God is Closer Than You Think: 3 – Partnering With God Today In week 1 we remembered God’s closeness; always reaching out to us – longing to engage with us. In week 2 we looked at some of the reasons we might feel far away from God: It may be because God ‘hides’ – letting us go alone for a bit. It may be because we, in our complacency have become ignorant of God’s presence. It

may be – because we would rather God didn’t ‘see’ us as we ask him to look away from us in our sin.

This week we speak of ‘Partnering With God’. Agreeing to simple obedience.

Can you recall a time or season when you obeyed or disobeyed God?

8:1–11 People of the Spirit Versus People of the Flesh In the Old Testament “flesh” could designate any mortal creature but especially designated human beings. It

Old Testament*Old Testament. The common modern term for the Hebrew Bible (including Aramaic portions) as defined by the Jewish and Protestant Christian canons; Jewish readers generally call this the Tenach.

connoted weakness and mortality, especially when contrasted with God and his Spirit (Gen 6:3; Is 31:3; cf. Ps 78:39). By the New Testament period, this connotation of weakness was extended to moral weakness, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and could be

SpiritSpirit. When capitalized in this commentary, it refers to the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit. New *New Testament. The common modern term for the early Christian literature finally declared canonical by the church and accepted by nearly all Christians today. Dead Sea Scrolls*Dead Sea Scrolls. Writings from a strict

translated “human susceptibility to sin,” or “self-centeredness” as opposed to “God-centeredness.” A life ruled by the flesh is a life dependent on finite human effort and resources, a selfish life as opposed to one directed by God’s Spirit. Paul’s use of “flesh” and “Spirit” refers to two spheres of

existence—in Adam or in Christ—not to two natures in a person.

“Flesh” per se is not evil in the New Testament writings; Christ “became flesh” (Jn 1:14), though not “sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3). (The NIV

Jewish sect (usually agreed to be Essenes) that lived in the Judean desert, near modern Khirbet Qumran. The writings include the War Scroll, the Community Rule, the Damascus Document, the Thanksgiving Hymns, the Genesis Apocryphon, the Temple Scroll and commentaries on and expansions of various biblical books. NIVNew International Version

translation “sinful nature” can be misleading, because some people today think of spirit and flesh as two natures within a person, whereas “Spirit” here is God’s Spirit—it is not a special part of a person but the power of God’s presence. Romans 7:15–25 describes a struggle of two aspects of human personality—reason and passions—trying to fulfill divine morality by human effort; but this struggle is not in view here, where people either live that struggle by the flesh or accept God’s gift of righteousness by the Spirit. The radical bifurcation of a human being into a morally upright “spiritual” part versus an immoral “bodily” part is a Neo-Platonic idea foreign to Paul. It was first introduced into the interpretation of the New Testament by Gnostics and would not have been the natural interpretation to Jewish readers or to Gentile Christians who knew about the Spirit.)

But flesh, mere bodily existence and human strength, is mortal and inadequate to stand against sin (which abuses bodily members that could have been harnessed instead by the Spirit). Although the term is used flexibly in the Bible, in one sense we are flesh (especially in the Old Testament use of the term); the problem is not that people are flesh but that they live life their own way instead of by God’s power and grace. The New Testament does sometimes distinguish the human body from the soul, but this distinction is not the point of the contrast between walking according to the flesh and walking according to the Spirit (8:4).

The Spirit especially anointed God’s people to prophesy in the Old Testament but also endowed them with power to do other things. Here, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and occasionally in the Old Testament, the Spirit enables a person to live rightly (see especially Ezek 36:27). In Judaism, the Spirit indicated God’s presence; here the Spirit communicates the very presence, power and character of Gnostics*Gnosticism. A fusion of Greek, Jewish and Christian ideas that began by the early second century and presented a major challenge to early Christianity. Some scholars have seen tendencies toward developed Gnosticism in the opponents of Paul (especially in Colossians and the Pastoral Epistles) and John. The same Greek ideas that later produced Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism were probably already at work in the first century, but we can reconstruct these from other sources without recourse to Gnosticism per se. Gentile*Gentile. Anyone who is not Jewish. In ancient Jewish parlance, this was often the equivalent of “pagan.” graceGrace. In the New Testament, the term generally represents the Old Testament concept of God’s covenant love, which was expressed in passages like Deuteronomy 4:37, 7:7–9 and 10:15.

