Romans 8:9 - Exposition

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But (not now, as in the Authorized Version) if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his . That is—Though I imply the possibility of even the baptized being still in the flesh, so as to be unable to please God, this is certainly not your condition; if, indeed (as is surely the case), your conversion was a reality, so that you have become really Christ's; for the Spirit of Christ (which is the Spirit of God) of necessity dwells (so as to be the ruling power) in all such as are really his (cf 1 Corinthians 3:16 ). We observe here how "the Spirit of Christ" is identified with "the Spirit of God," so as to imply the essential Deity of Christ, and also to lend support to the doctrine of the double procession of the Holy Ghost (cf. 1 Peter 1:11 ). Observe, too, how persistently and continually the apostle presses his protest against antinomian abuse of the doctrine of grace, with which he began this section of his Epistle, at Romans 6:1 , He never loses sight of it; it pervades the whole. If St. Paul, especially in this Epistle, is, on the one hand, the great exponent of the doctrine of justification by faith only, he is, on the other, no less the persistent preacher of the necessity of works. Sanctification is continually pressed as the necessary result, as well as evidence, of justification. He only shuts out human works from the office of justifying.