Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.08UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.08UNLIKELY
Fear
0.09UNLIKELY
Joy
0.6LIKELY
Sadness
0.19UNLIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.65LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.11UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.97LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.8LIKELY
Extraversion
0.08UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.33UNLIKELY
Emotional Range
0.61LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
We spent most of our time last week studying Romans 8:3.
In this one verse, Paul summarizes the gospel that he says he was not ashamed to proclaim.
What made him so bold, so confident of the gospel, was his awareness that God had now “done what the law, weakened by the flesh could not do.
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
In the flesh of the Messiah, in the very person of Jesus, in the fullness of his humanity, God had brought condemnation on sin.
This is why we Christians celebrate Christmas.
It is the whole sum of our joy during the advent season.
God has done something amazing: he has condemned sin in the humanity of his incarnate Son.
We’re trying to understand this good news.
We’re trying to see what Paul saw that made him such a bold proclaimer of the gospel.
The eighth chapter of Romans can really help us see what is so good about the gospel.
One thing we can now see, because of the incarnation of Jesus, is that there are two realms in which we find two different mindsets that result in two different outcomes.
Two Realms
So, in verse 5, Paul speaks to these two distinct ways of living.
But one thing must be said at the start.
What we find in the next several verses is not an exhortation to live one way instead of the other.[1]
The focus here is not on competing moral behaviors that we need to decide between.
Please get this clear.
Paul is describing two different realms, two different realities in which certain kinds of behavior or conduct are found.
We need to understand the two different realms first.
Flesh and Spirit
We can see that Paul is contrasting the flesh with the Spirit, so we need to know what he means by these two terms.
If we go back to Romans 7:5, we recall that Paul could speak of a time when “we were living in the flesh.”
But, he goes on to say in verse 6, that “now we are released from the law . . .
so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit.”
The contrast, then, is between two different realms, one which is dominated by a power called “the flesh” and the other dominated by the power of the Spirit, that is, by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit.[2]
Now, to be a Christian means you have been set free from the realm of the flesh and transferred into the realm of the Spirit.
This transference from one realm to the other is what Paul speaks of in Colossians 1:13, where he praises God for delivering “us from the domain of darkness” and transferring “us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
So, the realm of the flesh is the place from which non-Christians live, and the realm of the Spirit is the place from which Christians live.
These are distinct realms that distinguish believers from unbelievers and that explain the differences that emerge between them.
Cultural Reality
Again, it is important to see that Paul is not talking about the way things ought to be.
He is speaking about the way things are.
He says in verse 5, “Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh,” and vice-versa for “those who live according to the Spirit.”
The Greek does not use the verb “live” here but rather the verb “to be.”
He is referring not to those who live in accordance with the flesh or spirit but rather those who “are” in accordance with the one or the other.
The New American Standard makes this clear: “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.”
This is important, for Paul is talking about a fact, an unchangeable reality.
He’s describing people who come from different realms, from different cultural contexts.
If you travel to a different culture, you will find that people live differently than you do in your own culture.
The culture is the context in which certain kinds of conduct are found and explained.
What Paul is speaking about here is an entirely different culture found “in Christ,” and certain ways of living within that culture that now make sense.
The conduct which he will come to soon enough cannot be isolated from the culture which inevitably produces it.
The Cultural Explanation
Now the burden of these verses is to explain how it is that the same law can pronounce a verdict of condemnation and death over some and a verdict of vindication and life over others.
Why is it that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v.
1)?
Verse 2 says that it is because Christians have been set free “from the law of sin and death” by “the law of the Spirit of life.”
These are not two different laws.
These are two different verdicts coming from the same law.
And it is culture that explains the different verdicts.
So what verse 3 says the law could not do is explained in verse 4. The “righteous requirement” of the law is better understood as the righteous verdict of the law.[3]
The law could not pronounce life over any of us human beings because of the cancer of sin that had taken root.
