The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.
Romans 8:6 (NIV)
Where a Mind Is Set
The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. Paul writes that to readers he also tells where they stand: you are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Their minds are still set on something every hour of the day.
The difference runs through what a mind is set on. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires, and those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. It takes longer to find out what a mind is set on than to watch how somebody behaves under pressure.
Life and peace arrive together in a Spirit-governed mind. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God, Paul says, and doesn’t submit to God’s law and can’t do so. The peace he names has to do with that hostility being over.
Two men on the same shift at the firehouse, eighteen years of it, will sit at the kitchen table through a whole evening and say maybe nine sentences to each other. One gets up for water and fills the other man’s cup on the way back. The scanner talks to itself on the counter. Neither of them is working on the silence.
None of this comes with a lever a person pulls. Behavior can be forced for a week, and wanting takes longer and goes deeper than that. It does change, though, and the change is God’s own work, done by the Spirit already living in the one it happens to.
At the station the bay doors get checked at ten, and the second man is up and moving toward them before the first one has finished saying so.
A Prayer to Remember
Right now I want the wrong things and I’m not even worked up about it, God. This afternoon is going to go wherever my wanting goes. Change what I’m after, since I can’t get at that from the inside. Give me one hour today with my mind on you and nothing to show anybody for it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
