Spirit and Flesh
Christ Frees Us
Romans 8:1-11
Rev. Tim Callow
Preached Sun. July 12th, 2020
Paul sets out two ways of living. He says there are those who live by the way of the flesh, and set their minds of the things of the flesh. Then there are those who live by way of the Spirit, and set their minds on things of the Spirit. Paul doesn’t immediately elaborate on what it means to set your mind on the flesh, or what it means to set your mind on the Spirit. So what does he mean? How do I know when my mind is on the flesh, or when my mind is on the Spirit? What is flesh? What is Spirit? What does it mean that “the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death?”
Paul sees all of human history divided into two ages. There is “the present evil age” as he puts it in Galatians, which is ruled by the flesh, sin, and the Law. But then there is the New Creation. The New Creation is characterized by the Spirit and God’s grace. In the New Creation Christ reigns, in the Spirit. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold the new has come.” Jesus is the fulcrum between those two ages. When Jesus was crucified “the world was crucified to me and I to the world,” as Paul puts it. Jesus’ resurrection marks the beginning of a New Creation. He is, after all, the first fruits of the new creation. And God is giving birth to this New Creation, in the Spirit, in the world today. So the Flesh characterizes the realm of the fallen world, while the Spirit characterizes the realm of life in Christ.
What does it mean to live according to the flesh then? Living according to the flesh means living according to our basest desires. The fleshly life looks like this: “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” We know we will all die. So those who live according to the flesh try to make the most out of a short life. Either we make the most money, or have the most sex, or gain the most power, or watch the most movies, or find the finest cuisine. In the flesh that’s all there is to life.
The flesh sees happiness as the fulfillment of base desires. The purpose of life, then, is to fulfill those desires. It’s like the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, for those who’ve seen it. Willy Wonka has creatively removed all the kids who showed different vices that, in the end, frustrate their desire to own the factory and know true happiness. Augustus Gloop is gluttonous and gets stuck in a tube, Veruca Salt is greedy and ends up in the trash heap, and all that. But Charlie Bucket is moderate in his desires. At the end of the movie Wonka gives him the factory and they fly off in a glass elevator. While they’re hovering over Charlie’s new factory Wonka says, “don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.” Charlie asks, “What happened?” And Wonka says, “He lived happily ever after.”
I never agreed with that. If we suddenly got everything we always wanted, I think we’d be bored after awhile. Or we’d grow paranoid, afraid we might lose it. We weren’t made to have all our bodily desires satisfied. This is why Paul often characterizes life in the flesh as a life of competition and divisiveness. “But if you bite and devour one another,” he says, “watch out that you are not consumed by one another.” When he lists the works of the flesh, they are things like “enmity, strife, jealously, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy…” and so on.
Now, this isn’t to say that our physical needs are bad. We ought to meet our basic needs, there are people who are unjustly condemned to poverty and oppression, who are without the basest rights and dignity. This isn’t to say that we should tell them, “you just want to live by the flesh, you ought to live by the spirit.” But God didn’t make us to be animals, like dogs who eat a nice juicy steak, and are happy enough to sleep. Our lives cannot be about meeting the needs of the flesh. We are made for more. God made us to live in fellowship with him and with one another. He made us to love. And our capacity to love means that we have a higher purpose that cannot be met if we live according to the flesh.
After all, the flesh tends toward death. We all know this. We’ve all felt aches and pains. If we live for the flesh, and the flesh alone, we won’t have much to show for it. Think of all the people we alienate and hurt because we are so self-protective. But love is outward focused, it’s wanting what’s best for someone else as we want it for ourselves. It means being willing to make sacrifices for another not because we would get anything out of the deal, but because we love them.
Paul tells us love never ends. (1 Cor. 13:8) Love is a force stronger than death, it is love that raised Jesus Christ from the dead, the love of the Father that would not let his Son see corruption in the grave. When love is at the forefront of our lives we’ll discover that we are no longer living for the self, for our flesh, for our own desires. We’ll discover that suddenly getting everything we ever wanted” doesn’t lead to happiness after all. Because once we have everything we need to keep it. We need to protect it, and we fear losing it. But we don’t need to fear losing love, particularly the love of God.
Paul tells us that the Holy Spirit is the love of God poured into our hearts. When we know that love, when we see by the Spirit, we are made participants in the New Creation, we experience eternal life, the whole world is made new. Paul calls this setting the mind on the Spirit, and this leads to life and peace.
The life of the flesh is self-preservation, self-satisfaction, fear, and death. The life of the Spirit is love, peace, and abundant life. If you want a model of what it means to set your mind on the Spirit we ought to always think of Jesus Christ, who lived according to the Spirit. Jesus showed love to others by teaching, by hanging out with the downtrodden and outcast and despised, by healing others and by giving people purpose in life they had long lost. He didn’t come to rule over others, but to serve others. He came to free us, to give us life again.
Jesus not only forgives our sins, but he frees us from our sins. He frees us from sin. He calls us to a life not focused on death, but eternal life in him. “There is therefore,” Paul says, “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.” We are set free. Set free from our fears. Set free from our anxieties. Set free from our guilt. We are free to set our minds on the Spirit, to live a new and joyous life. This is Christ’s gift to us, offered without price.