Jehovah's Witnesses Straight Talk - Forum/Blog

Rom.8:5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

Here we find a dichotomy, a quaternary if you will! Does a person born into sin (flesh) have a choice if they think from the things of flesh? Not really. This statement may seem off the wall to some who believed they can by personal will causes themselves a rebirth by God's Holy Spirit, but they cannot! Why is this important to our understanding much of what Paul spoke to in the book of Roman's?

1Cor.2:10 But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God.
2:11 For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so, no one knows the things of God, except God's Spirit. 2:12 But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. 2:13 Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.
2:14 Now the natural man doesn't receive the things of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can't know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 2:15 But he who is spiritual discerns all things, and he himself is judged by no one.

This is why? The situation was those born of God's Spirit, God's anointed, his son's, and brothers of Christ just didn't get it? And what was it they could not get? They could not be people of the flesh, and be in Christ, or understand God as son's if they did. They were factually dead to God's anointing of them if they went back into laws for death, which were created to judge their flesh. Having said that, this is the theme of Roman's, so what flesh is Paul speaking about?

Romans 9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers' sake, my relatives according to the flesh.

Romans 11:14 if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh, and may save some of them.

Paul is speaking specifically about the Jews under the law given to Moses. Not one Jew under the law, could by works of law anointed themselves out of the law of Moses into Christ being freed from sin. That act came from above, from God YHWH, not a practice of the law designed to point out sins in imperfect people and than condemn those sins and execute judgment and punishment for doing those transgression against God.

1Tim.1:9 as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 1:10 for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave-traders, for liars, for perjurers, and for any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine;

Romans 6:7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.

Subsequently, if a person was under the law of God as a Jews they were fleshly with no way out of its judgment they must think fleshly in terms of fleshly judgments of sins. They could not as Paul spoke of in Roman seventh chapter have a comparison of being freed in Christ and than seeing that nothing good dwelt in their flesh (under law), the flesh were not been killed by the law, it was killed by being born again into Christ freeing them from the laws wrath of sin and judgment by laws for wickedness. There was no comparison of fleshly mind by spirit mind of Christ.

Romans 8:11 But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Romans 8:10 If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

Romans 6:11 Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 7:4 Therefore, my brothers, you also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you would be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit to God.

Now understanding this helps us to understand why those not anointed by God's Holy Spirit really don't get his message accept in theory. They can intellectualize Paul's words, but not live them, that is, having the life of Christ indwelling them where the flesh constantly lust against his spirit and Christ mind. But here Paul speaks to those who have a choice, but they have forgotten their own cleansing and want to go back to works of law. He speak specifically to God's anointed Jews and Gentiles alike.

Romans 9:24 us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?

1 Corinthians 1:24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Those living according to the flesh not anointed by God in Christ really have no choice but living and thinking in their fleshly mind, hence, the Jews in practicing the law, but since Christ has came to call out a spiritual Israel first from among the Jews by faith they can now make a choice. But it is important that we take away a point here, flesh acts like flesh, it must live by laws of the flesh, and think by it nature in fleshly judgments. It is only those born again that must thinking in laws of freedom, which laws are the laws of Christ.

1 Peter 2:16 as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.

1Tim.1:9 as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers.

James 2:12 So speak, and so do, as men who are to be judged by a law of freedom.

Galatians 5:13 For you, brothers, were called for freedom. Only don't use your freedom for gain to the flesh, but through love be servants to one another.

It is when they refuse by choice to judge again by laws they themselves are freed from they are dead to mind of Christ, and will make faulty judgments. They do not gain by practicing laws of the flesh through a religion or even from their bibles such thinking is dead in Christ. They have been saved from the price of their sins, and from God's judgment of the laws created for the unrighteous which is wrath to the flesh, and particular so for his anointed children.

Romans 1:18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Romans 4:15 For the law works wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there disobedience.

Romans 9:22 What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction.

Ephesians 2:3 among whom we also all once lived in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

See also: www.nu-truth.com