So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.  (9) But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.  (10) And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.  (11) But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

The letter to the Romans was written by the Apostle Paul to the Christians living in Rome.  In a previous chapter Paul had raised the question:  “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  The answer is that through the completed acts of Christ Jesus we are delivered in faith by the indwelling Son and Spirit of God.  Paul is teaching here that at the moment of belief we receive the Spirit of God.  The Mosaic Law could never be followed by fallen and sinful man.  So God initiated reconciliation and sent Christ to be the once and forever sin offering for the justification of believers.  Because of this sacrifice, man who has faith is justified – made right with God.  Believing Christians no longer walk in the ways of the flesh (sin) but walk according to the spirit.  Paul qualifies this saving faith by saying that if anyone does not have true faith, “he is not His”.

The verses we study today contrast life and death – the body and the spirit.   There is the death of the body because of sin but there is the life of the spirit because of justification of man through Christ.  There is the flesh and there is the spirit:  both states have a path and an end and the goal of both these ends acts on man.  To gain the goal of death man needs   more and more complete separation from God – this is the path of death.  The spirit aims for life in God and works toward that goal of salvation.  So on the one hand there is a state of death in which not a spark of life remains.  Or, there is the goal of spiritual life –  that perfect life from which the last vestige of death has disappeared.