Let us turn again to that portion
of scripture that we read in the epistle of Paul to the Romans,
chapter 8, and reading again verses 7, 8, and 9. Romans 8, 7, 8, and 9, Because
the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to
the Lord of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are
in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. And if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, he is none of his. Here in verse 7 we read of the
carnal mind or as the margin says the minding of the flesh. And in many ways that mind of
the flesh that fleshly or carnal mind should be recognized as
the noblest part of man. It has reference really to that
that distinguishes man from brute creation. It refers to the understanding. The Swami says, Be ye not as
a horse or mule that hath no understanding, whose mouth must
be held in by bits and bridle. We are told quite clearly there
in the creation of man how that God made him a living soul. The Lord God formed the man of
the earth and that was his body and then he breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul. But as we come this morning to
consider these verses that I've just read for our text, I want
us to consider what is said here with regards to man's status
as a sinner. Because certainly that is what
is being described in verses 7 and 8. Because the carnal mind,
the fleshly mind, the mining of the flesh, is enmity against
God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be. So then they that are in the
flesh, that is those who are but natural men and women, cannot
please God. And so I want us to consider
some three things. First of all, to say something
with regards to man's status or his condition as a sinner,
and then secondly, the cause of that condition, and then thirdly,
to say something with regards to the cure that God has provided
for this particular creature. Firstly then, man's condition. The man is evidently a creature. Again, the psalmist acknowledges
that in the 100th Psalm. It is thou that has made us,
not we ourselves. And when it comes to the account
of creation, you are familiar with what we read in the opening
chapter of Holy Scripture. Oh, that God was pleased to make
all things out of nothing in six days. It was a certain progression. But God's work was that that
was brought into being simply by His fiat. He spoke. He spoke and it was done. God
said let there be light, and there was light. God says let
the dry land appear, the dry land appears. But then when we
come to the sixth day, after all that work of creation has
been completed, and now God will create man, He doesn't just speak
man into existence as with every other part of his creation. But
there is that council of the persons in the Godhead, that
council of the Trinity recorded in Genesis 1.26. Let us make man, says God, in
our image, after our likeness. And as I've said, Then we have
the detail in the second chapter of the way in which God goes
about the creation of man. The Lord God forms his body out
of the dust of the earth and breathes into his nostrils the
breath of life and he becomes a living soul. We're all creatures
and as creatures we are those who are ever dependent on our
Creator. He holds our very breath in his
hand. He is the one who has given us
birth. He is the one who preserves us
in life. The God in whom we live and move
and have our being. And what would we be and where
would we be without his continual providential sustaining of us? Man's condition and man's status,
he is a creature. But what we see here is that
this creature has become corrupted. He is a sinful creature. He is one that has rebelled against
God, turned from God, and disobeyed the commandments of God. Remember the language of the
preacher in Ecclesiastes? Lo, he says, or behold, This
only have I found that God made man upright, but they have sought
out many inventions." Or why, in the very act of creation,
man is created as a creature to stand erect and upright. A man, as it were, in tune with
the heavens, in tune with his gods. But our man has fallen. They've sought out many inventions. And there's a word that we find
again in the book of Psalms in Psalm 49 and verse 12. Man being in honor abideth not,
it says. And some of the commentators
reckon that what is being said there is that when man was made,
when man was created in honor in the image of God, he couldn't
abide even one day in that pristine condition. Because the word to
abide literally means to lodge, to pass a night. And so literally
what he said there in that 49th Psalm is that man being in honour
did not pass a night. The commentators then say that
it would appear that Adam and Eve fell upon that very first
day of creation. before ever the day had passed,
how soon man transgressed and fell, what a corrupt creature
man is. And we have of course that awful
account of the fall of our parents, our first parents there in Genesis
chapter 3. And what is man's condition now
with regards to his natural minds, his fleshly minds? The carnal
mind is enmity against God. It is not subject to the law
of God. Neither, indeed, can be. Man's understanding, that noble
part of man, that part wherein we can begin to discern the seat
of God's image in man, the understanding. Paul speaks of those Gentiles
having the understanding darkened, he says. alienated from the life
of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the
blindness, or the margin says, the hardness of their hearts. Well, this is what we have here
then. We see man's sad condition. This carnal mind in man, it is
not subject to the law of God. Now, the word law here we can
understand in a general sense. Often the word law is used, as
you know, in reference not specifically to the Lord of Moses, the Lord
of the Ten Commandments, sometimes the whole of Scripture, the whole
of the Word of God is referred to as the Lord of God. We certainly
see the word used as a synonym with other words in the 119th
Psalm, God's law, God's statutes, God's judgments, God's words. And we can understand the word
as we have it here in our text in that sense. Man is not subject
to the words of God. If we go back here to the first
chapter, And there in verse 28, where we have this description
of the terrible sins that men are guilty of, and it says there,
even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which
are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication,
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate,
deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful,
proud, disrespectful, catalogue of the sins of men. And it all
flows from this, they did not like to retain God in their knowledge. This is the mind of Manus. He doesn't retain God in his
knowledge, he doesn't have any regard for God's words. He rejects the word of God. He
despises the scriptures of truth. What do we have here in Holy
Scripture? The Bible of course is a revelation
of God. Well, this is the law of God.
