What does it mean that to be carnally minded is death (Romans 8:6)?

They, then, that are after the Spirit walk on this principle, live by this life; mind, have their minds set on, the things of the Spirit. Those after the flesh, that live taking what the flesh wills for their object and sole motive and guide, have their mind on the things of the flesh. Now the mind of the flesh is death, the mind of the Spirit life and peace. All the workings of the desire and will of the flesh end in death - yea, have the principle of death in them, for it is a living without God. It works apart from God, turns its back on Him, and passes on into death; while the free energy of divine life before God and peace of heart is the condition of those who walk in the mind of the Spirit, that is, the thoughts fixed on what the Spirit reveals and introduces into. The mind, the union of desire and will, of tile flesh, is enmity against God. It not only goes its own way with lusts contrary to God's nature, but it would not have God to control or hinder it, and, as He must, it is enmity against Him. His law claims obedience on His authority. It is not subject and cannot be, or it ceases to be flesh - is not. So "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." In its nature - will, lusts - it is against God; it is not, if it is not this: of course, it cannot please Him, but is contrary to Him. They that stand on this ground before God cannot, of course, please Him. Such is the hopeless condition of man as in the flesh. But this is not the Christian standing at all He is not in the flesh: "Ye are not in the flesh," not standing as a child of Adam in your natural place as born after the flesh, and to answer for yourself according to law. Ye are in the Spirit if the Spirit of God dwell in you.

The opposition between the two, the Spirit and the flesh, is now put before us. "The mind of the flesh," not "the carnal mind" as if it were a fleeting condition, but what the flesh is in its character at all times, "is death." "The mind of the flesh is enmity against God"; that is death truly. Death is separation from the source of life, and the flesh is willingly separate. Thus then, it "is not subject to the law of God neither indeed can be," and "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." "In the flesh" we find here, therefore, to be a spiritual condition, although it is related to the old creation place out of which we have passed. One who is in Christ cannot be in the flesh. On the other hand, the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. How blessed a thing is such peace! At one with God, everything else is at one with us. All things of necessity, therefore, "work together for good to them that love" Him. "If God be for us, who can be against us?"

Verse 5. "They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit." It is "after the Spirit." the man's condition is looked at here as spiritual. Every nature has its object, which is its "mind." There are two principles here, each having its own object; the very brute creation have their desires, the flesh its more deliberate objects. The spiritual man obeys the tastes and appetites of the Spirit instead of the flesh.

85 Verse 6. "To be carnally minded is death" (or, which is better, the mind of the flesh, and the mind of the Spirit. It is what each in its nature desires, not a state). If the flesh run its course, death, the seal of condemnation, must be upon it. "As it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment"; "but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace." Now we are getting the real, practical, inward thing. There are two kinds of peace - peace in the conscience, and peace in the heart. "To be spiritually-minded is life and peace." This is a far higher thing than simply peace in the conscience. It is peace in the heart and affections. The affections are at rest, and then there is the steady pursuit of things for which our consciences will not accuse us, for, delighting ourselves in the Lord, there will be peace. If you are restless and discontented in your mind, you are not at peace, you are thinking about yourselves! self has come in, so we want something for self. The Spirit turns the eye away from self towards the Lord. The things of the flesh are too small to fill the heart, and the heart likewise needs enlarging to grasp the things of the Spirit; and herein is the contrast between Ecclesiastes and Canticles on this very point.

And as the essential character thus differs, as well as the range and objects of flesh and Spirit, so also the issues. "For the mind of the flesh [is] death, but the mind of the Spirit life and peace." (Ver. 6.) The flesh has not one pulse of life Godward, however active in its pursuits and pleasures here. On the other hand, the mind of the Spirit, its exercise of thought and feeling, is life and peace. It was so in Christ; and so it is in the Christian. How a sinner is to find either life from God or peace with God is not the subject-matter in hand, but the moral bent and result of flesh and Spirit. Flesh satisfies itself, or at least its desires are set on things seen and felt apart from God or His word; the Spirit cannot rest short of the love and the glory of Christ. And as this only is the life of the Spirit, so it is peace of heart. In every sense God has called us in peace; whereas, there is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. How could it be otherwise with fallen humanity? "Because the mind of the flesh [is] enmity against God; for to the law of God it is not subject;" nor need one wonder, "for it is not possible. But they then that are in flesh cannot please God." (Ver. 7, 8.)

Verse 5 gives us concisely the two opposite governing principles operating in souls. There are only two: they have no real similarity, no point of agreement in any single particular, and between them there is no possibility of making peace. Those who are according to flesh are of course unbelievers: those according to the Spirit, believers. The mind of the one is set on fleshly things, the mind of the other on the things of the Spirit. The principle is a simple one, that the object upon which the mind is set, will govern conduct — though there are inward workings which set the mind one way or the other.

