Now would you open your Bibles
with me to the book of Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. The past few
weeks we've been going through this chapter and studying the
issue of what it is to be a child of God, which means what it is
to be filled with, led by, motivated, energized by the Holy Spirit.
He speaks of that in these verses. I'm going to begin at verse 12
if you'll look at it. I want to read through these
verses, just a few verses and make some comments and then come
back on this subject. The title of the message is The
Death of Sin. The Death of Sin. And I want
you to see that subject from the scripture. But one of the
things you need to be thinking of as you go through these passages,
and I think this is something And we today, in our generation,
need to really consider, you know, we hear a lot about Revelation
and the end time, and all that, we're getting ready, we're gonna
study the book of Revelation in our Sunday school. And people
talk about the Antichrist. I think it's a big, big mistake,
a big misconception, to look at Antichrist as just someone
or something that's off into the future. I think Antichrist
is here. I think that spirit is identified
in the spirit of false Christianity. And so what I'm saying in that
is when we talk about the spirit of God here, the Holy Spirit,
What I want to know, and what you need to know, is am I filled
with, am I motivated by, am I led by, guided by the Holy Spirit,
God the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of Antichrist? Now, whatever
you believe about, whatever your position is, or your eschatological
theology is, that's things to come, that's what that means.
This is what you need to be concerned with. A couple weeks ago, I had
a fellow walk into the church after the service, had a big
old bright green shirt on that said, May 21st, 2011, the day
of the Lord. Well, that's less than two weeks
away. Somebody asked me, I said, what if he's right? And I said,
well, I hope he is. But here's the thing about it. If we knew
for certain, which I don't believe we do, because the Bible says
we don't, that the Lord was coming back on that day, this is still
what you need to be concerned with, right here, what this book
says about Christ and the gospel and how God saves sinners. That's
what this issue is. Now, this will separate Christ
from Antichrist in your mind and heart if the Spirit leads,
if the Spirit empowers. So let's look at this, the death
of sin. Now, how does all this relate?
Well, look at verse 12. He says, therefore, brethren,
we are debtors, not to the flesh to live after the flesh. Now,
you know what a debtor is? A debtor is somebody who owes
something. He owes something. If you owe money or if you owe
work or whatever, you're a debtor. I used to have debtor's prisons.
A person who was in debt and couldn't pay his debt would go
to those prisons. They were in debt, they owed
a legal debt. Back in the old covenant, God made a provision
for them. You can read about it in Exodus
25, it's called the law of bond slavery. And what that meant,
back then when a person was in debt to another person, if he
couldn't pay his debt, then he had to be a servant or a slave
to that person to whom he owed the debt. And he had to work
for so much time to pay that debt. Under the law of bond slavery,
it was seven years. And at the end of that seven
years, then it was considered that his debt was paid to the
person to whom he owed the debt, and he could leave. He was set
free. The law said, you're free. You can go. You've paid your
debt. And the law of bond slavery said, if that servant, because
he loved his master, wanted to stay and serve his master, then
he could freely and willingly do so. And that's a picture of
Christ and his servants, Christ and his children. We're not legal
slaves trying to pay a debt. to God were bond slaves, willing,
loving bond slaves. And you know in Exodus 25, they
bore a hole in his ear with an awl, and what they normally did,
they didn't mention his name, they put a ring through it. When
you saw a servant with that ear board and that ring, you knew
that person was serving willingly, freely, because he loved his
master, and not because he was forced to by law. And that's
the way it is in the gospel. Now, we don't bore a hole in
your ear and put a ring through it. What we do is we preach the
gospel and the Holy Spirit gives you ears to hear, eyes to see,
and you serve the Lord out of grace and gratitude and love.
But Paul says here, as inspired by the Holy Spirit, he says we're
still debtors. Now, what kind of debtors are
we? What do we owe? Well, we owe, listen to it, we
owe no, absolutely no legal debt to God's law and justice. That
debt's been paid in full by Christ on the cross. That's what he
was doing on the cross for his people based on their sins charged
to him. He legally became responsible
and accountable for the debt That we owe the debt of sin. That's what it was. We're sinners. The wages of sin is death. We
owe a debt to God's law and justice we couldn't pay. What was Christ
doing on that cross? He paid that debt with the price,
the redemption price, the ransom price of his precious blood.
