Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. Title of the
message is very obvious. No condemnation. Paul from the very first chapter
has been headed to this point. No condemnation. At the end of chapter 7, Paul
spoke of the struggle of the two natures that every believer
has. Now he tells us, in chapter 8
here, that the new life that we have in Christ is lived
out in the power of the Holy Spirit. He says, those that walk not
after the flesh, but after the Spirit. You see, it's a capital
S. He's speaking there of the Holy Spirit of God. And this is good news to everyone
who knows this struggle within. This is good news to know that
we are guided, led, controlled by the power of the Spirit of
God as we walk through this life. And the evidence that God has
saved us is the walk that we walk as we pass through this
life. Now, seeing that we are justified
and sanctified by our union to the Lord Jesus Christ, and Paul
has told us that we are dead to the reigning power of that
sinful nature, and that we are dead to the condemning power
of the law, we are dead to the law through the death of Christ,
that we are now made alive unto God through Jesus Christ. We're
risen in Christ to walk in newness of life. And that is our walk.
It's a new life. It's a new life. It's the life
of God in the soul. We're not walking by ourselves
anymore. We used to walk in the flesh, in darkness. But now we walk in the light.
We walk in the spirit of God. He indwells us. He guides us. And because of the Lord Jesus
Christ and what He has done, there is no condemnation. There is none. Therefore, Paul
draws this conclusion of what he has said since chapter 1. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit, Paul, in all that he has said, comes to
this conclusion. No condemnation to them who are
in Christ. We were condemnable. Every child
of God here knows that you were condemnable. I was condemnable.
Because by nature, we were children of wrath, even as others. That's what it tells us in Ephesians
2. You take the most outwardly wicked person that we have seen
in our lifetime. We have the same nature that
person has. We have the same nature. We know
that. And we know this, there's enough
sin in us now to condemn us. There's enough sin to condemn
us now. If it were not for the truth,
that Jesus Christ died for our sins and put them all away and
satisfied God's law, we'd still be in trouble. We'd be in trouble. But our Lord died for our sins,
put them away, all of them, before I was ever born and before you
were ever born. Isn't that good news? That's
good news. All our sins were dealt with
and put away in Christ and Him crucified, all of them. Sins
I've not even committed yet have been put away. Now, what Paul
does here also in this first verse, he gives the character
of them that are in Christ Jesus, them that are justified by faith. them that are sanctified in the
Lord Jesus Christ. This is their character. "...who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit." Paul does not base no condemnation on the
believer's conduct. That's not what he's doing. He
bases no condemnation on the believer's position in Christ. That's why there's no condemnation.
It's my position in Christ. Our position in Christ has liberated
us from the compelling power of sin that's still in us. The
indwelling of the Spirit of God enables us, now listen, He enables
us to walk after the Spirit and mortify the deeds of the flesh. Sin, as Paul had already previously
stated, shall not have dominion over you. The life of God that's
in you, that new man that's born of God, overcomes the power of
sin. It overcomes the power of that
old sin nature. He says in verse 2, for the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death." This is not a particularly easy verse
to interpret. Some say here the law of the
Spirit is the gospel, and it is. It can be stated that way.
The law of the gospel has made me free from the law of sin and
death. The liberty that I have in Christ, or the law of that
covenant of grace, that I have in Jesus Christ has made me free
from the law of sin and death. But Charles Hodges said this,
"...the power of the life-giving Spirit has delivered us from
the dominion of the law of sin and death in our members." The
power of that life that's in you. has set us free from the
power of the law of sin and death that's in our members. The power
of that life which we have in Christ has delivered us from
the power of sin which leads to death. The life, it's like this. Let
me see if I can make this, not muddy this up, make it clear.
When you turn a light on in a dark room, you go in a dark room,
I mean pitch dark, when you turn the light on, what happens? The
light overpowers the darkness. It overpowers that darkness.
