Romans 8:12-13, Debtors

¹² So then, brothers, we are debtors [to God], not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death [consider dead] the deeds of the body, you will live. [We are to consider dead our former sinful deeds, having no influence over us. In mortification, we actively put to death things that the body would otherwise want to do.] 

This is Wright’s translation of these verses:

¹² So then, my dear family, we are in debt—but not to human flesh, to live our life in that way. ¹³ If you live in accordance with the flesh. You will die; but if by the spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 

With verse 12, Paul seems to take a deep breath as he speaks to his Christian family. We have arrived at the heart of what he wants to say, especially about our inheritance. But if we speak of “hope” and “inheritance” to most western Christians today, they will think of heaven, or of “waiting to be called home,” or of “going to be with Jesus, way beyond the blue.” But Romans 8 never mentions heaven, or going up to the sky as opposed to living on earth, or waiting to be called home, or anything like that. Nor is there any mention of a soul waiting to be saved. This chapter, says Wright, is about new creation, not about escaping the present creation and going somewhere else. God has made a wonderful creation, and he is bequeathing it to his children. When it is a matter of inheriting from God himself, our stewardship of the whole new creation, we are in a perpetual state of happy indebtedness to him—a debt of love that only love can repay.

The spirit has already made us new-creation people. Who are we called to be, standing perhaps uncomfortably at the overlap of the ages? We are already part of the new creation which, having come to birth with Jesus’ resurrection, is on the way to the final rescue of the present creation from its slavery to corruption. By the spirit, we find ourselves part of the active pilot project for that ultimate new creation, both new-creation people in ourselves and called to be agents of new creation in the present. We are therefore already called to live gladly and gratefully as God’s free children, God’s new-exodus people, and to be caught up in the present work of God’s spirit who enables us to pray “Abba, father,” even when—particularly when!—the world is dark all around us.

We are indebt to God because, being his heirs, we are to live in the present time as his sons and daughter, the people at whom the world looks to get an impression of who the father must be. This is a matter of calling, of vocation. In Exodus 19:6, Israel is called to be God’s royal priesthood, standing between him and the whole world. We are called to nothing less. We are to reflect God’s image into the world as his image bearers.