What Romans 8:11 Really Means
The true meaning of Romans 8:11 has been debated for centuries, with Greek-skilled commentators taking two different sides, neither of which is the preferred “side” in faith circles! Being good Berean types who study for ourselves to find out what’s really true, we can see that some serious CSI (Critical Scripture Interpretation) work is ahead!
Here’s the verse, along with the one before it and the two after it:
Romans 8:10-13:
And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.
For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
If there were an “obvious” meaning that leaps off the page, there would be no debate about Romans 8:11. It seems that one could legitimately take this verse in 3 different ways – and possibly a COMBINATION of them:
Meaning #1:
When Jesus comes back, He will give you a new spiritually alive body to replace the unspiritual body you have today.
Meaning #2:
In this life, the work of the Holy Spirit in your unspiritual body will enable you to overcome sin so that you don’t have to be a debtor to the flesh.
Meaning #3:
In this life, the Holy Spirit will impart divine life into your subject-to-physical-death (and spiritually dead) body, bringing physical healing when needed.
This road will be fraught with some peril, as it would be all too easy to come up with dead-end conclusions such as, “God will raise something from the dead that isn’t dead” or “Because Jesus is coming back, you don’t have to live in the flesh today.” You’ll see what I mean as we delve deeper. Let’s get started!
The Key to It All
After giving this a little thought, we can determine that the phrase “quicken your mortal bodies” is the key to the whole thing. The three competing interpretations each have a different slant on what “quicken your mortal bodies” means. If we figure that out, we’ve “cracked” the verse.
We’ll look at it in English, which is usually a good place to start! There is usually no need to delve into concordances and Greek manuscripts if something obvious stares us in the face in English. The word quicken would seem to mean “raise from the dead” and the word mortal would seem to mean “subject to death, though not dead yet.” So “obviously” this verse means that God will raise something from the dead that isn’t dead – your body.
So we’ve encountered our first bump in the road, because it makes no sense for something to be raised from the dead that isn’t dead. If Paul had said, “quicken your dead bodies,” the investigation would already be over and we could celebrate our conclusion that this verse refers to the final resurrection – the day when our bodies will all be changed and we will receive new immortal spiritual bodies that aren’t dead to the things of God. But now that option seems to be all but ruled out. If God imparts life to our mortal but not dead bodies, that “life” must refer to something other than the raising of the dead. It would make more sense that the life of God would bring healing to our current subject-to-death bodies.
But what about just meaning that our flesh will be given God’s “life” throughout this life so that we don’t have to sin? This seems to be a problem, too, because the next verse declares that we are not debtors to the flesh, but not that the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit continually stops us from being debtors to the flesh. We also remember reading elsewhere in Romans that we must reckon ourselves (already) dead to sin (Romans 6:11). Therefore, if the question is whether you’re already dead to sin, the correct answer is “I reckon!” rather than “No, the Holy Spirit is continually doing a work in me that strengthens me to get individual victories over individual sins.”
Armed with this reasoning, it appears that we should crown Meaning #3 the winner and be done with it.
So we check various public-domain commentaries online as a sanity check.
But as we do, we notice that just about ALL of them conclude that either Meaning #1 or Meaning #2 must be the real meaning. Meaning #3 is the extreme underdog.
How could that be? Have they noticed something in the Greek that we need to see? Well, any Christian doctrine can be backed up by the Greek, so we shouldn’t be afraid to do some checking just to be sure.
Time to Be Greek Geeks
The commentators point out that this verse has a particular issue that most verses don’t – the “original Greek” is slightly different depending on whether you use the Textus Receptus or the Morphological Greek New Testament as your basis for study. The commentators highlight the issue that you could read the verse “by His Spirit” or “because of His Spirit” depending on which you choose. Does this throw a wrinkle into things?
