All right, well, I'm Tanner Van
Beek. I'm Gary and Fonda's grandson, Eric and Katie's nephew. And
I grew up in one of those pews, about over there. And now I'm
in my suit coat. I get to be here, and I get to
open up the word of God with you guys. And God is just so, so good,
and I can't express how thankful I am to be able to stand up here
and testify to His grace through His Son, Jesus Christ. So we're going to be here in
Romans 8 this morning, and Romans 8, it contains this precious,
precious promise that God has made to his people, that there's
no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And God has made these promises
to his people, and they culminate in Christ, and when I think of
those, it reminds me of stretching all the way back to Genesis chapter
3, when the serpent is in the garden with Adam and Eve, and
Adam sinned, and God is talking to the serpent, and he promises
the seed through the woman is going to crush your head. And
that's the gospel, the first time the gospel is proclaimed
and we can see how God fulfilled that promise throughout history
through the work of his son, Jesus Christ. So we have this precious, precious
promise to us and it's been important to me and it's been in that spiritual
emergency kit that I have, you know, where you're discouraged
about something or you're struggling and you can run over and grab
the hammer and smash the glass, pull it out and read this scripture
or listen to this song that reminds you that God loves you, and the
way that he sees you in Christ, it's him looking at a son, it's
him looking at a daughter with no anger in his heart towards
you, but only the love that a father would have for a child. So I'd like to read this passage
one more time before we get started. There's therefore now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of
life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and
death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh
could not do by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin. He condemned sin in the flesh
in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled
in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to
the spirit. So I think that it's a really
tragic thing when we have these promises to us as believers,
but we forget them, and we forget the freedom that we have in Christ. And we forget these promises
to us, and we all of a sudden start to not look to God, but
we're looking to ourselves. And so in this passage this morning,
we're going to see that in the fact, in the promise that there's
no condemnation for us, we're going to see that we're free
in Christ from one, we're free from the guilt of sin. And two,
we're free from the righteous requirement of the law. So Paul, In context, he's just
wrapped up this long explanation of how the law applies to believers. We're gonna start here because
as believers today, I think there's a lot of kind of confusion, this
shaky understanding that we have of God's law, what's meant by
it, and whether it affects us or not today. And we can hear,
you know, we can hear we're not under the law, we're under grace.
And that is very true. But we can be confused anytime
we hear about that. We kick the law to the wayside.
We fail to consider it. We fail to acknowledge it. And
I think this is bad on our part because how will you enjoy your
freedom if you don't know what you're free from? So we're going to start by talking
about the law. We're going to define what we're talking about. What
does it mean? We're gonna try to make it clear, you know, because
here in this passage we have, He's made us free from the law
of sin and death for what the law could not do, that the righteous
requirement of the law, what are we talking about? So first,
let's define it. The term law has been used in
a lot of different ways. A lot of different ways in the
Bible it can refer to the whole Old Testament, or it can refer
just to parts of the Old Testament. The law of Moses, the Ten Commandments,
or God's moral law, or the different ceremonial laws that the Jews
followed, or the civil laws that govern them. So here, in this
context, the thing that we're talking about is God's moral
law. God's moral law is any commandment or command of God that he's given
us that it reflects his character and points us to his standard.
So these commandments, they can be plainly revealed to us like
the ten commandments. We all know those. For example,
the second commandment, you shall make no idols. Well, you know,
that's a command to follow don't make any idols, but it's also
pointing to an aspect of God's character that he's deserving
all of the glory, and no one else deserves glory. He's not
sharing his glory, so he doesn't want people to attribute it to
something else that's not him. And this moral law, it doesn't
only apply to those who have received this special revelation,
you know, the book or the tablets that Moses brought down from
the mountain, but it's a universal law that is written on the hearts
of every person on earth. In Romans 2, 14 through 15, it
says, So that means that every person on earth, everyone that's
ever lived, you know, they have a
conscience. They have this law that's written
on their hearts, that God's put on their hearts, tells them what's
right and wrong, what's important to God. And so in some aspect,
in some capacity, everyone on earth has something that points
them to God's character and points them to God's standard. So here in Romans 8, 3, So you
might be saying, You know, everything that you're
telling me right now about the law, you know, that sounds like
good stuff, you know? It points us to God's character.
