now no condemnation for those who are in Christ


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April 6, 2014

This is our fifth week in Romans 8. We started with the great and glorious truth that “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (8:1), because the Spirit has set us free from sin in Christ Jesus (8:2). More specifically, God sets us free from the penalty of sin by justifying us through faith in Jesus (8:3), and God sets us free from the power of sin by sanctifying us through the indwelling of His Spirit (8:4). When the Spirit dwells inside us, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead is living in us… Jesus Himself is living in us… God Himself is living in us! And that means even though the selfcentered sinful nature of our flesh could never submit to God or please God, we truly can submit to God and obey Him and fulfill His law, because His Spirit is at work in us, changing our hearts, making us like Jesus, and producing His love in us (8:4-11). Our text tonight builds on this teaching, and I pray that the truth will be driven deeper into our hearts and minds so that we live it out by faith. Paul starts by drawing a conclusion, “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” You don’t owe the flesh anything, because the flesh hasn’t given you anything. In fact, the one thing the flesh gives is death. And that means even when the flesh gives, that giving is actually taking. The flesh takes life from you. So you are not under any obligation to the flesh. I pray that you feel the power of this truth: If you are in Jesus, the flesh has no rightful claim on you! The flesh can make no demand of you that you have to obey. The flesh has no rightful power or influence over you. Now, it can still influence you, but only when you give it a power and influence that does not really belong to it. The reality is: You don’t owe the flesh anything, and you do not have to live according to the flesh. Why? Because the Spirit has set you free! The Spirit has done a decisive work in your life in which the rule and reign of the flesh has been broken. The Spirit gives you freedom and life. So you don’t owe the flesh anything... and you owe the Spirit everything. The Spirit does have a rightful claim on you, and the Spirit has the power to do everything that needs to be done in you. This truth about the Spirit’s work and our dependence on Him is huge and powerful and central to the Christian life, so it is crucial for us to understand it and believe it and live it out. But I believe it’s also easy for us to miss it—I see two major misunderstandings that can happen—and our next verse pushes us to really understand what it means for the Spirit to do everything that needs to be done in us. 8:13, “For if

you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Here are the two misunderstandings I see that can cause us to miss what Spirit-filled Christianity really is: 1.

We reduce it to a moral self-help program.

We make it about behavior modification and self-discipline. We try to find the right 5-step or 7-step or 12 -step program that works for us, and we work really hard to follow it. But we fail to see that the only way the “deeds of the body” will ever be put to death is by the Spirit. Christianity is decisively supernatural. It requires a power above us… beyond us… coming to work inside us. It requires the very Spirit of God Himself taking up residence inside us and changing our hearts. And if we reduce Christianity to a list of rules and behaviors that humans try to follow in their own strength, then whatever we may call our religion, it is not Christianity. Christianity is supernaturally empowered by the Spirit of Christ. The other misunderstanding “pendulum-swings” to the other side of the spectrum: 2. We reduce it to a mystical experience completely separate from our effort and choices. Some people take the truth that Christianity (and holy Christian living) is “by the Spirit” and then say that means it’s not done by us. But look at the very next words in 8:13, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body…” You do this! If you are filled with the Spirit, you should be waging a violent war against your flesh. You are a Spirit-filled executioner who is killing every expression of sin you see in your life. This is real effort on your part. This is a deliberate choice and a relentless focus. Make no mistake, you are doing it by the Spirit, but also make no mistake, you are doing it by the Spirit. You are supernaturally empowered by the Spirit, and you are supernaturally empowered by the Spirit.

