20250921 Romans 8:5-8 Two People, Two Desires, Two Destinies
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it, and they not only will believe it, but they also will defend it as a truism. Our culture is permeated with the idea that there is no war between man and God. We hear, “God hates the sin but loves the sinner.” We hear that God loves everybody unconditionally, but that is the biggest lie of our day, because he does not. At the last judgment God will not send sins to hell; he will send sinners to hell. Even though sinners enjoy the blessings of God’s providential love, his filial love is not their desert.
The Scriptures are graphic in describing God’s attitude toward impenitent, carnally minded people. God abhors them. Nobody talks that way anymore—except for God in his Word. To set our minds on the things of this world is death. God is the supreme obstacle to people’s finding happiness in their desires of the flesh. God is always standing in the way. The life of the flesh is lived not in neutrality but in opposition to God, which is Paul’s point. To be carnally minded is to be at enmity with God.
Why do we hate God by nature? Why, in our original state of corruption, do we have a fleshly mind-set? Why do we have what Paul earlier called debased minds (1:28)? The reason is God’s law. We are at war with God because we do not want to be subject to the law of God. The media covers every ethical controversy facing mankind today, yet Christianity is held at bay in the discussion. The majority do not want the church involved in ethics because they want the right to do what they want to do. Who gave them that right? Certainly not the law of God. Every time we want to do our will, express our appetites, and live out our preferences, we run right into the wall of the law of God.
They cannot obey the law of God nor do the will of God, and the worst verdict is that they cannot do anything to please God. Those who are not Christians can do nothing to please God. So long as we are in the flesh, the only response we will have from God is a response of his displeasure, which is a euphemism for wrath. We must remember the context here: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (v. 1). For those who do not walk according to the Spirit, those who are not in Christ Jesus, there is nothing but condemnation. That is the only possible consequence for a life defined by a mind-set of the flesh, one in which the mind is at war with God and with his law and does not want to be ruled by him.
