Scripture Daily

Context No. 44 of 4322 · Romans

Context · Reflection

Romans 8:9-15: in context

9But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. 10If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. 12So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. 13For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are children of God. 15For you didn’t receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Romans 8 comes after seven chapters of hard argument about sin and law, including Paul's account of wanting to do good and finding himself doing otherwise. The chapter opens with there is now no condemnation, and this passage explains what has changed. Not that the believer tries harder, but that God's Spirit now lives in them.

Paul draws the line by contrast. Flesh here does not mean the body, which he expects to be raised, but the whole self turned in on itself. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit dwelling in these people, and it will raise their mortal bodies too. So they owe the flesh nothing, and are under no obligation to keep living its way.

Then the register changes from law to family. You did not receive a spirit of slavery leading back to fear, he writes, but the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry Abba, Father. Abba is Aramaic, the everyday household word for father, and Paul leaves it untranslated in a letter written in Greek to Romans, because it is the word Jesus himself used. Under Roman law, an adopted son took the family name and the inheritance in full, with no lesser standing. The cry is a claim about status. When I am afraid, do I speak to God like a slave calculating my standing, or like a child using the name I was given?

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