This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace� That is one of the most asinine
and ignorant things anybody could ever assert about Scripture.
It's not only is it wrong, it's a twisting of the Word of God.
It's an adding to Scripture. And what it does is it adds to,
it adds the church back under the law. It brings the body of
Christ who has been liberated by the gospel of grace under
a burden that God Himself says we no longer have. Now, but when
I say these things, people make the charge, and we've heard it,
what, antinomian, you just telling people, who has said, go sin?
Paul says in Romans 6, it's an absolute absurdity. It's an absurdity. Should we sin that grace may
abound? You know, God loves us so much, and He's forgiven us
in Christ, and the work of justification is done, the work of sanctification
is done. Our righteousness is not our own, but it's Jesus.
So let's just go and just continue to practice the things that He
died for. See how silly that is? But yet,
without being born again, without regeneration, we find ourselves
in a conundrum, because we may with our minds understand that
the gospel is all of grace and all of God and to be received
only by faith, but then with our flesh in its unregenerate
state, we still will try to find a way to make provision to prove
that righteousness. We will still try to make provision
to establish some sense of assurance that comes because of what Christ
has done. Well, now I know that I'm truly
a believer because look at my life. And I've said this for
weeks, there is no testimony of any believer throughout the
entirety of Scripture, nor a true believer throughout the entirety
of historical record, nor will there ever be a true believer
in the future who will testify before man and before God, I
know that I am in Christ because look at my life. It's not possible. Yes, there are aspects of our
life. For example, before we are born
again, we fall into this complete debauchery. We fall into these
areas of life that are just absolutely immoral. Those things do change.
It doesn't mean the temptation's not there. It doesn't mean that we might not fail in the
flesh, but we are not talking about these things. We are talking
about a self-righteousness that condemns us. And that's what
Paul has done. Let's start in verse 19 and read
through the end of the chapter and read verses 1 and 2 of chapter
8, and then we'll go from there. Verse 19. Well, verse 13, Did
that which is good then bring death to me, speaking of the
law? By no means. It was sin producing death in
me through what is good, through the law, in order that sin might
be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become
sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual,
that means it is of the Spirit, it is of God, it is divine. But
I am of the flesh, sold out under sin. For I do not understand
my own actions, for I do not do what I want to do, But I do
the very thing that I hate. Now if I do what I do not want,
I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer
I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing
good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire
to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want,
it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil
lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God."
Important. I delight in the law of God, my inner being. But I
see in my members another law waging war against the law of
my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from
this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. So then I myself serve the law
of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ
from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law
weakened by the flesh could not do, by sending His own Son in
the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin He condemned sin
in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the
law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the
flesh, but according to the Spirit. And we'll stop there. Recognize and remember in the
reading of Scripture that this is not something that is laid
out by Paul in this way. The Apostle did not put an 8
there. He did not put the 7 there. This
is an argument that is continuing by the Apostle and is for us
to not try to segment it in such a way that now there's this and
now there's that. But Paul says, I do not do the
good that I want to do, in verse 19, but I do the evil that I
do not want to do. So here, there is something that
needs to be brought out. Paul does not desire to sin. We who are in Christ are not
desiring to just get up every day and live contrary to that
righteousness that God shows us in His law, in the person
of Christ, in the teaching, the commandments of the apostles,
etc. It's not something that we relish. It's not something
that we love. We don't love it. When we sin, we actually hate
it. We hate it because of the guilt. We hate it because it
defames Christ. We hate it because it tears up relationships within
our lives, in the church, in our homes. For those around us
in the world, we hate it that sin causes us to not be able
to pray, to not desire to pray, all sorts of things, which is
why Romans 8 is such an amazing thing that Paul says that even
when we are failing in our flesh and unable to pray and don't
know how we ought to pray, not just through suffering, but the
suffering of temptation, the suffering of sin in our own bodies
and minds, that the Spirit of God prays on our behalf. So here
we see that Paul does not want to do that. But for some strange
reason, he continues to labor in war against covetousness.
He labors in war against the temptation that comes to the
flesh. And as we know from the letter of James, it tells us
that we are not tempted by that which is not normal for us, which
is not common unto man. So in other words, that which
tempts us is that which our flesh really desires. Our flesh desires. But yet our spirit that has been
renewed by God, verse 25, does not desire that which is contrary
to God's goodness. We desire to do what is right.
