When I was in school, we were taught numerous ways
to trick folks into religion. It wasn't called that. They called
it soul winning. Trick folks into religion. You
prepare your messages, working to a certain place, and you work
on people's emotions. sing hymns and you tell stories
and you tell frightening things and you strike while the iron's
hot and get folks to make a profession of faith. The whole religious
world is involved in that kind of hellish trickery. I'm not
here to trick you. I'm here to preach the gospel
of God's free grace and pray that God the Holy Spirit may
be pleased to give you life and faith in Christ by the marvelous
work of his grace called the new birth. The new birth is a
radical change wrought in sinners by the power and grace of God
by which he makes sinners new creatures in Christ. gives them
life in Christ, makes them partakers of the divine nature. This new
birth God promised to his elect before the world was in covenant
mercy. And this new birth is the direct
result of Christ's redemptive work. In other words, every sinner
chosen of God from eternity and redeemed by Christ at Calvary
shall be born again at God's appointed time by God the Holy
Spirit. This new birth is the work of
God in us. The work of God the Holy Spirit
giving us life. I was asked this week a very
good question. What's the difference between
regeneration and conversion? The new birth and conversion.
The new birth is the gift of life. Instantaneous done. God gives life, sinners live. Conversion is the lifelong experience
of those who are born of God ever being turned to God. We are turned to Him in the initial
work of His grace in the conviction of sin. Turned to Him in the
gift of faith. Turned to Him in repentance. Turned to Him in every reviving
of our souls. Turn to him by his providence.
Turn to him as he turns us away from ourselves, away from the
world, away from the things of this world. And turn to him again
as often as we're fallen. When I was asked that question,
I immediately thought of Peter. The Lord said to Peter, when
thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. We are continually
in need of God turning us to himself. Now let me give you
five things that characterize sinners who are born again by
God the Holy Spirit, who have been turned and are being turned
to God by his grace. The first thing that characterizes
one born of God is faith in Christ. Whosoever believeth that Jesus
is the Christ is born of God. If you believe on the Son of
God, eternal life is yours. If you believe on the Son of
God, you've been born again. He that believeth on the Son
hath everlasting life. It is not faith in Christ that
causes life. Oh no, faith in Christ is the
result of that life. If you believe, it's because
you've been born again. If you believe that Jesus of
Nazareth is the Christ. This season of the year, everybody
is compelled in God's providence to think at least in some measure,
about the incarnation and birth of God's darling Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, when He stepped into human flesh. But few people
in the world have any idea who He is. He is the Christ. He is the Christ. That one born
at Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago is the Christ. He is the man by whom all the
prophets were fulfilled. He is the man who accomplished
everything written in the prophets that the Christ would accomplish.
That is essentially to say, He brought in everlasting righteousness
for sinners by His obedience unto death. He satisfied the
law and justice of God, making an end to transgression, putting
away sin, fulfilling all the law for sinners by his sacrifice
upon the cursed tree. Do you believe on the Son of
God alone? For all your righteousness, all
your redemption, all your acceptance with God, if you believe, you've
been born of God. A second characteristic of one
who is born again is the hope of eternal life. Peter tells
us that God, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten
us again unto a lively or a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. Do you have a good hope through
grace of everlasting life? A good hope is a hope given by
God based upon God's word arising from the experience of life and
faith in Christ. Do you have a good hope of everlasting
life? If you have a good hope of grace,
you've been born of God. It is the gift of God through
faith in Christ the Lord. A third characteristic of the
new birth is love for the people of God. Love for Christ. Love for His people. If any man
love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be damned the Lord's
coming. That's the language of scripture.
If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema
maranatha. Let him be forever damned at
the coming of Christ. This gift of life causes sinners
who by nature hate God to love His Son. We love Him because
He first loved us. And those who are born of God,
taught to love God, love one another. We love His people. It is not love in word only,
but in deed. It's not a pretend love, but
a genuine love. Believers love each other. Somebody
said, well, Christians ought to love each other. No, Christians
do love each other. There's a huge difference. Believers
ought to love each other. No, believers do love each other. We ought to love the Lord. No,
we do love Him if we've been born of God. A fourth thing that
characterizes all who are born of God is commitment, surrender,
submission, obedience to Christ the Lord. Believers are men and women once
ruled by darkness and sin and self who are now ruled by Jesus
Christ the Lord and they want it so. They're people whose lives are
governed by Christ the Lord. Motivated by His grace. Motivated
by His love. Motivated by His mercy. Seeking
His glory. Compelled by grace, they gladly
surrender their lives to Christ the Lord. Talk about being converted, being
saved, being born again, and then after going through some
struggles, surrender their lives to the Lord. Start living for
the Lord. Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Salvation
begins with surrender to Christ. And this business of salvation
is a lifelong surrender to the Son of God. I'm his. Lock, stock and barrel. I want it that way. That means
that I don't have any property of my own. I don't have any time
of my own. I don't have any possession of
my own. I'm his. I'm his. I won't have no will of my own.