Christ. 8:1–4. Paul’s point here is that whether the law brings life or death depends on whether it is written in one’s heart by the Spirit (Ezek 36:27) or practiced as an external standard of righteousness, which is unattainable by human effort (cf. 3:27; 9:31–32; 10:6–8). 8:5–8. Philosophers often urged people to set their minds on eternal things rather than on the transitory affairs of this world. Philo condemned those whose minds were taken up with the matters of the body and its pleasures. Philosophers divided humanity into the enlightened and the foolish; Judaism divided humanity into Israel and the Gentiles. Paul here divides humanity into two classes: those who have the Spirit (Christians) and those left to their own devices.

Some people believed that inspiration came only when the human mind was emptied, as in some Eastern mysticism. But Paul speaks of the “mind of the Spirit” as well as the “mind of the flesh.” Instead of opposing reason and inspiration, he contrasts reasoning that is merely human (and thus susceptible to sin) with reasoning that is directed by God’s inspiration. 8:9. Most Jewish people did not claim to have the Spirit; they believed that the Spirit would be made available only in the time of the end. After the Messiah had come, all those who were truly God’s people would have the Spirit working in them (cf. Is 44:3; 59:21; Ezek 39:29). 8:10. Jewish people in this period usually distinguished soul and body, just as the Greeks did, although for Jews the division usually functioned only at death. (Some Jewish writers were more influenced by Greek categories than others.) But Paul does not say here that the (human) “spirit is

Philo*Philo. A first-century Jewish philosopher committed to both Judaism and Greek thought; he lived in Alexandria, Egypt, and held a position of great influence and prestige in the Jewish community there. Messiah*Messiah. The rendering of a Hebrew term meaning “anointed one,” equivalent to the original sense of the Greek term translated “Christ.” In the Old Testament, different kinds of people were anointed, and some of the Dead Sea Scrolls mention two main anointed ones in the end time, a king and a priest. But the common expectation reflected in the biblical Psalms and Prophets was that one of David’s royal descendants would take the throne again when God reestablished his kingdom for Israel. Most people believed that God would somehow have to intervene to put down Roman rule so the Messiah’s kingdom could be secure; many seem to have thought this intervention would be accomplished through force of arms. Various messianic figures arose in first-century Palestine, expecting a miraculous intervention from God; all were crushed by the Romans. (Jesus was the only one claimed to have been resurrected; he was also one of the only messiahs claiming Davidic descent, proof of which became difficult for any claimants arising after A.D. 70.)

alive” (NIV, NASB); literally, he claims that the “Spirit is life” (KJV, NRSV, TEV). Thus he means that the body was still under death’s sentence, but the Spirit who indwells believers would ultimately resurrect their bodies (8:11). 8:11. Jewish people believed that God would raise the dead at the end of the age. Paul modifies this teaching by only one step: God has already raised Jesus, and this event is a sure sign that the rest of the resurrection will happen someday.

8:12–17 Led by the Spirit The Jewish people looked back to their deliverance from Egypt as their first redemption and looked forward to the Messiah’s coming as a new exodus, God’s ultimate act of salvation. In this hope they were prefigured by the prophets, who often portrayed the future deliverance in terms of the exodus from Egypt (e.g., Hos 11:1, 5, 11). 8:12–13. Those who lived according to the flesh (as bodily creatures in their own strength) would die, but those who lived by the eschatological Spirit (the Spirit who in most Jewish thought and often in the Old Testament prophets characterizes the life of the age to come) would be resurrected by him; see comment on 8:1–11 and 8:10–11. 8:14. The Old Testament often comments that God “led” Israel through the wilderness (Ex 15:13; Deut 3:2; Ps 77:20; 78:52; 106:1

NASBNew American Standard Bible KJVKing James Version NRSVNew Revised Standard Version TEVToday’s English Version resurrection*Resurrection. Although some scholars earlier in the twentieth century derived the idea of Jesus’ resurrection from Greek mystery cults, it is now widely understood that early Christian belief shared little in common with the Mysteries’ myths, which simply reenacted a seasonal revivification of fertility. Rather, Jesus’ resurrection was rooted in a Jewish hope, which in turn was rooted in notions of God’s covenant, promise and justice from early in Israel’s history. Most Palestinian Jews believed that God would resurrect the bodies of the dead (at least the righteous, and many believed also the wicked), at the end of the age (Dan 12:2). There was, however, never any thought that one person would rise ahead of everyone else; thus Jesus’ resurrection, as an inauguration of the future kingdom within history, caught even the disciples by surprise. eschatologicalEschatological. Dealing with the end time. 1Keener, C. S., & InterVarsity Press. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary : New Testament (Ro 7:25-8:14). Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press.