Mulling over all three meanings, there doesn’t really seem to be anything that stands or falls on that issue. Whether God does things BY the Spirit who lives in you or BECAUSE OF the Spirit who lives in you seems like an overly picky point; if He does things BECAUSE OF the Spirit who is you, it would make sense that He does things BY the Spirit who is in you.
Besides, it’s obvious that “quicken your mortal body” is still the key here, not the words that follow that phrase.
So a good next step would be to dissect the Greek. We have only 4 words to deal with (“quicken your mortal body”), so this shouldn’t be too bad. A quick check with the concordance and the Greek text shows that the word “your” (hymon) has its obvious English meaning. So there are only 3 words left of any consequence – quicken, mortal and body.
The word quicken is the Greek word zoopoieo. We determine that this means “to raise from the dead” at least most of the time where it appears in the New Testament. Hmmm. If that’s the preferred meaning, maybe we’ve missed something about that word mortal. If we’re really talking about raising the dead, you will only get an “alive” body when Christ returns, and Meaning #1 is actually the correct one after all! God would be promising to take your current mortal body and change it into an immortal one. As that IS promised in other verses when Jesus returns, that would be consistent with the New Testament. So let’s look at that word mortal.
Death Match: “Mortal” vs. “Dead”
The word mortal in Romans 8:11 is the Greek word thnetos. The word dead in both cases where it appears in Romans 8:11 is the Greek word nekros, a different word entirely. It is unreasonable to assume that Paul mixed up his Greek words in the middle of the same verse. So let’s see what happens if we substitute the word dead for the word mortal in the 5 other verses where thnetos appears in the Bible. If this works, we’ll actually have to go with Meaning #1. If not, Meaning #1 is probably toast.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your dead body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.” – Romans 6:12. This seems to be almost a knockout punch to the idea that thnetos could refer to something dead, as this revised verse doesn’t seem to make sense. MAYBE we can try to “shoehorn” Meaning #1 by pointing out that your body IS “spiritually” dead, so Paul meant not to let sin reign in your SPIRITUALLY dead body. Let’s keep going.
“For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this dead must put on immortality.” – 1 Corinthians 15:53. This is probably a bigger problem still, because if you took one of those annoying timed multiple-choice pre-college aptitude tests (I’m glad I’m long done with them!), what word would you say fits “Corruptible is to incorruption as ______ is to immortality? The answer is obviously “mortal” and just as obviously not “dead.” “Dead” just doesn’t look like it fits the context here. You’d be straining to claim that Paul meant that your spiritually dead body would put on immortality.
“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this dead shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” – 1 Corinthians 15:54. This has exactly the same problem as the preceding verse.
“For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that death might be swallowed up of life.” – 2 Corinthians 5:4. Given that Paul wasn’t dead when he wrote this, replacing mortality with death really doesn’t work either.
“For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our dead flesh.” – 2 Corinthians 4:11. This isn’t getting any better, is it? This actually could be a wildly popular interpretation today, as we could conclude that Paul actually DID die when he was stoned at Lystra and that he conducted the rest of his ministry as a zombie! You could combine the story of Paul’s life with a zombie movie and make a lot of money.
This last verse seems to blow away any doubt on the subject. Paul was not physically dead – he would not have written the verse if he were! So the last gasp is that Paul meant that the life of Jesus would be manifested in his spiritually dead flesh.
A final check of the Greek word thnetos shows that it is translated mortal 6 times out of 6. It is NEVER translated dead. The word nekros is used to describe something that is dead as opposed to still alive but subject to death. In Romans 8:10 Paul used the word nekros in a way that WOULD describe the spiritual condition of his body. However, mortal could not describe the spiritual condition of his body – it was already dead (nekros), not subject to death. It would seem that if Paul were talking about your “dead” body in the next verse, he would also use nekros instead of thnetos.
So we’ve reached a definite conclusion that the word thnetos definitely means “mortal” – that is, “subject to death,” but not “dead.” So Paul can’t refer to a future resurrection of his DEAD body. He must be talking about the MORTAL body that he had when he wrote the verse.
