are by contrasting the old regime of the flesh from which we have been rescued with the new regime of the Spirit to which we now belong. Only by carefully reading the relevant passages and comparing Paul’s uses of sarx across his writings can we bridge the context from his day to ours.

(2) But bridging the contexts in translation is more difficult. The Italians have a famous saying about translation: Traddutore, traditore: “Translators, traitors.” What they mean is that any attempt to translate a book into another language inevitably fails to capture all the meaning and nuances of the original. Languages differ significantly. What one language expresses elegantly in a single word may not have a single word equivalent in other languages; a wordplay in one language does not work in another because the range of meanings of the words involved is different. Anyone who has tried to translate from one language to another knows just how hard the task can sometimes be and that the translator must always make difficult choices.

The rendering of Paul’s sarx into English is an excellent case in point. One could, of course, argue that the “literal” meaning of the word (“flesh”) should be preserved. But what do we mean by “literal”? Lurking behind this word is a false assumption about the way languages work, namely, that every word has a simple equivalent in another language that the translator can simply plug in. A lot of people who ask me what is the “most literal” translation of the Bible seem to have this impression of language.

But things are not that simple. Words have different meanings, and other languages often use different words to translate those meanings. I can use “bit” to refer to the implement I put in a horse’s mouth and to describe how powerful my computer is. Other languages undoubtedly have different words for these two meanings of a single English word. Imagine the confusion if I insisted on translating the English word “bit” with a single word in these other languages!

But let’s return to flesh. When one looks in an English dictionary, the meanings given for this word are: (1) “the soft parts of the body of an animal …”; (2) “edible parts of an animal …”; (3) (a) “the physical being of man”; (b) “human nature.”9 None of these is quite what Paul means by sarx. The last is the closest, but would the normal English reader know a meaning that comes so far down the list of definitions? Moreover, if the translator chooses to use “flesh” for every occurrence of sarx in Paul, the English reader might think that Christ came “in the flesh” in just the way that people apart from Christ are “in the flesh,” thereby eliminating either the sinlessness of Christ or the sinfulness of people.

I think it fair to say, then, that no good solution to the problem of translating sarx into English exists. The translator has to decide which of the alternatives has fewest problems, which gets closest to what Paul seems to intend. English readers of the Bible should not despair: Good translation gets the message of the Bible over clearly enough. But English readers should also understand that even the best translation will often not quite get the meaning of the original. Comparing other translations and the use of commentaries and other reference materials can do a lot to overcome the inevitable deficiency of an English translation.

Contemporary Significance

THE TRINITY IN ROMANS 8:1–13. Most students of the Bible know that one of the great distinguishing doctrines of the Christian church—the Trinity—is never explicitly taught in the Bible. The famous formulation about God as the “three in one,” three persons within a single Godhead, is not found in the Scripture. The closest we get are formulations such as Matthew 28:19, where Jesus commands his disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Why, then, does the Christian church hold this doctrine? Because we are convinced that the Trinitarian formulation is the only way to do justice to what the entire Bible teaches about God: Father, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. “There is one God” is clearly taught in the New Testament as well as the Old (e.g., Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4–6; James 2:19). But equally clear is the teaching that Jesus is God (e.g., John 20:28; Rom. 9:5; Titus 2:13; Heb. 1:8) and that the Holy Spirit is God (Acts 5:3–4). Only the doctrine of the Trinity can account for the claims made in all these texts.

Another, less direct, witness to the Trinity are the many passages that fall into a Trinitarian pattern. The New Testament writers, perhaps before they had even formally worked out the conception of the Trinity, were writing about God in ways that showed they were assuming such a view. Romans 8:1–13 affords two of the clearest examples of this consciousness. (1) Note how Paul involves Father, Son, and Spirit in the work of redemption (vv. 2–3). God the Father sends his Son to condemn sin (v. 3), and the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of that action to release us from sin and death. Salvation is the work of the Triune God. All three persons are active in rescuing us from sin and bringing us into the new life. Our thanksgiving and worship, therefore, are appropriately directed to all three persons. Many of the great hymns of the faith reflect this Trinitarian structure.

(2) Note also how Paul varies the way he talks about God’s work in our hearts in verses 9–10: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” What takes up his dwelling in us is first the “Spirit of God,” then the “Spirit of Christ,” then, finally, “Christ.” Paul does not mean that the Spirit and Christ are two names for the same person or that they are interchangeable. Rather, both are involved so intimately in the work of God in our lives that he can shift virtually unconsciously from one to the other.

Theological metaphors once again. In the Bridging Contexts section of 3:21–26, we noted how biblical writers use various metaphors to capture theological truth. Romans 8:9 illustrates the point once more, though the NIV obscures this fact somewhat. Let us therefore start with a literal rendering: “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. And if someone does not have the Spirit of Christ, that person does not belong to him.” Note how Paul can shift within these two verses from the metaphor of our being “in” the Spirit to the metaphor of the Spirit being “in” us. Neither, of course, is ontologically true. But both are pictures of a theological truth: The believer is under the dominance of God’s Spirit.

How easily we can use the metaphors of Scripture and not always understand them was brought home to me forcefully one day when I got home from work to find my son David, then about five years old, rushing up to me, exclaiming excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy, I just asked Jesus into my tummy!” A metaphor such as “asking Jesus into the heart” can become such a cliché that it ceases to have significance. We miss the truth that the metaphor is designed to point to.

