Romans 8:7-8 is often used to defend the Calvinistic doctrines of Total Depravity and total inability. The text says this:
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Romans 8:7-8).
Regarding this text, Calvinist commentator John Murray says that “Enmity against God” is nothing other than total depravity and “cannot please God” nothing less than total inability (Murray, Epistle to the Romans, 1:287).
“The Flesh” in Romans
But, as with the discussion of Romans 7, it is important to know what Paul means when he writes about “the flesh” in his letters.
The flesh is dead and dying. The flesh is separated from God, is corrupted, and when the soul attempts to operate through the flesh, only sin-tainted behavior results.
The unbeliever, of course, since He does not have the Spirit of God, has no choice but to operate through the flesh. As we have seen in the discussion about the three parts of a person, this says nothing whatsoever about the ability (or inability) of the unregenerate person to believe in Jesus for eternal life. It is not “the flesh” that believes in Jesus, but the soul.
So while Paul is absolutely right that the flesh cannot please God, we should not understand Paul to be saying that a person cannot believe in Jesus for eternal life. God calls all to believe in Jesus, and since faith is not a work of the soul through the corrupted flesh, the soul is able to believe in Jesus and receive eternal life from Him.
Unbelievers are Not the Focus on Romans 8:7-8
Of course, having said this, it is important to note that the unregenerate person is not the subject of Paul’s statement in Romans 8:7-8.
Instead, Paul is writing about the experience of believers.
In Romans 7, he wrote about the ongoing struggle with sin that every person experiences (both believer and unbeliever alike), and concluded that description by rejoicing that God has provided a way through Jesus Christ for people to be freed from the bondage to decay and corruption that was brought about by the body of death. As a result of Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit, our mind can now serve the law of God, even though the flesh still serves the law of sin (Romans 7:25).
Based on this understanding, Paul goes on in Romans 8 to call believers who have received the Spirit of God to live according to the Spirit, and not according to the old man, the corrupted flesh.
Romans 8 is a Call for Believers to Live According to the Spirit
In Romans 8, Paul calls believers to stop walking according to the flesh, and start living according to the Spirit (Romans 8:1). He invites us to no longer set our mind (our soul) on the flesh, but to set our mind (our soul) on the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:4).
He goes on to explain that when believers live according to the flesh, we are carnally (or fleshly) minded, which leads to death. But if we live through the Spirit, we will finally discover the life and peace that we have always desired, but could never accomplish through the flesh (Romans 8:6).
Paul says that since we have the Spirit, we can now live for God (Romans 8:9), but we must make the choice to do so, for even though the Spirit of life is in us, the body of sin is still there as well, seeking to lead us back into death, decay, and destruction (Romans 8:10-15).
What this all means then is that Paul’s statement in Romans 8:7-8 about the carnal mind not being able to please God is that Paul is not primarily referring to unregenerate people, but to those who are regenerate, who have the Spirit of God, but who choose to live according to the flesh.
Such behavior, though carried out by Christians, is not pleasing to God.
He gave us His Spirit so that we might live a new life, a life free from the damaging and destructive consequences of sin. By choosing to live through the flesh, we invite the natural consequences of sin down upon our heads (Paul calls this wrath), which saddens and troubles God.
God wants us to be delivered from sin, not just in our position of being “in Christ,” but also in our daily experience.
This, in large part, is what the book of Romans is all about. It is not primarily about how people can escape hell and go to heaven when they die. Romans is about how Christians can be delivered from the consequences of sin and experience the life God wants for us, and thus, inviting the world into our experience of the rule and reign of God.
Romans 8:7-8, then, says nothing about Total Depravity or total inability of unregenerate people. Instead, these verses are an invitation from Paul to believers to reject the way of death, and choose the way of life instead.
If you want to read more about Calvinism, check out other posts in this blog series: Words of Calvinism and the Word of God.
