Introduction 

For the first 186 verses of the book of Romans, the Holy Spirit is barely mentioned. There are some glancing references - brief mentions in chapters 1 and 2, and a couple of hints in chapters 5 and 7. But in those passages we see the Holy Spirit almost out of the corner of our eye. 

For the first 186 verses of his letter to the church in Rome, Paul is focused on other things: after his greeting and an introduction until about mid-way through chapter 3, he is focused on showing how all people, whether Jew or Gentile, whether born in AD 56 or 2026, are in need of salvation from their sins. And the Holy Spirit is largely absent from that discussion. 

Then, from 3:20 to the end of chapter 4, the apostle explains the means of salvation - that sinners such as you and I can be justified and have peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. And still the Holy Spirit is largely absent. 

Then, in chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8, Paul describes the benefits of salvation. In chapters 5, 6, and 7, Paul describes those benefits as peace with God, freedom from Adam’s curse, newness of life, and release from our slavery to sin and the tyranny of our fleshly desires.But even in those first three chapters detailing the gifts of salvation, the person and work of the Holy Spirit remains largely peripheral to Paul’s message. 

But all of that changes in Romans 8. 

In chapter 8, the gift of salvation that is the Holy Spirit in the life of every believer explodes from Paul’s pen. No more on the periphery, no more seen from the corner of our eye, the person and work of the Holy Spirit is presented to us as one of the great jewels in the crown of our salvation and, for the first seventeen verses of chapter 8, the Spirit occupies the entirety of Paul’s attention. Across those verses the third person of the Trinity is named fifteen times - variously called the Spirit of life, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of him who raised Christ from the dead, and most commonly, simply, the Spirit. 

Then, after Romans 8, the Spirit again recedes from view and in the final seven chapters of the letter he is mentioned only six more times. In chapters 9, 10, and 11, Paul addresses the place of Israel in redemptive history and God’s sovereignty over salvation. Then, in chapters 12 through 15, the focus of the letter is on the practical, day-to-day, ethics of Christian living.

What should we think of the sudden eruption of the Holy Spirit in chapter 8? How do we explain this supernova of pneumatological revelation that flashes so bright and then all but disappears?

Well, first of all, the words I just used to describe it - eruption! supernova! - only describe the manner of Paul writing, not the metaphysical reality underpinning it. The Holy Spirit is no late comer to the scene of our salvation. He does not first exist in chapter 8, he is simply first described there. He was always present within the great story of man’s redemption. 

Here, in part, is how our own confession of faith describes him.

He is the life-giver and sustainer of the redeemed; the Spirit of regeneration, convicting sinners of their rebellion against God, granting them new life, and baptizing them into the Body of Christ. He is the Spirit of adoption, the guarantor of the promised redemption, and the seal of redemption unto God. He is the comforter, keeping his people in perfect peace and sanctifying them in all seasons of the truth. He is the Spirit, securing the disciples in the love of the Father poured out upon them. He is the Spirit of freedom and fellowship. He is the Spirit of holiness. TCF 10.1. 

And he is there in Romans. Over every verse of every chapter, over every word on every page of both the New and the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is there, hovering over the deep things of God. 

In Romans 8:2-7, Paul describes the Holy Spirit as existing outside of us. He is the glory of the Godhead expressed in and to his creation and it is toward that expression of glory, toward that Spirit of holiness, that the redeemed of the Lord look and yearn and bend all thoughts and affections. “Those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit,” (Romans 8:5) we read there. The Spirit leads and we follow. In that sense the extent to which the Christian lives a Spirit-led life can be said to depend on a Christian’s own actions, his or her own resolve, his or her own decision to choose this way of life and not that way of death; this way of the Spirit not that way of the flesh.

A helpful way of picturing this way of relating to the Spirit is to go back to the book of Exodus. In the Old Testament the Spirit of God frequently revealed himself in the form of a Cloud of Glory. After the Israelites left Mount Sinai, it was in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night that the Spirit appeared to them and led them through the wilderness. When the Cloud of Glory stopped, the people of God stopped and made camp. And when the Cloud of Glory moved on, the people of God pulled up their tent stakes and followed. That picture of relating to God is similar in some ways to what Paul is describing in the first seven verses of Romans 8.

