I have been a part of many different styles of churches with diverse theologies about the Spirit. I have been a part of conservative churches which talked very little about the Holy Spirit and argued that I needed to work real hard to live the Christian life. Sure, I was saved by grace but now I needed to put in the work which very much felt like this hand crank flashlight, leaving me the source of my power and struggling to keep up. I’ve also been a part of charismatic churches which focused a lot on the Holy Spirit, big miracles, emotionally loud worship, and displays of power. Sure, Jesus spoke about dying to self but I needed to focus on how to be this Spirit-filled, power conduit which felt a lot like a spotlight, leaving me to be some Spirit-filled performer. Both understandings had good things and bad things and I would like to come to Paul in Romans 8 to sort and sift the role of Jesus and the Spirit in our own personal transformation. Prior to Romans chapter 8, Paul has mentioned the Spirit only three times. In chapter 8, however, arguably one of his more famous discussions, he will mention the Spirit nineteen times. And I want to focus on Paul’s “now” in vs. 1 with respect to the Spirit, Paul’s phrases “according to the flesh” and “according to the Spirit,” and Paul’s thoughts about what the Spirit “will” do in the future.
First, “There is now . . .” It’s quite a list:
· No condemnation
· Freedom
· Condemnation of sin
“There is now” in vs. 1 is Paul’s invitation to what God has done (past tense) in and through Jesus. This is the liberating message of the gospel – “what God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” (vs. 3). Through Jesus’ Spirit-filled life, death and resurrection, God has secured our righteousness and freed us from the “law of sin and death.” It’s done – now – in Jesus. And through the Spirit, God empowers us to live a new life as the result of God’s love manifested through the Spirit. I want to confess an uncomfortableness with the timetable a little because there’s still so much struggle in my Christian life. But the Apostle Paul doesn’t seem to share my concern. Whatever reasons I might contrive for the challenges of the present moment, Paul wants to anchor me in the “now” and say, “Now you are no longer condemned. Now you are free. Now sin’s power is broken.” And you know – he’s right on two fronts. The Christian life is recognizing that we have been freed “now” in Jesus and that we have the promise “now” to becoming free by the Spirit. It’s a declaration first, that all the conditions for what needs to happen for salvation have been met in Jesus. Before you do or believe anything, salvation has been won, shame has been cancelled, even death defeated by God for you. The second front, is that you can move toward becoming free now even when you fail and struggle. You can talk about confidently even though you know you will fail at times. Even when I fail my wife, lose my temper or don’t do something I said I would, I still have no problem stating that I love her “now” and not in some distant future. I have no problem saying that my desire is to please her now, to care for her now, to understand her now, even when I don’t do so all the time. I live with her and for her “now” even when I fail. So it is with those who say “yes” to Jesus and are empowered by God’s Spirit. God has condemned sin through Jesus and by the power of the Spirit given to you – which means that sin is not the most important thing about you. The Spirit testifies that "now," in Jesus, all the necessary conditions have been met for you to be free.
Second, “According to . . .” what?
Paul will go one to contrast to ways of “walking” or living by two ways of life: kata sarka and kata pneuma, often translated “according to the flesh” and “according to the Spirit.” And here we need a little Greek of the week.
“kata sarka” or according to the flesh is not a comment about your body, the Greek word soma, which appears vss. 10-11. Rather, it refers to the self as dominated by culturally and psychologically ingrained values of an enslaving system (kosmos) by which we have sought to maintain the illusions of control and mastery of the world. It’s the self composed of clinging and comparing. Kata sarka is our desire to secure our life by our own power. So, it’s not about lustful desires specifically. In fact, Paul himself will speak of even asceticism and self-denial as “fleshly” (Col. 2:20-23). Everything an alienated person does is infected by alienation, even the quest for God. So the flesh is way of imagining the world with ourselves at the center which becomes dominated by fear of death and hostility both to God and from God. So this is not some dualism whereby we are to assume that our bodies are bad and some other part, soul or spirit, is good. No, our bodies are the very site of redemption, the war which God has already won. Our bodies will be redeemed and remain the place where the Spirit dwells. Kata sarka is not something that you have to fight. It’s something for you to let go of.