It points us to God's standard. You know, God is good. So that
sounds good. So why would Paul call it the
law of sin and death here in this passage? Why would we need
to be freed from something like this? In Romans chapter 7, 7 through
8, Paul says, What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not. On the contrary,
I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would
not have known covetousness unless the law had said, You shall not
covet. But sin, taking opportunity by
the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire."
In Romans 7-12, if you jump ahead a little bit, it says, therefore
the law is holy and the commandment holy and just and good. And so
what Paul is saying is that the law is good. There's nothing
wrong with it. It's holy because it points to
the holiness of God, right? So the problem lies not in the
law, but the problem lies in us. See, every one of us is born
with a sinful nature, a sinful disposition, or a sinful default. We have the sin nature because
Adam, our human head, He sinned against God in the garden. Romans 5.12 says, So this was
a point of, I guess, theological wrestling for me when I was a
new believer. You know, asking myself, how is it fair that You know, I have this sinful
disposition because one man messed up, because Adam messed up a
long time ago. Why is that fair that I'm dealing
with the consequences of this? And, you know, that thought is
kind of cleared up by the thought that if it was me, all the way
back in the garden instead of Adam. Or really, if it was any
one of us, you know, any one of us would have done what he
did. Any one of us would have sinned
against God. So Romans 5.12 says that if we
all sinned in Adam, so if it helps, don't picture that this
headship of Adam is so much like this genetic disease that is
passed on. you know, it's passed on down
to us, it is, but picture it like this action that you yourself
have taken part in, this action of sin that you've taken part
in all the way back. That's kind of what helps me
to clear up that concept. And if I have a problem with
this, that my old head performing an action that has consequences
for me, then I would also have a problem If I'm being consistent,
I'd have a problem with my new head's perfectly obedient life
that has consequences for me, his sacrificial work on the cross
that has consequences for me, and his current mediation in
heaven that right now has consequences for me. And that's stuff that
I just don't have a problem with. I'm very thankful for it. So we having the sin nature that
permeates and corrupts every single part of us, it leaves
nothing untouched. It leaves no part of us untouched.
It's not like, picture this little house. You have all these different
rooms, and the kitchen is a mess, and the living room is a pigsty,
and the entryway is all dirty from the mud that people track
in. And the house is gross, but tucked away in the corner is
this little closet, and this little closet is pristine. It's
clean as opposed to everything else in the house. But no, that's
not an accurate picture of the sinfulness of man. Now, our house,
that closet's dirty and stained as well. just like everything
else. No part of the natural human
heart loves God, or desires Him, or is inclined to move toward
Him. And that's not to say that we're not all walking around
and being as bad as we could be. You know, we're not, by God's
restraining grace, we're not all murderers or taking apart,
you know, like in human trafficking or all this other horrible things
that you hear about. No, He has restraining grace,
but still the truth is that there's no part of us that's untouched
by sin. Isaiah 53 6 says, all we like
sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his
own way. In Titus chapter 1 15 through
16, to the defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure, but both of
their heart and minds and their consciences are defiled. And so when we see that, that's
where the law comes in. Again, the law points to the
character of God and presents His perfect standard to us. And
theoretically speaking, anyone that follows God's commands perfectly
would be counted righteous before Him. They haven't transgressed
against anything. They'd be worthy to be in His
presence. they would die at the end of their perfect life and
then be present with God in heaven. But Romans 3.10 reminds us that
there's none righteous. No, not one person. No normal
person has ever kept the law perfectly. No, no living person. It's never been done once in
history except for our Lord Jesus Christ. So in theory, if someone
keeps the law, they'd be righteous. But in practice, it's impossible
because of our sin nature. So the standard to live up to
God's law, it's placed before us, and what it does is it gives
us something to sin against. It's like in the Amazon, God's
law is this piece of meat that you throw into the river, and
the piranhas are swimming around, and once they immediately sense
