The Mind of the Flesh Is Death, but the Mind of the Spirit Is Life and Peace (Romans 8:4–7)

Rom. 8:4. That the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

All that the Lord accomplished was in His flesh, in His Person. “You will ask: is there some benefit for me from the fact that this was accomplished in the flesh of Christ? There is benefit for you precisely” (Saint Chrysostom). What precisely? That we now walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, “do not will to live in the flesh but in the spirit” (Oecumenius). The Apostle does not explain how such a change was accomplished in us; because he wrote to Christians who bore such a change in themselves and knew how it was accomplished. The sin-justifying and sin-conquering power from Christ the Lord passes to every believer, who clothes himself in Christ in holy baptism and receives the gift of the Holy Spirit in chrismation. Therefore he immediately begins from now on to walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. But this is not accomplished mechanically, but as a result of free changes in the deepest disposition of man. Let us recall what was said under verse 2 of this chapter. The fallen man became self-centered, self-indulgent, pleasure-loving. Passionate self-indulgence, operating in soul-and-body life and moved by pleasure-love, was the source of endless sinfulness, the law of sin acting “in our members”—or that fleshliness of which Saint Paul writes here. But God’s grace in Christ Jesus comes and restores man’s spirit to its rights, forms in him self-denying zeal to please God by fulfilling His holy will, with readiness even to death for this. Upon this disposition, which in the beginning occurs only as it were inwardly, God’s grace, which has been acting till now from without, descends in the mysteries within and, dwelling in the spirit, makes what was before only deliberately intended to be the living elements and operations of man’s inner life. And he begins from now on to live by the spirit in God, pleasing Him, offering to Him in every way and self-denyingly his soul-and-body life as a sacrifice, with the suppression of all passionate self-indulgence—begins, in other words, to walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. “Not to walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit,” writes Ambrosiaster, “means to serve God with the mind, which is the spirit, not consenting to sin (self-indulgence), which through flesh sows lusts in the soul.”

What fruit comes from such walking not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit? This: “the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in us”—that is, only in us, the believers, not in anyone else: for only we receive the power for it and form in ourselves the disposition suited for it. He who lives according to the spirit zealously seeks to please God; what pleases God is expressed in His Law—both in the law of conscience and in the written law, which has clarified and confirmed that law and merged with it. He who lives according to the spirit thus zealously seeks to fulfill the law and, having received the power to do so, truly fulfills it. As only believers in the Lord are such, so only they are faithful fulfillers of the law—in other words: it is in them alone that the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled. “The righteousness of the Law” is either the righteousness demanded by the Law, or the intention and goal of the Law. It comes to this: what the Law aimed at, for which it was given—and it was given so that we might be righteous and holy—is fulfilled in us believers—and only in us. And why in us alone? Because in us alone that is removed on account of which the Law was powerless, the law of sin dwelling in the flesh is removed, and the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus begins to operate; in other words: because only we can live and do live not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Saint Chrysostom says: “What does righteousness mean? The end, the goal, the success. What did the Law seek and what did it sometimes produce? That man should be sinless. This very thing is now accomplished for us by Christ. It was His work to resist and overcome, and ours to use the victory. So we will no longer sin, will not sin if we do not grow weak and fall in spirit. Therefore the Apostle added: in us, not walking according to the flesh. And so that, hearing that Christ has delivered you from the struggle with sin and that through the condemnation of sin in the flesh the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled in you, you should not neglect the necessary preparation (disposition, readiness), the Apostle, as before, having said no condemnation, added not walking according to the flesh; and here he added the same thing to the words that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us. Or, more correctly, here something far greater is added. Having said that the righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, not walking according to the flesh, he added but according to the Spirit—thereby giving to understand that one must not only refrain from evil but also adorn oneself with good. Christ’s work is to give you a crown; yours is to keep it on yourself. Christ accomplished for you what the righteousness of the Law consists in—namely, that you are not subject to the curse. So do not lose this gift, but keep this beautiful treasure. By this the Apostle suggests to you that baptism alone is insufficient for our salvation if after it we do not show a life worthy of this gift. Consequently, this again is said in defense of the Law. For even after believing in Christ we must do and fulfill all things, so that the righteousness of the Law, fulfilled by Christ, operates in us and not remain powerless.”

Again, there naturally impresses itself on the mind the reflection that holy and righteous life is the essential norm of life for a man worthy of that name. It was man’s original purpose in creation; it was the goal of all God’s providential actions before the Law; it was what the Law aimed at; and for it the entire new-testament dispensation of salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ is ordered. The essential condition for its actual manifestation is life not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit—that is, the restoration of the original structure of human nature—that man should live in the spirit in God and by its power authoritatively rule soul and body—a structure truly restored in Christ Jesus by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Rom. 8:5. 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, on the things of the Spirit.

