Verse 11 says, "And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you." The preceding verse says that God causes our spirit to become life, and this verse tells us that God causes our bodies to receive life. Verse 10 says that only the spirit is living; the body is still dead. This verse continues by saying that the body can also become living after the spirit is revived. First it says that the spirit is living because Christ lives within us; then it says that the body is living because the Holy Spirit lives within us. The Holy Spirit wants to give life to our body.

We have already seen how our bodies are dead. Although the shell is not dead, it is heading toward the tomb. Spiritually speaking, the body is also reckoned dead. Although humanly speaking, the body has life, God regards that life as death because it is full of sins. "The body is dead because of sin." On the one hand, even though the body has strength, we cannot allow it to express its own life. It should not have any action because the actions of its life are nothing but death. Sin is the life of the body, and sin is spiritual death. The body is living in a kind of spiritual death. On the other hand, we know that we should be witnessing for God, serving God, and doing God's work. All of these need the strength of the body. Since the body is dead spiritually and since its life is also dead, what should we do so that our bodies can be used to supply the needs of the spiritual life without utilizing its life of death? Our body is unwilling as well as unable to walk according to the will of the indwelling Spirit of life. On the contrary, it opposes and fights with that will. What must the Holy Spirit do in order to enable the body to walk according to His will? The answer is that the Holy Spirit wants to give life to our mortal bodies.

The One "who raised Jesus from the dead" is God. But God is not mentioned directly; He is referred to as the One "who raised Jesus from the dead" because the emphasis is specifically on God's work of raising up the Lord Jesus from the dead. This draws the attention of the believers to this point: if God raised up the dead body of Jesus, He is able to raise up the mortal bodies of the believers. The apostle states that if the Spirit of God, namely the Holy Spirit, who is also the Spirit of resurrection, "dwells in you," God will "also give life to your mortal bodies" through Him. This is the second time that the apostle used the word "if." But he was not in doubt about whether the Holy Spirit is within the believers. In verse 9 he said that those who have partaken of Christ already have the Holy Spirit. He meant that since one has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him, his mortal body must receive His life also. This is a privilege shared by everyone who has the Holy Spirit dwelling within him. He was unwilling for even one believer not to know and draw upon this in faith, thereby losing this portion of blessing.

This verse tells us that if the Spirit of God dwells in us, then God should give life to our mortal bodies through the indwelling Spirit. This does not refer to the time of resurrection in the future. This has absolutely nothing to do with resurrection. God is only making a comparison between the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and our bodies that have now received life. This verse does not speak of the body which has died; if it did, this would be dealing with resurrection. It is only speaking of the "mortal" body that has not died, but which will die. The body of the believers is spiritually dead. This is different from saying that it is already dead. In reality, it is heading toward the tomb and it will die. Just as the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is a matter of the present world, the Holy Spirit giving life to our mortal bodies is also an experience of the present world. Neither does this verse speak about our regeneration, because the Holy Spirit is mentioned as giving life to our body, not to our spirit.