Our scripture lesson this morning is from Romans 8 and I'll be reading

verses 7 through verse 11 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not able to do so.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

However, you are not in the flesh but in the spirit. If indeed the

spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin,

yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

But 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

indwells you.

Oh Father, the magnitude of these treasures is breathtaking.

And I pray that there would be granted now in these next few minutes the capacity to feel something approaching an appropriate emotional response to this glorious truth.

Left to ourselves we are dead,

hostile, incapacitated, to submit, let alone enjoy.

But if you come, if you bestir yourself within and over, no one on earth can imagine what might come of this service for the glory of your name. And the good of your people and the good of the nations.

So come. Help me, help us be faithful to your word in the preaching of it, hearing of it, and the heart and head responding to it.

In Jesus, name I ask, amen.

Here at the beginning of verse 9,

the issue is, what's different about you, Christian, from the rest of mankind.

Human beings are divided into two categories, according to the Apostle Paul, they're the only two that really count.

In verses 7 and 8, he describes them as in the flesh or in the spirit, mind of the flesh or

mind of the spirit. Those are the two categories. It's a matter about race.

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