Romans 8:4

Here the purpose of the Incarnation appears in the context of the struggle of chapter 7. God fulfills the Law’s requirements in us by His Spirit who indwells and empowers us. However this is not automatic because He indwells us. He fulfills them if and as we walk by the Spirit rather than walking according to the flesh. Walking by the Spirit means walking in submission to and dependence on the Spirit (cf. Galatians 5:16). Walking according to the flesh means behaving as the flesh dictates and allowing our sinful nature to govern our lives.

"’To walk according to the flesh,’ then, is to have one’s life determined and directed by the values of ’this world,’ of the world in rebellion against God. It is a lifestyle that is purely ’human’ in its orientation. To ’walk according to the Spirit,’ on the other hand, is to live under the control, and according to the values, of the ’new age,’ created and dominated by God’s Spirit as his eschatological gift." [Note: Moo, p. 485. Cf. Kevin W. McFadden, "The Fulfillment of the Law’s Dikaioma: Another Look at Romans 8:1-4," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52:3 (September 2009):483-97.]

"The law’s requirement will be fulfilled by the determination of the direction, the set, of our lives by the Spirit, by our being enabled again and again to decide for the Spirit and against the flesh, to turn our backs more and more upon our own insatiable egotism and to turn our faces more and more toward the freedom which the Spirit of God has given us." [Note: Cranfield, 1:385.]

"To run and work the law commands,

Yet gives me neither feet nor hands;

But better news the gospel brings:

It bids me fly, and gives me wings." [Note: Writer unknown. Quoted in Bruce, p. 154.]

"The importance of these verses [1-4] lies in the fact that they provide a summary of chs. v. to viii., and indicate in brief but sufficient form the secrets of Christian holiness." [Note: Griffith Thomas, St. Paul’s Epistle . . ., p. 205.]