So what does this look like? How do we live out Christianity in the power of the Spirit without becoming self-reliant on one hand and without becoming irresponsibly passive on the other hand? How do we live out authentic, Spirit-filled Christianity? Before we work on the answer, let’s start where 8:13 starts. It starts by telling us how crucial it is for us to live out authentic, Spirit-filled Christianity, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.” We know the death Paul is talking about here is not just physical death, because everyone dies a physical death, whether they live by the flesh or by the Spirit. Paul is referring to eternal, spiritual death here. Paul is saying that ultimately, if we don’t live out authentic Christianity by the Spirit, we will not have eternal life. That’s how serious this is! But that also raises an important question. If we are justified by faith and not works, then why does Paul warn us that living by the flesh results in eternal death? Can we lose our justification and die eternally if we live by the flesh and not by the Spirit? If so, are we really justified by faith? And if we can’t lose our justification, why does Paul even give us the warning? Let’s start with what we have seen clearly in Romans: We are justified by faith apart from works of the law (3:28). We are justified because God credits Jesus’ righteousness to us as a gift of grace when we believe (3:22; 4:4-5). Now, let’s connect that to what is coming just a few verses later in chapter 8, “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” That verse tells us that the justified will be glorified. It is certain. It is guaranteed. In other words, if you receive justification by faith, you will receive eternal life and glory, not eternal death and damnation. So no, those who are justified by faith cannot lose their justification and die eternally. (Another way to see this truth is to remember that our justification is not based on our righteousness, but on Jesus’ righteousness. If we are given Jesus’ righteousness, we are given a perfect, unchanging righteousness that will guarantee our justification for all time.) But that leads us to ask: Then why does Paul give the warning, “ If you live according to the flesh, you will die.” And even more, why does Paul say, “If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” The answer is built on a true understanding of justification by faith. The way you are justified is that God unites you to Jesus. God creates a supernatural union in which you are connected to Jesus so intimately (you are “in Christ”) that everything that belongs to Jesus belongs to you. Jesus’ righteousness becomes your righteousness, and that is how you are justified. But the union doesn’t stop there. Jesus’ death to sin becomes your death to sin. Jesus’ life to God becomes your life to God. And the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead comes to live inside you and produce new life in you. The very of Spirit of Christ Himself dwells in you. And that means if you are truly trusting Jesus and have truly been justified by faith, then you will also live by the Spirit. By the power of the Spirit, you will “put to death the deeds of the body”… In other words, you will be killing the sin in your life and growing in holiness. And if that never happens… if you aren’t living by the Spirit and you aren’t waging war against sin and killing it… then there’s no strong evidence that you are truly connected to Jesus (because being connected Jesus means being connected to His Spirit who dwells in you and empowers you). And if you aren’t connected to Jesus, you aren’t justified. So it’s not that you earn your justification by living by the Spirit, and it’s not that you lose your justification by living by the flesh. It’s that living by the Spirit is evidence that you are justified. Those who are justified will live by the Spirit and not the flesh (not perfectly, as we saw in chapter 7, but persistently). And the opposite is also true: Those who live by the flesh and never battle by the Spirit are not justified.

Piper says it very powerfully: “Putting to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit – the daily practice of killing sin in your life – is the result of being justified and the evidence that you are justified by faith alone apart from works of the law. If you are making war on your sin, and walking by the Spirit, then you know that you have been united with Christ by faith alone. And if you have been united to Christ, then his blood and righteousness provide the unshakable ground of your justification. “On the other hand, if you are living according to the flesh – if you are not making war on the flesh, and not making a practice out of killing sin in your life, then there is no compelling reason for thinking that you are united to Christ by faith or that you are therefore justified. In other words, putting to death the deeds of the body is not the way we get justified, it's one of the ways God shows that we are justified. And so Paul commands us to do it – be killing sin – because if we don't – if we don't make war on the flesh and put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit – if growth in grace and holiness mean nothing to us – then we show that we are probably false in our profession of faith, and that our church membership is a sham and our baptism is a fraud, and we are probably not Christians after all and never were.” And that brings us back to the question: How do we live out authentic, Spirit-filled Christianity? We know now what’s at stake: Living by the Spirit distinguishes between a believer and an unbeliever. Followers of Jesus live by the Spirit. Those who don’t live by the Spirit are not followers of Jesus. That’s what’s at stake. This is a matter of eternal life and eternal death. And 8:13 tells us the ones who “put to death the deeds of the body” by the Spirit are the ones who live. So what are “the deeds of the body” and how do we put them to death by the Spirit? The best way to understand “the deeds of the body” is to see that their relationship to “the flesh” is the same as the relationship between “sin” and SIN (or sinful nature). In chapter 7, we saw that there is a power of SIN at work in our nature, and it produces sins in us. For example, 7:8, “But sin… produced in me all kinds of covetousness.” SIN produced sins. SIN=flesh and sins=“deeds of the body.” The deeds of the body are the individual sins we commit when we live by our flesh. So when we talk about putting to death the deeds of the body, we’re talking about a very practical, everyday-life command to kill the expressions of sin that we see in our lives. That’s why this is isn’t a mystical, effortless approach for us. This is focused, tactical warfare. We see sins of greed in our life; we kill them. We see sins of gossip in our life; we slaughter them. We see sins of lust in our life; we crucify them. We see sins of pride in our life; we execute them. We are talking about real change that alters our day-to-day behaviors. But then how do we do this by the Spirit, so that we are living out authentic, supernatural Christianity, and not just moralistic self-help and self-effort? It’s helpful to start by looking back at our text from last week. 8:5, “For those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” If we’re going to kill sin by the Spirit and not by self-effort, we have to “set our minds on the things of the Spirit.” In other words, when the flesh tempts you to sin, you don’t just make up your mind to resist and shout, “No!” You do that, but if you’re going to do that by the Spirit, you have to do even more: You turn your mind to the things of the Spirit. In other words, you don’t just resist the negative. You turn to the positive. You refuse the sin by focusing on the Spirit. So what does it mean to set your mind on the “things of the Spirit”? We see the same phrase in 1 Corinthians 2:12-14 when Paul talks about what God has revealed by His Spirit, “We have received… the Spirit who is from

