We're going to be in Galatians
chapter 5 today. Again, I want to look at just
two verses there, but we won't just look there,
of course, because to understand these two verses we're going
to have to go out through the rest of the Word of God. Sometimes we read over the scripture because we don't
understand what it means and we get used to reading over it
because we don't understand what it means and we say it so many
times that we just assume that somehow we have an intuition
about what it means. And I think it's very important
that we ask the Lord, what did you mean when you spoke these
words? And I certainly don't claim to
have all that understanding. But I pray, by God's grace, he
would give us all as much as we can hold. Remember when Jesus broke the
loaves and the fish twice. Two fish and five barley loaves
at one occasion. They gathered up after the people
had eaten to the full and there were still twelve baskets left
over because we can never hold it all. And I certainly can't
understand it all. I never get time to say everything
that went into a message. And I often think of things during
the message. And I hope that that's for your
benefit, not mine. I don't want to use God's word
as a mechanism to gain man's praise. I want it to be for your
soul, your soul's good, and for the glory of God, and only God's
grace can enable us both to do that. So let's pray and ask the
Lord to be with us. Gracious Lord, you gave the word,
you gave your promise, and you fulfill your word and your promises,
and all of these you fulfill which you have given to the Lord
Jesus and to us who are in him by your sovereign, eternal, electing
grace. And so we pray today that according
to this eternal will of yours and this work of yours in time
to bring us to the Lord Jesus your work to give him up for
us all. We pray, Lord, by that same grace
and that same eternal will, which is unchanging and certain to
eternity, you would answer the needs of our heart, you would
look upon our poor, helpless, sinful selves, and you would
save us for your grace, make us vessels of honor to your glory,
and lift up the Lord Jesus Christ to this universe and to our eyes
today, that we might honor Him with all that we are and have.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In Galatians chapter 5
and verse 16, the Apostle says this, This I say then, walk in
the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh,
for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against
the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that
you cannot do the things that you would." Now, if you recall
the last two messages, at least on this chapter, we looked in
verse 5 and we saw that it is through the Spirit of God through
the Spirit of God, not of our own selves, not by our own work,
not by keeping the law, but by God's grace, by His Spirit, by
His promise, because of Christ's redeeming blood, in verse 5,
that it is through the Spirit that we wait We expect, in confident
anticipation, the fulfillment of God's promise to us in Christ
because of the righteousness of Christ. And we do this by
faith. We hope, we wait for the hope
of righteousness, the promise God has given us in Christ of
eternal life and eternal inheritance, to stand in his presence conformed
to the image of his Son. And we wait for that. We look
for it. We expect it. Not because we felt something,
or because of our thoughts, or our works, or anything of ourselves,
but only because The Lord Jesus Christ is God's answer for all
of our sins and the fulfillment of all of our righteousness.
And God has set him up for that and told us that and caused us
as sinners to look to him for that righteousness. He's given
this to us and therefore we look for it in hope. And this is the
life of faith, he says. We through the Spirit wait for
the hope of righteousness by faith. Now this is really an
important verse. It really anchors us to understand
the verses we just read in 16 and 17. And then remember the
other message we had here in verse 6. For in Jesus Christ
neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availeth anything, or prevails
with God, but faith which worketh by love. We looked at that last
week. What a blessed thing it was to
consider how God in His grace towards us brings us down. He
makes us low in our own eyes and lifts up Christ to our eyes,
our God-given eyes of faith. Remember Bartimaeus? He is made
blind and that blindness in him caused him to see Christ in his
soul by God-given grace and faith. And then there was Jacob who
was humbled when he was Wrestling, the Lord Jesus actually wrestled
with him, and wrestling and struggling, and Christ touched his thigh,
took away his natural strength, left him clinging to Christ,
depended upon him entirely for the blessing that he had to have.
God put that in his soul, and the Lord Jesus then blessed him
and changed his name to Israel, which meant prince with God and
men, one who has power, who prevails with God, and that was by God's
grace of faith to him. And so God takes delight in His
own work. The work that the Lord does in
us to give us this faith in Christ is His work. It's the fruit of
the Spirit, not our works. not what we do by keeping the
law. He comes to us when we were failures
and points us to the one he set up before he created the world
to stand for us and do all for us, the Lord Jesus, the one from
whom he has received all for us. So that's what those two
verses are teaching us. And this faith, which looks to
Christ, produces something in us. It produces a love for him.
