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I have a burden this morning to help us grasp these verses, which are rather remarkable in what they proclaim and teach.
No doubt these verses shed light on why it was that Paul could say he was not ashamed of the gospel.
Paul had come to see the implications for life now after the Messiah had come and “condemned sin” in his own flesh.
So here in Romans 8:1-11, and especially in verses 9-11, there is help for us today to not miss the implications for life on the other side of Christmas.
To not miss the implication of what it means that Christ, the Messiah has come.
The days after Christmas ought to be filled with even more wonder and joy and amazement than we could have had before Christmas.
There are three things here we should know, that we should call to mind day by day to help us live in the reality that the Lord has come.
We should know the age in which we live, the power with which we live it, and the Savior for whom we live.
Know the Age
First, we see in this text the necessity for Christians to know the age, that is, to know the time in which they now live here on the other side of Christmas.
We Christians believe that the greatest transition of time in all of history took place in and around the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
And it is crucial that we know this.
The Old Age of Death
The first four verse of chapter 8 emphasized the truth that there is “now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1).
Having been united to the one in whom and by whom the condemning power of sin was itself condemned, Christians for 2000 years now have lived their lives free “from the law of sin and death” (v.
2).
They now live in the freedom of “the law of the Spirit of life” (v.
2).
These are completely opposite realms, two entirely different realities in which one might live.
Verses 5-8 described the old age.
Enslaved to the law of sin and death, death is the only possible mindset (vv.
5-6).
And this mindset put us at odds with God, hostile to him, unable and unwilling to submit to his law, to his ways (v.
7), incapable of pleasing him at all (v.
8).
This is life outside the kingdom of God, and before the first Christmas, everyone in history lived in that reality.
That’s not to say that there were no saints in the old age.
But all of them lived in an era that was like the days before Israel’s exodus from Egypt.
These saints “groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help” (Exod 2:23).
It’s the groan that Paul described in the previous chapter in Romans: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24).
These saints trusted in God’s faithfulness, they believed a day of deliverance was coming.
The prophets “searched and inquired carefully” about what life would be like on the other side of this salvation (1 Pet 1:10-11).
But it was a mystery to them.
The New Age Dawns
The strong adversative conjunction in verse 9 (translated “however” in the ESV) is meant to encourage and inspire the Christian.
“But you are not in the flesh!”
This statement is a relief to the one who knows what Paul was talking about in verse 5-8.
It’s good news for the one who has felt the frustration of feeling completely helpless against the power of sin and death.
Paul does not exhort people to stop being in the flesh; such an idea would be as futile as telling a leopard to change his spots.
Rather, Paul is wanting us to see the implication here for us who are united to Christ, who are no longer under any condemnation from sin.
If you are a Christian—that is, if you are one who trusts in Jesus Christ, then you must realize this: you are a new creation in Christ.
The old way of the flesh has passed away for you.
And the new way, the new era, the promised new age, has come.
What is this new way?
It is the way of the Spirit.
“You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.”
The “Spirit” here is the Holy Spirit.
So what does it mean to be “in the Holy Spirit”?
The next phrase in verse 1 sheds some light.
Paul says you are “in the Spirit” if in fact the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you.
So to be in the Spirit is for the Spirit to be in you, to live in you, to take up residence within you.
Christians come up with all sorts of strange ideas about what it means to be possessed by the Holy Spirit.
I don’t mean to cast suspicion on all the different experiences we sometimes attribute to the Holy Spirit; but I do wish to help us think about what this must mean in light of the biblical story.
The Old Testament talks about a visible manifestation of God’s presence among his people, usually described as a cloud (Exod 13:21; 16:10; 19:9; 34:5; 40:34), what Jewish rabbis would eventually call the Shekinah.
The word Shekinah is Hebrew for “that which dwells.”[1]
The Shekinahwas the evidence that God has taken up residence among his people.