it, you know, they're on top of it, and they're devouring
it. That's our sin against God's law. It puts something in front
of us. It gives us something to sin
against. So our sin nature sees these
commands and drives us to disobey. But back in Romans 7, 8, it says, So just for an example, an illustration,
say that I'm working in the kitchen and I have a kid with me and
there's a jar of cookies on the counter. Maybe you've heard this
before, but you tell him, no, don't touch the cookies. You
have to wait for dinner. You're going to spoil your appetite. And then I turn
around and I'm doing something else and my back is turned. and
then I turn back and the kid is elbow deep in the jar already. That's a good picture. So our situation, once you have
this clear picture of our situation, our sinful nature, and this constant,
this friction, and our incompatibility with God's law, You know, by
our very nature, we're deserving the punishment and condemnation
that this brings. By our disobedience, we deserve
punishment and we deserve condemnation. And we'd be in this constant,
this conflict, this war with God, with no way of taking any
step toward Him in peace, no way to raise our arm with this
white flag and wave it, you know? No way to please God in any of
our actions apart from Christ. But the good thing is that God
knew that we would never be able to live up to this standard that
he set before us. It's not like God started plan
A with the law, and it got all messed up, and it got derailed
by our sin, and all of a sudden he has to scramble and find a
way to make this work, so he, so he comes up with Jesus Christ
to be the solution. No, God knew that we wouldn't
be able to keep His law, and that's okay because that's not
what He designed the law for. His purpose for the law was that
it would make our sin known to us, that we wouldn't go on thinking,
I'm okay by myself. but that we would realize that
there's no way that we ourselves can live up to the standard and
that we need help and we need to be saved from this. So God
meant for the law to point us to Jesus because his plan for
redemption has always been centered around Christ. Always. In Christ, we're free from that
condemnation that would have been ours. if God had not had
mercy on us. We're free in Christ, and in
this passage we can see that in two ways. In the first way,
we're free from the guilt of sin. In verse 3, for what the
law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did
by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. For
sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. So when God saves us,
has mercy on us, the Holy Spirit enters us. And what that does,
it does a lot of things, but one of the things that it does,
it gives us this new heart, this new disposition, and the default
of this disposition is love for God. Love as a father, It gives us this, this sense
of thankfulness and obedience. We want to do what God wants
us to do. We want to be obedient to Him
out of our thankfulness. It's all, it's flowing from this
new heart that He's given us as opposed to the old rock-hard
heart that hates God. So when we're saved, we have
that new heart, but the thing is, is that we still sin after
that. Paul in Romans chapter 7, he's
describing this conflict, this conflict of the believer, that's
describing just that, is that I have this new heart that loves
God and wants to do what's right, but is in constant conflict with
my flesh, my sinful nature. He says, for I do not understand
my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the
very things that I hate. Now if I do what I do not want,
I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer
I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing
good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire
to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I keep doing. Now if I do what I do not want,
it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil
lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God
in my inner being. But I see in my members another
law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive
to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that
I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? So we see
Paul struggling with this conflict that we've just talked about,
and we can see His shame and his guilt that's
eating away at him. He does what he does not want
to do because what he wants to do is obey God. But he keeps sinning. But we
can see at the very end his hope. Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. See, there's no condemnation
because Christ died for sin. And the second way that we're
free in Christ is that we're free from the righteous requirement
of the law. We no longer have to strive to
fulfill it by ourselves. It says, for God has done what
the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own
son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He condemned
sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of
the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to
the flesh, but according to the spirit. So this is what it means when
you hear that we're not under the law anymore. That we do not
need to do anything. No action that we do is going
to further our standing with God. It's not going to move us
an inch closer or affect the way that He sees us. But this
freedom that we have, it comes when we realize that everything's
already been done for us. Jesus lived a perfect life already
with no sin. Nothing corrupted or stained
him. His house, completely clean. Nothing kept him from fulfilling
God's law. He kept it perfectly. So that
means that he was perfectly righteous, and he was totally worthy to
be with God when we weren't. So the fact that He kept the
law perfectly and then was punished for our sins, that is the sense
that God condemned sin. Jesus took our sin upon Himself
and died for it, so we no longer have any guilt for our sin, and
He also fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law, so we
no longer have have the guilt or the responsibility of living
up to it by ourselves, but we can rest and rely on his work
for us. Matthew 3 17. This is my absolute
favorite verse in the Bible. It says, this is my beloved son
in whom I am well pleased. And that's at the baptism of
Christ, and that's God's voice coming down from heaven. and
people around Jesus, they can hear it. And God is saying, that's
my son, and I am well pleased in him. He pleases me. And that's
my favorite verse in the Bible because it's just, it's a comfort
knowing that If I am in Christ, that's the exact same way that
God feels towards me. There's no action I can take. There's no way that, you know,
if I screw up again and again and again, that's not affecting
the way that God is seeing me. He still looks at me like a son,
and He's pleased. So in that way, there's no condemnation
because he fulfilled the requirement of the law for us. And so when
we're talking about this truth that we're no longer under the
law, I think that it's important we need to be very clear in the
fact that this isn't a license to abandon obedience. You know, it's still a reality
that Jesus gives us commands. Jesus has things that he wants
us to do, and they're for our better, right? You know, we have
all these different commands in the New Testament that Jesus
gives to his disciples. In John 14, Jesus is talking
to them, and he says, those that love me will keep my commandments. So here in verse 1, we read,
There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,
who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the
Spirit. That phrase, who do not walk according to the flesh,
but according to the Spirit, it's not like this stipulation
that is based upon our actions. It's not, there's therefore no
condemnation if your actions keep being good
enough. But instead, it's this promise that the actions don't
matter if you're in union with Christ. There's no condemnation. And the commandments that Jesus
gives to us in the New Testament, there's a lot of them, but really
they can be summed up in love God and love your neighbors.
And you know, that seems really simple. It's just two of them. But you know, even those two,
we're not very good at keeping. Even those two, we're not able
to keep them perfectly by ourselves. No. No, we can't do it perfectly,
and it's just the reality that we still have this sin nature,
and living the Christian life, we're going to fail, and we're
gonna stumble, and it's gonna feel bad. It's gonna feel bad
when we mess up, right? The Holy Spirit has a convicting
ministry within us, convicts us of our sin. But the thing
is, is that we can't, wallow in our sin. We can't wallow in
this misery and just give up. But we need to to rest in this
promise that even though we're gonna mess up, and we will, that's
not going to affect the way that God sees us. It's not going to
affect our standing with Him if we're in Christ. And it's
when we start to add to this, when we start to add to the gospel,
that's when we start to keep these chains back on our shoulders,
when we start to put ourselves back in bondage, right? When
we add to the gospel. For example, just this one thing
that I've seen, maybe I screw up, I sin in a big way, and I
feel awful about it, I feel convicted and guilty, and I'm just miserable
over my sin. And it's right to feel convicted
about your sin. But maybe in practice I sin And,
you know, I'm just in misery for the rest of the day, and
I feel like I, I can't approach God. I can't run back to God,
but instead maybe, you know, I try to grind out the rest of
the day, and I go to bed, and I wake up in the morning. And,
you know, I wake up in the morning, and then I pray to God as if
there's, as if that period of time you know, satiated God's anger
and wrath toward me, you know, that, that cleared up his wrath.
