Such, and nothing less or else, was the Law's "_righteous demand_"; an obedience not only universal but also cordial. For its first requirement, "Thou shalt have no other God," meant, in the spiritual heart of it, the dethronement of self from its central place, and the session there of the Lord. But this could never be while there was a reckoning still unsettled between the man and God. Friction there must be while God's Law remained not only violated but unsatisfied, unatoned.[124] And so it necessarily remained, till the sole adequate Person, one with God, one with man, stepped into the gap; our Peace, our Righteousness, and also by the Holy Ghost our Life. At rest because of His sacrifice, at work by the power of His Spirit, we are now free to love, and divinely enabled to walk in love. Meanwhile the dream of an unsinning perfectness, such as could make a meritorious claim, is not so much negatived as precluded, put far out of the question. For the central truth of the new position is that THE LORD has fully dealt, for us, with the Law's claim that man shall _deserve_ acceptance. "Boasting" is inexorably "excluded," to the last, from this new kind of law-fulfilling life. For the "fulfilment" which means legal satisfaction is for ever taken out of our hands by Christ, and only that humble "fulfilment" is ours which means a restful, unanxious, reverent, unreserved loyalty in practice. To this now our "_mind_," our cast and gravitation of soul, is brought, in the life of acceptance, and in the power of the Spirit. [Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =For they who are flesh-wise,= the unchanged children of the self-life, =think,= "_mind_," have moral affinity and converse with, =the things of the flesh; but they who are Spirit-wise, think the things of the Spirit,= His love, joy, peace, and all that holy "fruit." Their liberated and Spirit-bearing life now goes that way, in its true bias. [Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =For the mind,= the moral affinity, =of the flesh,= of the self-life, =is death;= it involves the ruin of the soul, in condemnation, and in separation from God; =but the mind of the Spirit,= the affinity given to the believer by the indwelling Holy One, =is life and peace;= it implies union with Christ, our life and our acceptance; it is the state of soul in which He is realized. [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =Because=--this absolute antagonism of the two "_minds_" is such _because_--=the "mind" of the flesh is personal hostility (ἔχθρα) towards God; for to God's Law it is not subject. For indeed it cannot be= subject to it; [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =those[125] who are in flesh,= surrendered to the life of self as their law, =cannot please God,[126]= "_cannot meet the wish_" (ἀρέσαι) of Him whose loving but absolute claim is to be Lord of the whole man.