Because we stand in Him, complete and perfect, by God's grace,
by His work. We have nothing that would prevent
us from coming with full access to God because we come by the
blood of Jesus. And all the shame of our nakedness
and filthiness were clothed in His righteousness, and so we
come looking to Him, not to ourselves. Not trusting ourselves, not trusting
in anything or an experience, our sincerity, our works, or
our expectation of what we might be someday, but only to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now, I refer you back to those
two verses because when we look at these verses in verse 16 and
17, it helps us to understand those two because they really
are teaching us the meaning of these verses here. So, I want
to look at these again with you. Let's look at the first verse
in verse 16. And I've entitled this message, Walk in the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit. I want to
try to understand from Scripture, what does it mean to walk in
the Spirit? What does that mean? And you
might ask yourself that question in light of what the Lord has
shown you from Scripture. What does it mean to walk in
the Spirit? It doesn't mean a lot of... The most common understanding,
I think, is incorrect and we need to understand what scripture
is talking about. But in verse 16 it says, Paul says, Now, it's
most commonly understood to walk in the Spirit and you
shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh, what is the most common
understanding that you have heard how that has been explained in
the past? What's the most common interpretation
of this verse that you have heard or perhaps have thought of? I
think the one that I've heard and even been inclined to think
that it meant was that it's saying if you somehow yield yourself
to the Spirit of God. How to do that, I'm not quite
sure. But if you do that, then you will be given power to avoid
the lust of your flesh. You won't do those things. You won't be so sinful as you
were before. You'll be more holy and less
sinful through the power of the Spirit of God in your life. And
so, this is, I think, the most common understanding of this
verse. Somehow, through yielding to
the Spirit of God, you will live a more righteous life, a life
more pleasing to God, and you'll be more holy. And if you fail
to yield to the Spirit of God, then you'll give in to the lusts
of the flesh. And so, in this explanation, You see that there's
going to be low points in a believer's life where they're yielding and
somehow they're conquering sin. And these, I'm sorry, the high
points and then there's low points where they're failing to yield
and they're being overcome by sin. And you think, well, you
weren't walking in the spirit there and you were walking in
the spirit there. And so that's the way this is
most commonly interpreted. But let me ask you a question.
If that is the correct interpretation, If by your yielding you get power
over sin, how are you doing? How is it going with you? Do
you find it to be true that you are becoming less sinful and
more holy? I think that question often gets
answered quickly without even thinking about it, that somehow
we commend ourselves or have an optimistic outlook on how
we're doing. And we even begin to think we're
doing better and better. And sometimes we even look back
on our life. I'm talking of myself. We think, well, that was a time
of life where I was really yielded to God, and therefore I was blessed. But I really believe now, in
retrospect, that that thought shows that at that time, with
that thought, I was the most unyielded to God. Because I was
thinking that my yielding to Him was the cause of His blessing
to me. That my success was somehow tied
to my own actions. But so we have to ask the question
from this text of scripture exactly. Let's read it again. This I say,
walk in the spirit and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
It doesn't say that if you walk in the spirit you might fulfill
the lust of the flesh or there's a possibility that you will not
fulfill the lust of the flesh if you walk in the spirit. It's
not a probable or a possible thing. It's a certainty. If you
walk in the Spirit, you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.
