- Spirit is Life
Romans 8:10 And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
We can count on the promise of life for the Spirit is life. The Life is God’s Life, which is eternal; and it is full and rich and abundant. The promise of life means that not only will we live forever but also we will live well. The Holy Spirit living within us in our spirit is life, gives life, and makes life worth living. The Spirit can be in us because of the righteousness of God that has been given to us because of Jesus Christ. If I am righteous, and if I am justified by grace through faith in Christ, then I can be sure that the Holy Spirit is residing in a cleansed vessel where righteousness dwells. This promise depends on Christ being in you; Christ is in you because you believe and are baptized. Believers have the Spirit and the Spirit is life.
The other interesting assertion made is that the body is dead because of sin. It does not normally seem to us that the body is dead; we know it will get sick and weak and finally die, but we think we are living. The truth is that the body is dead, and it is dead because of sin. In the day that Adam ate he died; it took 900+ years for his body to physically die, but sin brought death immediately. We are also dead from the moment we are born; spiritual death means separation from God, which is caused by original sin. Spiritual death guarantees physical death. Sin causes the body to be dead. We experience the dead body almost every day: if the body weren’t dead we would be immediately healed when injured and cured when sick; the body would continually renew and energize itself. But it does not; it is dying. Thus the body is dead and we live with a dead body daily.
But we still cherish and nurture the body, though it is dead, because it is a precious vessel that houses the spirit where God lives, as in a temple. The vessel will die but it will rise and live again, this time without sin and death. Meanwhile, however, we have death and life existing side by side within us: one is caused by sin and is always with us by nature; the other is with us by faith.
The promise is that we have life in our spirit; it continually gives life and energy to the soul and the body, and this life is forever.