But since God has condemned sin in the flesh of the Messiah, God has now made it possible for the law to do what it wanted to do all along.
This good news—this gospel—is not a message only of what awaits us after death.
It is just as much a message for the here and now.
It is because of the gospel so vividly described in verse 3 that verse 4 can now be true.
One of God’s purposes for the cross of Christ was “that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.”
The “righteous requirement of the law” does not refer to moral behavior, commands to be obeyed.
What Jesus did for us on the cross was not to make it now possible for us to keep God’s law and on those grounds be justified.
However, Jesus did do something in his death that makes it possible for the law to announce over us a positive verdict, a verdict of life.
Jesus did not merely neutralize the law, far less did he abolish it.
Jesus turned the law away from announcing a verdict of condemnation and death to now announcing a verdict of vindication and life.
And this is true for Christians living now, not just our hope when we die.
Two Mindsets
So notice, next, the present difference for Christians evident in the two contrasting mindsets.
Cultural Inclinations
The verb “to set the mind” in verse 5 and is nominal use in verse 6 again need to be read as part of the distinct cultural realities from which they emerge.
What we are reading here are not exhortations to choose between two different ways of living.
Paul is not giving us the option to think one way or the other but describing instead something that is just the way it is for the whole person.[4]
He is not describing something like an American living as Chinese as they possibly can in Beijing.
He is saying that Christians and non-Christians have a different mindset not because of mental effort but because of where they’re from.
So, those who are from “the flesh” have their minds set on “the things of the flesh.”
All of us are born “of the flesh,” which means that we are born united to Adam, fallen, corruptible creatures.
And as such, it is natural for us to have our minds set in a particular way.
Paul is speaking here of ways of thinking that all human beings share by virtue of our humanity, despite our many differences.
The mind is the place where sin wages war and takes us captive (Rom 7:23).
And Paul is speaking of those who are “according to the flesh” as held captive to the fleshly way of thinking.
We can speak of this mindset as “natural” because it is what comes “natural” to us given the fallen cultural context in which we are all born and raised.
But if we become Christians, we find a whole new way of thinking also becomes true.
The mind becomes set on “the things of the Spirit,” and this means we see the world differently than we did before.
Cultural Clarity
No wonder, then, Christians are strangers in the world.
We just think differently than non-Christians think, and that’s why we live differently than they do.
But let us be careful to notice that it is the culture of the Spirit that distinguishes us from non-Christians and not some other fleshly culture.
The distinction in these verses is not between different forms of fallen cultures but between the culture of Christ and the various cultures of humanity, all of which are fallen.
We easily mistake the two.
As Christians, we know the fallen culture of the flesh all too well, because it is from this culture that we have been redeemed, delivered, transferred out of.
Because of Christ, we’ve become citizens of a new kingdom, but none of us started out there.
These verses in Romans 8 do not say that we find ourselves somewhere in-between these two kingdoms; nevertheless, we can easily confuse the two.
So we must be careful that we do not equate the kingdom of Christ with any of the various fallen kingdoms of men.
Let me be blunt: being an American does not equal being a Christian.
Being an American does not make you one inch closer to being a Christian either.
And the same is true for any other nationality or sub-culture.
Your political affiliation does not mean you are closer to Christ than if you were in some other party.
Of course, we all see the world from our own cultural perspectives and political preferences.
But what we must not do is confuse this perspective with the Christian perspective which stands against all others.
And we certainly must never prioritize our fallen perspectives over the Christian one.
This is a challenge for us, because in the redeemed community, in the realm of the Spirit, we will find ourselves surrounded by people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9).
Needless to say, there is quite a diversity in the kingdom of God! What unites us is nothing other than the Lamb who was slain and who has made us all “a kingdom and priests to our God” (Rev 5:10).
Nothing could be more irreverent to our Lord than to prioritize our relationship with those who vote like us over those who will forever reign on the earth with us!
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9