We desire to do what is good. But the battle is on, and the
battle is won. The problem comes when we think
that the battle is won in the flesh. Now, that's obvious. We've already talked about that
over the last three chapters. When I say the battle is not
won in the flesh, a lot of people, and they're rightly thinking,
but they think too one-sided. We often think that the battle
is not won in the flesh in that there's nothing we can do in
our flesh to overcome, but the Spirit, of course, will cause
our flesh to overcome. Beloved, that is not the case.
It is not the case. There is never a sin known to
man that any human being has ever been perfectly cleared of.
There is never a temptation that man has stopped having in this
world. Now some people would disagree
with that, and to that I would answer them, then what is it
then that you have in your struggle against sin? And I have asked
that question, and I have been told, I do not struggle with
sin. to which John would say, that
man is a liar and the truth is not in him. Any person then who
would also say that I love the Lord with all my heart, mind,
soul and strength is a liar, because we do not do that, even
though we may have fleeting moments where we might consider that
this is as much as we could give, the greatest love and affection
that we have is not enough to fulfill the commandment of God.
to have no other gods before me. I've had many people say,
well, I've never worshiped a false idol, to which I respond, yes,
you have. You worship your children, you worship your boyfriend, you
worship your girlfriend, you worship your car, you worship
your hair. How much time did you spend in the mirror this
morning, beloved? I mean, you see, we have idols. There is
no way around them. As Calvin would rightly say,
and very true to Scripture, that the heart of man is a continual
and perpetual, what? Factory of idols. That when one
comes out and we crush it and throw it in the fire, another
one is right behind it. It is like an assembly line before
there was an assembly line. We see that it is always there.
So this win in the battle of sin in the flesh is not that
we can't do it or that God must do it in our flesh. It's also
that God will not do it in our flesh. And listen. It doesn't
mean that we're going to be overcome and consumed by sin. It's not
there. The Bible says that we are free from the rule of sin. It no longer reigns over us.
But beloved, it is here. It is indwelling. It is real. and we are not to continue to
labor fretting and wringing our hands and wondering when will
come the day that I will never ever sin again. You want to know
that day, beloved? The day of the Lord, the day
of judgment, whereby all people will be judged by God and we
who are in Christ will hear these words, well done, my good and
faithful servant. For what? We might ask. How is
it well done? because Christ has done it all. Christ has accomplished it all. There is nothing that Christ
has not done for the sake of the justice and the righteousness
of God. It is ours in Him. We are perfect. I said this weekend that because
of the work of Christ, God the Father sees us as law keepers.
God the Father sees His church, His body, His beloved, as if
we have never, ever sinned. As if the law and its requirements
in our flesh has always been adhered to. As if we never inherited
the nature of our physical father, Adam. There is no guilt. That's why Paul can land his
therefore. There is now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. There is nothing for God to call
upon. There is nothing for God to bring
justice on. There is nothing in the life
of the believer that God can call foul with. Nothing. Nothing. But Paul says, and I
do what I do not want. He says, it is no longer I who
do it, but sin within me. Now some people say, see there,
there's some mystical thing happening inside of us and it's out of
our control. No, Paul said He did it. Paul said He did it. But it was sin that dwells within.
Where? Him. I do it. Though I don't want
to do it, I do it. Nothing's making Him do it. It's
just His flesh. So this battle, this war, is
because our desire is to do good. If our desire was not to do good,
there would not be a problem, right? If the law was not shown
to us by the Spirit, we would not have a problem at all. We
would actually pretty much say, hey, we're doing pretty good.
We're not breaking the law of God at all. We're pretty good
people. We're moral people. We follow that which God has
set before us in many ways. But we battle in the flesh and
it rises up and resists that which is good. The flesh rises
up to resist the law of God. The flesh rises up to fight against
the righteousness of God, but there's no stopping that. We
fail in the flesh and we falter in the battle, but we never lose.
People say, well, I succumb to sin, but that sin has not overcome
you. It has not overcome you, and
surely, listen to this, it has not overcome the light of Christ.
