You, 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.
Romans 8:9 (NIV)
Told First Where You Stand
The letter came in an envelope with a window in it, and one paragraph in the middle decides whether the rest of it applies. The money is further down the page, and it means nothing until that paragraph is settled.
A mechanic stands at the counter reading it, hands still black at the knuckles. He gets to the part about what is covered and goes back to the top of the paragraph, because all of it turns on whether he is one of the people it describes.
You, 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.
In this sentence the people who got that letter are told where they stand before anything is asked of them. You are in the realm of the Spirit. It arrives as a statement about them, in the second person, from a man who sets them on their feet here before he says what follows.
Belonging to Christ is tied to the Spirit of Christ being present, and a man who wants that settled about himself has no instrument to test it with. He can hear a bad bearing through a closed hood from across the shop, and none of that training reaches the question standing in front of him now.
Paul describes the difference from the inside, as a mind set on what the Spirit desires, and as life and peace where there had been hostility toward God. None of that is a form a man fills out at a counter in five minutes. It describes a whole direction, and the man at the counter cannot stand far enough back to see his own.
Nobody was handed that sentence to use on the person standing next to them. It came addressed, in the second person, to people meant to read it about themselves. That is a harder thing to do with it than pointing it at somebody across the room, and it leaves a man holding a question he cannot close by looking around.
A Prayer to Remember
Somebody has been on my mind the whole time I was reading this. I do not know what is true about them, and you do. Keep them from settling the question against themselves some night when they are tired. Send them one person this year who makes it easier to believe you are there.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