This is the words of God and how ultimately God has come and
revealed Himself in the person of His only begotten Son. Oh
yes, God speaks in the Old Testament. Remember the opening verses of
Hebrews, God who at sundry times in diverse manners spake in time
passed unto the fathers by the prophets. as in these last days,
spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all
things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness
of his glory, and the express image of his person." Who is
the image of the invisible God? He is that one who has revealed
God. This is the real man, the true
man. This is that that all that man
should have been but man now in that state of rebellion against
God the scriptures then give us this revelation of God in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and when we consider the
Word of God when we consider the record that we have of the
life of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see that this is just how
man ought to have lived his life. Man was made in God's image.
He was created after God's likeness. All should have lived that sort
of life, that life of ready, willing obedience to the commandments
of God that was lived by the Lord Jesus Christ. When we come
to the Word of God, when we read the Word of God, It's like a
mirror. As we look into the Word of God
we should see a reflection of ourselves. All that we should
be. Remember how James takes up that
particular image in the opening chapter of his epistle. What does he say there in chapter 1 verse 23? If any be a hearer of the word,
and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face
in a glass. For he beholdeth himself, and
goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man
he was. Why, when we look into the Word
of God, what do we see? We see how that image has been
defaced, and that image is so spoiled, because of sin because
of the fall of our first parents but also because of the sort
of lives that we live as individuals, our personal lives and we're
not the people that we should be because we have this carnal
mind, this fleshly mind that is not subject to God's law,
not subject to God's Word that rebounds against the Word of
God and rejects the Word of God. What do we see when we come to
the mirror of God's Word? We only discover this awful truth
that we are those who are sinners. We've sinned against God. All
have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We read back
in chapter 3. And now, this is what David is
brought to acknowledge the awful truth of his sinnership. Behold,
I was shapen in iniquity, Christ, and in sin did my mother conceive
me. Even from the birth he confesses
the sad truth of his sinnership. Our sin has come down the generations. Adam sinned the head of the race
that great representative head we all sinned in him and from
him we all partake of a fallen nature and now that death that
is the consequence of sin reaches to every part oh there's no exception
all that man is even the noble part of man as we see here The soul, the seat of all that
should be good and noble in man, is despoiled because of sin. Again, the language of the Apostle
there in the second chapter of Ephesians. He says, wherein in
time past ye walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
that now worketh in the children of disobedience among whom also
we all had our conversation in times past in the lust of our
flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind
and were by nature the children of wrath even as others children
of disobedience children of wrath well soon that sin becomes ever
more manifest. We only read a little way into
Holy Scripture. We only have to come through
to the sixth chapter of Genesis. In that antediluvian world, that
wicked world that got destroyed by a universal flood and God
saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart. There it is you see,
all that man is, every imagination of the thoughts of his heart
was only evil continually. That heart of man, the soul of
man, deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Here is man's condition then,
before God. Or what is man's status? The
carnal mind. His enmity against God. for it
is not subject to the law of God. Neither indeed can be, so
then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Two things
that we have to observe in particular with regards to this condition.
First of all, it speaks quite specifically of enmity. It doesn't
say the carnal mind is an enemy, I like the comment of William
Parks in his little book on the five points of Calvinism. And
he's dealing with the matter of man's condition, total depravity.
And here he says, an enemy may be reconciled, but enmity cannot. A vicious man may become virtuous,
but vice cannot. All man, you see, in his Natural
condition is enmity personified. And that's why there must be
a new birth. That that is born of the flesh
is flesh. That that is born of the spirit
is spirit. That sinful part of man, it's
enmity. It will always be that. And of
course when the sinner is born again, the believer, discovers
then that he has a new nature but also an old nature, and there's
a conflict. The good that I would, I do not. The evil that I would
not, that I do, cries out Paul. O wretched man that I am! You
shall deliver me from the body of this death. What is the condition
then of man's fleshly mind or this noble part of man? It's
enmity. But then also here we see that
as man in his natural condition is enmity against God, so also
we see his impotence. He can do nothing to change himself,
he can do nothing to please God. This mind in man, this understanding
is enmity, it says, against God, and it is not subject
to the Lord of God. Neither indeed can be, it says. Neither indeed. Observe the strength
of the language that Paul is using here at the end of the
seventh verse. He doesn't just say neither can
be, but he introduces this word indeed. It's an impossibility.