In verse 8 though there’s a shift. “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Romans 8:8.Not just those who obey the desires of flesh, but those who are in the flesh. Here, Paul describes our sinful, fallen, flesh as not just something external to who we are, but internal. It's not just something we do, it's something we are! 

For any non-Christians here this morning, know this: your problem is not that just you commit sinful acts, but that you, yourself, are sinful. That is something that no New Year's Resolution can fix.

But here is good news: to the Christian, this is good news that is a present reality for you; and for the non-Christian, this is a present promise held out to you this very moment, at 11:15 on Sunday, May 31, 2026: through Jesus Christ you can be free of that sinful self. Every strand of your DNA can be washed clean of the stain of sin. 

Verse 8 states the bad news: if you are in the flesh, you cannot please God. 

Today’s passage states the good news: the Christian is no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit because the Spirit now indwells you. 

Let’s pray

1. What is the Indwelling of the Spirit?

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. 

What does it mean for the Spirit of God to dwell in you? 

Let’s begin with that word “dwell”. When the Spirit filled you at your conversion, he did not find you empty. He did not fill an empty heart. Your soul was not an undiscovered land or a blank canvas. No, something was there already. Something had already conquered your will and your heart and infected your every action. Three times in Romans 7, Paul tells us what dwelt within us prior to our conversion. “Sin dwells within me”, he writes in 7:17. Three verses later he states it again: “sin dwells within me.” And three verses after that, the refrain culminates with this: “I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” Romans 7:17. The filling of the Spirit that occurred at the moment of your salvation defeated sin, your heart’s captor, freeing you so that you might belong to God. 

Once inside of the Christian, we see the Spirit adopt a new role, one different from what we see earlier in chapter 8, and different too from what we’ll see later on in the chapter. No longer is the Spirit only an external object of devotion that we are called to keep in step with and set our minds on. The Spirit is also a kind of internal engine of new life. We see God, himself, in the form of the third person of the Trinity, take up residence within us as the prime mover of any Godly affection we possess, the instigator of any righteous deeds we perform, the vivifying pulse that circulates the spiritual lifeblood of our souls. 

No longer do sin and death claim you as their own, but God has claimed you and set his mark upon you. Through the Spirit, he inhabits us as the animating ignition of our deepest self, the “trilling wire in the blood” that directs our deepest motives, our deepest longings, and our eternal identity. It is his indwelling that makes “the soul’s sap quiver.” Where sin once dwelt within us and ruled over our motives, loves, and actions, the Spirit of God now reigns supreme from the throne of our heart. It is his presence within us that consecrates and marks the Christian as holy unto the Lord. 

Living a Spirit-led life is not just a matter of striving after an external spiritual perfection we will never fully reach, it is a matter of resting in who the Spirit of God has already transformed you into by his abiding presence within you. I’ll say that again: living a Spirit-led life is not just a matter of striving after an external spiritual perfection we will never fully reach, it is a matter of resting in who the Spirit of God has already transformed you into by his abiding presence within you. Not “who you are” in your natural, sinful, state; not “who you are” in some humanistic, therapeutic, sense, but who you are as a born again child of God. In that sense, not even who you are, but whose you are. 

Let’s go back to Exodus again to understand what is happening here. We’ve already connected the Cloud of Glory that led the Israelites in the wilderness to Paul’s admonition to follow the leading of the Spirit. But the Cloud of Glory was more than a guide, it was the great theophonic emblem of the glory of the Lord given to his people as a sign of his presence and favor. 

The cloud of glory they followed in the wilderness was the same one that had descended on Sinai when Moses received the law. 

On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Exodus 19:16-20

And that same cloud of glory filled the tent of meeting at the conclusion of Exodus when the tabernacle had at last been erected

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Exodus 40

And that same cloud of glory filled Solomon’s temple in 2 Chronicles when it was inaugurated.

As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the Lord on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the Lord, saying, ‘For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.’ 2 Chronicles 7:1-3. 