Raising the Dead Issue
So now, if the word zoopoieo must mean “raise from the dead,” Romans 8:11 states that God will raise from the dead something that isn’t dead – your body. That would be good fodder for those “Bible Contradiction” websites, but not good fodder for our doctrine. You can’t raise something from the dead until it’s dead first, and our bodies aren’t dead yet.
So now we need to look at where else zoopoieo is used in the New Testament. Does it always refer to raising the dead, and if not, what DOES it mean in those other cases?
“For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” – John 5:21. This is a clear reference to raising the DEAD.
“It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” – John 6:63. This appears to refer to breathing divine life into something but not necessarily raising the dead. One could argue this either way.
“(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.” – Romans 4:17. This is another clear reference to raising the DEAD.
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” – 1 Corinthians 15:22. Score another one for raising the DEAD in this context.
“Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die:” – 1 Corinthians 15:36. Score yet another one for raising the DEAD.
“And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 15:45. This is a little less clear. Jesus could be a “life-giving” spirit without raising everything from the dead all the time, which He does not actually do.
“Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” – 2 Corinthians 3:6. This could go either way, too – you could say that the letter kills people but then the Spirit raises them from the dead, or you could say that the Spirit breathes life into people without it necessarily meaning that they’re being resurrected. Take your pick.
“Is the law then against the promises of God? God forbid: for if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law.” – Galatians 3:21. This at least appears to refer to a spiritual raising from the DEAD, as the hearers of the Law were all physically alive already.
“I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession;” – 1 Timothy 6:13. This one doesn’t read well as “raises all things from the dead,” as it is clear that He does NOT raise all things from the dead! There would be no dead people, animals or plants if that were the case. So this appears to be more along the idea of breathing life into things, but not raising everything from the dead.
“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:” – 1 Peter 3:18. This looks like another straightforward “raise the dead” meaning.
So MOST of the time zoopoieo refers to raising the dead, though it COULD mean “infusing life into” in the minority of cases.
This almost puts us between a rock and a hard place, because we know that “God raises your dead bodies that aren’t dead” is an indefensible rendering. Given that “mortal” CANNOT mean “dead,” the word that has to “give” here is zoopoieo, and it seems that we would have to conclude that the verse says that God imparts life (God’s life) into our mortal bodies during this lifetime when we still have mortal bodies.
If the true meaning were that the Spirit would quicken their mortal bodies with resurrection life so that their bodies became like Jesus’ resurrected body – spiritually raised from the dead – that is tantamount to saying that every reader of his letter would be alive at the time when Christ returned in the clouds! Otherwise, they’d all have dead bodies at that point! And obviously there was no “rapture” event in any of their lifetimes. So the Spirit did NOT physically “raise from the dead’ their mortal bodies.
Within Romans 8:11 itself, Paul uses the word egeiro twice to describe how God raised up Jesus from the dead and raised up Christ from the dead, and the word dead is the Greek word nekros in both cases. If Paul’s point were that God would “also raise up your dead bodies,” he could have used the words egeiro and nekros a third time – but he didn’t. He used the different words zoopoeio (quicken) and thnetos (mortal) instead. This is a VERY compelling argument that Paul did NOT refer to literally raising your body from the dead.
How else can we be reasonably sure that Paul would NOT use those words to describe the “rapture” at which dead bodies will be raised up? Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, where Paul DID talk about the raising up of dead bodies of believers. He used the words egeiro (raised up) and nekros (dead) – the same words he used in Romans 8:11 when he meant a dead body being raised up! These are NOT the words he used in Romans 8:11 about quickening a mortal but still living body. If he really meant the raising of dead bodies, he would have used the words egeiro and nekros that he used in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 to state what would happen to us, not the words he used for quickening living but mortal bodies in Romans 8:11.
The Greek has spoken. Meaning #1, it’s time for you to go! There are now two survivors.
