What does it mean that the body is dead because of sin (Romans 8:10)?

A. "Mortal" hardly chimes in with this. The other sense makes "the body is dead" depend directly on what precedes. If Christ be in you, the body is dead (i.e. reckoned dead according to Rom. 6) because of sin being its character if alive in flesh, and the spirit life because righteousness is the will of God and in us the fruit of the Spirit. I hardly think the first view can he maintained, however generally true in itself.

Verses 10, 11, recite some of the consequences of this indwelling of the Spirit. And, first, let us notice in verse 10, the identification of Christ with the Spirit of Christ. In the unity of the Divine nature they are one. The Lord is that Spirit. "If Christ be in you," etc. We have already seen that the ground and title of the believer's blessedness is his being in Christ (John 14:20; 17:23). We have here the counterpart of that truth. A Christian is not simply a man who has Christian ideas and notions, as men speak, but one in whom Christ is; who lives, yet not he, but Christ lives in him (Gal. 2:20). The results of this are now stated. First, "the body is dead because of sin," and, secondly, "the Spirit is life because of righteousness." The body is dead. The Christian, though an heir of immortality, is mortal still while in the unchanged body of his natural flesh. Though Christ, the Lord of life, be in him, he differs as yet from other men only in the possession of a knowledge and a hope which make death but a stingless sleep until the awakening trump of God be heard. The body is dead. To be treated then as such. To be neglected in its lusts and denied in its desires. To be used and not served: to be governed, not obeyed. To be brought into subjection, and yielded, as we have seen (chap. 6) to God. Meanwhile, the Spirit is life; living in us because of righteousness imputed to us: Christ in us, the hope of glory. But though the body be dead because of sin, yet "if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by (or, because of) His Spirit that dwells in you."*

Rom. 8:10. "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin." The body can only produce sin. Now, on account of Christ, the Christian accounts it as dead. If it act in its living will, there is nothing but sin. The body is only an instrument of righteousness so far as it is dead. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. By the fact that Christ is in us, the Spirit is our life. He produces only righteousness.

Verse 10. "But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin," that is, Christ being power and life in us, we take it for dead, for if alive, it only is and can be sin: "but the Spirit is life because of righteousness," its natural practical fruit; I only am and own that as life. That is, the old man in us (the body with a will is called the flesh) is as dead, shorn of will, for I judge it: but the Spirit is life, already manifesting the fruits of righteousness in us, to the praise of the glory of God.

We have to do with reality. Christianity has its realisation in us in a conformity of nature to God, with which God cannot dispense, and without which we cannot enjoy or be in communion with Him. He Himself gives it. How indeed can we be born of God, unless God acts to communicate life to us? We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works. But it is the Spirit who is its source and its strength. If any one has not the Spirit of Christ, if the energy of this spiritual life which was manifested in Him, which is by the power of the Spirit, is not in us, we are not of Him, we have no part in Christ, for it is thus that one participates in Him. But if Christ is in us, the energy of this spiritual life is in Him who is our life, and the body is reckoned dead; for if it have a will as being alive, it is nothing but sin. The Spirit is life, the Spirit by whom Christ actively lived; Christ in Spirit in us is life — the source of thought, action, judgment, everything that constitutes the man, speaking morally, in order that there may be righteousness; for that is the only practical righteousness possible, the flesh cannot produce any. We live only as having Christ as our life; for righteousness is in Him, and in Him only, before God. Elsewhere there is nothing but sin. Therefore to live is Christ. There is no other life; everything else is death.

But the Spirit has yet another character. He is the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from among the dead. This God did with regard to the Christ. If the Spirit dwells in us, God will accomplish in us that which He accomplished in the Christ, because of this same Spirit. He will raise up our mortal bodies. This is the final deliverance, the full answer to the question, "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?"

If the Spirit that acted in Christ so perfectly, dwells in the believer it must be in order to express or reproduce the character of Christ in the believer, so that it can be said Christ is in us. But if Christ be in us by the Spirit, then the Spirit must be the energy of this spiritual life in order that there may be practical righteousness. If the flesh is the energy of life it can only be to bring forth sin, and the body is the instrument by which the flesh expresses itself. Therefore the body is held to be dead so far as sin is concerned, but the Spirit, who now dwells in the body, is the source and energy of life in view of practical righteousness.

We are not left without the clearest scriptural authority for the application of reckoning dead to the body, for Rom. 8:10 throws clear light upon what it is that in the full Christian state of liberty is practically held for dead, viz., "THE BODY is dead because of sin" - physical death having no place here. Full Christian state (the state of a Christian being quite another thing, as always short of the scriptural standard) anticipates, in a certain sense, resurrection; viz., the body, so reckoned or accounted dead as to its being vitalised by sin, that it may be free for the full energy of the Spirit of God, its only recognised legitimate life. "The Spirit is life because of righteousness," i.e., practical righteousness.

as found in Romans 8:10, "But if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin."

Further light is furnished here as to what it is that is to be held as dead to sin, the complete sentence indicating the body as that which is so to be accounted. But this carries us back to Romans 6:12, in which the "mortal body" is viewed as being no longer the servant of sin - "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." Sin is here assumed to be that which lives, not dies, since it endeavours to dominate - "reign." Hence the "mortal body" necessarily becomes that which is to be accounted dead, in accordance with verse 11. In the full Christian status of liberty, the apostle consequently speaks definitely - "The body is dead because of sin."

241 In Romans 8:10, "the body is dead because of sin." If my body is alive, in the scriptural sense of evil, it is flesh, but of course this body is a mere instrument. The Jesuits said a body ought to be a mere carcase and obey. "On account of sin" is the practice. The only source of life to the Christian that he owns is the Spirit. I hold my body dead, because if it is alive it will be a fountain of sin. Sin in the flesh is clear in scripture. You never get flesh alone unless merely as to the body, as "the life I live in the flesh." The "body of sin," in Romans, is taking it as a whole: as I might say the "body of heaven," the whole of it. In Colossians it is "body of the flesh": it is the idea of the whole thing going as one lump. I do not doubt there is an allusion to the body, but the thought is the whole thing. This body is looked at as the seat of sin, I have no doubt.

The body dead because of sin is the practical conclusion the apostle draws as to the Christian state. In 2 Corinthians 4 always bearing about Christ's dying is the practical realization of it. But I reckon myself dead by faith. All this is confounded, and false doctrine the consequence.