Paul generally has an eschatological reality in view rather than an existential or ontological reality. For Paul, Messiah has come, the old ways of being the people of God are over. Thus in chapter 7 he is not saying that this is his personal struggle but he is talking eschatologically, i.e ‘This is the situation before the Messiah came’ and now in ch 8, ‘It is like this in the new age of the Messiah’. And yet although the new age has been inaugurated it is not yet fully come. Christian still live with possibility of the old age behavior and must seek to live in the full reality of Messiah’s kingdom.
I suppose that could be. Either way, I completely agree with that last line. We still struggle with sin and must live in the reality of Messiah’s Kingdom. Yes and yes!
My readings over the last few years have opened up my thoughts about God and His children – all His children – and the fact that we all share the same breath and that this (in my opinion) comes from God and links us all to Him. This idea of everything that has life sharing God’s breath as it were, seems to make a lot of sense to me and calls us to think about the connection offered to all living things – and the responsibility it calls us to in caring for living things around us.
‘Living by the flesh’ is what happens, in my opinion, when the connection with God and all around us has been overlaid and subdued by all of life’s superficiality. Yet the underlying breath of God remains, in my opinion, in everyone.
Paul is one who writes with passion and a sense of ‘this is how it is’ and I feel that there is little I disagree with if I consider the ideal. However life is rarely lived in the ideal and so to ‘live by the Spirit’ is a continual challenge. Faith is that, as God’s breath literally inspires us from within, it is the acknowledgement of this, the awareness of this, the embracing of it (God) that changes our thoughts and actions and actually speaks to those around us as we make decisions and frame opinions in the light of it (and ideally verbalise this as we have the chance).
At present, I am not a member of a ‘Church’, and this is something that my upbringing and the late 20th century Christianity I experienced creates a continual insecurity about my faith and lifestyle.
Yet outward life aspects seem to show that I am living more by the Spirit and in fact have had way more opportunities to have conversations about how I think and decide what to do in line with my connection with God.
No-one has the right to comment on whether someone’s living by the flesh or the Spirit unless they are commenting on clear outward signs of good or bad – Jesus’ encouragement to judge a tree by its fruit has come back to me again and again as I meet ‘unbelievers’ who have much in common with me until we talk about God and then to quote Rob Bell ‘the God they have turned their back on is not the God I believe.’
So, for me, ‘living by the Spirit’ is acknowledging that the Breath of Life and Love is shared by everyone, calls us to connect and be reciprocatingly responsible to each other, connected to this breath and acknowledging its Source as a parent of all, a source of all things positive – God a word we use to name it.
Yet humanity has a deep allergy to this connection and its challenges and it is only when we experience the full force of being connected first to God that His spirit flows into us in a new way and enables us to live Love’s way.
Anyone living in relative comfort will see the inequality of life that is just not fair, yet we carry on buying a cup of Starbucks, or using an iphone even though such things done without by many could radically change life for others.
The difficulty of the Christian life is that each day God knows where we start and God knows how we continue our journey – and everyone’s journey is different each day.
The key is to be journeying with God and allowing His Spirit to speak, encourage, rebuke and enable us to be the best we can be today – and our best for today pleases God because we are acting out our life in communion/connection with Him and so with everyone and everything living around us.
Sometimes, as at this present moment, I feel I miss the mark by so far. Yet when I think back, I miss it by a lesser margin than ten years ago.
So on we go. And try to see people as God sees them, not knowing where they were ten years ago so having no right to judge where they are now. Only God can judge. Living by Spirit or Flesh a tricky call to make of others, but a constant challenge for those who have accepted the challenge for themselves.
For me Paul is making an appeal to live in the new eschatological reality which includes the church that Messiah’s coming has created. So dont give up on church however counterproductive it might seem. The church is the sign to the world and the angelic powers that Jesus Messiah is Lord. Just don’t believe everything the priest or pastor says.