He explains why the righteousness of the Law is fulfilled only in those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. It cannot be otherwise, he says: for those walking according to the flesh, or, what is the same, those living according to the flesh only “set their minds on the things of the flesh”—they have no concern for the Law, care nothing for the Law. Only those walking according to the Spirit, or, what is the same, those living according to the Spirit “set their minds on the things of the Spirit”—they concern themselves with what is in accord with the demands of the Spirit, or with the Law; for the Law is spiritual. Such is the nature of the fleshly and the spiritual that the former’s mind does not incline toward what is lawful; but the latter think only of ensuring that all is lawful, in accord with God’s will and pleasing to God. Therefore only these can fulfill the righteousness of the Law—the goal of the Law, that we be holy.

“Those who live according to the flesh”—not those who have flesh—but those living in the gratification of flesh, doing what pleases the flesh in lust (Rom. 13:14). The discourse is not about the nature of flesh, but about man’s fleshly disposition. “This does not lean toward an accusation of the flesh,” says Saint Chrysostom; “as long as it maintains its own proper order, nothing is unreasonable. But when we give the flesh freedom and it, transgressing the limits set for it, rises up against the soul, then all is ruined and corrupted—not by its own nature, but on account of excess and the disorder arising from it.”

“Those who live according to the flesh”—yet the expression is very strong. It points to such immersion in fleshliness that it is as if nothing but flesh existed in the man. We with our human eye see but few such: for however much someone is given to the flesh, both his soul appears to be active in him, and sometimes even the natural spirit of man. But God’s eye does not see all the fallen as such: for such is the law of the fall, that he who has fallen from the spirit does not stop in the soul either, but is cast down to the very bottom—into the flesh. Fleshliness appears as the ruling principle even in those who live by the soul (scientists, artists, men of affairs). It is the background, and everything else is various figures drawn on this background.

“Thinking”—here means not merely thoughts or the cast of mind, but the entire inner structure—thoughts, cares, plans, sympathies, deeds, and even dreams and imaginings—the moving, governing and arranging principle of all. “The fleshly,” he says, “having given themselves to lusts, have only that care and concern” (Oecumenius). “Those who have given themselves to immoderate slavery to the flesh always care only for the fleshly” (Blessed Theophylact). “Only what pleases the flesh is sweet to them” (Ambrosiaster).

“Those who live according to the Spirit”—these are those who live by the spirit in God, think of God’s things, desire God’s things, are consoled by God’s things, moved by the fear of God and guided by the suggestions of the conscience enlightened by the commandments—all through the action of the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Lord Jesus Christ. To live according to the Spirit is the norm of human life by its creation. But after the fall he no longer lived according to the Spirit, though the spirit was in him: it was in him, but had not the determining power; it spoke, but was not heeded. Such are all who have not yet arisen from the fall. Man begins to live according to the Spirit only after receiving grace—being born again. Then the spirit enters into its rightful place, gains power and governs all in man, by itself determines the norm of his life. Such a man cares only for one thing: to remain unwaveringly in God by the spirit and to direct all only to what pleases Him. “Those who have wholly submitted to the Spirit think and do all that is spiritual” (Blessed Theophylact). Soul-and-body life is not suppressed or silenced, but, having been placed within its natural limits, is directed there too, to what pleases God, and through this becomes spiritualized—and man’s whole external life becomes spiritualized in all its aspects. Thus those “living according to the Spirit” do not forget the fleshly, but only spiritualize it; while those “living according to the flesh” forget the spiritual—or perhaps one can say that they too do not forget it, only they carnalize it.

Rom. 8:6. For the mind set on the flesh is death; but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.

“For”—because; again a cause. The holy Paul here binds a chain of causes: for the following verse too begins with a causal particle “because.” To what does the cause in the present verse point? To that which immediately precedes, namely: “those living according to the Spirit” (think), “on the things of the Spirit”; it shows why they do so: because they are aware that only in spiritual thinking is life, and in fleshly thinking is death. And experience confirms this: for nothing so strengthens life according to the Spirit as the awareness, feeling and tasting of moral-religious well-being in such an order of life and the remembrance of what comfortless heartache is the source of fleshly life. And in theory it should be so; for he living according to the Spirit and holding spiritual thinking lives by the Spirit in God and, strengthened by His power, directs the actions of soul and body and all his relations to pleasing God. Through this, standing in living union with the source of all life, he is filled with true life, which, harmonizing all manifestations of his own life, both inner and outer, brings into it harmony and peace more beautiful, more sweet and more rapturous than anything man can imagine for himself on earth. Conversely, fleshly thinking—life at a distance from God and with forgetfulness of Him, life of pleasure-loving self-indulgence moved and agitated by passions—because it holds aloof from the source of life, makes human nature impoverished, exhausted, withering; and because it gives predominance to flesh and soul over the spirit contrary to the natural order of human nature, introduces discord into that nature, disintegrating and corroding it. Both result in torment like the agony of a dying man. Fearing this—the lethal effect of fleshly thinking which has been experienced—he who has entered into spiritual thinking holds fast to it with all his might, the more earnestly because he feels and tastes the life and peace that flow from it.

Rom. 8:7. Because the mind set on the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can it be.