The importance of our mind-set. In discussing verse 6, we suggested that the Greek word phronema that Paul uses there might best be rendered “mind-set.” Note how the NIV translates the cognate verb (phroneo) in verse 5: “have their minds set on.” These two Greek words are distinctively Pauline. Twenty-three of the twenty-six New Testament occurrences of phroneo are found in Paul (Rom. 8:5; 11:20; 12:3, 16; 14:6; 15:5; 1 Cor. 13:11; 2 Cor. 13:11; Gal. 5:10; Phil. 1:7; 2:2, 5; 3:15, 19; 4:2, 10; Col. 3:2; see also Matt. 16:23; Mark 8:33; Acts 28:22), and all four New Testament occurrences of phronema come in this chapter (vv. 6 [2x], 7, 27). These words include intellectual activity (“thinking” in the narrow sense), but go beyond it to involve the will also. The phronema is our fundamental orientation, the convictions and heart attitude that steers the course of our life.

As such, having the “mind-set” of the Spirit is the crucial “middle” step between existence in the sphere of the Spirit (v. 9) and living according to the Spirit (v. 4b). Cultivating a Spirit-led, Spirit-filled disposition of heart and mind is necessary if we are to live in a way that pleases God.

These verses, therefore, raise a fundamental question: How are we forming our “minds”? What are we putting in them? What are we exposing them to? Christians who read nothing but the latest novels, watch nothing but network television, and talk to nobody but unbelievers are never going to form the mind-set of the Spirit. All the input comes from one direction, reflecting the value system of the “flesh.” No wonder we so often think and act in “fleshly” ways!

If we are serious about progressing in the Christian life, we must seek every day to feed our minds with spiritual food. Too easily our “quiet times” can degenerate into routine exercises in which the mind is hardly involved. We read Scripture, but we don’t really seek to engage it by asking what it means or how it applies to us. We pray, but we follow the same pattern every day. Our daily times with the Lord can be one way in which we develop the mind-set of the Spirit, but only if the mind is really involved.

God’s gift and our obligation. The juxtaposition of verses 1 and 13 is jarring. In the former, Paul boldly proclaims that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But in the latter he warns, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” How can both be true? If there truly is “no condemnation” for believers, then how can we warn believers that they may die if they live the wrong way? Has God secured our eternal life once for all? Or is it still up to us to earn that eternal life?

Theologians have answered these questions in very different ways, and their views have filtered down to Christians. The result is that people have very different ideas about the Christian life and how to lead it. What is important is to maintain a careful balance between what God gives us in Christ and what we must do in response to that gift.

A few interpreters have tried to avoid the tension between these verses altogether by particular readings of verse 13. Some think that the people Paul addresses (“you”) may be church attenders who do not really know the Lord. But how can Paul then urge them to use the Spirit to fight sin? Others think that “death” and “life” in the verse are physical only. But it is nonsense for Paul to suggest that physical death, the fate all who do not live until the Lord returns, will be the penalty only for Christians who live according to the flesh. The “death” Paul warns about and the “life” he promises are spiritual, not physical. Paul affirms that his Christian readers will be damned if they continue to follow the dictates of the flesh.

But how then does the need to put sin away from us relate to the promise of verse 1? Here two basic theological traditions part company. Calvinists and Arminians are agreed that the believer must progress in the battle against sin if he or she is to attain eternal life. But the Arminian believes that a regenerate person might, indeed, be so lured by the flesh that he or she fails to progress in the Christian life. At some point, then, that person might cease to be “in Christ.” Thus, the promise of verse 1 no longer applies to that person. The Calvinist, by contrast, believes that the influence of the Spirit in a believer’s life is so dominant that he or she can never reach the point of falling permanently into a lifestyle of sin and so forfeit the promise of “no condemnation.”

Each of these theological traditions, in other words, focuses on different sides of the truth Paul presents in these verses. The Calvinist does full justice to verse 1 with its ringing promise of “no condemnation”; the Arminian does full justice to the warning of verse 13. Both words need to be heard if we are to maintain a balance in our Christian walk. Security without responsibility breeds passivity, but responsibility without security leads to anxiety.

I have counseled both types of Christians. During an interim pastorate, I got to know an elder in the church. He proclaimed himself a strong Calvinist and delighted to discuss Reformed theology. I eventually discovered that he was having sex outside his marriage. But he was not worried about it; he was eternally secure in Christ. I also remember counseling a young woman who was extremely performance oriented. She brought this attitude into her Christianity and was eternally in despair because she had not lived up to the Lord’s expectations of her. She could not grasp her security in Christ—that Christ had taken her sins so that her performance was no longer the basis for her acceptance.

The truth question cannot be evaded. We need to preserve security and responsibility in balance. But how do we combine them in a way that is both coherent and true to Scripture? When push comes to shove, I myself think the strength of the assurances Paul gives to justified believers in this part of Romans (see esp. 5:9–10, 21; 8:1–4, 10–11, 28–30, 31–39) favors the Calvinist interpretation. No true believer can ever suffer condemnation. The verdict of innocence has already been proclaimed in the divine court, and it cannot be changed. But precisely because I take this view, I bend over backwards to do justice to the responsibility side of biblical teaching. As John Murray, a Calvinist himself, says, “The believer’s once-for-all death to the law of sin does not free him from the necessity of mortifying sin in his members; it makes it necessary and possible for him to do so.”10

The Spirit’s presence in our lives inevitably produces fruit pleasing to God. Thus, we are secure. But the Spirit does not do his work apart from our response. I like the careful balance Paul achieves in verse 13: “By the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body” (italics added). Paul puts the responsibility squarely on our shoulders: You need to put sin to death. But at the same time, he makes it clear that we can only do it through the Spirit.