Here is man's condition, and he is impotent. Oh, it's a helpless
state that man is in. Hopeless, really. The natural
man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, they are
foolishness to him. Neither can he know them, because
they are spiritually discerned. And this is what we have to come
to. We have to come to this recognition, this understanding that we're
impotent and we cannot help ourselves to be brought to the end of ourselves
and to see then that if there is any salvation it must all
together come from God. It's all together by the grace
of God. Well, this is how God teaches
his children. We have to believe Really, in
our native unbelief, we're unbelievers. What was the sin of Adam and
Eve, the root of all their sin, of all our sin? Unbelief, that's
what we are. We're unbelievers. And faith
is an impossibility, but for the grace of God. Oh, we're so
undone. The Hymn writer says that we're
unholy, needs no proof. We sorely feel the fall. Oh, are we those who do that?
We feel it. You see, here we can understand
the word law. I said we can understand it in
a general sense, yes, but we can also understand it in that
particular sense. When God is pleased to take that
commandment, that holy law, and to apply it to us. The carnal
mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of
God. All we know, that what things
whoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law,
that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty
before God. That's what Paul says previously,
there in chapter 3 at verse 19. That Lord of God, when it applies,
it stops men's mouths. What can they say? What can they
plead? By the law, man is brought to
that understanding of his condition. The law worketh wrath, or the
law condemns the man. He has now no hope at all in
himself. Yet this is the way in which
God works. To bring the sinner to himself,
the sinner must be brought to see what he is, to feel what
he is. To see sin smart but slightly, to only live confession is easier
still, but all to feel cuts deep beyond expression, to feel what
we are. And yet we're told that God has
concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon
all. Oh, when God concludes us into that that we are and makes
us feel what we are, then there's a blessed hope. Oh, there's a grace, a glorious
hope then. Before faith came, Paul says
we were kept under the law. Shut up to the faith which would
afterward be revealed. Oh, man's condition then as a
sinner. This is his status, this is his
standing. Now, what is the cause? What
is the cause of all of this? I want to say something more
with regards to the beginnings, the creation of man, the fall
of man. Remember what God says to Adam
there in Genesis chapter 2 concerning the tree? of the knowledge of
good and evil that is in the midst of the garden, of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.
For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die,
says God. Or as the margin says, in the
day that thou eatest thereof, dying, thou shalt die. And it's interpreted in the text
in our authorized version as declaring the certainty of death. thou shalt surely die. But there's
that sense in which he is dying, but he's not altogether dead. He is spiritually dead as soon
as he partakes of the forbidden fruit. Death is instant. But Adam doesn't die physically. immediately. He lives, as we
see, many hundreds of years after he had fallen. If he fell on
the very first day, why all the days that he lived upon the earth?
He lived as one who was dead in trespasses and in sins, dying,
and then he would die physically, and if If God makes no provision
of salvation there will subsequently be an eternal death, an eternal
separation. Now that's the language that
we have there in Genesis chapter 2 concerning that tree that God
had set in the garden, in the midst of the garden, the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. What is God doing when
he says that man is not to eat of that tree. If he eats, he
will die. The man is on probation. The
man is on probation. Now we see that from what Paul
says later here. There is a blessing that comes
when there is obedience. Look at the language in chapter
10. In verse 5, Moses describeth the
righteousness which is of the law, that the man which doeth
those things shall live by them." Here is the Lord of Gods, when
man is on probation, it centers upon that tree. If you disobey,
you'll die. If you obey, you'll live. The
man that doeth them, says the law, shall live in them. all man is on probation there
and what happened of course was that man didn't stand he fell
he didn't obey he clearly disobeyed the command of God and as I said
spiritual death was the consequence and see how the apostle brings
that out here in chapter 5 at verse 15 following. He speaks
there of the first man, he's speaking of Adam, and look at
the language that we have in those verses. Chapter 5 verse
15, Through the offense of one, many be dead. Verse 16, The judgment
was by one, that is Adam, to condemnation. Verse 17, by one
man's offence death reigns by one. Verse 18, by the offence
of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation. And then verse 19, by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners. Read those verses in chapter
5, 15 through to 19. Here is Adam and he stands at
the very head of the rice as Paul says there in verse 12, as by one man's
sin entered into the world. It was
by Adam that sin entered into the world. As in Adam, all die,
he says, writing in 1 Corinthians 15. And then we have that awful
catalogue that I just referred to in those verses from verse
15 through to verse 19. All this fall of Adam, this is
the cause of man's sad condition. This is the reason for what we
have in our text this morning. This is why the fleshly mind,
the natural mind, the mind that is spoken of here as the carnal
mind is enmity against God because of all that transpired there
in the Garden of Eden those many thousands of years ago All sin has entered, O thou hideous
monster sin! What a curse hast thou brought
in! All creation grows through thee,
pregnant cause of misery." And we saw it in the reading concerning
not just man but the whole of creation. Verse 20 it says the creature
was made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of him
who have subjected the same in hope because the creature itself
also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into
the glorious liberty of the children of God for we know that the whole
creation grown and travaileth in pain together until now and
not only they but ourselves also which have the first fruits of
the Spirit even we ourselves grow within ourselves waiting
for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body and what we see there
is that God has provided the cure to all of this awful condition
That is the great theme really that runs throughout this epistle,
is it not? It's a gospel book, is Romans. As we've seen before from the
very opening verses, Paul is defining what the gospel is.
