Romans 8:10,11 - If Christ is in you

8:10

When we gave our lives to Christ a whole series of fundamental changes took place. First, Christ is in us. Jesus said that the Father and the Son would come to make their home with us (John 14:23). Being a Christian is most definitely not about getting a ticket to heaven, it is not about giving an intellectual assent to some doctrines, it is not an emotional response. It is about being born again (John 3:3), about becoming a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). Now your body is still subject to death. This is true physically and spiritually. We all know that we still age, we still get diseases. Sometimes God may heal us miraculously but eventually this body is going to die. We also know that we still have a battle with sin. We find wrong desires within us, and sometimes these seem to have a strong hold on us. But the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.  The Holy Spirit is at work in our lives. “because of righteousness”. This can be taken in two ways. It is only because Jesus’ blood has justified us that the Holy Spirit can dwell within us. Jesus said He had to go away in order for the Spirit to come (John 16:7). Part of the purpose of the Holy Spirit is to produce righteousness in us, to sanctify us.

8:11

So the way of the flesh, the way of Law, is to have a set of rules and seek to follow these rules by our own efforts. This inevitably leads to failure, even if the rules themselves are very good. But now a new way is open. If the Holy Spirit is living in us then He will give life to our mortal bodies. Now look at this more carefully. The Holy Spirit was involved in the raising of Christ from the dead. Notice the subtle transition “He who raised Christ from the dead”. The He here is the Father, and He too will give life to us, through the Spirit. The Spirit gave life back to Christ, and He will give life to our mortal bodies as well. In the context that means that we will start to enable us to live more Christlike lives. It is also essential that the Spirit is alive and He is a person. Notice too that all this is as a result of what God does, and see the trinitarian nature of all this. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all distinct and all working perfect unity as the One God.