And Then There Were Two
So the conclusion that God imparts life to our mortal bodies in this lifetime proves Meaning #3, right? After all, we have dismissed Meaning #1, which refers to a future resurrection. This knocks out a lot of commentaries, but actually our Calvinist friends would agree with our conclusion. I base that statement on the combination of two facts: (1) John Calvin said that Romans 8:11 refers to this life, not the resurrection and (2) John Calvin was a Calvinist. Actually, it’s interesting to see how sometimes other respected preachers of old support ideas that we think are new. Take, for example, this quote: “One of the Bible’s greatest truths is that Christ died to take away all our sins – not just part of them, but all of them: past, present and future.” You might suspect that I took this from a hot new bestseller, “My Brand-New Sensational Hyper-Grace Revelation.” But it’s actually a direct quote from 2004 – from Billy Graham!
What Does the Spirit Do in This Life?
We aren’t as “done” as we’d like to be at this point, because we still could argue that the Spirit infuses life into our flesh to help us overcome sin or that the Spirit infuses life into our bodies to promote health. That first remaining option (Option 2) is not as hard to dismiss as you might think at first. If you look at the verses around verse 11 back at the head of this discussion, there isn’t any talk about healing, but there is plenty of talk about sin and the flesh. So within the wider context, it would actually appear that Meaning #2 is preferred and that Meaning #3 might be trying to stretch the context to put something there that Paul never meant.
I never said that this was going to be easy.
Can Physical Healing Really Relate to Life-Giving?
So let’s consider whether there is ANY precedent that “life-giving” could relate to physical bodies. If not, the investigation is over and Meaning #2 can be declared the clear winner. But after looking around, we find this passage that speaks of divine life being imparted to mortal bodies that are having physical trouble – in this case, ones that kept getting beaten for the gospel’s sake.
2 Corinthians 4:8-11:
We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.
For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
One could try to argue from verse 10 above that Paul spoke of the day when he and his fellow workers would get new immortal bodies, but that falls apart immediately in the next verse where the life of Jesus was manifested in their mortal (thnetos) flesh – we’ve been down that road already! This HAS to be about this life. Thus, we have successfully found precedent for divine life being imparted into our mortal bodies to strengthen and heal them. If Paul didn’t keep getting healed, how far would his ministry have gotten after his all-too-frequent physical abuse? He would never have made it out of Lystra!
So we seem to have backing from other verses for BOTH Meaning #2 and Meaning #3, so we have to keep going.
Life, Death, Body and Flesh
Perhaps we’re missing something more basic here. It’s easy to gloss over terms like life, death, body and flesh and not think about whether a physical or a spiritual meaning is intended. You have to see the context to know whether “life” and “death” are physical or spiritual. For example, God told Adam that the day that he ate the forbidden fruit, he would surely die. But Adam didn’t die physically for a long time! God obviously meant spiritual death in that context, because a “physical” meaning would make the Bible contradict itself.
Meaning #2 assumes that the “life-giving” has to do with the flesh. Meaning #3 assumes that it has to do with the body. So at least we’ve established a final test to allow the remaining two meanings to duke it out. Can we prove that Romans 8:11 is or is not talking about the flesh as opposed to the body?
Before we can perform this test, though, we have to prove that body and flesh really are two separate words. Otherwise, if the same Greek word is used for both, we have no final test after all! If they’re different, we need to find out what they mean.
This one is very easy to figure out – we find immediately that the word body is a translation of the Greek word soma and the word flesh is a translation of the different Greek word sarx, unless you’re using the classic NIV translation where sarx is mistranslated as sinful nature all over the place. That is why I never recommend that Christians use that translation, especially for reading Paul’s epistles. The classic NIV might be easier to read than the King James Version and it shows you enough to get saved, but if you believe the classic NIV, you’ll go around thinking you have a sinful nature after you’re born again, which you don’t! Because the classic NIV’s insistence on the mistranslation sinful nature really irks me, I’m going to take a detour for a page or so while we’re on that topic. I wonder how many believers right now mistakenly think that they still have a sinful nature because they have NIV Bibles! (The error is so bad that an update of the NIV finally fixed it at this writing, but there are still a lot of un-updated ones around, so beware if you have one!)