It has not overcome the light of Christ. We never find our
justification in the law. We never find our justification
in the work of obedience. We never find any obedience in
reality in this world. No one has obeyed but Jesus,
the Christ. No one has ever obeyed God. We
never find it to be that which will set us right before God.
And in the same way, listen to this, in the same way that our
obedience will not justify us, neither shall our obedience sanctify
us. We shall not be sanctified. We
shall not be made holy. We shall not be set apart for
God through the obedience to the law and the commands. It
is an impossibility. It is an absurdity. Just in the
same way that sanctification is righteousness, we cannot be
made righteous through obedience or through works, so therefore
we are not set apart by works. We are not proven to be set apart
by works. We are proven to be set apart
by the resurrection of Jesus, which is what Brother Trey preached
to all of us this past Lord's Day. It is our assurance. It is our guarantee. We've been
sealed by the Holy Spirit of God, as Paul teaches us in Ephesians
chapter 1, that we are what? We have a guarantee of our inheritance. God the Father has a receipt
that the debt has been paid, and Christ has paid it, and the
Holy Spirit is that certainty. Jesus Christ is alive. So I find
it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close
at hand. The standard of righteousness
that the law shows us, which is absolute impeccability, we
must be absolutely perfect, is an impossibility. The impeccability
of God's commands is an impossibility for God's people. Even after
their new birth, it is an impossibility. Many people throughout the ages
have preached and tried to establish what we would know as a sinless
perfectionism in the flesh. Not only is it a doctrine of
demons, it is a burden of death. And that's what Paul is saying
here. Evil lies close at hand. And only the regenerate, only
those who are born by the Spirit of God can see the freedom that
Christ brings by the Gospel. That the Spirit of God who gives
us understanding and illumination, the light has not been overcome
by the darkness. And beloved, don't ever forget
what Jesus tells us in John 3. The darkness of Nicodemus was
the righteous obedient to the law of Judaism. But Paul doesn't say he hates
the law. He just says that because of the law of God, the flesh
is always under attack. He says that the mind is always
under attack, the heart is always under attack, the eyes and the
ears, and I'm speaking in a metaphorical sense. We're always under attack. There's always something there
that we know we should be doing that we do not. There's always
something there that we know we should not be doing that we
do. And we fight and we labor. And faith alone in the work of
Christ is the answer. And Paul will say that very clearly
in just two verses. Paul is not saying he hates the
law. He doesn't hate the righteousness of God. He delights in it. He
loves it. For in it, he sees the perfection
of God. For in it, he sees the totality
of what God has done in the Gospel, that he himself is a lawbreaker
and unable to stand before God uprightly. He is not righteous,
nor is he just, even in his best of days, so that now he can see. And in the seeing of this glorious
righteousness, which is the law, he delights, for he can see the
picture of God face to face. I want you to remember, church,
we often forget because in the teaching of Scripture, because
we do exposition, it can be so far ago that we can just lose
sight of it. Remember that the fullness of
the visible glory of God and His holiness and His righteousness
and His majesty is seen in the human life and body of Jesus. His humanity reveals the fullness
of God's divine glory. Now you think about that. That
is the testimony of God concerning His Son. That is the testimony
of the Spirit that shows us the beauty of Christ's humanity,
that He indeed in all ways as a person obeyed, so that there
is a man born of a woman, a virgin at that, who displays the perfect
picture of the glory of God. We see the face of God Almighty
in the human face of Jesus Christ. And if we are not just as Jesus
is, we are not holy. We are not righteous. We are
not sanctified. That's why Jesus' righteousness,
Jesus' sanctification, His obedience must be ours. It must be given
to us. Paul delights in the law, verse
22. And he says, "...in my inner being." He wants to give the
contrast here. Listen to this. He wants to give the comparison
here. That he delights internally in
his mind. He talks about the mind versus
the carnal flesh, the material flesh of his person. He says,
I delight in my inner being of the law. But I see, I notice,
it is clear to me in my members another law is at work, and it
wages war against the law of my mind. Now think about that
for a second. I love the righteous commands
of God. I want them to be my own. I desire
that. My heartbeat is for that. But
there's something else warring within me against that. And because
of that, it makes me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my body. How does that work? How does
that work? It means that at every turn,
At every thought, listen to this, at every word, at every opportunity,
even when we do what is right, I want you to hear this, it is
not right. Even when we love each other,
it is not true love. Because there is a war in our
members that is laboring to fight against the law of righteousness. Can we say we love each other
with an unconditional love? Can we say that we love each
other with a heart that would lay down our lives at the cost
of us even if we did? What's that moment look like?