And we see the same cloud of glory described by the prophet Ezekiel in his vision of a temple yet to come. 

Then he led me to the gate, the gate facing east. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east. And the sound of his coming was like the sound of many waters, and the earth shone with his glory…And I fell on my face. As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the Lord filled the temple. Ezekiel 43:5. 

But what does any of this have to do with us? What does the Cloud of Glory and the fire from heaven have to do with the Spirit of God dwelling within us? 

I hope the text from Pentecost Sunday we read last week is still ringing in your ears. 

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:1-4 

We are used to thinking of the church as a body. But the inverse is true also: the body is a church. More specifically, the Christian is a temple. But where the “church as body” is a kind of word picture, the statement that “the Christian is a temple” is not. It is more than metaphor. It’s reality. The Christian is not like a temple. The Christian is a temple. 

“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells in you?...God’s temple is holy and you are that temple.” 1 Corinthians 3:16.

“In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” Ephesians 2:22. 

“For we are the temple of God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them.” 2 Corinthians 6:16

The Spirit leads us like the cloud through the wilderness. The Spirit indwells us like the cloud in the temple. The spirit-led life of the believer is one of decision, resolution, mortification and discipline. The spirit-filled life of the believer is one of insoluble belonging, confidence, assurance, and even rest. God calls us in his Word to both.

I want to be more amazed by this than I think I usually am. This is not saying that the Christian is like a building. It’s not even saying that the Christian is like a building set aside for worshiping God. What it is saying is that the Christian is the place where God’s glory on earth dwells.

As I was preparing for this sermon, it was this truth that had the greatest impact on me. Brothers and sisters, it will change your life to meditate on the fact that you are a temple of the living God. Think of all those dozens of chapters that you unusually sort of skim over in Exodus and Leviticus about the building of the tabernacle. All the instructions for this kind of wood and this kind of cloth and this gold carved in just this way and these tassels on these robes. And think about the building of the temple in 1 Kings and 2 Chronicles and again in Ezekiel: the treasures and skill and time spent constructing and preserving them. All done for “glory and for beauty”, to be reverenced and set apart as consecrated and holy. The temple was the central locus of God’s activity and presence on earth. More than any other physical, created, thing on earth, it mattered. Down to the smallest detail, it mattered. But even those temples, as great as they were, were all pointing toward something else. Solomon’s temple in all its glory pointed at something. Yes, in an important sense, the temple pointed to Christ. But Paul is quite clear that in its function as the dwelling place of God on earth after Christ’s ascension, the temple points to you. Your body. Your soul. God does not dwell in temples made with hands. Through his Spirit, he dwells in you. 

That changes how we think about the ethical commands in scripture, doesn’t it? It changes how we treat our bodies, it changes how we relate to the world around us and what we allow to enter our minds. We aren’t moralistic kill-joys for keeping ourselves sexually pure, we’re preserving the sanctity of the temple of God. We aren’t interested in bourgeois self-improvement for its own sake, we are killing sin so that we might shine forth the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 

Beginning in Romans 12 and continuing on through chapter 15, we’ll see Paul lay out all of these deep and profound ethical commands. Commands like “do not be conformed to this world”, “let love be genuine, [a]bhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” When we get to those chapters in our sermon series, I don’t want us to think of them as just rules for Christian living. They’re more than that, those commands are the architectural blueprints for the temple of God. These are not just moralistic requirements, these constitute the width and breadth of the temple walls, they constitute the curtains and gold and filigree. You are the house of God. The purpose of our holiness is not to make us fit to inhabit the house of God, it is to make us fit to be inhabited as the house of God.

2. How Do We Receive the Indwelling of the Spirit? 

Having been shown such an extraordinary reality, “who?” and “how?” are natural questions to ask. How do you become indwelt by the Spirit? Who receives this great blessing? 

Paul provides the answer in the second half of verse 9.

Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Romans 8:9

Or, put positively: if you belong to Christ then you have the Spirit.

The indwelling of the Spirit is not an optional upgrade available to some Christians and not others. All Christians have the Spirit. 