If the old New International Version (NIV) is correct that sarx can be translated “sinful nature,” then to be consistent we must accept the following translation of 1 John 4:2-3 where the word sarx is used: “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the sinful nature is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the sinful nature is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” The NIV’s sarx definition means that John warned again in 2 John 7 that deceivers have come who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the sinful nature. This would get even worse in John 1:14: “And the Word was made sinful nature, and dwelt among us…” Christ’s NIV-specific sinful nature would also be specified by this rendering of sarx in Matthew 26:41 and elsewhere: “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the sinful nature is weak.” The NIV “sinful nature” would fail to disappear after His resurrection, as the NIV sarx rendering of Luke 24:39 would be “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not sinful nature and bones, as ye see me have.” Perhaps the NIV fan should forbid marriage, too, as NIV-style sarx in Matthew 19:5 and elsewhere would tell us, “And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one sinful nature.” John 6:51-52 would have to read, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my sinful nature, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his sinful nature to eat?” And that would have been a very good question!
It doesn’t get any better – but as you go through these, it should give you better insight of what sarx is and isn’t. It certainly ISN’T “sinful nature!” If it were, we could go on and describe how Jesus’ NIV sarx (sinful nature) would rest in hope, according to the sinful nature God raised up Jesus to sit on David’s throne, His sinful nature did not see corruption, He was made of the seed of David according to the sinful nature, the rewrite of Romans 8:3 would refer to “sinful sinful nature,” beasts, fishes and birds would have different kinds of sinful natures, Paul’s sinful nature would have had no rest, which is no surprise because he had a thorn in the sinful nature, though the life he lived in the sinful nature he lived by faith of the Son of God, preaching at first in Galatia through infirmity of his sinful nature. I guess that’s because he taught (based on the NIV sarx definition) that Christ abolished “the enmity” in His sinful nature, suffering for us in His sinful nature, and we are members of His body, of His sinful nature and of His bones now that He reconciled us in the body of His sinful nature through death, through the veil, that is, His sinful nature, after He took part of the sinful nature and blood as God manifested in the sinful nature in the days of His sinful nature. These are all actual verses mashed together; I won’t pepper you with the references but you can do a cross-reference on sarx and find all of them and quite a few more! This highlights the problem with paraphrase and semi-paraphrase versions – you get what the author THINKS things mean, but not what they actually say in the original language. This makes them dangerous for use as serious study Bibles. So the traditional NIV is unreliable in its translation of the Greek word sarx! The fact that there are so many places where it CANNOT mean “sinful nature” (unless you’re a heretic and you actually believe all the ridiculous rewritten Scriptures above) should prove to anyone with any sense that the word sarx should NEVER be translated “sinful nature!”
A look at the uses of the word soma doesn’t turn up any surprises. The Greek word soma and the English word body correlate consistently to each other.
So we should realize that body and flesh are distinct, but are more similar than it appears at first, and that flesh does not have to refer to something sinful. If you are in Christ, you no longer have a sinful nature. (I’d like to make every NIV reader write that 100 times on a chalkboard!) So your problem is not an “old man” hanging around! You do not have two natures inside you! The new has come and the old is gone (2 Corinthians 5:17). What you have is a physical flesh body that is not born again; it is spiritually dead. Your body wants pleasure and doesn’t distinguish between a right and wrong way to get it because it has no conscience or moral compass. It’s not a sinful nature; it’s just an unspiritual nature, and it’s up to the real you – the hidden man of the heart – to keep it in check.
So now let’s go back through our passage and see what new insights we can glean. In verse 10, we see that “the body is dead (nekros) because of sin.” This leads us to two conclusions.
