“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Romans 8:10 (ASV)
In our Christian life, as we pursue the Lord, it is important to understand that we have an intrinsically corrupt nature in our flesh. Pursuing the Lord while feeling the corruption of our flesh seems paradoxical, yet Paul puts these two things together in the verse above. We might think that when Paul says, “If Christ is in you,” he would conclude with, “you are forgiven of your sins, you have full joy and happiness, and you do not have a problem in the world.” But instead Paul says, “If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin.” Here Paul is stating a fact about our actual condition while we are in this mortal body. Even though Christ is in us, there is still a part of us in a state of deadness, or utter weakness. This part has been smitten with total inability in relation to the things of God. So with our “dead” body, we do not have the ability to perform what we desire to do or even what we will to do. There is something dragging in us, and we can feel the pull of it. That pull is the feeling of death due to sin in the flesh, or indwelling sin.
The last part of Romans 8:10 says, “but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Most Bible versions translate “spirit” with a small “s” because here Paul is contrasting the human body with the human spirit, not the Holy Spirit. Two things are equally true of us as believers: on one hand, the body is dead because of sin, and thus we feel our weakness; on the other hand, the human spirit joined to the Lord is life because of righteousness. If Christ is in you, these two things are true. This helps us understand the actual situation of our Christian life.