And darkness has to give way, doesn't it? Darkness does not
overpower light. Light overpowers darkness. When
you turn the light on, darkness is gone. That life that we have
in Christ overpowers that death that we have through sin. It
overpowers it. That's what enables us to walk
in the Spirit, the life that we have in Christ. For the law of the Spirit, a
law is what? A law is something that has force.
It has force to it. In other words, the force of
the Spirit of life that's in you overcomes the force of sin
and death that's in you, in this body of flesh. And when it says
this body of flesh through here, it's not talking about skin and
bones, it's talking about that nature we're born with. Verse 3, "...for what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, or
for a sin offering, that's what that means. He sent Him here
as a sin offering. And as a sin offering, God condemned
sin in the flesh, in the body of Jesus Christ. He condemned
that body of sin and death. Now what could the law not do? For what the law could not do,
which Paul didn't know this until God saved him, and no one knows
this and understands this until God has saved you. I didn't know
it, you didn't know it. The law cannot justify a guilty
person. It can't do it. It can't do it
and be a just law. He can't do it. He cannot justify
a guilty person. That's why Jesus Christ was made
to be sin for us. In Proverbs, it calls it an abomination. I'm going to paraphrase. It's
an abomination to condemn the innocent and set the guilty free.
So what has to happen? For the law to be satisfied,
the guilty man has to suffer the penalty. That's why God made
Christ to be sin. He became guilty in our place.
And when the law took its justice out on Him, it took it out on
me. Only God can do that. Only God can do that. The law
cannot justify a guilty sinner. The law could not make a guilty
sinner innocent. You know, let's say I've stolen
some property. Well, the law can't make me innocent.
Now I'm guilty. It's like once you shoot a bullet
out of a gun, it's gone. You can't bring it back. It ain't
coming back. I cannot undo what I do. I cannot
unsay what I say. And the law cannot make me innocent
if I'm guilty. And then the law cannot give
spiritual life. It cannot make me a partaker
of the divine nature. It can't do that. I tell you
what, the law cannot enable me to love God. The law cannot enable
me to love my neighbor as myself. It can command me to, but it
can't enable me to. So that's what Paul is saying.
What the law could not do, God did. In the person of his son, God
accomplished what the law could not accomplish. And the reason the law could
not do this is because of the sinfulness of the flesh. He couldn't
do it. As Paul said in one place, the
law that was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. Why? Because of my flesh, my sinful
nature. What the law could not do, God
Almighty did. And here's how He did it. God sending His own Son, God
in the person of His Son, the second person in the Trinity,
God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. We know He was without sin, but
He came into this world and became a very, very real man. He had
a very real body. He was a man in every way, in
every way, except He knew no sin. He came in the likeness
of sinful flesh, And for sin, that's why he came, take care
of this sin issue that you and I have. This sin issue that has
separated us from God. He came to take care of this
matter. He came to remove sin that you and I might be able
to come into God's presence, holy and blameless and unreprovable
in his sight. all of my sins and all that I
am, Christ came into this world to take care of that problem
and remove it out of the way. So that God could be a just God,
He could be a just God and a Savior. The Scripture says He's a just
God and a Savior, and it is in that order. He is a just God
first, and then He's a Savior. Jesus Christ is the answer to
our sin problem. Every problem we have, every
problem that we see in this world, in the human race, every problem
is sin. That's the root of it. It's sin.
People can lay it off on this and that, whatever. It's sin.
It's what we are. And Jesus Christ is the answer
to our sin problem. God sent His Son into the world
to put away our sins, the sins of His elect, which are just
sinners, nothing but sinners, ungodly sinners, chosen by Him
before the world began. And He did it by the sacrifice
of Himself. We read that, or Doug read that
in Luke back in the study. He read of the crucifixion of
Christ. That's not an example hanging
there, that's God Almighty in flesh, in human flesh hanging
there, putting away sin. My sin, your sin. If we believe on Him, it's evident
He put away our sin. Because, listen, if God were
not satisfied toward me, He could never call me effectually by
His grace. There's got to be satisfaction
first to God's law before He could ever bring me to Himself. God did what no one else or nothing
else could do. He sent His Son into this world.
