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The Biblical Meaning of “Life in the Spirit.”

 “Life in the Spirit” is an example that the Apostle Paul gives in the book of Romans starting in chapter 5 and going through to chapter 8. He begins by telling us we are justified by faith (5:1), and have gained access by faith into the grace of God (5:2). We have been delivered from God’s wrath (5:9) and we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son (5:10). He goes on to explain that through Adam all die (5:12), and that the free Gift of God brings justification and righteousness to the believing sinner (5:15-17). 


Through our conversion we are baptized into Christ and into his death, which frees us from the law and makes us dead to sin (6:2-4). He explains that just as Christ was raised from the dead, we are given new life in Christ (6:4). Our old unregenerate self was crucified with Christ so that our body of sin might be done away with (6:5-6). Because we have died to sin, we now submit ourselves to God being that we are now under grace, not the law (6:8-14). 


We no longer submit to sin because we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness (6:15-18). Our old ways of living only produced spiritual death and made us ashamed, but righteousness produces holiness which leads to eternal life (6:19-23). Paul gives an example of marriage in chapter 7. In the same way that a wife can only re-marry after her husband dies, without being called an adulteress, we died to the law through the body of Christ, that we would belong to another, (Christ). He explains that sinful passions are aroused by the law (7:5), which bore fruit for death (7:5), by dying to the law we serve God in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the law (7:6). 


He explains if it weren’t for the law we would not know what sin is (7:7), but the law killed me because of my inability to keep it through my flesh (7:7-25). In chapter 8, Paul tells us we have been liberated by a new law, The Law of the Spirit of Life (8:12). God sent his Son to be a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who live according to the Spirit (8:4). The mind of sinful man or the sin nature is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life (8:6). 


Because we have the Holy Spirit, we are not controlled by the sinful nature (8:9). If you don’t have the Holy Spirit you don’t belong to Christ (8:9). Christ gives life to our dead bodies, however our spirits are alive because of justification (8:10), and because the Holy Spirit lives in us, He will give life to our mortal bodies (8:11). Because of all this, Paul says we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit, to put away sin, because if you don’t do this, you will die spiritually (8:12-13). This is Mike.


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