And it is the gospel of the grace of God, it's a provision that
God has made. That way of salvation, that way
of redemption. Consider the words that John
the Baptist speaks as that one who comes to prepare the way
for the appearance of Christ who is the Saviour of sinners.
All we know, neither is there salvation in any other. There
is none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby we
must be saved. But remember how John's ministry
is spoken of in prophecy back in the 40th chapter of Isaiah
we read of the preaching of the Baptist verse 6 a voice said
cry and he said what shall I cry all flesh is grass and all the
goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field the grass
withereth the flower fadeth because the Spirit of the Lord bloweth
upon him. Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the
flower fadeth, but the Word of our God shall stand forever. This is the ministry of John,
the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness. Prepare ye
the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our
God. And thou is that preparation
made, while the voice cries out and declares what man is by nature. So what we've said this morning
concerning man's condition and his corrupt condition, his sinful
condition as a fallen creature, and when the Lord is pleased
to show us that and make us to feel that, that is the way in
which the Lord prepares is people for that great salvation we have
to know the reality of our fallen states our utter inability these
things have to be brought home into the heart of the sinner as Moses says in Psalm 90 the
prayer of Moses the man of God thou turnest man to destruction God hasn't turned man to destruction
in the sense that God is the author of sin. No, the prophet
says thou hast destroyed thyself. What does Moses mean when he
says thou turnest man to destruction? What it follows, and sayest return
ye children of men. What Moses is saying is that
God makes a man understand and feel what he is. and then salvation comes. Paul
knew it. I know that in me that is in
my flesh dwelleth no good thing. He knew that. Who shall deliver
me from the body of this death was his great crime. And where
did that salvation come? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord, he says. Here is the cure. It's all together
in the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is the work of the Holy
Spirit, the work of Him who is referred to here as the Spirit
of God and the Spirit of Christ, who makes Christ so blessed and
so real. He says in verse 8, So then they
that are in the flesh cannot please God, but What a word! Oh, what a word is that at the
head of verse 9! But, ye are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. The Spirit of God, the Spirit
of Christ, oh, Christ is God. And do you sense the Spirit as
we see there in the Apostle Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost.
It is the Lord Jesus who has shed abroad the Holy Spirit.
Now what does He come to accomplish? The great work of regeneration,
the new birth. Ye must be born again. There
must be a new nature. Man is a fallen creature but
there must be the restoration of man. In Colossians 3 and verse
10 we read of the new man which is renewed in knowledge after
the image of him that created him. For here is man in our text
you see the carnal mind, the mind of the flesh enmity against
God, that noble part of man so despoiled and ruined by the fall. Ah, but the new man is renewed
in knowledge, renewed in knowledge. after the image of Him that created
Him. There's a restoration of that image. The new man which
after God is created in righteousness and through holiness, we read
in Ephesians 4.24. It's that image of God restored
now by the work of the Spirit as He comes to make real the
work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, if any man be in Christ
is a new creation, a new creature. All things are passed away. All
things are become new. All the man is brought now to
look to Christ and to see all his salvation there in Christ. What does it say at the opening
of this very chapter? There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. who walk not after the flesh
but after the Spirit. Here is the cure. As the sin comes with the first
Adam, so the cure comes with him who is referred to in 1 Corinthians
15 as the last Adam, the Lord from heaven. Oh God grant that
we might be those then who are found looking unto the Lord Jesus,
the author, the finisher of faith, to be those whose trust is only
in Him, brought all together to the end of ourselves, made
to feel the impotency and the enmity of our natural hearts,
born by the Spirit of God, looking unto the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting
in Him, as all our salvation, as all our desire, because the
carnal mind is enmity against God. For it is not subject to
the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are
in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit. If so, be that the Spirit of
God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit
of Christ, He is none of His. The Lord be pleased to bless
this word to us.