First, this MUST refer to spiritual death – being unresponsive to God – as your body is still physically alive. Ever since Adam’s fall, man has had bodies that were not subject to God, the only exception being Jesus, and that is why He HAD to be born of a virgin to not participate in that sin nature. Even Jesus said that His body was weak – it surely did not relish the idea of being tortured to death.
Second, Paul knew how to distinguish a dead body from a mortal one, as he used different words.
Now we come to Romans 8:11 and the statement that God raised up Jesus from the dead. Was this from the physically dead or from the spiritually dead, or both? Within the context of Romans 8:11, the reference is clearly being raised from physical death because “He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” There is NOTHING stated about Him quickening your spirit here, nor could there be – Paul was writing to believers, and they were already spiritually alive (quickened)! The moment you were born again, your spirit became as ALIVE as it will ever be through all eternity – your spirit has eternal life NOW. So Paul could not have meant, “He who raised Christ’s spirit from the dead will quicken your spirit too.” If you don’t believe that Jesus rose BODILY, you can’t even be saved (Romans 10:9-10). It is an old heresy that only His spirit rose. Paul explicitly said “your mortal bodies.” So Paul refers to God doing something to YOUR body that He already did to CHRIST’S body.
By the way, it is still consistent with this to believe that Acts 13:33’s statement “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee” refers to His resurrection (as is clear from the context) and not to His incarnation. I’m just saying that Romans 8:11 is about Christ’s physical resurrection being tied to something God wants to do for the believer today.
We know that what He does to our mortal bodies can’t refer to the total change in Christ’s body, as in this life we will not be able to just show up somewhere at will at yet still eat fish and honey. We also saw that Paul knew how to distinguish mortal bodies from dead bodies. So whatever the Spirit is doing, it must be something BODILY in this life other than the complete change that is coming at Christ’s return.
Note the use of the word also in Romans 8:11 – “he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.” Just as Jesus’ body was raised up healthy after it was sick and weak to the point where Jesus couldn’t even carry His own cross before He died, we should expect God to impart health to OUR bodies through His Spirit.
What does this leave as a possibility? Meaning #3. We can crown it the winner as long as it can withstand the arguments that are advanced for Meaning #2, which could qualify as objections against Meaning #3. Let’s see what these arguments are and whether they’re any good.
Do “Meaning #2” Arguments Hold Up?
Those who believe that Paul meant that God’s resurrection power will get into our fleshly bodies to help us overcome sin could argue that healing isn’t discussed in this part of Romans 8 at all. That certainly IS a true statement, but there are plenty of other promises in Scripture that seem to pop up even though they aren’t the main focus of the chapter they’re in. After all, the many commentators who back Meaning #1 have no problem taking verse 11 as a parenthetical insert in a chapter that isn’t about the rapture of the church. So that wouldn’t be quite enough to disqualify the bodily health angle.
Then an objector could argue that the “Therefore” at the beginning of verse 12 ties not living after the flesh to whatever this quickening of our mortal bodies is. In fact, any time you see “Therefore,” it’s there for a reason! So we have to take that seriously.
The question becomes whether “Therefore” ties back to verse 11 or to the whole previous section. By default, we would assume verse 11 because it’s the previous verse, though Paul was known for writing convoluted sentences with a lot of parenthetical thoughts. (Paul did not figure that because it was “news,” he had to dumb down everything so that people who flunked sixth grade could understand it. Unfortunately, even Peter had trouble understanding some of what Paul wrote, so you wouldn’t be the first to wonder what he meant sometimes.) It actually seems, though, that “Therefore” is intended as a wrap-up to the previous 11 verses rather than just verse 11. Verse 11 doesn’t seem to fit as well. Maybe looking at verses 12 and 13 would help.
There we see that we don’t have to live after the flesh and die. We can through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body and live. Whoa, wait a minute! In this case, “the flesh” and “deeds of the body” are equated to each other. We didn’t quite notice that before. Given what we just saw, we may have just lost our right to make a distinction between Greek and English words for body and flesh. Living after the flesh is doing the deeds of the body.
