Life in the Sprit – Romans 8.6-11

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For those who sow to their own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. The unspiritual does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to them, and they are not able to understand them because these are spiritually discerned. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes oneself an enemy of God.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you. Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us his Spirit. Worldly people, devoid of the Spirit, cause divisions.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Thus, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test. Like Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Let Christ dwell in your hearts through faith so that you are rooted and grounded in love. God chose you to make known how great the riches of the glory of this mystery is, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to them and eat with them, and they with me.”

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. God raised Christ up, having released him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. No height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.