What does the moment look like when we lay down our lives for
our enemies? Now keep this illustration. I even said this yesterday to
our high school class that Jesus in His beatings loved His enemies. Not once did He take personally
and affront of the injustice of His pain. So we may be willing
to die, but friends, we are not willing to die in love because
we cannot do it. And even if it may look to ourselves
and to others around us that our love is impeccable, it is
not impeccable because it is confronted by the flesh. It is
confronted by the members of our body. It is confronted by
this war that is always going on, even so far as to say, I
wonder if I'm really loving, which would be doubt. If we're generous. and the smallest
inclination of, man, I just, that felt good for them to thank
me. Pride. So generosity is not impeccable,
even though it is practiced in temporality. So this is the war. Has Jesus loved? Paul could not love. Though he
says to the church of Thessalonica, he says, I love you with all
the affection of Christ. He establishes that love in that
as Christ loved them fully, so He also loves them in Christ.
But even then, what is it that Paul did in his heart? He coveted. He coveted. Paul was a brave
man. He was a man that stood in great
conflict, great persecution. Paul stood firm. Because the
joy that was His is Christ and the gospel of grace, not the
escape from the suffering. It was Christ. He says to the
church of Colossae, He says, that I pray that I may fill up
that which is lacking in the suffering of Christ for your
sake. That is, for the church, the body of Christ. So that as
you cannot see Christ, as Peter would say in his first epistle,
chapter 1, You cannot see Him. You have a joy that's inexpressible.
Paul's joy was sometimes inexpressible. And he worked and he labored,
but even in the midst of this labor, which was divinely worked
in him, he said it was Christ that did it. It was Christ that
lived. It was Christ's mind that had been given to him. And we
have all those same things. It still is at war. So Paul then,
as he labored, as we see in the writing to Timothy in the second
epistle, what did he do? He was hurt. Demas hurt Paul. Someone he thought a companion
in the faith, a companion in the suffering. When it got too
much, Demas said, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. The Corinthians, and they never
would get it right, but that wasn't the intention of Paul
for them to get it right. It was for them to understand
what was right and to trust in the gospel as they labored in
this war. The same war that Paul labored
in. Paul was a weak man. He said to the Corinthians, I
did not come with what? Eloquence and great speech. but
barely able to speak, barely able to stand, I trembled with
much fear before you as I chose to preach only the cross of Christ
and Him crucified, lest it lose its power. It is only of Christ
and I only come and stand before you today in the power of Christ.
For I am not wise, I am not of noble birth, I have nothing to
offer but this weak, frail, depraved, war-torn body. in Christ. But there's another
element in which Paul suffered. Look at it. He suffered in his
flesh. Struck down but not destroyed.
Whipped. Whipped. Twice. Imprisoned. Shipwrecked. Beaten. Stoned. Left for dead. Starved. Sick. He was sick when he wrote Timothy,
this final letter. Luke was tending to his illnesses.
He was very ill. But none of these things did
Paul call himself wretched. He said, in my weakness, Christ
is my strength. So therefore, I will boast all
the more about my weaknesses. But oh, beloved, what does Paul
say? Paul never rang his hands in despair in the suffering of
his flesh for the sake of Christ. He never once said, oh, woe is
me. He never once. ever faltered
in the work of God that He put before Him, no matter how hard
it was. But in the contemplation of Paul's
sin, as he awaited the consummation of Christ, he cries out, verse
24, "...wretched man that I am." Wretched man that I am! Where
does that cry come from? From the sin within him. and
the war that is too much for Him to bear. So in that comparison,
Paul was more joyful and able to stand greater with Christ
in His flesh in persecution and destruction of his body than
he was with the contemplation of the sin that so easily snared
him. Who will deliver me? He never
said, who deliver me from this body of death. He said, we count
it all joy. We rejoice when we are given
over to death like lambs to the slaughter, just one after the
other in a bad way or a bad way. We just die one after the other.
