Romans 8:10

“ Now if Christ be in you, the body is indeed dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. ”

As the apostle had substituted the Spirit of Christ for the Spirit of God, he now substitutes for the Spirit of Christ His person: Now if Christ be in you. “Where the Spirit of Christ is,” says Hofmann, “there he is also Himself.” In fact, as the Spirit proceeds from Christ, His action tends to make Christ live in us. “I shall come again to you,” said Jesus (John 14:17-18), when He was describing the work of the Spirit. This new expression brings out more forcibly than the preceding the solidarity between the person of Jesus and ours, and so prepares for Romans 8:11, in which the resurrection of Jesus is set forth as the pledge of ours.

This hope of sharing His resurrection rests on the fact that even now His life has penetrated the spiritual part of our being (Romans 8:10 b). No doubt this spiritual life will not prevent the body from dying; but it is the earnest of its participation in the resurrection of Christ. From chap. Romans 5:12; Romans 5:15; Romans 5:17, we know the apostle's view respecting the cause of death: “Through one man's offence many are dead.” The fact of universal death does not therefore arise from the sins of individuals, but from the original transgression. The meaning of these words: because of sin, is thus fixed; they refer to Adam's sin. It is sometimes asked why believers still die if Christ really died for them; and an argument is drawn hence against the doctrine of expiation. But it is forgotten that, death not being an individual punishment, there is no connection between this fact and the pardon of sins granted to believing individuals. Death, as a judgment on humanity, bearing on the species as such, remains till the general consummation of Christ's work; comp. 1 Corinthians 15:26.

The term dead here signifies: irrevocably smitten with death. The human body bears within itself from its formation the germ of death; it begins to die the instant it begins to live. Commentators who, like Chrys., Er., Grot., explain this term dead, as dead unto sin (in a good sense), evidently do not understand the course of thought in these verses, 9-11.

But if the believer's death cannot be prevented, there is a domain in him where life has already established its reign, the spirit in which Christ dwells. Hofmann insists strongly that the term spirit should here be applied to the Spirit of God. In that case the words: the spirit is life, must be understood in the sense: the spirit produces and sustains life in the soul. But this sense is unnatural, and the contrast between spirit and body leads us rather to apply the former term to the spiritual element in the believer. In the passage, 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Paul distinguishes these three elements in man: body, soul, and spirit. By the third term he denotes the organ with which the soul of man, and of man alone of all animated beings, is endowed, whereby he perceives and appropriates the divine; by this spiritual faculty it is that the Spirit of God can penetrate into the soul, and by it rule the body. Hence arises the sanctification of the body (Romans 6:11-13), not its deliverance from death. But Paul can already say, nevertheless, that in consequence of its union with the Spirit of God the spirit of the believer is life. This expression no doubt sounds somewhat strong; why not say simply: living? This peculiarity seems to have been observed very early; it is certainly the origin of the reading ζῇ, lives, instead of ζωή, life, in two Greco-Latin MSS.; but Paul's thought went further. The life of God does not become merely an attribute of the spirit in man through the Holy Spirit; it becomes his nature, so that it can pass from the spirit to his whole person, psychical and bodily (Romans 8:11).

The last words: because of righteousness, cannot refer to the restoration of holiness in the believer; not that the word righteousness cannot have this meaning in Paul's writings (comp. Romans 6:13; Romans 6:19), but because it is impossible to say life exists because of holiness; for in reality the one is identical with the other. We must therefore take the word righteousness in the sense of justification, as in chaps. 1-5. To this meaning we are also led by the meaning of the clause which forms an antithesis to this in the first proposition: because of sin. As the body dies because of a sin which is not ours individually, so the spirit lives in consequence of a righteousness which is not ours.

But will this body, given over to death, be abandoned to it forever? No; the last trace of condemnation behoves to be effaced.