So we do not owe a debt to God's law. Listen, we don't owe the
law of God any measure of justice. Christ fulfilled it all. He drank
damnation dry. Do you understand that? You've
heard people who commit a crime, they get convicted, they go to
jail, and they serve their time, and they say they paid their
debt to society. Well, we've paid our debt to
God. Not by our works. Not by anything
of the flesh, not by anything we've done, are doing, plan to
do, promise to do, try to do. No, we paid it because Christ
died for our sins. That's his people now. That's
what you read about in Romans 6 there. When he died, I died. He did it for his people. He
said the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. So what
kind of debt do we owe God? A debt of love. That's what we
owe God. We're debtor. We owe God love.
And let me tell you something, that's not a legal debt. That's
a grace debt. And let me tell you something
else, it's a debt that'll never be paid. You'll spend eternity
loving God for what He's done for you, if you're one of His
children, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's what
He says, we're debtors, but not to the flesh. The flesh there
means the sinner. Anything that comes from me,
In salvation, if I'm saved by grace and I cannot contribute
anything of that salvation or any degree of that salvation
to myself, I can't say, well, I was saved because I, whatever
you put in there. I'm a debtor, but not to the
flesh, to live after the flesh. And living after the flesh, what
Paul's talking about there is a person who's trying to work
for their salvation. That's what living after the
flesh is. But put it in any realm, there's no way that we who are
saved by the grace of God have any excuse or reason to live
according to the flesh, the worst of the flesh or the best of the
flesh. There's no excuse to sin, and there's no legal obedience
owed. We're not debtors to the flesh. Now verse 13, he says,
for if you live after the flesh, you shall die. That's the consequence. Anybody who lives after the flesh
shall die. If you walk according to the
flesh, motivated by the flesh, which is self-righteousness,
self-love, selfishness, self-fulfillment, all of that, then you'll die.
That's the end of it. That's sin. That's what the flesh
is. It's sin. It's not just the human body.
As I told you, Christ had a human body, but he had no sin. And
so he didn't live for the fulfillment of that human body in a selfish
way. You can use this human body in
sinful ways, but the fault's not in... I can use my hand to
commit sin, but the fault's not in my hand. You cut my hand off
and I'm still a sinner. When Christ was talking about
that in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, if thy right eye offend
thee, pluck it out. He was speaking metaphorically there. You can
pluck out both eyes and you'll still have evil thoughts, evil
motives, evil desires. The flesh will still be there.
What was he saying? He was teaching that we've got
to attack sin at its source. And where is the source of sin?
The heart. It's a heart matter. And you
know the first thing you find out when you start attacking
sin as a heart matter? You know what you really learn
when you first start doing that? You find out you can't handle
it. That's right, isn't it? I can't handle it. I mean, think
about it. Think about false religion. How
they would beat their bodies Go ahead and beat your body to
death. Don't do that. But they do it. You'd see these
Catholic monks whipping themselves with these chains. Well, did
that get rid of the sin problem? Absolutely. Didn't even diminish
it. Didn't even weaken it. You can't handle it. You say,
well, I'll just go to sleep the rest of my life. You'll dream
sinful dreams, won't you? think sinful thoughts you say
today today i'm gonna i'm gonna have nothing but pure thoughts
try it the next second it'll be a problem
you cannot handle i can't handle it you can't stop it or you can
categorize it you can minimize it you can say well uh... uh... Just like the old preacher
told a fella, he said, you can look at a woman and glance at
her, but it's only sin if you look again. I mean, what a fool. You cannot
handle it. Nobody can. Sin's too big of
a problem within us to handle it. But there's one who can. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ.
He can handle it. He can handle it. So to live
after the flesh is death. And even the best of the flesh.
Now religion won't take care of the sin problem. It won't
put down the flesh. Again, the flesh here is not
my human body. It's the sin problem. It's the
heart sin. It's fallen sinful human nature
that you cannot rise above. You can't improve it. You can't
redeem it. No. You can't eat, listen, you
can reform it, but then what did Christ say about that? Well,
he told the Pharisees, when you make a convert, you turn him
into a moral, religious person, you make him twofold more the
child of hell than you are. What's the problem? Sin. So to live after the flesh you'll
die, but look here, verse 13, but if you through the Spirit,
now I believe that's the Holy Spirit, The context tells us. How do you know? Look at verse
14, for as many as are led by the Spirit of God. So if you
through the Holy Spirit, that is by means of, by empowerment
of, being filled with, led by, guided by, energized, motivated
by the Holy Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall
live. Mortify. What does mortify mean? It means put to death. If you
mortify something, you know what that means? It doesn't mean it's
weakened. You see, if you get sick and
have to lay down, you're still not mortified. If you're breathing. It doesn't mean to weaken it.
