The negative result of this (verse 8) is that those who are, in this sense, en sarki cannot please God. That is a remarkable statement, implying as it does its converse: that those who are in the spirit can and do please God, as Paul says in various other places.4 There is a strand of post-Reformation spirituality that is so anxious to avoid any appearance of ‘works-righteousness’ that it shies away from any suggestion that anything we can do might actually please God. The best we can hope for on that score is to avoid getting into trouble. But if God’s spirit is at work within us, then of
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