“For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit life and peace” (JND). Verses 6, 7 and 8 give us the essential opposition in these two things — the end of the former being death, the end of the latter life and peace. The flesh, with all its objects is brought only to death: it has no better anticipation: its eye sees no further, because it cannot. The mind of the Spirit, which has Christ for its object, of course, is life and peace. Christ is risen from the dead, in a sphere of perfect rest and peace, and this being the assured portion of him who has the mind of the Spirit, death has become merely an incidental thing: the end is life and peace, and the present takes its character from the end.

Nor is this a mere general standing for certain persons; but the apostle goes on to say, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." He appropriates it to himself: he makes it a personal thing, not a mere vague matter, in which the positive joy of it is all lost to the individual soul. The same word of God that shows the common standing of the saints in Christ immediately makes it also a personal thing. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." it is entirely a question of God working for His own glory. Man wrought to the shame of God and his own sorrow. God now has taken the work in hand, has done it perfectly, and He communicates this to us. He wants us to enjoy it, and to be settled in the happiness of it. We are brought there in Christ. Why should we not believe it and keep it always before our souls? Why should we not treat any doubt of it as coming from the devil? — For we must remember that the enemies' spite is not so much against us as against Jesus. And if we belong to God, and have got the blessing of His blessing and glory that he has lost for ever and ever, therefore it is that he hates us. Leaving his own first estate, he had rebelled against God, and all hope was lost for him — because there is no call for a fallen angel. Yet for us who had chosen him for our friend instead of God, the grace of God has come down to such poor, sunken, low ones, and has most richly blessed us. Therefore the hatred of the enemy is turned against us. Well, immediately after the Holy Ghost has shown us the full deliverance in Christ, now, He says, as it were, I must let you know a little about yourselves. The fact of our being in Christ does not hinder that we have got the flesh in us; and the flesh is a hostile thing to God. It never seeks God's will. But the difference between the unconverted man and converted is, that the former has got nothing but flesh; while the converted man, besides the flesh, has got a new nature, which he did not possess before — a new life, which he derives, not from the first father of all men, but from the last Adam. This is what the apostle goes on to show. You have got this evil nature still about you, though you are not regarded as in it, but as completely delivered from it. You are no longer called by your old name, but by your new name, because it is Christ, that has taken you to Himself; and the Holy Ghost is the seal of it. "To be carnally minded is death." I do not take this as referring merely to the unconverted man. It is true of the converted also. Does he allow the fleshly mind in himself? So far there is the working of death.

Two classes are considered. Those "after" or "according to" the flesh and those according to the Spirit. The former mind the things of the flesh: the latter the things of the Spirit. The mind of the flesh is death: the mind of the Spirit life and peace. The two classes are in complete contrast, whether as to nature, character or end. They move in two totally disconnected spheres. The Apostle is of course speaking abstractly. He is viewing the whole position according to the inward nature of things, and not thinking of particular individuals or their varying experiences.

We may very rightly raise the question of our own experiences. If we do, what have we to say? We have to confess that though we are not after the flesh yet we have the flesh still in us. Hence it is possible for us to turn aside from that minding the things of the Spirit, to mind the things of the flesh. And, in so far as we do, we come into contact with death rather than life and peace. But let us make no mistake about it; if we go in for the things of the flesh, we are not seeking things which are properly characteristic of the Christian, but rather wholly abnormal and improper.

Rom. 8:6. The flesh's mind, death; the Spirit's mind, life and peace. For flesh's mind, enmity against God. How simple! The mind of man (fallen) is not, cannot be, subject to the righteous requirements of the Creator; it cannot be so. So, then, my standing and abiding there cannot please God. To say they can involves no less than this, that God cultivates flesh and the fallen man.

Rom. 8:6 gives the respective results — death, and life, and peace: as Rom. 8:7 presents the deep, moral reason — the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, and hence necessarily rebellious when tested by His law. The conclusion, Rom. 8:9, is clear: those that are in flesh (i.e., natural men) cannot please God. The law could only regulate their responsibility and condemn their failure, instead of delivering them.

The plain fact is that all the things in which the flesh and the world move are but death. Romans 8 tells us that there are the things of the flesh which are minded by those after the flesh, and the things of the Spirit which are minded by those after the Spirit, and that while the mind of the flesh is death, the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. It also tells us very plainly that "if ye live according to flesh, ye are about to die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (verse 13, N. Tr.). In these words the apostle speaks of things according to their essential character. Death lies at the end of a life lived according to flesh, and whoever lives that life, no matter who he may be, or what God in mercy may do before the end is reached, is making straight for death, and may be said to be "about to die." On the contrary, whoever goes forward in the energy of the Spirit putting to death the deeds of the body has life, in its full and proper sense, before him. For such an one "the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness" (verse 10), i.e., the body is held as a dead thing, for if it gains the mastery of us, so that we are swayed by its desires, only sin is the outcome, whereas when the Spirit controls so as to be the internal means of life, righteousness is the outcome.