θεοῦ and πνεῦμα χριστοῦ in ver. 9 that the Spirit of Christ is the same as the Spirit of God, and the use of χριστὸς alone in the next verse shows that this same spirit is the alter ego of Christ. Cf. Phil. i. 19; Gal. iv. 6; Eph. iii. 17. This is one of the passages in which the presuppositions of the Trinitarian con- ception of God come out most clearly.
(2) Vers. 12-27. The Spirit as a spirit of adoption, the first-fruits of the in- heritance of the children of God.
Ver. 12 f. The blessed condition and hopes of Christians, as described in these last verses, lay them under obligations: to whom, or to what? Not (ver. 12) to the flesh, to live according to it; to it they owe nothing. If they live after the flesh they are destined to die—the final doom in which there is no hope; but if by the spirit (1.ε., God’s Spirit) they put to death the doings of the body, they shall live—the life against which death is powerless, We might have expected τῆς σαρκὸς instead of τοῦ σώματος, but in the absence of the spirit the body in all it does is only the tool of the flesh: the two are morally equivalent.
Ver. 14. Ye shail live, for as many as are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons, and life is congruous to such a dignity. vids suggests the rank and privileges of the persons in question; τέκνον (in ver. 16 f.) their kinship in nature to God. Yet