Jesus Christ did not come into this world to just be a messenger,
although He is the messenger of the covenant. He came to be
a sacrifice. He came to die. He's the only
person, Jesus Christ is the only person who came into this world
for the sole purpose of dying. You and I, we do everything we
can not to die, don't we? People spend every dime they
got not to die. I mean, all the medication we're
doing, everything we're doing is trying to live another day.
He came to die. His purpose was to come. For
this hour, he said, I came. I came to die. I came to sacrifice
myself. This is why I came. Christ in the flesh took our
condemnation on Himself. Now listen, condemnation is a
very real thing. Those who believe not are under
condemnation. They are condemned already. It's
not waiting until I die to see what's going to happen. If I'm not in Christ, if I do
not believe on Christ, and I do not love Christ, right now, right
now, I'd be under condemnation. I'd be on death row. This world,
this unbelieving world is on death row. They're just waiting
on execution day. And they don't even know it.
They don't know it. Execution day is coming. Our
execution day, Every believer here. Our execution day happened
2,000 years ago. And actually, if you want to
go back into eternity, Christ is the Lamb of God slain before
the foundation of the world. As far as God's concerned, before
He created the world, this was already taken care of. This was
done. But in time, Christ had to come
and perform the work, and cry out, it's finished, and you and
I experience it. We could not be justified until
this matter of sin is dealt with and taken out of the way. And
the evidence of our justification, the evidence of it, the evidence
of our sanctification is by our walk. That's what Paul is going
to say here, teach us here, is by our walk. In verse 4, that
the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who
walk Not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. God not only
sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that He might
condemn sin in the same nature that committed it, but that He
might fulfill the law, and that the law might be fulfilled in
us. You know the law is fulfilled in us as we are in Christ? He's the head and are we not
the body? When He kept the law, I kept the law, you kept the
law. As He is, so are we in this world. Is He holy? So are we in this world. Is He
accepted of God, God the Father? Yes, or so are we, even in this
world. And the law of God is fulfilled
in us through the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, our Lord fulfilled
the law in two ways. He filled it, first of all, by
keeping His demands in His life. You know, he loved his mother
and father, earthly speaking, Joseph and Mary. He loved them.
He looked after them. He cared for them. He loved his
Father, God Almighty. He loved Him with all his heart
as a man. As a man, he loved God with all
his heart, and he loved his neighbor as himself. He stood there and wept over
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How often would I have gathered
you together as a hen to gather her brood, but you would not.
He wept over Jerusalem. And when that young man walked
away, he walked away sorrowful because he's very rich. The Lord
told him to sell all that he had and go give to the poor. And
it says the Lord loved him. As a man, listen now, as a man,
he loved his neighbor as himself. He did. He did. He fulfilled the law. He kept
the law. And then secondly, He fulfilled the law by dying. By
dying the death it required of the sinner. You see, He kept
all the precepts of the law in His heart. I mean, He kept it
inwardly and outwardly. But the law says, the soul that
sinneth shall surely die. Well, he's got to do that too
if he's going to fulfill the requirements of the law. He can't
just come into this world and keep the law perfectly and that's
it and then go back to heaven. No, he's got to die the death
that the law demands of me. Has to. So once again here, Paul describes
the character of them that are in Christ. He says here, who
walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Someone wrote this. This statement
characterizes those in whom the righteousness of the law is fulfilled. They are one with Christ. They
walk in the power of the Holy Spirit. Paul is describing their
life on this earth. They walk not after the flesh.
What is it to walk after the flesh? It's to walk after the principles
of the flesh. It's to walk after the It's a
walk after the world, the cravings of the world. Everybody here
that God has saved, you know what it's talking about. You
walked after the faith. You walked in a way that was
pleasing to yourself, whatever way that was. Whatever sin was
that pleased you at the time, that's the way you walk. You
walked under the influence, you walked under the reigning power
of that sinful nature. And he says here, those who are
in Christ don't walk that way no more. He's not saying we don't
sin. That's not our life anymore.