“kata pneuma” or according to the Spirit involves the recognition that in and through Jesus, God’s Spirit oikeins (“dwells”, “houses” literally derived from the word oikos or house) within you and by you Paul means your actual body apart from you having done anything more than saying “yes” to being “in Jesus”. Your job is not so much to NOT live “kata sarka” but to open your life to the one who will dwell in you and handle that for you. In 1 Corinthians 6:19, Paul will ask, “Do you not know that your body (soma) is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” God is not far, not out there, not distant, even when you feel it. Your transformation is not earned, grasped, or grunted but “dwells” within you. God is the very ground of your being and the very source of your freedom.
A few comments from my own Spirit-neglected & Spirit-filled journey: 1) The difference between kata sarka and kata pneuma in the present is not an either/or but a both/and. Transformation doesn’t turn on a dime but is both a process of being freed and becoming free. In Jesus you have been made free – “there is now no condemnation” but you will have to avail yourself to unlearning those things that keep you in chains. Freedom, at times, can feel scary and demands, Jesus taught us, a dying to self. The Apostle Paul will wrestle with Spirit-filled people who are, even performing miracles, in 1 Cor. 13 and not living according to the Spirit. And here’s the thing, the Spirit will use your own failings, your own weakness, your own kata sarka, even at times, to help you. I once had a powerful spiritual encounter in a charismatic church where I asked God for the miraculous power to heal others. I asked with a certain sincerity and certain self-centeredness of both kata sarka and kata pneuma and I will never forget what happened. I had an experience of standing before Jesus with hands outstretched asking to be given this power and as I reached out he slid his hands over mine leaving enormous, ragged, crucifixion wounds on my hands. I literally cried out, “No!” in church. Friends, that vision, which was nothing more than Jesus showing me his actual words of dying to self and taking up my cross has defined for me what it means to walk by the Spirit, leaning into humility, honesty, woundedness as the means by which I am a conduit of the Spirit, not relying on myself, as an agent for healing but on the Spirit who I lean on because I recognize I can’t do it on my own. It’s why my divorce, for example, may be one of the more healing elements of my ministry. 2) Your body is spiritual. Our spirituality must shift from “doing” toward a surrendering to God’s freedom, intimacy and inner dwelling. Our bodies must be included. In C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, a young demon-in-training, Wormwood, is instructed by his experienced uncle, Screwtape, on the important of keeping humans ignorant of the role of the body in prayer. “My Dear Wormood, . . . At the very least, they [humans] can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.” The geography of prayer must always include an inner dimension. You will need to consider posture, breathing, and the importance of having the experience of prayer in your body where the Spirit dwells. 3). Solitude and silence are the go to ancient Christian practices for dying to self, inhabiting a body, and becoming free. To live and pray “kata pneuma” according to the Christian tradition, of which there are many rich resources, I want to restate the critical nature of solitude and silence which help move prayer from communication to one of communion and union. The earliest Christians understood that solitude and the practice of silence oriented one’s self to the deep Christian truth that one human being cannot fix another, nor can we fix or fill ourselves. It is a place where only God will do.
“Life will come. I guarantee it.”
The “now” of God’s Spirit should never fully eclipse the not yet. Yes, now we are Spirit filled. We are Spirit-filled, beautiful, fragile things. We are a dollop of the Spirit housed in a thin bubble – who die. We surrender to the now and patiently wait for the next. In vs. 11, Paul will acknowledge that while much can had now – we will still die – but, he says, the Spirit that is now living in you, which raised Christ Jesus from the dead, will – will – also “give life to your mortal bodies” by which he means resurrection – which one again is a whole life, a full life, a heavenly life IN a “mortal” body. And in Ephesians, Paul speaks of the Spirit as a guarantee or down-payment of what is to come. Ephesians 1:13b-14 says, “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.” The Greek word used is arrabon, which in modern Greek means an engagement ring, a sign in the present of what is to come in the future. And our inheritance, he declares, is resurrection. And we see that in our Romans passage as well where it is acknowledged that even those in the Spirit are subject to death but the Spirit will also, in the future, give life to our mortal bodies “because his spirit lives in you.” God’s indwelling determines our future. And that inheritance and guarantee is not disembodied heaven nor even small renovation of your house, your body, but a refurbishing of all creation.
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