The Believer and His Body 643
“If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal
bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you” (v.11). Verse 10
explains how God quickens our spirit; this verse tells us how God
gives life to our body. The tenth verse speaks of the spirit being
made alive, with the body still dead; the eleventh verse goes further
by saying that after the spirit is made alive the body too may live.
The first part announces that the spirit lives because of Christ
dwelling in us; this part declares that the body will live because of
the Holy Spirit abiding in us. The Holy Spirit will give life to our
bodies.
The body is dead not in the sense that this outer shell is, but in the
sense that it is traveling towards the grave; spiritually speaking it is
counted as dead. According to man’s thought the body possesses life;
yet according to God even that life is death because it is abounding
with sins—“your bodies are dead because of sin.” On the one hand,
although there is strength in the body we must not permit it to be
manifested. It should not have any activity, for the activation of its
life is but death. Sin is its life, and sin is spiritual death. The body
lives by spiritual death. On the other hand, we know we should
witness, serve and labor for God. These require bodily strength. Now
inasmuch as the body is spiritually dead and its life is nothing but
death, how then can we ever engage it to respond to the demands of
spiritual life without concomitantly drawing upon its death-life? It is
obvious that our body cannot and will not do the will of the Spirit of
life within but will oppose and fight against Him. How can the Holy
Spirit therefore induce our body to answer His call? He must Himself
give life to our bodies of death.
The One “who raised Christ Jesus from the dead” is God. Why is
He not directly named? It is to emphasize the work which God did in
raising the Lord Jesus from the dead. It aims at calling the attention
of believers to the feasibility of God raising their mortal bodies since
God hitherto has raised the dead body of Jesus. The Apostle