Life in the Spirit
Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Rom 8:7
carnal mind is... Minding the sins of the flesh is enmity with God (see Rom. 8:5). Such a mind will not obey the law of God, nor can it because it submits to sin. When it ceases to rebel then it ceases to sin. As long as it lives in rebellion it cannot please God (Rom. 8:7-8).
This very statement is why mind control is so bad. The mind, not given over to the Lord Jesus Christ, truly can have power, but it is from the wrong source. Mind power tells us that we have the power within ourselves to bring miracles about. It really is saying we don’t need God, we can do it ourselves.
The unbeliever’s problem is much deeper than acts of disobedience, which are merely outward manifestations of inner fleshly compulsions. His basic inclinations and orientation toward gratifying himself, however outwardly religious or moral he may appear, are directly hostile to God.
Even the good deeds unbelievers perform are not truly a fulfillment of God’s law, because they are produced by the flesh, for selfish reasons, and from a heart that is in rebellion.
In Rom. 8:7-8 Paul focused only on the sinful mind (phronēma tēs sarkos, “mind-set, aspirations of the sin nature”; cf. Rom. 8:6) to explain why he said (Rom. 8:6) that it ends up in death: (1) It is hostile to God (cf. Rom. 5:10); (2) it does not submit (pres. tense, “is not submitting”) to God’s Law; and (3) it cannot do so.
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