So there's two things here that are pointed out to us, the Spirit
and the flesh. And these two things we must
understand. So here's a question before we can ask this first
question, what does it mean to walk in the Spirit? We have to
understand what is flesh in this verse and what is spirit. Now
we use the word flesh sometimes commonly to mean our physical
bodies. And scripture uses it for that
reason at the same time. Remember the Lord Jesus came
into the world and says the word was made flesh and dwelt among
us. He was made a physical human
being. Not a sinful man, but he was
a human being. He had a body like us. He says
in Hebrews chapter 10 verse 5, When he cometh into the world,
he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body
hast thou prepared me. So, the Lord Jesus had a body
and that was his flesh. But that's not the flesh spoken
of here. The flesh spoken of here is a
word that God uses to describe our fallen and sinful nature. So, when God created the world
and made man, He created man, all men, in one man, Adam. And because he created all men
in Adam, because we are born through Adam, we were created
then in him, he also set up Adam as our head. So in that one obedience
or disobedience of Adam, we either obeyed God or disobeyed. And
you know that Adam sinned and we sinned in him. And we became
guilty and we died in Adam. So that in his death, in his
spirit, we also died then. So that when we were born of
our mother, And our father, we were born just flesh and not
spirit, without a spiritual being. And so David said in Psalm 51
verse 5, In sin did my mother conceive me. And that's what
it means there, is that we were born in sin. Jesus told Nicodemus
that which is born of the flesh of a sinful fallen man is flesh,
is just a sinful fallen man. And no more. Look at Isaiah chapter
40. God speaks here of our flesh
in this way, in Isaiah chapter 40. And verse 6, this is also
quoted. In 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 24
and 25, but I'll read it here. It says, The voice said, Cry,
and he said, What shall I cry? This is the word that was given
to him to 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 it. Surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever. Flesh, our
human, fallen human nature is like grass. it will pass away. The Spirit of the Lord blows
upon it and we will pass away. There's nothing there that's
going to last. It's going to pass. And not only
is it going to pass, but it can do no good. And so I want to
consider some of these things about our flesh that God says
in Scripture. So, look at Romans chapter 7
and put a marker there because we'll come back to this in a
minute. But I'm just going to go through right now and identify
what the Bible means by this term flesh in Galatians chapter
5. He says in Romans chapter 7 and
verse 18, Paul the Apostle says, I know that in me, in me, that
is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. What's the first thing
we learn about our flesh? Our fallen, sinful nature. In
our fallen, sinful nature, there is no good thing. That's hard
for us to really understand. But since we're born this way
of our parents, until we're born of the Spirit of God, all we
are is sin. That's all we are. We're just
sin. In ourselves we're full of sin. Jesus said in Mark chapter
7 and verse 21, He says, "...that which cometh out of the man defileth
the man, for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed
evil thoughts." adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness,
wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride,
foolishness. All these things come from within
and defile the man. And they come from our sinful,
fallen, sinful nature. And so Jesus said this in John
6.63, the flesh profits nothing, not even a little bit. The flesh
profits nothing. In spiritual things, the flesh
is of no value. It can't profit us. And then
in Romans chapter 8, since you're there in Romans 7, look at chapter
8 verse 7. It says, because the carnal mind,
this is another word for our flesh, our fallen sinful nature,
because the carnal mind is enmity against God, hostility towards
God. What we are by nature is hostile
toward God. We're His enemies in our heart,
in our minds. For it, our fallen sinful nature,
is not subject to the law of God. And it cannot be, neither
indeed can be. So we're not only not obedient
to God, not subject to His law in our carnal mind, but we can't
be. It's impossible for us. So we
learn something quickly here, that our flesh is no good, it
profits nothing, and this is what we are by nature, and there's
no good in it. We can't do anything that is
pleasing to God. We can't do the will of God.
We're utterly weak in this. In Matthew 26, verse 41, it says,
This is a description of our spirit. It's willing. Our flesh is weak. Now that word weak there doesn't
mean that we have some strength, but we just don't have enough
strength. Because it's the same word that's used in Romans chapter
5 and verse 6. without strength in due time
Christ died for the ungodly. That's the word. Weak means having
no strength. So our flesh profits nothing.