God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit… The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God…”

In that text, the things of the Spirit are the truths God has revealed about Himself. These truths are now recorded for us in the Bible by the Spirit-inspired prophets (OT) and the Spirit-inspired apostles (NT). So when Paul says to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, I believe that means setting our minds on the truth of who God is as He has revealed Himself in the Bible. We get some confirmation that this interpretation is accurate when we remember that we are asking how we kill sin by the Spirit, and then we remember that Ephesians 6:17 says “the sword of the Spirit… is the word of God.” We set our minds on the things of the Spirit, which are the truths about God in His Word, which is the sword of the Spirit, which is the perfect weapon for killing sin. In other words, we kill sin by the Spirit by knowing and loving and recalling and thinking on the Word of God. When we said earlier that you don’t just shout, “No!” and turn your mind from sin, but you also turn your mind to the things of the Spirit, this is where you turn: To the truth of God in the Bible. You set your mind on the truth of

who God is: He is the gracious, powerful, life-giving Father who has united you to His Son and justified you in all righteousness and filled you with His Spirit and empowered you to live in all holiness. When you know the truth that that is who God is and that He has turned all of His power as grace to work for you and in you, you have everything you need to slaughter sin. I want us to see this truth one more place in the Bible. It’s a text we looked at two weeks ago. Galatians 3:2-6, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?... Does he who supplies

the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith—just as Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness?” The way we kill sin by the Spirit is through “hearing with faith.” The phrase “hearing with faith” points us to the fact that what faith

believes is some sort of word that is heard. And what we’re seeing tonight is that that word is the Word of God, which is the sword of the Spirit, which empowers us to kill sin by the Spirit. So the way we kill sin by the Spirit is by focusing on who God has revealed Himself to be in His Word. The Spirit of God works through the Word of God, so if you want to grow in holiness, you have to fill your mind and your heart with God’s Word. I want to connect this truth to a truth we saw in Romans 6. In that chapter, Paul urged us to choose to serve God as our rightful King instead of serving as a slave to sin. It’s the same thought we are dealing with now in terms of living by the Spirit instead of living by the flesh. And we saw two huge ways that Paul encouraged us to live for God in Romans 6: (1) He told us over and over that we are already dead to sin in Jesus and alive to God in Jesus. In other words, he kept bringing us back to the truth of the gospel and the truth of God’s Word. This is where your power over sin is found! (2) He showed us the difference between God as our rightful Master and sin as our fake master in 6:23. Sin gives death to its slaves and then abandons them, but God gives eternal life to His slaves and then loves us as sons for all eternity. And when you see the difference between the two—especially when you see how beautiful and how superior God is—your heart will be drawn to God and you will want to serve Him. In other words, as you focus on who God is as He has revealed Himself in His Word, you are empowered to serve God and live for Him. Your sanctification depends on knowing God’s gospel, knowing God’s Word, knowing God Himself! Several months ago, Pastor Phillip and I were talking about seeing God’s glory—seeing how good and how great and how gracious God is, and therefore seeing how valuable and how worthy and how awesome He is. And Phillip shared a great thought he had read. He said, “If you’re going to see God’s glory, you have to stare long enough to let your eyes adjust.” God’s glory is so bright and so overwhelming that we don’t see it all at once. We have to acclimate to it, and the way we do that is by dwelling long on it in His Word. The more we look at God in His Word, the more we are able to see Him. And the more we see Him, the more beautiful He becomes and the more we are drawn to Him. And in light of His glory, sin becomes more and more hideous. It is exposed as a disgusting fraud, and its enticing power is broken. That’s how you kill sin by the Spirit! The Spirit gives supernatural power for holiness as you look long at God in His Word! I know I’ve said this many times over the years, but once again, we’re reminded that Christianity is not a religion of avoidance. It’s not just about avoiding sin. Christianity is a religion of pursuit. It’s about pursuing Jesus (“Follow me”). It’s not just about driving unholy thoughts out of your mind and unholy behavior out of your life. It’s about replacing them with holy truths and holy living. It’s not about “not focusing” on sin. It’s about focusing on God. Christianity is about redemption. It’s about God reclaiming your heart and your mind and your life from the flesh by the power of His Spirit. So don’t settle for moral self-help that tries to weed out the bad by your will power, and don’t settle for a mystical experience that doesn’t reclaim anything—those aren’t Christianity! By faith, dwell long on the things of God in His Word and rely on His Spirit to redeem your heart, your mind, and your life.