Carnal versus Spiritual II
“For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” Romans 8.6
The reason people go immediately to the conclusion that this verse is referring to having “sinful” thoughts, or the like, is that in Christianity we are so conditioned to think we are in a performance based religion. Maybe it is our old Boy Scout training that causes us to keep thinking about earning merit badges and we get confused and apply that way of thinking to Christianity. Our life and faith is not about earning anything. “Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?” [Gal 3.3] We get that, right? We know all the verses about grace and eternal life being free gifts. Why are they free? They are free because they cannot be earned by any human being. We are incapable.
Whatever we have from Him is imputed to us. Impute basically means to create a fact or a reality that did not previously exist. “Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works …” [Rom. 4.6] “And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness: and he was called the Friend of God.” [James 3.23]
More on that in Part III
A Mark Goodson - Bill Todman Production