Did Meaning #2 just pull victory from the jaws of defeat?
If we can no longer make a distinction, verse 11’s statement about your “body” could be made equally well about your “flesh!” Thus, Paul could be talking about the Spirit empowering your flesh as “flesh” is understood everywhere else, not giving physical life to it. It could just mean that your flesh receives some kind of spiritual power to not sin as much. In other words, your body/flesh receives spiritual “life” by the Spirit, and THAT is why “therefore” you are not a debtor to the flesh to live after the flesh.
The Final Round of Reasoning and the Announcement of the Winner
The whole reason you have trouble with your flesh is that your body is unspiritual – not alive to God. Isn’t that our permanent lot in this life? Isn’t there a verse somewhere about a carnal mind NOT BEING ABLE to be subject to the Law of God? Let’s find it. Wow, it’s Romans 8:7, 4 verses before Romans 8:11, and it says that “the carnal [fleshly] mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.”
AHA! A light bulb just went on here!
Because the carnal mind CANNOT be subject to the Law of God, what you would consider “the mind of the flesh” CANNOT be made to act spiritually. Thus, Meaning #2 cannot be right because your flesh cannot – even by the Spirit – be made spiritual and submissive to God’s will. NOTHING other than a new body will solve that problem. Nothing in Scripture even hints that you can receive spiritual life in your dead flesh so that it will stop acting like spiritually dead flesh! If it even got a little spiritual “quickening,” it would no longer be spiritually dead.
Besides, if Paul’s body were no longer spiritually dead, he would not have needed to “bring it under subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:27).
We remember that verse 11’s word for “quicken” would mean “raise from the dead” or “impart God’s life.” But your mortal body will NEVER be spiritually raised from the dead in this lifetime. In fact, Romans 8:10 just told us that the body is (spiritually) DEAD because of sin. Now we’re getting on a roll! If ANY of the “resurrection life” or “life of God” could get into your FLESH as Meaning #2 would imply, Romans 8:10 would be instantly false! If you had any of God’s spiritual life in your “flesh,” your flesh would cease to be dead. If a person in an emergency room had ANY sign of life in him at all, he would still be “alive” and no doctor would write a death certificate.
So it certainly appears that your “flesh” as understood in the surrounding verses cannot be what your “mortal body” means. It’s all coming together now! Suddenly we see something we overlooked all along in verse 13 that wipes out Meaning #2. We see that YOU mortify the deeds of THE BODY through the SPIRIT. The SPIRIT does not mortify the body’s deeds for you! In fact, your body must be just as spiritually dead as it ever was. Otherwise, you would have no need to mortify its deeds! It is up to YOU to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). You CANNOT get the Spirit (or “life”) into your flesh so that it stops having unspiritual desires.
We can now briefly consider what else we know from the New Testament about the flesh, and we realize that there is NO teaching about ANYTHING that will stop your flesh from wanting to do its own thing short of Jesus’ return, which is not an available solution at the moment. (You wouldn’t still be reading this if Jesus had just returned!) Paul had to put HIS BODY under (1 Corinthians 9:27) – He didn’t find some way to get “life” into his body so that he didn’t have to keep it under. So no spiritual power to avoid sin can ever lodge in your flesh (or in your mortal body), so Meaning #2 has faded off into the sunset, leaving Meaning #3 as the champion! The Spirit imparts the life of God into your mortal body.
We do not expect that our bodies will become like Christ’s resurrected body in this lifetime. But we do have the “firstfruits” of the Spirit now. We can’t have sickness-proof, death-proof bodies now, but we can enjoy God’s “life” that drives out sickness today. Just as all the sicknesses that Jesus’ body had to bear were GONE when He rose from the dead, we can enjoy that same resurrection power at work in our mortal bodies to cause our sicknesses to be GONE!