We die over and over again. We die. And this is good. But my struggle in sin is This
is a body of death. Now, I have heard some stupid
stuff in my life. But I've heard recently somebody
say that Paul there was wanting to die. That's why he said that. Then, we should not listen to
Paul. Context rules. Context rules. No matter what the meaning of
the word may be to you, if someone uses a word and the context proves
it different in its meaning than what it actually means, guess
what the word means, whatever the context says. If I call this
pizza, and we know it's a phone, then guess what? If you see what
I'm holding in my hand and say, this is a piece of pizza, Either
I'm crazy or I'm misunderstanding the term, but either way, when
I say, piece of pizza, I mean phone. Look around the context. Paul, in the context of this
body of death, is the wretchedness of his sinful condition. Who will deliver me? What does
he say there? Thanks be to God, through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Paul never found assurance in
his fleshly obedience. Never. Well, the Bible says, pastor,
that Jesus is going to present His church blameless and spotless
without blemish. That's right. Do you know the
Gospel? We are His righteousness. His
obedience is ours. His holiness is ours. We don't
have one of our own. So when God the Father is presented
with the body of Christ, Christ in His body is pure, and those
for whom He died are pure without blemish. Nowhere in Scripture
does it teach any type of thing that would take us to a better
righteousness today than we had yesterday. I've often heard the saying,
and a very good dear friend of mine used to say it a lot, I'm
not where I want to be, but I'm not where I used to be. Let's
unpack that for a second. I'm not where I want to be. Where
do I want to be? I want to be with Christ. But I'm in Christ, and
you're in Christ. I want to be perfect and sinless
and blameless. I already am in that place. I am where I want
to be before God. I am perfect. I am blameless. I am guiltless. I have never
sinned. You see how stupid that sounds?
But it's true. It's true. That's what Christ
has done for us. It's true. And no, I'm not where
I used to be. Ephesians 2, verse 1. You once were dead in your trespasses
and sins, and God has made you alive. So I am where I want to
be, and I'm not what I used to be. But that has nothing to do,
and Paul makes it clear here, with how we're getting more and
more righteous. What does it mean to be righteous in your
affection for God? That means that there has never
been a time, nor shall there ever be a time, when your affection
for God is shared with anything else. And beloved, I will tell
you, I have eaten food that has taken my mind off of Christ. Just for the pure joy of tasting
it. There's no way I could ever love
the Lord. I want to, but I can't. So I love Him as I can by His
own power. He gives me the ability to love
Him temporally and spurts as the flesh continues to say, no,
love me, love me, love me, love me. Oh, I'm a wretch, you see. Where's my hope? In Christ. That's
my hope. We are before the Lord sinless
because Jesus has perfected us once and for all in His sacrifice. He has secured us once and for
all in His resurrection. Everything that is necessary
for us to be established before God, for Him to say, come in
my child, for Him to be able to put His mark of adoption upon
us, we must be holy and perfect and sinless. So that's the gospel
of Christ. That's why it's the good news,
church. Wretched man am I who would deliver me from this body
of death? It is God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then Paul
says in verse 25, So then I myself serve the law of God with my
mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. As Jesus will
present His bride without blemish, as we've already understood because
He's cleansed us through His body by taking on our punishment,
so that we are presented to God perfect, not because we are,
but because Christ is, then Christ keeps us from the penalty of
the law. Christ keeps us from the wages of sin. Christ keeps
us from the corruption of the flesh. Because even though we
may fall and fail, We have an advocate with the Father. And
the Holy Spirit of God through discipline will grow us and mature
us and help us mortify the flesh and season, but it is never finished,
and it is never continually getting better. Consider the progression of the
flesh and sanctification the way most people say it, sort
of like cancer that progresses in the body. As we grow older in this day,
As our body grows older and older in its age, we go closer and
closer in the flesh to the wages of the sin of humanity. And our body sees corruption
in its flesh, but it will not see corruption, for it will not
be taken over by sin. Though we may think it, we may
cry out, Oh God, who's going to save me from this wretched
body of death? Christ has already done it. He's
already done it. So when we look at our works,
when we look at our exercising obedience, I use that term lightly