It just is. Not my will, thy will be done. And there's a fifth characteristic
of all who are born of God I want to talk to you about this morning.
Turn to Romans chapter 7. Every sinner born again by God's
grace is a person who in his soul experiences
a continual warfare between flesh and spirit. 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
you would. You cannot do the things you
would. Romans 7 verse 14. We know that the law is spiritual,
but I am carnal, sold unto sin. For that which
I do, the things that go on in my life all the time, I allow
not. For what I would, the things
that I really desire, that do I not. But what I hate, that
I do. If then I do that which I would
not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no
more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that
in me that is in my flesh. Now notice the apostle is writing
here in the present tense. As I read this, I speak it from
my heart before God to you in the present tense. I know, I
know that sin dwelleth in me. For I know that in me that is
in my flesh dwelleth no good thing, for to will is present
with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would, I
do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that,
I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth
in me. I find then a law, a law. I find something that's just
an inescapable law, just a fact that when I would do good, evil
is present with me. For I delight in the law of God
after the inward man. But I see another law in my members,
warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity. to the law of sin which is in
my members. Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord, so then with the mind I myself serve the law of God,
but with the flesh the law of sin. Every believer Every child
of God, every man, every woman, every child born again by God
is a person with two distinct natures. Two distinct natures
absolutely, diametrically, constantly opposed to one another. That
man who's born again is two people in one inside him. in his soul is, as it were, the
company of two armies at war. There is within him a man of
sin, the flesh, and a holy man of righteousness, the spirit,
Adam and Christ. And these two men are constantly
at loggerheads. They're constantly at war. They never agree. and there's
no possibility of truce between them. May God, the Holy Spirit,
help me now as I try one more time to talk to you about the
warfare. That's my subject, the warfare.
I want to show you five things. I will be brief, but I will be
pointed. May God shoot these five arrows
as barbed arrows into your heart. and mine and teach us by his
word and by his grace. Number one, I repeat what I've
said already. Every believer is a person with
two natures. In our text, Paul speaks of these
two natures as I, the new man, and sin, the old man. Another
law in my members That is the principle of nature and the law
of my mind, the principle of grace. In Galatians 5, 17, he
calls it the flesh and the spirit. In both places, he's telling
us that every converted sinner, every person born again by Christ
Jesus is a new man in Christ, but the old man remains with
him. Now, this is what he's telling us. And this is what we know. This is what we know. All that I am by nature is the old man Adam. Flesh. Sin. All that I am by grace is the
new man Christ. Spirit. Righteousness. Every child of God born in this
world is still a child of Adam. When we talk about the flesh,
the evil of the flesh, we're not talking about this physical
body of flesh or life in this physical body of flesh. No, no,
we're talking about the old Adamic nature that's in us by birth.
That we have By birth is the nature called sin. And the new
birth doesn't in any way change that. Regeneration doesn't make the
old man new. Regeneration doesn't improve
the flesh. Regeneration doesn't make the
carnal man spiritual. Not at all. That which is born
of flesh is flesh. It's always flesh and will never
be anything but flesh. I don't say that sin lurks in
the flesh, but rather sin is the flesh. I don't say that the
flesh is prone to sin, rather the flesh is sin. Everything
about our nature Everything about what we are by nature is sin,
nothing but sin. It has no inclination toward,
no thought of, no understanding of righteousness, goodness, and
spirituality. Some foolishly imagine that the
flesh gradually becomes spirit, but that'll never happen. The
flesh is not cured, but crucified. It's not sanctified, but slain. Some years ago, back when was
Grace for Today published? 87? When my first devotional
book came out, someone got real upset with it and wrote up some
articles. Several folks got real upset
with it in those articles. This is what one of them said,
where I dealt with the matter of sanctification. He said, sanctification
is ever-increasing holiness. that grows until the believer
is ripe for heaven and then breaks forth into glorification. Now
that sounds pretty, but it just ain't so. It just ain't so. Oh no, believers do not gradually
become more and more holy so that they are finally ripe for
heaven because they're less and less fleshly. They're now Spiritual
people because they have become so sanctified not at all Christ
is our sanctification The new birth makes us sanctified the
new birth puts that holiness in us without which no man shall
see the Lord It is never improved. It's never improved Several years
ago. I was preaching up in Grand Rapids
I've told you the story before but it bears repetition and illustrates
what I'm saying And I hope every one of the preachers present
at that time. Here's this I It was amongst
a bunch of Reformed folks, Baptists and Presbyterians and others,
and they invited me to go to lunch. And I didn't much want
to go, but Fred had made arrangements, and I went to lunch with them.