It doesn’t always feel like that, does it? Christians sometimes seem divided between the thinkers and the feelers. There’s the ones who take notes during the sermon and there’s the ones who say “amen” during sermons. There’s the ones who talk about what books they’ve been reading recently and there’s the ones who talk about how God has been leading them recently. It can be easy to think that it’s only that second kind who are filled with the Holy Spirit. But Paul makes it clear that it’s a package deal: if you belong to Christ, you have the Spirit. [Story about visiting Morning Star. Why yes, I’m fluent in Charismatism]. 

Verse 9 should be an encouragement to us that if you have Christ then you have the Spirit. 

But that’s not quite the end of the story, is it? We know from scripture and history and from our own experience that the Spirit is sometimes poured out on his people in extraordinary, world-changing ways. It is not enough to simply say “every Christian has the Spirit” and leave it at that. As in so many aspects of the Christian life, there is a tension between two poles of the same truth.

Last week we celebrated Pentecost Sunday. Earlier this year, we had a series of classes on various revivals in church history. And the question that naturally arises when considering those things is this: how? 

How can I be filled like that? 

How can the foundations of this place be shaken? 

How can God do a mighty work in our land or my family or even just in my own heart? 

I don’t have a comprehensive answer to that question. I’m not sure anyone does. As Jesus himself said, “the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

There is no mechanism for creating revival. There is only faithfulness to what God has called us.

And yet. And yet. 

We do long for more of the Spirit. And it is right to have this longing.

As I was preparing for this sermon, I had a burden and encouragement for us, one connected both to this question of how we receive more of the Spirit and the idea of each individual Christian being the temple of God. How might being the temple of God equip the Christian to be filled with more of the Spirit? I think I have an answer, but somewhat awkwardly, it comes in the form of an imagined conversation with God. 

It begins like so many of our prayers do: 

“Father, fill me. Fill me with your Spirit.” 

“Child, you are already filled. I filled you with my Spirit, with my glory, with the Spirit of my Son the moment I first breathed new life into you. The very air your soul breathes is my Spirit. You are filled.” 

“Yes, Father, but fill me more. I want more of you.” 

“Then you must make room. Expand the temple walls of your heart. Raise high the roof beams. Take your most secret thoughts and your deepest desires and sanctity them unto me. Purify them with my refiner's fire. Empty the treasuries of your heart of all rivals, empty your storehouses of all idols, empty your garners of all you rely on, and I will fill them with myself.” 

Brothers and sisters, it is simply a fact that, in the Christian life, addition requires subtraction. Less hobbies, less sleep, less shopping, less food, less alcohol, less screentime, maybe for some of us even less exercise, maybe less work, maybe less school. Less, less, less. Why? Not so that you will be saved. But so you might have more, more, more. More love, more joy, more peace, more patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; more prophecy, more conversions, more revival. More Christ. 

There is a line from a song we sing that goes like this: “I worked my fingers down to the bone, but nothing I did could ever atone.” It’s a good line. But it would be a mistake to assume that because working our fingers down to the bone can never atone, that we should never work our fingers down to the bone. The history of the people of God is full of men and women and children who have done just that. They worked their fingers down to the bone. But if not to atone for their sins, if not to earn God’s favor, or their entry into heaven, then for what? 

The record of their lives written in their hymns and diaries and letters and in the margins of their Bibles suggests that they worked their fingers down to the bone so that Christ might have more of their hearts. They worked their fingers down to the bone, not to earn salvation, but to make more room for the Spirit. 

The Spirit comes to make us holy, and by being holy, more of the Spirit comes. 

I don’t know what you call that. 

Is that a spiritual feed-back loop? 

Is that a spiritual perpetual motion machine? 

I don’t know. I think we just call it the normal Christian life. 

The Spirit has come to make us holy, and by being holy, more of the Spirit comes.