and you can see in the inflection of my voice that I'm a little
bit sarcastic in that context. We do so by faith, not with any
hope or provision of the flesh that we might stand a little
bit better today than we were yesterday before God. That is
not possible. It is not possible to say, you know, God has worked
in me a love for him that's greater and greater and greater and now
it's perfect. No. Think about the fall of the devil,
of Lucifer. What was his sin? A lot of people
think that because they don't read all of it and they remember
it as a child and they've never really read it again. A lot of
people think that Lucifer stood before God and says, I will,
I will, I will, I will. And a lot of people think that
all the multitudes of the heavenly host that fell with Him stood
there in His corner and went like, yep, He will, He will,
He will. But He never spoke a word. He never rolled a haughty spiritual
eye toward God the Father. He never raised His hand. He
never stepped out of line. He never did anything physically
as an act of rebellion. The Bible says that Lucifer said,
you said in your heart, that I will ascend to the throne and
stand next and ascend to the mountain of the gods, etc. Lucifer felt in his heart he
was worthy to share in the reflected glory of God as Creator. And
a lot of other angels felt the same way. And God, with the knowledge
of this, threw them into damnation. What is it that we can do to
say that we've accomplished something, or to say that God has accomplished
something in our flesh? You know what that is? Unbelief. That means that there's some
thing in our lives that God is even doing that causes us to
be a little bit better people, a little bit less worthy of destruction. and not Christ. Christ carries
us all the way home, all the way to the Father, and on our
last breath, we will still be sinners in our flesh. And some of us, like John the
Baptist, may even sin in our last days. We may say, God, where
are You? Christ, are You even real? John
the Baptist sent his people to go check and to make sure that
this was really the Christ. Because he could not imagine,
though he prophesied himself, I must decrease that he may increase.
He had no idea that it would mean he'd go to jail and die.
So he inquires, is he really the Christ? And of course, by
the mercy of God and the Holy Spirit, John remained steadfast. He believed, but he sinned in
doubt. His flesh was warring against
the Spirit of God within him. His flesh was warring against
the new mind that God had given him. He knew to trust in the
Lord here in the center of our soul, but the senses of our carnal
being lie to us. And the devil is right behind
going, listen to the lie, listen to the lie, listen to the lie. The war over sin is forever in
the flesh. We will never conquer it, but
it will also never conquer us. Christ has already won. The victory
is ours, but not to a sanctifying measurement of righteousness
or proving grounds of the work of Christ. The work of Christ
is ours, and by the Spirit of God we've been born again. It
is applied to us because God is just and He has forgiven our
sins in Jesus Christ. When we figure that we're able
to overcome sin in this life and in the flesh, we are already
subdued. Paul had no fear of death. He had no fear of suffering. He had no fear of imprisonment.
But sin crouched at His door. And when it did, He trembled.
He feared. And He cried out because He knew
there was nothing in His flesh that He could do to resolve this
war. And that He was completely and
eternally secure in the work of Jesus Christ. So much so now
that He can say in verse 1 of chapter 8, There is therefore
now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because God, through Jesus Christ
our Lord, has rescued us and we are free. Beloved, see the gospel. Believe
the gospel. Rest in the gospel. And yes,
as we labor and fight, We might feel as though we are at the
point of despair, but we are not going to lose this war over
sin because Christ has defeated it. Rest in Him. Let's pray. We love You, Father. We thank You for just the measure
of grace to be able to grasp this. Lord, many sound bites
that come to my heart I don't say, and then others that I do
say, and there's not enough time to just go through all of this
and what we're trying to accomplish here each week. But Father, be
merciful toward me, that even if I speak in error, You would
show me that I might correct it in the weeks to come. But
Father, there is a clarity here, that everything that we are before
You is finished. And one day we will be made anew
perfectly, instantly. We will be raised. Our flesh
will no longer be corrupted by sin and death. Father, though
we have escaped the guilt and the judgment that you are going
to pour out over evil, Lord, we are not yet released from
the battle. But the battle is won. Help us
to rest in the gospel. Help us to know for sure that
we are indeed saved by Your mercy, because Christ has finished the
work. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.