And they were asking me about this very thing of our being
men of two natures, people of two natures, flesh and spirit. That was born of God cannot sin,
as John tells us in 1 John 3. And I kept pressing this issue
of sanctification, getting more and more holy, more and more
holy. And we were sitting in a crowded
delicatessen, I guess it was, about everybody having a sandwich,
and this one young man kept pressing the issue. And I looked at him
and I said to him, I said, you seem to be the chief spokesman
here. Let me ask you a question. You said you were Born again
10 years ago and you've been preaching the gospel all this
time. Tell me something. Are you more holy now than you
were 10 years ago? Man, that place got deadly silent. I don't believe anybody in there
crunched on a pickle. And he paused for a little bit
and he looked at me and he said, well, honestly, I'd have to say
I am. And I said, Steve, honestly,
I'd have to say you or I, one, don't know God. I'm not. And you know that's so. You who
are God, you who've experienced His grace, you know you're not
more holy today than you were yesterday. You know you're not
any better today than you were yesterday. The lust of your flesh
only increase. They never diminish. They never
diminish. Thank God. Thank God. There's
another nature in us, but the old man is not taken away. In
regeneration, God doesn't repair the old man and dress him up.
He creates us new in Christ Jesus. He creates a new man in us, a
new man created in righteousness and in true holiness, making
us partakers of the divine nature so that Christ is put in you
and it is Christ in you in the experience of grace that is the
hope of glory. Or John tells us in 1 John 3,
that which is born of God can not sin. That which is born of
Adam can't do anything else. That which is of God doth not
sin. That which is of the devil can't
do anything else. That which is within us, which
is born of God, you see, is the very nature of Christ. That new
man created in righteousness and true holiness cannot sin
because it's born of God. The new man, Christ in you, has
no tendency towards sin, no appetite for sin, no taint of sin. That new man is holy. All its
appetites are heavenly. All its thoughts are holy. All
its desires are toward God. The new nature. The new man created
in us. And the old nature. The old man. Constantly at war. constantly at war. Nothing about them agreed. I was raised in a house, I would
hardly call it a home, with a mother and father who
absolutely despised each other. How they lived together until
My mother and dad, I don't understand. I guess they just had to have
each other for some reason. Either that or they just liked
fighting. I don't know which it was. I don't know which it
was. Never do I remember coming into
the house when both of them present, I didn't expect to fight. Fussing,
fighting, fussing and fighting. Always opposed to each other.
But that's nothing. That lives in me. two natures with which there
is never any agreement, never any consensus, never any
truce, never any peace. Be assured of this. In us are these two natures,
the one that hates God the other that loves him, the one that
hates God's law, the other that loves God's law, the one that's
of the earth and earthy, the others of heaven and heavenly,
the old man of sin and the new man of grace. The old man is
constantly with us. Be assured of this, all believers,
have a new, holy, righteous nature. Yes, grace makes a difference. The man who is born of God isn't
the same as the one who's dead in sin. He has an entirely new
nature in him. And this is true of all who are
born of God. And that new man... Lindsay, that's what we truly
are. It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in
me. Oh, the old man, that's me. That's
me. But bless God, that old man soon
is going to die. The new man, that's who I really
am, because that's Christ in me, the hope of glory. The new
nature may look weak and seem to struggle for existence, but
it's there. And though it may look weak and
seem to struggle for existence, that new man is a king. Christ hath made us kings and
priests unto God. And that new man, the king, reigns
over the old man. Reigns over the old man. So that
we live in this world ruling over the passions that are in
us. Let's see if I can illustrate
it. You may take a wild man who's
lost his mind, a wild, dangerous man, and you can't change the
man. You can't change what he is.