In our flesh dwells no good thing. Our flesh is utterly powerless
to do one thing of all that God requires. It's not subject to
God's law and it cannot be subject to God's law. And I bring this
out because we often think that somehow By the Spirit of God,
we can make our flesh align with the Word of God, and over time
it can grow better and better. But that is not the case. Our
flesh will always be flesh. That which is born of the flesh
is flesh, period. But that which is born of the
Spirit is Spirit. And so our flesh is what we received
from Adam because we were created in him. And Job said this in
Job 14.4, who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? That's
what we are. We're unclean. And we're unclean
because we were born of unclean parents. But it was not just
their fault, our fault too, because God said it was. Now, later on
in Philippians 3.3, because of all these things, we learn about
our flesh. The Apostle Paul said that we have no confidence in
the flesh. That's what you would expect,
right? If our flesh is only wicked, if our flesh is only opposed
to God, if our flesh has no power to do the will of God, if our
flesh is condemned to die, pass away like grass, is no prophet,
And we would expect that we would take no confidence in the flesh
and that's exactly what God is teaching us to do. No confidence
in the flesh. Because the law and the flesh
go hand in hand. The law was weak because it depended
on our flesh. And that's the reason we can't
be justified by the law or made holy by the law. And so we have
need of something else, and that's what's called the spirit. Now,
in Galatians 5, hold your place in Romans 7 if you're still there,
but in Galatians 5, I want to re-read this to you. It says
in verse 16, I say this, And verse 17, lusteth against the spirit, and
the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one
to the other, so that you cannot do the things that you would."
Now here's a revelation to us that we're not just flesh if
we're believers, we're also spirit. So the believer is made up, every
believer is made up of two natures. And we wouldn't know this had
not God revealed it to us. Two natures. The first is what
we receive from our parents by birth. The second is what we
receive from God by our second birth, by the Spirit of God.
And that is called Spirit. Now, the Spirit. What is the
Spirit? Well, the Spirit is the Spirit of God. It's His grace
in us. It's Christ in us. The Apostle
Paul said, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. That's Galatians 2.20. And then in Colossians 1.27,
it says that Christ in you is the hope of glory. Christ in
us. So the Spirit of God in us is
Christ in us and He is that Spirit. In Romans chapter 8, he says
this in verse 10. And if Christ be in you, the
body is dead because of sin. That's our body, everything connected
to our body, which is our sinful, corrupt nature. But the spirit
is life because of righteousness. So our spirit is alive. Why?
Because of Christ's righteousness. We've been raised from spiritual
death to spiritual life. We've been created out of our
spiritual nothingness to a spiritual new man. In 2 Corinthians 5.17,
it says that whoever is in Christ is a new creation. And in Ephesians
2.10, we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto
good works. So this creation, this birth
of God, raises us from spiritual death to life. It gives us a
spiritual being. And that spiritual being now
is Christ in us. It's not something that we have
of ourselves, it's the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit dwelling
in us. Now, you can see now why there's
this combat, this warfare going on between the Spirit of Christ
in us and our old nature, both of which are still part of us
as a person. The flesh never improves. The
Spirit of God in us, our spirit, now this is our life, never sins. And this is what's taught in
Romans 7, in Galatians 5, which we just read, and in 1 John 3. And if we understand this, it
clarifies so much in Scripture and also teaches us what it means
to walk in the Spirit of God. And I want to look with you now
at Romans 7 just briefly because this leads into the explanation
of what it means to walk in the Spirit. And most of this we're
just going to read through it so you get the sense of it from
the Apostles' struggle. Now, the apostle was a very honest
man. There was no reason not to be
honest. Jesus said in John 3.23, He that doeth righteousness,
or he that doeth truth, comes to the light. That his deeds,
what he does, he made manifest that it was worked out in God. So the apostle here is a work
of God. And he's going to lay himself
open and say, this is what I am. And in seeing what I am, you'll
see these two natures, flesh and spirit. There's no reason
to hide it from you. This is the truth about myself.
And so look at Romans chapter 7. He said in verse 5 of Romans
7, For when we were in the flesh, that means we were only in the
flesh. When we were only in the flesh, we had not yet been converted
Not yet been given the Spirit of God. He says, "...when we
were in the flesh, the motions of sins which were by the law..."