God commanded that a sanctuary be built so he could “dwell in their midst” (Exod 25:8).
The tabernacle, and later the temple, was the place where God’s glory was seen.
It was heaven on earth, the place where God and man would meet.
But disaster came to Israel when the glory of God departed the temple shortly before Israel’s exile to Babylon and the temple itself was destroyed (Ezek 10).
Even after returning from exile, Israel lacked the Shekinahin her rebuilt temple.
That is why in the first century the great hope and expectation was that God would soon deliver Israel from the rule of the Roman empire and take up residence in his temple again.
This is what Paul is talking about.
This is what he says has come pass.
To be “in the Spirit” means to be in the situation or condition in which God is dwelling among his people.[2] Paul says if you are a Christian, you are now living in the fulfillment of that expectation.
Why, then, does he speak, not only of Christians being “in the Spirit” but also of the Holy Spirit being in us?
Because where the Holy Spirit dwells is where we see God’s temple.
And this is the shocking reality of the new era that has dawned.
Where is God’s temple?
“Do you not know,” Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:15, “that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
The Mingling of the Ages
So, to no longer be “in the flesh” but rather “in the Spirit” is more about the time into which we have now come than it is about some mental or psychological state we might try to get ourselves into.
You are in the Spirit, Paul says, not “if you act this way or that,” but “if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.”
If God’s Spirit is dwelling in his sanctuary, and that sanctuary is, shockingly, the people of God themselves, their very bodies, then we find ourselves living in the future.
The promised and anticipated age to come has already dawned upon us.
The apostles of Jesus clearly believed that this was the case.
On the day of Pentecost, you’ll recall form Acts 2, the speaking of “the mighty works of God” (v.
11) in the language of people “from every nation under heaven” (v. 5) was the sign that God’s Spirit had returned and filled his temple.
It was, Peter says, the fulfillment of exactly what God had said would happen according to the OT prophet, Joel (vv.
16-21).
The “last days” had now come, and the evidence that this was the case was the very real presence and power of the Holy Spirit dwelling one again in his temple.
Of course, not every human being on earth comprises the temple in which God himself now dwells by his Spirit.
“Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him,” Paul says.
This statement does at least two things.
It rejects the possibility that anyone would be able to claim to be counted among God’s people but to be still enslaved to the prevailing power of sin.
As we’ve seen, the realm of the Spirit is the realm in which sin has been condemned, and the mindset is one of submission to God and his ways rather than the rebellious ways of sin.
If you claim to be a Christian, you cannot rightly claim to be defenseless against the power of sin because to be a Christian means you now live with the prevailing power of God’s Spirit.
Second, it teaches us that we live in the time in which the old and new eras are mingled.
As Christians, we live in the midst of fallen mortal world with a redeemed, immortal life.
Not everyone is “in the Spirit” rather than “in the flesh,” so the world we see is at the same time passing away and also becoming new.
And this explains the strange experience Christians have in this world, the experience described in the next verse.
Know the Power
What verse 9 is meant to do is encourage; it is not meant to cast doubt on the legitimacy of one’s claim to be a Christian.
We don’t go around doing tests to detect the presence or absence of the Holy Spirit in a person, though of course a person ought to examine themselves to see whether they are in the faith (2 Cor 13:5).
At the same time, if this is all true, if we who are Christians live in a new age, then we should begin to see the difference in the lives of Christians over against non-Christians.
The difference should begin to be as clear as the distinction between heaven and hell.
And the difference will be made clear the more we Christians know the power with which we now live.
The Power of Christ Within
So here we go.
“If Christ is in you…” Then what?
What will this look like?
But wait a minute.
What does it mean for Christ to be “in” us?
To belong to Christ means one also has the Spirit Christ has sent, and that is what it means for Christ himself to be “in” a person.
We are familiar with the important doctrine of the believers’ union with Christ, the idea that you and I are “in Christ,” but Christ “in us” is not quite the same idea.
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