3. What are the Results of the Indwelling of the Spirit? 

Paul describes two great consequences of this indwelling: (1) holiness and (2) life 

Holiness

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit. Romans 8:8-9

The immediate context of Paul describing the indwelling of the Spirit is an ethical one. He is contrasting the state of the unregenerate person with the regenerate, born again, Christian. If you are in the flesh you cannot please God. If you are in the Spirit, you can. It's as simple as that. I don’t actually want us to get distracted this morning trying to parse the difference between the Spirit being in us and us being in the Spirit. In this particular section, Paul moves from one to the other without making much of a distinction. Again, we can picture the cloud of glory descending onto the temple: the cloud both envelopes the temple and indwells the temple. The same is true of the Spirit and the Christian: we are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in us. The indwelling is mutual and reciprocal. What is most important, here, is the result: this profound union with the Spirit of God has resulted in the birth of the Christian as a new creation who is not only called to be holy but commissioned to be holy.

It is common in our circles to sometimes compare justification and sanctification. Justification, we define as that once and for all forensic declaration of righteousness in the eyes of God on account of the work of Jesus. Sanctification, we define as the gradual upward growth in holiness in the life of the believer. Both of these concepts are bedrock doctrines that are essential to understanding our faith. 

But the term “sanctification” has a second meaning, too. Like justification, sanctification also has an immediate, once-and-for-all, dimension to it. It is the declaration of our set apartness, or consecration. At the moment of our salvation, we are declared righteous in the Lord and also consecrated for holy use. We are those vessels for honorable use that Paul will describe in chapter 9, temple-vessels marked for worship. 

The story of the world is the story of the gradual consecration of all things, the gradual set-apartness for God of all creation.

In the final verses of his prophecy, Zechariah describes the great day of the Lord like this: And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts. 

It is not yet true that even the bells on the horses are holy. It is not yet true that every pot is holy to the Lord of hosts. But what is true is that we are holy to the Lord. We are the first fruits of that work. We are the downpayment on what is to come. The holy yeast that is the church of God is making its way through creation. It starts with us. It ends with the bells on the horses. Brother and sister, you are holy unto the Lord. You are holy, not because you are sinless, but because you have been set apart and commissioned to be so. You have the Lord’s own blood sprinkled on you. You have the Spirit’s own breath within you. 

Identity precedes activity. The declaration of our holiness precedes our performance of holiness. Because you have been declared holy and empowered to be holy, you can now live as holy. 

Life

Paul then moves from ethics to life. 

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. (10) If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (11)

Life is presented here in two different forms. Verse ten describes the present spiritual life we enjoy, here and now; and verse eleven describes the future physical life we will enjoy in eternity.

1. The present life

Verse 10 is a highly realistic verse. Verse 10 acknowledges what all of us know, at least intellectually, and what many of us feel daily: the body is dead. Despite the incalculable gift of salvation and despite the profound reality of the Spirit indwelling us, we will, nevertheless, grow old and sick and at last die. It’s one thing to believe that you are the temple of God when you’re thirty years old standing on top of Mount Mitchell; it’s another thing to believe it when you’re carrying around a colostomy bag and need help putting on your own socks. But verse 10 speaks to that reality. Although the body is dead…the Spirit is life. The life that is ours through the indwelling of the Spirit of Christ is a life that shines through these bodies of death. Christ has saved us from these bodies even as we still inhabit them. The life of Jesus is manifested in our mortal flesh, 2 Corinthians says. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 2 Corinthians 4:16.  We hold the treasure of the Spirit of the Lord of Life in bodies that are but earthen vessels. 

What Paul describes here is the opposite of the hypocrites Jesus rebuked in Matthew 23. Woe to you, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanliness.We may look like we are dying on the outside. But we’re alive on the inside. I may never run a 5k as fast as I used to. You may never be the prettiest woman in the room again. But if you have the Spirit of Life within you, if you have the Spirit of Christ within you, then you have something far greater than physical strength or beauty. You have within you the same Spirit that hovered over the uncreated void, the same Spirit that was breathed into Adam’s nostrils, the same Spirit that clothed with flesh the valley of bones, the same Spirit that Jesus breathed on his disciples at the Last Supper.

Though we waste away, we remain temples of the living God. Though “with time’s injurious hand” we are “crush’d and o’erworn”; though still we dread “confounding age’s cruel knife”, we remain temples of the living God. 