He's wild, he's dangerous, murderous man. But you can control him. You lock him up in a cell. And
you throw away the key. And there it's contained. He
still rages and he's angry and he's mad and he'd kill you if
he'd get his hands on you. But you control him. And so it
is with the believer. Oh, the raging passions of my mad
soul. And thank God for grace that
will not allow those passions to rule my life, but rather His
grace rules my life. Here's the second thing. I've already hinted at it, but
I've got to say it plainly. The flesh and spirit are constantly
at war with each other. I see another man, Paul says,
another law in my members. Warring against the law of my
mind the flesh lusteth against the spirit The lion will not lie down with
the lamb in our hearts Fire will not be at peace with
water in our souls Death will never sign a truce with life
Sin will never submit to holiness The carnal mind, the carnal mind,
that's what's in you. That's what's in Oscar Bailey
and Don Fortner. The carnal mind is not subject
to the law of God. Neither, indeed, can it be. The carnal mind is enmity against
God. It's constant hatred of God. What we are by nature, the constant
hatred of God and all that he is, will not be subject to the
law of God. It cannot be. Satan's been bound
and Christ enthroned in our hearts, yet Satan's loyal servants within
us, though they're under the sentence of death, put their
heads together and constantly plot to recapture our hearts. The lust of the flesh are traitors
living in me. The flesh will wait until some
quiet, peaceful time when you feel secure and at ease and suddenly
lay hold of you with all its power, flooding your soul with
every evil imagination. I can't remember who it was.
I don't even remember whether it was one of the men or one
of the women who said this to me in the last couple of weeks. I don't
understand how I can be reading this book and my mind be just
wrapped up in the things of God and His goodness and His grace
and His mercy, His salvation, Christ and His love and His great
goodness toward me suddenly. my whole heart erupt in ungodliness. It's called flesh lusting against
the spirit. The flesh will give you great
ease and comfort and security in outward deeds of religious
service, make you content with a mere form of religion. The
flesh loves law and seeks to turn to legal works. We just
love it. We love law. We love legality. We love works. I was talking
to a very dear friend of mine, a preacher, and he's real upset
because folks don't come to church. He said, what do you do with
that? I said, leave it alone. He said, well, don't you need to
reprove and correct? I said, preach Christ to folks who are there.
And if folks want to worship God, they will. Or you can take
out the whip of the law and beat them good. Oh, you can work them
over. And you can get them convinced
if they were really spiritual folks, they'd be a church, and
they'd read their Bibles, and they'd give, and they'd do this,
that, and the other. But we're not under law. And
all you will do by whipping folks with the law is get them to live
by law. And that's not grace, and that's
not salvation. But the flesh loves law. And
we will revert to it like that. Each of us will. Flesh is never
more dangerous to your soul than when you think it's completely
subdued. So far as I know, no one here
has any great struggle with outward crimes of wickedness. But don't
imagine that the sins of the flesh are only outward acts of
indecency. Most people act and talk about
sin as though it were measured by deeds of drunkenness, adultery,
murder, and profanity. Paul's struggle, as expressed
here in Romans 7, was a matter of immeasurable inward evil. That which I do, he said, I allow
not. But what did he do? Read through the epistles. Find
me something this man did after he was converted that would indicate
he was a terribly wicked man. Find me something he did. What
did he do? He wasn't talking about outward evil. He was talking
about the things going on inside him all the time. You see, if
it goes on inside you Merle, you did it. If it goes on in your heart,
you did it. You did it. I do evil without
thought, without consent, even without knowing what I'm doing.