That's not our life. That's not the compelling, listen,
that is not the compelling force of our life. To walk after sin,
to walk after that old way of life and those old cronies we
ran with, that's not the compelling force of my life now. The compelling
force of my life, the life that I have in Christ, is after righteousness. It's after Christ. It's after
things above. Those who walk after the flesh,
the principles of the flesh, are not included in no condemnation. They're not included in that
statement. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things
of the flesh, they are given to it. But they that are after the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit, they are compelled by the Spirit of
God to do the things of the Spirit. You're here this morning. You're
here. There are those of you here because
you are compelled by the Spirit of God to be here. You want to
be here. And you miss it. You miss it when you're not here. That's the Spirit of God. You
can either feel compelled to be here by the Spirit of God
because you want to, you're just driven to, or you can just be
like, This is what you do on Sunday. And this is how you quiet
your conscience. No, it's not what we do to quiet
our conscience. This is what we do because we're compelled
to do it. We love the Lord Jesus Christ.
We want to hear about Him again. We want to hear about our Father. We want to hear about Him. You
know, if somebody's going to brag on your kids, you just want to hear about
it, don't you? You don't tell anybody to shut
up when they're bragging on your kids. No, you just keep on. Just keep
going. And that's what you're here for.
You wanna just like keep going. A carnal mind obeys the appetites
of the flesh. The flesh has appetites, many,
many appetites. And a carnal man, that's a dead
sinner, obeys the appetites of the flesh. No taste for Christ,
the bread of life. though that person may profess
Christ." There's no taste there. There's no real love for Christ. But they that are after the Spirit,
the things of the Spirit. This man walks in newness of
life. He hates sin. Though he sins, he hates it.
He hates the flesh. And he loves God, and he loves
the things of God. He loves God. That's a strong
word. He loves God. And to be in this
state is a state of peace. This is
where real peace comes from. Peace with God, peace in the
heart. You know, the Scripture says,
the work of righteousness is peace. Peace. For to be carnally
minded is death. There in verse 6. To be carnally
minded is death. To be minding the flesh is what
that says. To be minding that old nature,
to be walking after the flesh, it's death. It's evident that
person's still dead. But to be spiritually minded,
it's life and peace. The difference between spirit
and carnal is life and death. That's the difference. Because
the carnal mind is enmity against God. for it's not subject to the law
of God, neither indeed can be. There is a natural enmity in
the mind of every human being as soon as they are born in this
world against God. It first shows up, now listen,
it first shows up against your parents. That enmity first shows
up, that enmity that's against God, it first shows up against
mom and dad. That's where it first shows up. You don't know
anything about God, but there stands mom and dad who are the
authority figures of the home. And that enmity that's against
God's authority is first revealed against mom and dad. And then
it begins to be revealed against the civil laws and then, and
against God, against God. This carnal mind that said he's
not subject to the law of God, it can't be. It's enmity. It hates God. And the reason
people hate authority, there's one reason, there's one solid
foundational reason that men and women hate authority. They
hate God. Now you can tell most people
that, and they're just going to say, you're crazy, I don't
hate God. Oh yes you do. Yes you do. Unless God saves
you, you're going to find out. Here's a conclusion to the whole
matter here in verse 8. So then, they that are in the
flesh, they can't please God. You can't please someone if you
hate them. Can you? You can't. There's absolutely
nothing that a person can do in the energy of the flesh to
please God. The only person who ever did
that was Jesus Christ. He did it. He did it. But here's the good news. Here's
the good news. You are not in the flesh. Remember I told you earlier in
a few messages ago that you and I live in another kingdom? You
know, the scripture says over in Colossians that we have been
translated from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. We live in another kingdom. We
have a new nature. It's spirit. It's not just spiritual. It's spirit. That which is born
of the Spirit is spirit. It's of the same nature. That's
why we're said to be partakers of the divine nature. You're
not in the flesh. You're not ruled by the flesh.