You see, there's that. "...the law and our flesh worked
together to do..." What? "...they did work in our members
to bring forth fruit unto death." This is always the case. This
is why in the book of Galatians it's so strongly stressed that
we're not justified by the law, we're not perfected by the law,
because the law is for our flesh to prove that we're wicked and
only wicked in our flesh. Our sinful self to bring us down
so that we might be left humbled and look up to Christ, who alone
is our righteousness in life. And in so seeing Him, we realize
then that the Spirit of God, it dwells in us. But verse 6,
Romans 7 verse 6, But now we are delivered from the law, that
being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in newness
of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. We don't serve
God under the law, We serve God in the gospel. That's the word
spirit here. The spirit of God gives us grace
in us. He lives in us and we love the
word of the gospel. Don't you? Don't you? I do. I have to say I love to think
about how God has made a way to be holy and justify the ungodly
in Christ. This is beyond measure a glad
and joyful sound to me. And to every believer. Verse
7. What shall we say then? Because
the law brings death, what shall we say? Is the law sin? No. God forbid. Nay, I had not known
sin, but by the law. So it can't be bad if it reveals
sin to me. For I had not known lust, except
the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. But because I covet,
then I know I'm a lusting person. But sin. taking occasion by the
commandment wrought in me all manner of concupiscence." That's
another word for lustful desires. For without the law, sin was
dead. For I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment
came, sin revived and I died. When God's law Revealed to me
by God's Spirit what sin truly was, I found sin in everything,
in all my thoughts and motives and words and deeds, and it made
me ashamed and it left me helpless before God. Verse 10, And the
commandment which was ordained to life I found to be unto death.
The very thing that was good I found to be death. And this
is why, for sin, sin in me, my sinful nature, taking occasion
by the commandment, deceived me and by it slew me. My sinful
nature took what was good, God's law, and it deceived me by that
and it killed me. Wherefore the law is holy, It
killed me in that it took away all my legal hopes, all my futile
hopes of becoming holy before God by my own actions. Wherefore,
the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. It's
holy and just and good in its own, and it's also holy and just
and good because it shows my great sin. Was then that which
is good made death to me? If the law is good, why did I
become dead by it? Was it bad? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear
sin, working death in me by that which is good, the law is good,
and it worked death in me through my sinful nature, that sin, my
sin, by the commandment might become exceeding sinful. So what
I am by nature would become so sinful it would be abhorrent. For we know that the law is spiritual,
but I am carnal, sold under sin. The word carnal there and flesh
are interchangeable. For that which I do, I allow
not. By the way, carnal just means
not spiritual, having nothing to do with our spirit, the spirit
of God. For that which I do, verse 15, I allow not. I don't approve of what I actually
do. For what I would, what I want
to do, that I do not. But what I hate, that do I. Now this verse is remarkable,
isn't it? It shows that there's this head-to-head
combat between our flesh and our spirit. So that what I want
to do, I can't do. And what I don't want to do,
I actually do do. And this is a constant combat
within the believer throughout our life. And it leads to something. Verse 16. If then I do that which
I would not, I consent to the law. I agree with the law that
it is good. Because I'm on the side of the
law saying, I don't want to do this. And the law says you shouldn't
do it. So I'm agreeing that I don't want to do that. Verse 17, "...now
then, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in
me." This sinful, fallen sinful nature in me is what warring
against my spirit leads me to commit this stuff, this sin.
That's what he's saying. I sin. Is Paul... I'm going to
refer you back to Galatians 5 before we finish this. Is Paul saying
in verse 16 of Galatians 5, "...this I say, walk in the Spirit, and
you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh." Is he saying that
we're without sin? Clearly, Paul wasn't. And clearly,
in your own heart, if you're honest, you have to admit, of
course not. To even ask the question seems
laughable. For us, we know we're full of
sin, don't we? Even our experience tells us
that. And so he says this, It's no more I that do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me. Verse 17. And then in Romans
7, 18 he says, For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, my
fallen sinful nature, dwelleth no good thing. For to will is
present with me, but that will is not in my sinful nature. But
how to perform that which is good I find not. I don't know
how to do the good I want to do. For the good that I would,
I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Clearly,
Paul was a sinner still, wasn't he? He admitted it. I don't get to do, I'm not able
to do what I want to do. My best worship is full of pride. My best faith is full of unbelief. My best love is full of selfishness.
and hate. All these things are mixed together.
