Reflection on Rom 8:9
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.
What does it mean to be in the flesh, in other words to be carnal, and what does it mean to be in the Spirit, in other words spiritual? To be in the flesh means to have a carnal mind, which takes seriously neither God nor God’s judgment nor eternity. Scripture says that the works of the flesh are envy, murders, quarrelling, impurity, sorcery etc.
What does it mean to be in the Spirit? To have our mind most deeply united to the Spirit of God. Then the following applies to us: “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” (Rom 8:16)
Our spirit is the innermost essence of our being. The human spirit was created by God in His image; it is immortal. Our flesh is mortal. Our being is spiritual in essence: we are a soul with a spirit clothed in a body. In this earthly life, our body is like a spacesuit that we take off at the hour of death. We pass through the shortness of time to eternity. Whether it will be a happy or unhappy eternity is being decided now. Our body, which will turn into dust after our physical death, will be raised to life at the Last Judgment. Scripture says: “Remember, O man, that dust you are and to dust you shall return.” But it is also true that God created us in His image by breathing His spirit into the dust of the ground.
Scripture says that if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. However, it is important to know that if anyone is not His, he will not be saved. Jesus said about those who are not His: “Depart from Me, all you evildoers. I do not know you.” On Judgment Day, those who are not His will stand on His left hand. They did not do His will nor took Him seriously in their lives. To have the Spirit of Christ means to receive the mind of Christ and the Gospel of Christ. Those who receive the mind of the world and various Bergoglio’s antigospels, such as a gender, covid or ecological antigospel, do not have the Spirit of Christ and are not His.
Jesus said to the apostles: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be witnesses to Me.” In the prayer O Heavenly King, there are four things we ask the Holy Spirit to do: to come (come!), to permanently dwell in us (dwell in us!), to help us endure purgatory on earth rather than after death (cleanse us!), and to do the most important thing, namely to save us from eternal damnation (save our souls!). Every Sunday morning around nine o’clock we commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit. Apart from that, we celebrate Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit, 50 days after the resurrection of Christ every year. We also ask for the Holy Spirit daily at nine o’clock in a short prayer. If we want to intensively experience the infilling of the Holy Spirit and if He is to work in us, we need to know that a certain rule applies here. Jesus said that those who would believe in Him, out of their hearts would flow rivers of living water. This He spoke concerning the Holy Spirit, whom the apostles were to receive. Scripture says why they could not receive Him in fullness while Jesus was here on earth. The reason was that Jesus was not yet glorified – that is, He had not yet ascended to heaven. Before ascending to heaven and sending the Holy Spirit on the apostles, He first had to die on the Calvary cross and be raised from the dead. Only then was He glorified. If the Spirit of God is to work in us, we also have to fully enter into Christ’s death and be united to it, in other words to completely renounce our own will and fully accept the will of God in this time and in particular situations. At that moment, our old self, the root of evil in us, is paralysed and the Holy Spirit can fully work in us by His almighty power. We are confronted with a strange paradox: powerlessness as a means of God’s almighty power. Christ’s martyrs are an example to us. First it was the apostles, about whom Jesus said: “When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be My martyrés” – i.e. both witnesses and martyrs. The Church also points to the example of the martyrs of the first three centuries, who were ready to suffer the greatest torments to prove their faithfulness to Christ. It was the Holy Spirit who gave them the strength amid the greatest suffering not to deny Christ and even to experience the closeness of Christ and His special protection, often accompanied by extraordinary miracles, as we read in the lives of saints.
Let us ask the Holy Spirit, especially at Pentecost, to stay with us and not to leave us, that we may be faithful to Christ even to the point of death.
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