The language, at least in my translation, suggests that walking according to the spirit can’t be an unconscious change that happens without your knowledge or your trying. This is because of the words “walk” and “set their minds on” (that said, the NIV leaves it way more ambiguous, saying “have their minds set on” and “controlled by the sinful nature”). So then, it’s something conscious, that we choose to do when we receive the Spirit. I am guessing that the free gift of grace is that the Spirit is in us, in spite of our sin, guiding us as to His purposes and forgiving us when we fail to do what we should and transforming our hearts to want what he wants.
This would be, in my plant metaphor, like the branch being grafted on. It’s an opportunity that we don’t do anything to deserve and can’t do anything to help besides accept the gift. As far as that's concerned, it's a bit of a mysterious process that we can't do anything to help along. But after the graft comes the slow process of the branch rejecting its old nature and accepting the new. The gardener grafts you on, but your actions and decisions determine whether or not the graft will take. Every part of you needs to be transformed, and your actions and choices do allow the transformation. You "set your mind on" the things of the Spirit.
Showing posts with label Spirit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spirit. Show all posts
Friday, January 29, 2010
Romans 8:1-6...How to walk according to the spirit?
But getting down to what this means in practical terms. I think that when you try to walk according to the spirit and set you mind on the things of the spirit, you (or at least I) usually have a pretty good instinct of what that means in particular cases, but no idea in general. A couple of questions that I think are worth answering:
1. Is “to walk according to the Spirit” something we try to do and can succeed, something that we try to do and fail (but God’s mercy still regards us as his children), a free gift of God that we don’t have much to do with, growing in us and changing us, warring with and transforming our old nature, or just an name for the way we are once we accept Christ?
2. What does a life “lived according to the Spirit” look like? How is it different from the lives of moderately unselfish people with good intentions who don’t know God? Can it be made up of discrete actions (when I made my bed I was living according to the Spirit, but not when I put the extra sugar cube in my tea), or does it refer to a sort of abstract process, qualitatively different from our stream of actions and consciousness?
3. What does it mean to “set one’s mind on the things of the flesh/ spirit”? What are these things?
1. Is “to walk according to the Spirit” something we try to do and can succeed, something that we try to do and fail (but God’s mercy still regards us as his children), a free gift of God that we don’t have much to do with, growing in us and changing us, warring with and transforming our old nature, or just an name for the way we are once we accept Christ?
2. What does a life “lived according to the Spirit” look like? How is it different from the lives of moderately unselfish people with good intentions who don’t know God? Can it be made up of discrete actions (when I made my bed I was living according to the Spirit, but not when I put the extra sugar cube in my tea), or does it refer to a sort of abstract process, qualitatively different from our stream of actions and consciousness?
3. What does it mean to “set one’s mind on the things of the flesh/ spirit”? What are these things?
"I am the Vine, and you are the branches"--Romans 8:3-6
3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
I like plant metaphors!
To have the life of the Spirit is, I think, another way of putting the same truth that’s expressed by saying you’re part of the Body of Christ or you are a branch on the vine. The sap that runs through you belongs to a larger organism than yourself, a complete function of itself, of which you aren’t the whole but to which you wholly belong. That function or direction of the larger organism is to be completely your function; ie, if you are a leaf on a plant you are entirely given over to producing photosynthetic material, to the greater end that the plant might flourish and produce fruit. Such is the law of the plant—what happens to a living leaf, just by the nature of the way things are. To the extent that you’re not doing this, you’re not acting like part of the plant and you’re in enmity to it—you’re a parasite and a disease. And if the sap isn’t in you, you’re not part of the plant and as far as the plant is concerned you are dead.. You might still perform actions suitable to not being part of the plant, such as cell breakdown and getting eaten by bugs, but you’re not part of the greater life anymore. And you’re really pathetic, and you’ll die really soon. Such is the law of decomposition—the way nature works on a detached leaf. I think John 15 is talking about this. In this way, the law that brings death is actually the same law that brings life.
But that’s a passive metaphor… you’re part of the plant, its sap circulates through you, etc. What I like so much about Romans 8 (or maybe it’s just this translation) is its combination of active and passive words. When you’re in the Spirit, you are “walking” according to the Spirit, and you “set your mind” on the things of the Spirit. That’s what bothered me about this passage; because it makes it seem like once you are, through Christ Jesus, filled with the life of the Spirit, you will automatically be transformed into a creature that is free from the ways of the flesh and doesn’t follow them anymore. This doesn’t go along with observation, either of myself or of other people. It’s way too easy to sometimes have your mind on the things of the spirit and on the things of the flesh.
Martin Luther says that Romans 8 “gives comfort to those who are engaged in this warfare (struggling against the flesh, I think), and says that the flesh shall not condemn them.” That is, that as long as they are struggling against it and towards God, in Christ Jesus they are pleasing to him even as they fail and fail. We are children of God as long as we strive to put the flesh to death. So my plant metaphor breaks down a bit here. Not really, though. Life is just a very long wait to see if a graft will take or fail, assuming that the severed branch has some choice in the matter of whether it will be transformed to the new parent plant or remain itself.
I like plant metaphors!
To have the life of the Spirit is, I think, another way of putting the same truth that’s expressed by saying you’re part of the Body of Christ or you are a branch on the vine. The sap that runs through you belongs to a larger organism than yourself, a complete function of itself, of which you aren’t the whole but to which you wholly belong. That function or direction of the larger organism is to be completely your function; ie, if you are a leaf on a plant you are entirely given over to producing photosynthetic material, to the greater end that the plant might flourish and produce fruit. Such is the law of the plant—what happens to a living leaf, just by the nature of the way things are. To the extent that you’re not doing this, you’re not acting like part of the plant and you’re in enmity to it—you’re a parasite and a disease. And if the sap isn’t in you, you’re not part of the plant and as far as the plant is concerned you are dead.. You might still perform actions suitable to not being part of the plant, such as cell breakdown and getting eaten by bugs, but you’re not part of the greater life anymore. And you’re really pathetic, and you’ll die really soon. Such is the law of decomposition—the way nature works on a detached leaf. I think John 15 is talking about this. In this way, the law that brings death is actually the same law that brings life.
But that’s a passive metaphor… you’re part of the plant, its sap circulates through you, etc. What I like so much about Romans 8 (or maybe it’s just this translation) is its combination of active and passive words. When you’re in the Spirit, you are “walking” according to the Spirit, and you “set your mind” on the things of the Spirit. That’s what bothered me about this passage; because it makes it seem like once you are, through Christ Jesus, filled with the life of the Spirit, you will automatically be transformed into a creature that is free from the ways of the flesh and doesn’t follow them anymore. This doesn’t go along with observation, either of myself or of other people. It’s way too easy to sometimes have your mind on the things of the spirit and on the things of the flesh.
Martin Luther says that Romans 8 “gives comfort to those who are engaged in this warfare (struggling against the flesh, I think), and says that the flesh shall not condemn them.” That is, that as long as they are struggling against it and towards God, in Christ Jesus they are pleasing to him even as they fail and fail. We are children of God as long as we strive to put the flesh to death. So my plant metaphor breaks down a bit here. Not really, though. Life is just a very long wait to see if a graft will take or fail, assuming that the severed branch has some choice in the matter of whether it will be transformed to the new parent plant or remain itself.
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