But no, that's, that's not the way that it works, and I'm glad
that's not the way that it works. If we're, if we're adding a rule
like that, do you see how in that situation I added a rule
that I need to wait a certain amount of time before I go back
to God? When we're adding things to the gospel, When we're adding
things to the gospel, that takes away the freedom that we have
in Christ. That takes away the boldness in Jesus Christ that's
been given to us to approach the throne of God as sons and
as daughters. to go to God and say, God, I
sinned. I screwed up. I screwed up. And I'm sorry. I repent of my
sin, and it's only by your grace and your mercy that you've kept
me, and you're gonna continue to keep me forever. Another way, another trap that
I can see us falling into is This thinking that when we're
saved, when you're born again, Jesus' work on the cross, it's
wiped the slate clean. It's wiped all your past sins
away. So in that aspect, you're clean
and you're pure in that moment. but then from then on, in the
future, it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be mostly Jesus carrying
the load, but then also whatever I can chip in to the work. An example of that, I think,
would be early on when I was a Christian in the ministry that
I was a part of. It was a campus ministry, and
it was really, really good. And I was growing, but also I
had this growing sense of guilt within me, and this friction
that I felt that I'm not doing enough for Jesus. You know, I'm
not in the Word enough, I'm not in prayer enough, I'm not seeking
to share my faith enough with people. I'm not doing enough
for Christ. You hear that? I'm not doing
enough for Christ. As if that's the way that that
worked. And there was, there's guilt and there's shame there.
And it was only after realizing that this promise that in Christ
there's no condemnation, towards me, and it's not about what I'm
doing. It's not about how hard we try. It's about where we're looking,
right? If we're looking at what we're
doing for Christ, then it's never gonna be good enough. And those
chains are gonna be heavy on our shoulders, and we're gonna
be miserable if that's what we're looking at. But if we're looking
at what Christ has done for us, then that's where that peace
and that obedience and that freedom flows out. You see, it's all
about where we're looking. So in closing here, you know,
maybe there are those here who are realizing that God hasn't
brought you to this trust in Christ for salvation. that maybe
you know a lot about Jesus, and maybe you've been going to church
and taking a part in a ministry, maybe your whole life, but you're
starting to realize that what you've been doing is you've been
seeking, you've been working and trying to work out your salvation
by yourself. Maybe there's also those in here
who do know Christ, But you've forgotten the freedom that we
find in Him, and the freedom in this promise that we don't
work for our salvation in our Christian life. It's all dependent
on what He's done for us. But you find that you've fallen
into this trap of thinking that what I do I need to keep
doing more, and more, and more, and more, and I realize that
it's still not enough, and it's still not enough, and I'm miserable,
and guilty, and we're just eaten away by this guilt, and feel
this conflict. Well, for both of these, I think
that the response is going to be the same. Don't look at how hard you've
been searching, how wide you've been searching, or how hard you've
been working. But look to Christ. Just look to Christ. All you
have to do is look. And when I say look to Christ,
I mean realize that You know, He's not this nebulous spiritual
idea. He's alive right now. He's alive
in heaven. And He's victorious over sin. And He's victorious over death.
And He's died for sinners. He died
for sinners. And if we are in union with Him,
if God has brought us to faith in Christ, There's no condemnation
for us, but forever onward, when God looks at you, he sees a son
or he sees a daughter with whom he's well pleased. That's what he sees. Let's pray. Lord, we love you so much, We're
so thankful for the promises that you've given to your people
that we can look at and we can go to for comfort, to remind
ourselves that you are about our good. You're about bringing
your people to you. Thank you for this specific promise
in Romans chapter 8. that there's no condemnation,
that you don't feel angry towards believers. You're never, you're never seeking to do us
harm. Everything that happens to us,
even, even the things that are bad or sad, you work them out
for our good to bring us closer to you and ultimately to glorify
you. So God, may we look at this promise
and shed any notion that the way that you see us is about
what we do. No, it's all about the love and
the mercy. The fact that you've chosen us
to be your people, that you would send your son to die for our
sins. Just again, God, Lord, we love
you. May we be all about your glory. In Jesus' name, amen.