Don’t be fooled by the mirror. It lies by speaking only half truths. It says, quite accurately, that you are weak and that you are ugly and that soon you will die, but leaves unsaid the great truth that is ours in Christ Jesus, that the Spirit within you is the Spirit of life, and that you have already been “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.” 1 Peter 1:3-4.

2. The eternal life 

In verse 10, the life which Paul speaks of is a spiritual vitality we enjoy here and now by the Spirit’s indwelling. In verse 11, the life which Paul speaks of is a literal, physical, life which we will experience in the future by that same indwelling of the Spirit. 

If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (11)

The central truth and promise expressed in verse 11 is this: Christ has triumphed over death and we who are in Christ will share in that triumph. The authors of scripture never tire of repeating this promise. Again and again, across every era and epoch, in sunlight and in shadow, it is the great theme of our prophets, poets, and apostles. They repeat it because we need it. God, in his kindness, has not left us to fight our fear of death with only a few scattered verses. Scripture is full of the promise of eternal life. From Genesis to Revelation, this great truth rings out: 

The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ 1 Corinthians 15:51-54.

But our passage this morning is more than a precious reminder of death’s defeat. We see, too, that the Holy Spirit is active in that work. We get a hint of this in Romans 6:4 when Paul writes that “Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.” That word “glory” should be a tip that there’s more going on here than simply assigning the work of the resurrection to the Father, exclusively. Think back to the “glory of the Lord” in the Old Testament and the visible Cloud of Glory that was its visible representation. Remember how closely related that language and those images are to the Holy Spirit. Well here, in Romans 8:11, Paul returns to the subject of Christ’s resurrection that he already addressed in 6:4, but this time he draws even greater attention to the Holy Spirit’s role in the resurrection. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Who will raise us? The Father. How will we be raised? Through the Holy Spirit.

Why is this important? Why is this a comfort? 

Look at those last four words: who dwells in you. Not who will dwell in you. But who does, now.

While our bodily resurrection from the dead lies in the future, the power that will bring about that future resurrection dwells within us now. We do not wait for a future filling of his Spirit in order to be raised, and for perishable to put on imperishable, but only for the glory of the Father that already resides within us to call that immortality forth from within us. That resurrection power is ours now.

The eternal life we will enjoy in the future is brought about through the same Spirit who already dwells within us. 

Conclusion

The title of this sermon is “More than Metaphor” and that is my final burden for us, that we would not over-analogize or over-symbolize the Christian life. That we would not assume that words like regeneration, consecration, sanctification, indwelling, and resurrection are just theological concepts, or analogies and metaphors; or even if they’re not analogies, then at most they are physical realities located in some distant past or some distant future. 

They aren’t. They’re real. And they are now. 

You are the temple of the living God. There is great honor in that and great responsibility. 

When I was a child it was common for Sunday school teachers and kids books and probably my own parents to describe becoming a Christian as “asking Jesus into your heart”. If you were born between probably 1975 and 1995, my guess is that that phrase figured pretty prominently in your spiritual instruction. I don’t know, maybe that’s still a thing.

And when I was four somehow “asking Jesus into my heart” made sense. I understood what that was and I wanted that. 

But then I got a little older and I thought, “Ask Jesus into my heart? That’s a little weird; that must be some kind of an analogy.”

Then when I got a lot older and I was real smart and stuff and I thought, “that’s definitely an analogy and not a very good one at that. When I have kids I’m not going to teach them that silly Sunday School stuff. I’m just going to read the Shorter Westminster Catechism to them instead.” 

But I’m not so sure anymore. I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now. 

To quote a great Christian poem: 

We shall not cease from exploration 

And the end of all our exploring 

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time. 

(TS Eliot, “Four Quartets”)

I’ll be forty-four next week. And though I shall not cease my exploration of the things of God, I know now that the end of it all will be to arrive where I started. I trust that the same is true for you, also.

I just want Jesus in my heart. No analogy. No metaphor. 

The Spirit of Christ, in my heart. All the way. 

It’s the only way to live. And not “live” as some analogy. Not “live” as a metaphor. But the actual breathing kind of living. 

He is our life.