16 So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
Once again we have an imperative - 'Walk' - based upon the truth of our position in Christ (see notes on 5:1), and once again we must see this to be the activity of faith, the expression of faith in action. It corresponds to 'Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies' in Romans 6:12, and 'Sin shall not have dominion over you' in Romans 6:14. The statement in 17 indicates an unresolved conflict in Christian experience. The question is, how are we to interpret this? There are two senses in which it is true. In the first place, there is a sense in which this is a permanent element in Christian experience, for the reason that as Christians we are called to live our new life in the old order of existence. This necessarily means that the Christian is in a paradoxical position; he is both 'free from sin' and also 'subject to the condition of sin' (in the sense that he is not able 'not to sin'). Because therefore he is both 'in Christ' and 'in the flesh' (in the sense of still belonging to this present life - see Galatians 2:20), there will always be tension in his life, as expressed in this verse. Thus Paul can speak - in Romans 8, in the chapter which above all others reveals the Christian life of victory in the Spirit - of groaning within ourselves, waiting for the adoption (8:23), and this because sin has not yet vanished from our lives, even though in Christ we are free from sin, and the will to do right is therefore often in tension with the inability to perform it. We cannot, as Paul indicates here, do the things that we would (see Romans 7:19). This, however, does not necessarily exhaust the application of Paul's words in 17. Granted the truth of this constant, necessary tension in the normal experience of the believer who is in the Spirit, there is also a subnormal, sub-Christian experience of bondage and defeat in the life of the Christian which can come about because there is a stand that has not been made in terms of 5:1, and a walk that has not been maintained in terms of 5:16, and a death that he has refused to die. In Romans 6:11 the operative word is 'reckon'. What does this mean? It means to 'obey from the heart' (Romans 6:17) the form of teaching delivered to us, and this involves allowing the cross to do its gracious work of slaying the old man, putting the flesh out of action, making it inoperative. The pattern of the cross must 'repeat' itself in our experience if the Spirit is to be a reality in our lives. Life, the Spirit, love, fruitfulness (22) - these all lie on the other side of the cross. It is as those that are 'alive from the dead' (Romans 6:13) that we know and enter into the life of the Spirit and the liberty of the children of God. This kind of life is no theory or idle fiction. The cross has really to touch our lives if we are to know what it means to live in the Spirit. Not for nothing does Paul say at the end of the epistle (6:17), 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus'.