And remember Isaiah 40, 6 through 8, we just read, the goodliness
of man is like the flower of the grass. The best that we do,
according to Isaiah 64, 6, is filthy rags. That's what our
flesh does. And so he says here, the good
that I would, I do not, but the evil which I would not, that
I do. And this is a groaning, mournful thing. But he's going
to go on. Verse 20, Now if I do that, I
would not. It is no more I that do it, not
the spiritual I, but sin, the sinful I that dwelleth in me. Verse 21, I find then a law,
a principle, that when I would do good, evil is present with
me all the time. For I delight in the law of God
after the inward man. Now this is the spirit spoken
of in Galatians 5. Where he says the flesh lusteth
against the spirit. This is the inward man, the new
man. The mind of Christ. All these
are synonyms for the work of God which produced in us spiritual
life and being by Christ dwelling in us. The mind, he says. I delight in the law of God after
the inward man. But I see another law in my members,
my body, warring against the law of my mind, the spirit of
God in me, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which
is in my members. So I can't break free. I can't
do what I would do, what I want to do. I can't do it fully, perfectly. There's always sin with me. Verse
24, this is the conclusion that Paul comes to. And this is the
conclusion that God brings us to. Oh, wretched man that I am. He looks at himself because of
his fallen sinful nature and he concludes, I am wretched before
God. And this is the work of the Spirit
of God to teach us that we are wretched and helpless and that
we're utterly dependent upon God to deliver us. And so he
asks this question. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? Because I can't deliver myself.
Verse 25. And here we see the Spirit of
God coming in like a flood to drown our enemies. He says in
verse 25, I thank God. What is the answer? Jesus Christ
our Lord. You see that? He brings us low. with no hope in ourselves, and
lifts our eyes to the Lord Jesus Christ. So then, with the mind,
I myself serve the law of God. Now, this is the spirit of God
in us. We serve the law of God. This
new nature, this new mind, the new creation, that which is born
of God, sinneth not. We serve the law of God in our
new nature. With the mind, I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh, our old fallen sinful
nature, the law of sin. And these two are always this
way. In the believer, we have a nature that serves God, and
we have a nature that disobeys and serves sin. Look at 1 John,
just one verse there. Or two. 1 John. Just quickly, you might want
to hold your place in Romans if you're leaving there, because
I want to come back to it. 1 John 1, verse 7. First, it says, If
we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and what? And the blood of Jesus Christ
His Son cleanses us from all sin. Walking in the light means
walking in the truth of how God saves us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at 1 John 3. In verse 5,
you know that He, Christ, was manifested to take away our sins. And if you read in verse 4, that
means our transgressions of God's law. And in Him is no sin. In Christ there is no sin. We
are in Christ, therefore we have no sin. Because God sees us in
Him. It's true, we're in Him. All
that He did is ours and all that we did became His. And He was
made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him. In Christ we have wisdom and
righteousness and sanctification and holiness and redemption from
God. Verse 6 of 1 John 3. Whosoever
abideth in him, that means we just remain in Christ. This is
what faith does. We abide in him. Jesus said in
John 15, Abide in me, and I in you, and you shall bear much
fruit. Here he says, Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not. Why? Because we're in Christ.
Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. If we're
outside of Christ, of course, sin is imputed to us. Verse 7. Little children, let no man deceive
you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.
And we know that righteousness that we do is looking to Christ,
who is our righteousness. Because we can't produce righteousness
of ourselves. He that commiteth sin is of the
devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this
purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works
of the devil. Look at verse 9. Whosoever is born of God does
not commit sin. For his seed remaineth in him,
and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. Now, we might
think, like that's commonly interpreted, that means, well, I don't practice
sin. Really? You don't practice sin? But didn't
Paul just say, the good that I would I do not, the evil which
I would not, that I do? Don't you sin all the time? Isn't
sin something you do moment by moment? How can you say you don't
practice sin? Doesn't that take away the full
force of this verse? Whoever is born of God does not
commit sin, because his spirit dwells in him, and the new man
serves God. With the mind I myself serve
the law of God. Now, look back at Romans 8. So
we can answer this question. What is our new nature? It's
the Spirit of God in us, Christ in me, the hope of glory, Christ
my life, and this life in me is the mind of Christ. It's the
new man, it's the inward man, it's the renewed man. Chapter 8, verse 1 of Romans.
