f. The blessed condition and hopes of Christians, as described in these last verses, lay them under obligations: to whom, or to what? Not (Romans 8:12) to the flesh, to live according to it: to it they owe nothing. If they live after the flesh they are destined to die the final doom in which there is no hope; but if by the spirit (i.e., God's Spirit) they put to death the doings of the body, they shall live the life against which death is powerless. We might have expected τῆς σαρκὸς instead of τοῦ σώματος, but in the absence of the spirit the body in all it does is only the tool of the flesh: the two are morally equivalent.

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Old Testament