It doesn't mean to diminish it. It means dead, dead, dead. Put him to death. If you threw
the spirit now. Now you can try to do it by the
flesh. You can beat your body. You can get baptized. You can
take a bath up here. With Ajax. But it will not mortify the deeds
of the body. In fact, that is a deed of the
body. Whatever you do, You can try to mortify the deeds of the
body by the flesh. You can try to mortify sin by
the flesh, but all you do is create more problems. But if
you through the Holy Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh,
you shall live. Verse 14, for as many as are
led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. That's what
we're talking about. Remember 1 John 3 we studied,
and this manifested the children of God and the children of the
devil. Well, those who are led by the Spirit of God, motivated,
filled with, energized by the Spirit, they are the sons of
God. Now, I want that to describe me. How about you? Do you want
that to describe you? A son of God. How does one become a son of
God? Well, the Bible teaches this. You become a son of God
by electing grace. God chose his children. I'm not
going to argue with him about that. I'm not going to argue
with you about it. That's just what the Bible says, period. You can either
believe it or don't. He chose them in Christ, who
is the unique, only begotten son of God. That's why Christ
said in John chapter eight, if the Son, the Son, set you free,
you know what, you're free indeed. You're really free. It's not
just a pipe dream. You're really free if He sets
you free. How do you become a son of God? By adoption. We sold
ourselves out to Satan in Adam, born dead in trespasses and sin. That's the curse of the fall.
That's the ruination of the fall. That's why by nature we're children
of disobedience, children of the devil in that sense, by nature.
But God had already adopted his children in Christ. He adopted
them. And we become sons of God by
redemption. Somebody's got to pay the price.
We're sinners. And God's holy and just and righteous
and somebody's got to pay the price. Somebody's got to pay
that debt that I spoke of. Who did that? Christ did. What
was the price? His precious blood. We're sons of God by being justified,
being made right. We have a right and title to
acceptance with God, communion with God, to sit at his table. Like old Mephibosheth was invited
to the king's table. He wasn't invited, he was commanded
to come there, wasn't he? And he came there and he sat
and he ate at the king's table. How do we do that? By the righteousness
of Christ. We stand before God whole. And
then we become sons of God by regeneration. That's the new
birth. That's when the Holy Spirit brings
us providentially under the preaching of the gospel. You know, if somebody
had died, if you were an orphan, And somebody adopted you, but
left you where you were and never told you about it, what good
would that do you? See? But if they come and they
get you and they say, you're my son now, come into my home
now, you're in my family, that's what the Holy Spirit does in
the new birth. He goes out and gets the chosen, redeemed, justified,
adopted sons of God, children of God, and he brings them into
the family. He reads them the terms of this
sonship in the preaching of the gospel, God's grace. You weren't
worth adopting. That's what he tells you. How
would you like somebody to tell you that? You weren't worth it. You didn't earn it. You don't
deserve it. You didn't work your way into
it. The father, out of his sovereign, merciful choice, chose you, came
and got you. You're not gonna look around,
well why don't he adopt all these others? You're not gonna do that.
You're just gonna say, Abba, Father, look at it. Verse 15,
for you've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear. That's
legal fear. Now there is a fear of God that's
gracious and godly. But that's a respect, like a
child is to respect and regard and revere the father. But he
said you've not received the spirit of bondage, that legalism,
like you owe a legal debt, like you've got to earn your way in
and keep your way in by keeping on earning it, you see? That's
not the spirit of God. The spirit of God will never
lead you to think that you have to keep yourself in the family
of God by your works. That's why this notion that you
can be saved one day and lost the next is not the Spirit of
God, friend. I know that sounds hard, but
it's true. He's the Spirit of Christ. Somebody asked me, how does Christ
indwell us? And He does. He does so by His
Spirit and by His Word. That's how He does it. And he
teaches us of his grace, not only to save us, but to keep
us and preserve us and to bring us all the way home to glory.