Remember, you reckon yourselves to be dead to sin, that sin nature.
You're not ruled by that no more. You're not in the flesh, but
in the Spirit. You live in the Spirit. If so
be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. You know, saying that I'm a Christian
doesn't make me one. I think as Matthew Henry said,
claiming the name of a Christian doesn't give you the nature of
one. You can claim to be anything, and people do. if the Spirit of Christ is in
you." Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he's none
of His. They're going to stand before
the Lord and they're going to say, Lord, we preached in Your
name. We cast out devils in Your name. We've done many mighty
works in Your name. And He's going to say, depart
from me. I never knew you. I never knew you. You know how
confounded they're going to be? Job said they were confounded
because they had hoped. But it was a false hope, and that's
why they were confounded, or confused. They were just stupefied. Just like, what's happening here?
You never did believe. You never did believe. The Spirit
of God was never in you. But you that are born of the
Spirit, you are a Spirit, and God dwells in you. I'm looking
at a people. I said this morning, you know,
being a pastor, being feeding the Lord's flock, being over
the Lord's flock as an under-shepherd, it's a heavy responsibility that
Christ died for you? Well, not only did He die for
you, I'm looking at a people in whom God is. We think of God
being way off or somewhere, I mean, just out there beyond what we
can tell. God's in you. If God has saved you, He's in
you. God's sitting there with you.
He's in you by His Spirit. And His Spirit is ever real.
His flesh is real. He's in you. He dwells in you.
That's how we walk in Him. We can't walk in something that's
not there. Listen, if Christ be in you,
take that thought home with you. Take the thought home with you,
if you get off by yourself today, as a believer, that Christ is
in you. He's in you, literally. And if Christ be in you, the
body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because
of righteousness. If you have the Spirit of Christ
dwelling in you, Now He's talking about your body. This body right
here. This body of bones and flesh
and organs. If you have the Spirit of Christ
in you, your body is subject to death. You're dying. I don't
remember if it was John Owen or which one it was said, I speak
as a dying man to dying men. I can't remember the one that
said that. But that's what I do every Thursday and every Sunday. Another week has gone by. We've
died another week. We're dying. This body is now. Listen, this body is dying. That's what's happening. If you have the spirit of Christ
dwelling in you, your body subject to death is dying, but you, you
are not dying. You are alive. Life can't die. Life can't die. You're not dying. And this we need to get a hold
of. As we grow older and we're getting closer to the grave,
we don't know when that is. We need to get a hold of this.
Only my body is dying. I'm not going to die. The Spirit
is life, he said, because of righteousness, because of His
righteousness. Because of His righteousness,
we live. Christ said, because I live,
you shall live also. And last of all, verse 11, but
if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell
in you, you notice how he keeps speaking of this union, this
in Christ, and if you're in Christ or Christ in you, and if the
Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in
you, That word there means He's taken up His abode, His home,
His home in you. He that raised up Christ from
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, your bodies that
are dying, by His Spirit that dwells in you. This body is dying. But if the
same Spirit He said that raised up Jesus Christ, you believe
that Jesus Christ raised from the dead. With that same faith,
believe that He's gonna raise your body from the grave. You're
gonna have a new body. That's why He's saying it. You're
gonna have a new body. If the Spirit of God dwells in us by
the grace of God, death is not the end. That cemetery is not
the end. It's not the end. For he that
raised Christ from the dead, the same One, listen, the same
One that's dwelling in you is going to raise your mortal body.
It's going to be immortal. It's going to be new. But this
is to them who walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh. The evidence of their new life,
remember Paul said we walk in newness of life? The evidence
of that is by our walk in the Spirit. We're not going to be
given over to sin again. Sin's not going to dominate us
again. It can. He's not going to allow it. Not
going to allow it. All right.