Romans 8 offers an understanding of our obsessions with alcohol, over-eating, drugs (prescribed and illegal) gambling and other earthly things that are not good for our Spirit. We seem to attain to wroldly pleasures that end up destroying us, or at best leaving us with a void, an empty spirit without truth. We convince ourselves that another press up, dumb bell, doughnut, beer or whatever it is that we binge on will suffice, when it never does. In this letter Saint Paul tell us that ‘we are powerless to do anything because we are weakened by the flesh’. How many times over the years have I clenched my fist so determined not to drink and yet later that very day there I am at the bar waiting to fullfill my fleshy addictive desires. Now-a-days things are different. This morning I prayed, read my Bible and prayed again before going to work, and now Im sitting here writing this essay without any thought of allowing my old ways to inherit more time from my life. One day at a time my friends. God bless.
“1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
9You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
12Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
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