And all based upon the fact that he is who he is, he's God and
man in one person. And he did what he did. He accomplished
redemption by the sacrifice of himself and brought in everlasting
righteousness, which can never change or diminish. So we have not received the spirit
of bondage, of legalism, and ungodly fear, but you have received
the spirit of adoption. There's that adoption. You didn't
deserve it, didn't earn it, weren't worth it, but God, in his mercy,
loved us when we were yet enemies. Would you adopt an enemy? That's
what God adopted, enemies. Enemies in our mind by wicked
works. And he says, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. We don't really
have an English translation of Abba. We really don't. But it's an intimate word. It's
not, listen now, it's not an irreverent word or an irreverent
attitude. It's not the big daddy in the
sky or anything like that. No, sir. It's more like Papa. Papa. We have a special relationship
with God through Christ. Any claim of any special relationship
with God without Christ is irreverent, ungodly. Abba, Father. And he says in verse 16, the
Spirit, the Holy Spirit, it should be Himself. The Holy Spirit's
not an it. It's a person. He beareth witness. Now that's like giving testimony
in court. That's what that bearing witness
is. In other words, this is not just a feeling. This is a testimony
of God's truth. And he bears witness with our
spirit. Now our spirit is what's regenerated,
you see. That's what, we're born again
by the Holy Spirit. Before that, we're spiritually
dead. Now we've been made spiritually
alive. We have ears to hear, eyes to
see, hearts and minds to know and understand, love and believe
God. And he bears witness with our
spirit. And what does he bear witness of? What does he testify
of through the word of God? That we are the children of God. How are we the children of God?
through Christ, the Son, by election, by adoption, by justification,
by redemption, by regeneration. And verse 17, and if children,
then heirs, heirs of God. Now, an heir is somebody who
inherits something. And you don't work for what you
inherit. Somebody else did that, and they bequeathed it to you
in the will and testament, and they die, and you get it. And
that's what happened. What we're heir to, the riches
of God's grace and glory, we didn't work for and didn't earn.
It was bequeathed to us as children of God in a will and testament
called the everlasting covenant of grace. And so that when we
preach the gospel, we preach out the terms of that everlasting
covenant. And what happens is somebody
died. Christ died. You can read about
that in Hebrews chapter nine. He died, and we get the inheritance. And therefore, we're joint heirs
with Christ in that sense. He earned it, we get it. He earned
all spiritual life, all eternal life, we get. He earned righteousness. He is my righteousness. He earned all the blessings of
grace and glory. We get it. And he says, if so
be that we suffer with him, that is suffering with him in his
death and suffering with him over the gospel which identifies
us as the children of God that we may be also glorified together. Now all that has come about because
of the death of sin. Look back at verse 13. For if
you live after the flesh, you shall die, but if you through
the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live. Now I'm gonna give you briefly
here three things, all right? And then I'm gonna come back
in the next messages and I'm gonna capitalize on each one
of them, each one of these things. And I want you to read some scripture
on your own, I want you to study. And I want you to look at these
things because they're so important now. If we're going to understand
the difference between Christ and Antichrist, am I a child
of God? Am I filled with the Spirit?
Am I led by the Spirit? When I think this way or act
this way, is it the leadership of the Holy Spirit or is it the
flesh? And here's what I want you to see. Living by and living
after the Holy Spirit is known by several things. First of all,
what is our view of God? Now that's not the three things.
I haven't gotten to that yet. I'm gonna give them to you briefly
now. But how do we view God? And then how do we view ourselves?
How do we view sin? What's your view of sin? That's
why, you know, there is sin's nature, sin's reality, the depth
of sin. How do we deal with sin? That
tells us much about whether or not we live after the flesh or
after the spirit. There's so many misconceptions, faulty views
of sin. That's why I've told you several
times, you know, I hear preachers talking about sin as if it's
some kind of an object. Like, I can pick it up here and
put it over here. I heard a preacher saying a message
the other day. He said, he said, sin and righteousness cannot
exist in the same place because two objects cannot occupy the
same space. And I thought, are you crazy?
Sin and righteousness are not about objects occupying a space.