Everyone who trusts in Jesus for eternal life has the Holy Spirt living inside of him; however, for so long as we live in our physical bodies we also have a sinful nature that seeks to control the soul (the center of our thoughts, attitudes, passions, etc.). When we are motivated by love for Christ, this love is manifested toward others. When we live according to His Word our attitude will reflect His attitude toward others, an attitude of self sacrifice. There is nothing mystical or magical about the Christian Life, it is just a matter of being a doer of the word and not a hearer only.
Right. I am not super comfortable using the term “sinful nature” as I think it confuses things a bit, but regardless, I agree with your points here. Thanks!
I agree about being part of the church and that being part of Jesus’ message and call but maybe church and the concept of it is changing – this is certainly something that feels very real to me. Church was originally loving, supporting communities based on the Bible’s teaching – I don’t think they had governing bodies, and all the other stuff that goes with big organisations. I meet with people once a fortnight to enjoy a meal discuss around a book focussing on the Bible and then pray together. This seems to be my church for the moment but I don’t go to Church – for me it is about discovering the meaning of church rather than going to Church – the capitals relevant.
We need to live in community being answerable to each other to keep up moving forward.
Yes, and this community looks different for different people, but is essential for moving forward in obedience to Christ, and in helping establish His Kingdom.
v. 5-8 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. 6 For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, 7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
I don’t think Paul is talking about believers who are “in the flesh”, but there is nothing in the passage that necessitates people who are currently “in the flesh” must inevitably remain in that state. There is no irresistible grace, unconditional election, or regeneration preceding faith at all in these passages. Paul is contrasting those who set their minds on living in the flesh with those who set their minds on the Spirit. No barriers to move from unbeliever to believer except that of an unbeliever whose mind is “set” on the flesh and not “set” on the Spirit.
Would like to know how a person can regenerate themselves through self will. Impossible. That is why man is ‘depraved’ for starters relative to God’s Total Perfection. Even this simple search, shows this. Paul wrote; We were once Darkness. That is depraved. and ‘God saw that every inclination of the imagination of the heart was only continuously evil’. That too is TOTALLY Depraved.
Nobody can regenerate themselves. Regeneration is a work of God. But nobody I know ever claims that human can regenerate themselves.
The soul is also to be considered as ‘the flesh’. . What one individual is all kindred individuals will be. Flesh thus comes to denote blood-relationship ( Gen 2:23-24 ; Lev 18:6 ), and beyond that, kinship to all humans, “all flesh” ( Psalm 65:2 ; Isa 40:5 ; 49:26 ). Yet another extension of significance is the use of flesh in reference to the human body as a whole ( Lev 13:13 ; 16:4 ; 2 Kings 6:30 ). While in such uses it can denote a corpse ( 1 Sam 17:44 ; 2 Kings 9:36 ), it more commonly denotes the whole life of the individual viewed from an external perspective so that safety of the flesh is life ( Psalm 16:9 ; Prov 4:20-22 ) and its endangerment a threat to life ( Job 13:14 ; Prov 5:11 ).
Transferred Senses. It is an easy step from flesh as denoting life viewed externally to life viewed more comprehensively. “Flesh” is thus used interchangeably with “soul” and “body, ” and credited with the emotions and responses of the whole person ( Psalm 63:1 ; 84:2 ). In some instances it carries the sense of self ( Lev 13:8 ).
I agree with most of the things you said about this passage. However, it is clear that from verse 5 Paul is setting up a contrast between those who live according to the flesh and those who live according to the Spirit. That this is a contrast between the unregenerate and regenerate or the unbelievers and believers is made evident in verse 9 where Paul specifically says that “you… are not in the flesh… if the Holy Spirit lives in you” which is the same as saying if you are regenerate by the Spirit. Using this logic, it is safe to say that those who are in the flesh are those who are not regenerate and in whom the Spirit does not dwell. So, even though the large context is a call to the believer to live according to the Spirit, the context of verses 5 to 9 is the contrast between the unregenerate and the regenerate. Thus the subject of verse 7 is the unregenerate.
No. It is entirely possible to be regenerate and live in the flesh. Paul has been making this point clear since Romans 6.