A Dying Body But a Living Spirit
You, however, are controlled, not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. Romans 8:9-11
Paul signals a shift in direction by turning directly to his readers: ‘You, however, are controlled, not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit’ (8:9). ‘You … are controlled by’ is a strong translation of the straightforward ‘you are in’ the flesh or the Spirit. Paul immediately clarifies what he means by adding ‘if the Spirit of God lives in you.’ You are in the Spirit if the Spirit is in you because the Holy Spirit has a settled, penetrative influence in you. We may not always reflect His influence or control (8:12,13) but it is a fundamental fact of our Christian existence and the basis for a life of confidence in Christ. This also means: ‘if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ’ (8:9).
The hallmark of the true believer is that they have the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. As Jesus promised, ‘he lives with you and will be in you’ (John 14:17). The body of every true Christian has become ‘a temple of the Holy Spirit’ in which He dwells (1 Corinthians 6:19). If we do not have the Holy Spirit in us, we do not belong to Christ. The gift of the Holy Spirit is then the initial and universal blessing received when we first repent and believe on Jesus. There may be further and richer experiences of the Spirit and many fresh anointings of the Spirit for special tasks, but the personal indwelling of the Spirit is every believer’s privilege from the beginning.
Note Paul’s wording: the Holy Spirit is called ‘the Spirit,’ (8:8) ‘the Spirit of God’ (8:8) and ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (8:9). To have ‘the Spirit of Christ’ (8:9) in us is to have Christ in us (8:10). Paul is not confusing the persons of the Trinity by identifying the Spirit as the Son. His wording emphasises that although each person of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are eternally distinct in their personal ‘modes’ of being, they share the same divine essence and the same divine will. Consequently, they are inseparable. What the Father does, He does through the Son and what the Son does, He does through the Spirit. In a very real sense, where one is, the others are there also (John 14:16f, 21,23).
Having stated that having the Spirit is the distinguishing mark of God’s people, Paul now outlines two major consequences of His indwelling. The first he describes in terms of ‘life’ (8:10,11) and the second in terms of obligation (8:12,13).
The first consequence is ‘life.’ Paul now takes on a situation in which the Spirit’s dominance might not be so obvious: the believer’s continued existence in a physical body that is doomed to die and is still very susceptible to the influences of sin. ‘But if Christ is you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness’ (8:10). ‘Your body is dead’ means we still live in a body subject to death and destined to it.
At the same time ‘your spirit is alive because of righteousness’ (8:10). We have been ‘made alive’ in Christ (6:11,13,23). We have a dying body and a living spirit. Going back to the Adam-Christ parallelism in chapter 5, our bodies became mortal because of Adam’s sin (Genesis 3:16 ‘to dust you will return’) but our spirits are alive because of Christ’s righteousness (5:15-18,21), because of the righteous standing He has secured for us.
The ultimate destiny of our body however, is not death but resurrection. ‘And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you’ (8:11). Our bodies are not yet redeemed but they will be. Our confidence is based on our knowing that the Holy Spirit is not just the Spirit of life but that He’s also the Spirit of resurrection. He is ‘the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead.’ Therefore the God whose Spirit He is, namely He ‘who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies,’ and He will do it ‘through his Spirit, who lives in you’ (8:11). We have a resurrecting Father, a resurrected Son and a Spirit of resurrection. Christ’s resurrection is the pledge and pattern of ours. The same Spirit who raised Him will raise us. The same Spirit who gives life to our spirits (8:10) will also give life to our bodies (8:11)