It's not about geometry. It's not about geography. Read the Bible. What does the
Bible call sin? You know, the most common word
in the New Testament for sin means this, it means missing
the mark. What is that mark? The mark is perfect holiness. Isn't it? That's the mark. We
find that in Christ. We as believers, we're aiming
toward a mark, a goal, to be like Christ. And I'm talking
about in our character and in our conduct and our thoughts
and our actions. Now, now, have you attained that
yet? Have you made that yet? Have
you made that mark yet? Can you get up tonight or tomorrow
morning and say, I've hit the mark? Now if you can't, you know
what the Bible calls that? Sin. Now let me ask you, in light
of that definition of sin, are you a continual sinner? I am. Do you live in sin? I do. Paul spoke of that. Look back
at Romans 7 and verse 14. He said, for we know that the
law is spiritual. It means it reaches the inner
man, it reaches to the heart. It's not something I can pick
up here and put over there. It's not something I can get
up in the morning and leave in the bed as I leave. It's not
something I can take off and put on. It's in my heart. And he says, but I'm carnal.
That's fleshly, sold under sin. I'm a slave to it. What's he
talking about? He's talking about how he exists
even as a sinner saved by grace. In Christ, I have no sin, but
in myself, I'm a sinner. And I can't get away from it
and can't deal with it. How do we deal with sin? We'll
view the only right views and ways of viewing sin and dealing
with sin from the scripture. Let me give you these three things.
There's three, and this thing of mortification of sin, the
death of sin, there's three ways in scripture that I see that
sin is mortified. The first way is this, and here's
the ground and foundation of it all. Here's the heart of the
gospel message now in this first way of dealing with sin. That
is, mortifying it, putting it to death, viewing it as a past,
finished act. accomplished for me in and by
Christ. It's a past-finished act. In
other words, it's dead. It's not dying. It's not struggling
for life. It's not diminishing or weakening.
I mean, it's dead. How do you view it that way?
In Christ. Now let me show you that. Look
over at Romans 6. This is what Joe read earlier. Verse 3, well look at verse 1,
he says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound? Now what he's talking about continuing
in sin is, listen, we are continual sinners because we constantly
miss the mark. But what he's talking about here
is do we excuse sin? Do we promote sin? Do we make
excuses for it? Listen, I mentioned this in a
Sunday school class talking to somebody last week, how grace
covers all sin, past sin, present sin, future sin, all sin. How
is it covered? By the blood of Christ. God is
faithful and just to forgive us of our sins by the blood of
Christ. But grace will excuse no sin. It will promote no sin. So what
Paul's talking about is people who would say, well, since I'm
saved by grace, and my works don't save me and don't contribute
to my salvation, well, I'll just go out and live like the devil,
or I'll just go out and live and sin as much as I want to.
I think it was Brother Walter Groover who said, told somebody
who accused him, he said, well, I sin more than I want to. That's
our problem. That's what Paul's dealing with.
But look here, he says, verse two, God forbid, how shall we
that are dead to sin, Same root word as mortify. We're dead to
sin, live any longer than... Now how am I dead to sin? I know
I'm not dead to sinful thoughts. Now be honest here. That's what
it means, you know, when David said, blessed is the man to whom
the Lord imputeth not iniquity, in whom there is no guile. That
means that's an honest person. That's a person's convicted by
the spirit to be honest before God and before men. Be honest.
Do you still have sinful thoughts? Do you still have sinful thoughts?
Well, if you do, you can't say you're dead to sin in that way. Do you have sinful desires? Sinful
motives? Do you ever have a sinful reaction
to a problem? You're all not nodding, but I
know you are in your heart. I can tell. See, we're not dead to sin's
influence. I had somebody say, well, you
know, when they talk about this thing about the division of people,
I don't know about all that, I don't care. But, you know,
somebody says, well, I've got something in me that cannot sin
and cannot be contaminated. The word of God doesn't teach
that. Your thoughts, your best thoughts.
You came here this morning to worship God. Have you had any
sinful thoughts since then? Some contaminated you. Best intentions. We're not dead to sin now. How
are we dead to sin in that sense? How is sin mortified? Look at
verse three. Know you not that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ. Now baptized there doesn't mean
water baptism. It means placed into, in union
with Christ. We were placed into Jesus Christ,
when? Before the foundation of the
world, when God chose us in Christ. We were placed into Christ at
the cross when Christ died for our sins and put Him away, that's
what Scripture says, He put Him away by the sacrifice of Himself,
behold the Lamb of God which beareth away, taketh away the
sins of the world. He took them away, put them away.
We were baptized into Jesus Christ. We're baptized into his death. He died. He paid the penalty. He drank damnation dry. Daniel
9, 24, he made an end of sin. Sin can no longer condemn us.