There is therefore now no condemnation. He'd just been going through
this in Romans 7, saying, man, I'm a wretched man. I'm trying
to serve God, but I can't. It seems like everything I do
is infected with sin and is my sin. He says, there is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. You see? This is what he said in 1 John
3. We're in Him. In Him is no sin. And because
we're in Him, we have no sin. Our transgressions have been
put away in Christ. And here he says, There is therefore
now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. We don't try to please
God by what we do with our old sinful nature. To keep God's
law. No, we do not. What do we do
instead? Well, He just said in verse 25
of the last chapter. How am I going to be delivered
from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
my Lord. What does it mean to walk in
the Spirit? He just revealed this to us. It means that we
have this struggle in our soul. Where the new man, Christ in
us, is warring against the old man and we recognize it. We recognize
that our old man is sinful and corrupt and we abhor ourselves.
We cry out to God as a wretched man and we plead with God that
by Jesus Christ our Lord we would be delivered and we trust Him.
We come to Him and this is exactly how we came in the very beginning. And so he says this in Colossians
2.6, "...as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk
ye in Him." How did we receive Him? We didn't have anything.
We couldn't do anything. We were guilty and helpless.
And we saw that Christ was our all and we said, He's mine. By God-given persuasion, we realized
that we could come to God by Him, and God would look upon
Him, and not upon us as we are in ourselves, but upon what we
are in Christ. And we came, and we found such
peace and joy in believing. And so he says, there's no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. And this is what they do. They
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. They don't
rely on their flesh to please God. They look to Christ to please
God, who did please God for them. And therefore, they look to Christ
to deliver them from the body of this sinful flesh. They look
to Christ for everything. We don't walk by sight, we walk
by faith. 2 Corinthians 5.7, I think. For the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
death. Christ lives in me. We have the Spirit of God because
Christ established my righteousness for me. Before God I'm righteous,
therefore God rewards me with life, and that life is Christ
in me. And that life in me sees Christ for me, and we see that
we're free before God. Free from sin, free from death,
free from Satan, free from this world, free to serve God, free
to love God. All the things we've been seeing
in Galatians 5, 6, and 5, we now by the Spirit of God hope
for the Wait for the hope of righteousness by faith, and we
have this faith which works by love. These are all things that
God is saying here. Verse 3, Romans 8, 3. For what the law
could not do, in that it was weak through our flesh, God sending
His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, but not sinful,
and for sin, for our sins, condemned sin in the flesh, in His flesh.
And He condemned our flesh because of that death. We were put to
death in the death of Christ according to the law. And we
rose with Christ because we were in Him. And now look at verse
9. Romans 8, but you are not in the flesh. You're 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's none of his. And if Christ be in you, the
body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life. because
of righteousness. Do you see this? Do you have
this sense in yourself where on the one hand you feel a constant
propensity to sin and on the other hand you feel an abhorrence
of yourself and of sin and a desire to please God in everything and
this produces in you a cry to Him daily, Lord, Deliver me,
I beseech thee, deliver my soul. Doesn't that cause the righteous
cry? The righteous cry. Psalm 34,
17. And they keep crying. Psalm 116,
I will take the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the
Lord. What a blessing it is to know that we shall be saved. We wait for the hope of righteousness
to be free from this body of sin and death and to receive
the reward of Christ's obedience. And so love God with a perfect
heart, in our perfect man. We long for that, don't we? We
wait for it. Let's pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your
word. We know that we and ourselves are sinful, and yet we know that
in Christ we're holy before God. We stand in the Lord Jesus Christ
without sin. And this is what you have given
us to see, this faith. Our eyes were blind. We couldn't
see. You opened them and showed us
your Son, and now we see. and our hope is in him. And so
we wait according to your word and by your spirit. We look forward
with eager anticipation, knowing with certainty that because you
raised up Christ our Lord from the dead and he sits on heaven's
throne and intercedes for us, that we will be more than conquerors
through him that loved us. Even in the depths of our despair,
You've given us this hope so that sin and the lust of our
flesh will not have dominion over us. We will not fulfill
those lusts of our flesh because in Christ we shall be saved to
the uttermost. We shall stand in glory and look
over this life story and we will be conformed to his image and
then we shall be satisfied. Thank you, Lord, for your goodness
and for your word, for your promises for Christ Jesus, our Lord. In
Jesus' name we pray, amen.