“Because” διότι—through that, that—by the fact that. He said that fleshly thinking is death and spiritual thinking is life. Now he clarifies through what and by what the first produces death, giving to understand that the second produces life by the opposite. By what does the first produce death? By the fact that it is by its very nature enmity against God. Life is in a friendly, living union with God; and fleshly thinking, born as a result of falling away from God, is not only estranged from this union but cannot bear it and shrinks from it, because it undercuts it at the root. Therefore it naturally brings death, and indeed is death.

Fleshly thinking, as has been said more than once, means the general disposition of the fallen, by which he directs all his care to arranging earthly well-being, placing it in the satisfaction of soul and body needs, corrupted and perverted by the passions. With this it is occupied day and night, and this alone does it know how to arrange, not thinking of that which is beyond earth and of what lies beyond earthly life. Toward God and the things of God his soul has no inclination. This inclination of the soul toward the Divine is the mildest extreme of enmity against God. The harshest extreme is active, furious rebellion against God’s order, accompanied by blasphemy and zeal to turn others from God. The middle occupies that manifestation of fleshly thinking by which it does not openly rise against the Divine and seems to be at peace with it; but as soon as it comes into conflict with it, it always compels one to act contrary to it. And this last is what the Apostle sets forth here in the form of disobedience to God’s Law, as the most widespread and universal, and as that in which the first degree is already contained and the way to the second is opened.

Fleshly thinking expresses its enmity against God by disobedience to God’s Law. Usually it is silent, as if it did not exist; but as soon as comes the time to fulfill the Law, it contrives to present the matter so that the poor man in that case acts to please it against God’s Law. Thus every time, therefore always, so that disobedience to God’s Law is the distinctive living characteristic of fleshly thinking. Therefore the Apostle added further: “nor indeed can it be.” Fleshly thinking, as long as it is such, cannot obey God’s Law; for as soon as it obeyed, it would cease to be fleshly thinking. Man can hold both fleshly and spiritual thinking, bound by neither, can pass from one to the other. While given over to fleshly thinking, he cannot obey God’s Law; but since he is not bound by fleshly thinking and can depart from it, one cannot say generally that he cannot obey God’s Law: he can, when he wishes, when he himself arms against fleshly thinking and drives it away.

Saint Chrysostom expounds at length this side or this kind of inability. “Do not be disturbed on hearing ‘nor indeed can it be.’ This difficulty is still easy to turn aside. Under the name of fleshly thinking the Apostle understands here the reason that has become earthly, clinging to worldly things and evil deeds. Of it the Apostle speaks, that it cannot obey God—not of man in general. Otherwise how did Paul become so great? How was the robber saved? How was Manasseh saved? How were the Ninevites saved? How did David rise after his fall? How did Peter come to himself after denying Christ? How could the prodigal be received into the flock of Christ? How could the Galatians regain their former blessedness when they had lost grace? Therefore the Apostle does not say that it is impossible for the wicked to become good, but that the wicked, while wicked, cannot obey God, but if he changes, he will become good and readily obey God. He did not say that man cannot obey God, but says that a wicked man cannot do good deeds, as a fornicator, for example, cannot be distinguished by chastity. So when Christ says in the Gospel: ‘a bad tree cannot bear good fruit’ (Matt. 7:18); He does not by this deny the possibility to pass from vice to virtue, but means only that while given over to vice one cannot bear good fruit. He did not say that a bad tree cannot become good, but says that while remaining bad, it cannot bear good fruit. Therefore the Apostle calls fleshly thinking a vice, and spiritual thinking the grace given and deeds approved by good will, and reasons here not at all about substance and nature, but about virtue and vice. What you could not do before, he says, you can now—you can walk straight without stumbling if you receive help from the Spirit. For it is not enough just not to walk in the flesh, but you must walk in the Spirit; because for our salvation we need not only to avoid evil but also to do good. And we achieve this when we give the soul to the Spirit and persuade the flesh to remain in its place. For by this we also make it spiritual, just as by giving ourselves to negligence we make the soul fleshly. Since the gift is not given by natural necessity but is entrusted to free will, it depends on you now to become one or the other. Christ accomplished all that was in His power; sin no longer opposes the law of our mind and does not take us captive as before; on the contrary, all this has passed and is finished: the passions are calmed, brought to fear and trembling by the grace of the Spirit. But if you yourself extinguish the light, push aside the charioteer, cast out the helmsman, then blame yourself for the tempest. But that virtue has become more easily fulfilled now, and therefore more lovers of wisdom, you can see by comparing what condition the human race was in before and what it is now that grace has shone forth. What seemed impossible for anyone before, such as virginity, contempt for death and many other sufferings, is now fulfilled throughout the world. Not only among us, but also among the Scythians, Thracians, Indians, Persians and other barbarian peoples are there virgins, hosts of martyrs, communities of monks—everywhere incomparable fasting, abundance of poverty. Therefore, seeing the truth of events crying out louder than a trumpet, do not give yourself to luxury, do not lose such grace. To the negligent, even after receiving faith, it is impossible to be saved. Struggles have become easier so that you, the athlete, might win, not slumber, and not make the greatness of grace an excuse for you to neglect it, sinking again into the mire of sins.”