It's mortified in that way. It's put to death. Sin's finished. The death of sin in Christ by
the blood of Christ. It can't touch me as far as my
standing before God, because I'm righteous in God's sight
through the Lord Jesus Christ. My sins, we sing it. You know,
I had a person argue with me on that, on this very point.
He argued against it. And yet he'll stand up and sing,
Did you hear what Jesus said to me? They're all taken away. Do we believe that? They're all
taken? That means they're mortified. In Him, He was manifested, we
read in 1 John 3, to take away our sins, to bear them away.
How did He do it? By His death on the cross. By
establishing the only righteousness whereby God could be just and
justify the ungodly, the imputed righteousness of Christ. On the
law books, on my ledger, there's no sin. It's wiped clean by the
blood of the Son of God. Look at it, verse four. Therefore
we're buried with him by baptism in the dead. He was my representative
and substitute. When he died, I died. When he
was buried, I was buried. That like as Christ was raised
up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life. We walk in a state of justification
before God. We're sinners, but we're sinners
saved by grace. Who shall lay anything to my
charge? God justified me. How did he
do so? Who can condemn me? Christ died. Yea, rather, he's risen again.
Verse five, for if we've been planted together in the likeness
of his death, planted together with him, we shall also be also
in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man
is crucified with him. What is that old man? That's
what we were in Adam. condemned in Adam, according
to the covenant of works, we've been justified. That old man's
dead. That's not an old nature in me. Crucified means dead there. It doesn't mean dying. If that
means the old nature, then you haven't been crucified and I
haven't either. Because it's still alive. I heard a fellow
explain it this way, like it's like carrying a dead body around.
Well, I'm going to tell you something. That dead body has a lot of influence
over you and over me, doesn't it? Let me tell you something, in
ourselves, sin is alive and well. Hey, if it wasn't, we wouldn't
have any problems. There wouldn't be any divisions. There wouldn't
be any self-promotions. We'd be in glory. So he says
that old man is crucified with him, with Christ, when Christ
died. He died. That the body of sin
might be destroyed. That's the whole body of sin
will be destroyed. That henceforth we should not
serve sin, verse 7, for he that is dead is freed. That word freed
there is justified from sin. Now I'm going to come back to
that one. Here's the second thing. Let me give it to you real quickly.
Now this is, and this second thing is what Paul was talking
about in Romans 8. Look back at Romans 8, 13. If
you live after the flesh, you shall die, but if you through
the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live.
Here's the second way sin is mortified for a believer. It is a past and present finished
experience accomplished within us by the Holy Spirit. It's repentance. How do you mortify the deeds
of the body? I'll tell you how. And I'm gonna
give you some scripture on this later on. You look to Christ
and to him alone and repent of your dead works and idolatry. You stop trying to save yourself
by your works because you know what you see in that? Death. But you look to Christ. You believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ and you repent of your sins. A good
example of that, and I'm going to turn to this later on, but
you read it, is Philippians 3. Paul said, all those things that
I used to think gave me life, I'm going to mortify them. I'm
going to nail them to the cross of Christ. They're dead. They're
death. They're nothing but dung. He
repented of his death. That's what Paul's talking about
in Romans 8, 13. Mortifying the deeds of the body. If you think
that your baptism will give you life, your baptism in water,
put that to death. Mortify that. That won't give
you, what you'll do, you'll say in your heart, in your mind,
affects, and all that is is death. That's death. I know now that
it cannot give me life, it cannot keep me alive. It's dead. That's all it is. If you think
that your walk or your obedience can give you life, put that on
the cross. Mortify it. Put it to death.
Repent of it. That's what he's talking about.
That's the second one. And here's the third way. You can read about
this in Romans 6, beginning there, verse 12, or Galatians 5. It's
a present, ongoing experience in the warfare of the flesh and
the spirit as a future goal. I cannot kill sin within myself. I cannot put them to death. But
by the power of the Spirit of God, I can fight them. And it's
a daily fight. It's the warfare of the flesh
and the spirit. And my goal is that sin totally be put to death
within me. That's my goal. And I recognize it's not being
weakened, it's not being diminished, it's alive and well, but my goal
is to put it to death by the power of God's grace in Christ.
And just like one fella said, true Christianity, being a Christian,
is not a playground. It's a battleground. And it's
a battleground every day. It never stops. And we'll deal
more with that later on, all right.