You too. And this is what I'm saying. Those very things we most loathe
and despise in the outward actions of others, we're constantly guilty
of doing. The believer loathes and despises
these things in others, but he loathes them and despises them
in himself like he cannot imagine them in others. So far as I know,
nobody here is guilty of idol worship. But they're not a one of us who
doesn't go a whoring after idols every day. Not one. Right there is your biggest difficulty
in this regard. Right there is my biggest difficulty
in this regard. And right here is hers. Idolatry. Idolatry. None of us, as far
as I know, are guilty of drunkenness. I've never seen one of you intoxicated. But we're intoxicated with materialism. It may be that none of us are
guilty of outward adultery, but we're so full of lust It's indescribable. None of us,
as far as I know, are thieves, but all of us are thieves, full
of covetousness. None of us are notorious liars,
as far as I know, but every one of us is so full of pretense
and hypocrisy, it stinks. None of us, as far as I know,
are profane swearers, but we're all impatient and prone to fits
of temper. None of us are legally guilty
of murder, but every one of us are so easily stirred to anger
and malice and revenge that we are guilty of murder. I know these things are in you,
and I know they're in me. I know it by the written word
of God, and I know it by long painful,
daily, hourly, unceasing experience. This is the nature of man. But if this is a warfare in your
soul, because you hate the sin that's in you, then it is a blessed
warfare. The struggle between the flesh
and the is a lifelong real and bitter struggle, but a blessed
struggle. For this warfare tells me that
Christ lives within. It makes the believer sympathetic,
patient, kind toward his brethren. Say, well, it ought to make us
that way. No, it'll make you that way. It'll make you that way. Just to be
reminded, you picture a man on a battlefield
and one of the soldiers is suddenly wounded, maybe because he made
a stupid mistake. Happens a lot. But the wounded
soldier on the battlefield is not blamed by his comrades, but
rather his health. And so it is, we need to be constantly
aware of what we are. And the more aware Don Fortner
and Larry Brown are of what we are, the more sympathetic we'll
be with each other. Blessed warfare. Here's the third
thing. As long as we are in this flesh,
this warfare brings us into captivity. Look at verse 23, I see another
law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Bless God we're free in Christ,
free from the dominion of sin, free from the law, free from
the curse of the law, free from condemnation, free in Christ
Jesus. But as long as we live in this
flesh, we're still brought into captivity by the flesh. Years ago, years ago, we had
an occasion to take Faith when she was just a just a little
baby, to the zoo, a petting zoo in Roanoke, Virginia. Oh, she
was just four, maybe three years old. And she'd get in, pet the
various animals in the cage with them, and she'd just tickle to
death. But there was one that didn't let us pet. There was
an eagle sitting on a cross piece. I'd say the bar he was sitting
on was about 10, 12 feet high. And that eagle was just sitting
there on that thing. and had a chain around his leg. He could fly about 20 feet. Right back down on a chain. That's how I am in this world. I can see that eagle right now
just looking up into the sky. Longing to soar and be free.
It stretches wings and Take off and right back down he come.
That's about how I live in this world. How about you? We would pray without ceasing,
but sin brings us into captivity and we find it next to impossible
to utter a word of prayer. We would hear God speak. Oh, God speak, but sin brings
us into captivity and his word is as dead to us as war ads in
the newspaper. We would be content, but sin
brings us into captivity and we grumble at God's providence.
We would be weaned of this world, but sin brings us into captivity
and we find ourselves loving this world. We would be bold
in holding up the banner of Christ before men, but sin brings us
into captivity and we act like cowards. We would be a blessing
to those we influence. I'm going down to visit our friends
in Mexico and I want to be a blessing to them. Some of those men I've
known for, some of the preachers down there I've known for 40
years, better than 40 years. We've kind of grown up together.
And I want to be a blessing to them. My grandchildren, children
come home, visit them. I want to be a blessing to them.
Pray God, God make us a blessing to them. I'm so fearful of being
just the opposite, by some word, some foolish act, being a hindrance. We would be holy. We would live
entirely without sin. But sin brings us into captivity. and defiles even our thoughts
of holiness. There's a fourth thing. Even in this warfare, we find
that which God has made good for our souls. Because our constant
warfare with the flesh causes us to look to Christ for everything. Oh, wretched man that I am, who
shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through
Christ Jesus, my Lord. It is by God's wisdom and grace
that we're in this warfare. The best, safest, most fitting
place for us in this world is the place of penitent sinners
at the foot of the cross looking to Christ. Oh God, my God, take from me the proud thought
of the Pharisee and lay me low at the foot of the mercy seat
like the publican crying, God, Be merciful to me, the sinner.
Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom
and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. He's all our
wisdom, all our righteousness, all our sanctification, all our
redemption, that no flesh should glory in his presence. Nothing
in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling. Naked come
to thee for dress, helpless look to thee for grace. Oh, God teach
us these things. Now I send you home with one
blessed word of comfort and assurance. Look at the last two verses of
our text and learn this. Soon we shall be free. Oh, wretched man that I am. Who shall deliver me from the
body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ
our Lord. So then with the mind I myself
serve the law of God but with the flesh. the law of sin. Soon. Soon. We should be free. Free from
all sin. Free from all the evil consequences
of sin. Free. Just as free forever free
as Christ on His throne is free. God give you grace now to trust
His Son and God give us grace as we live in this world to live
constantly trusting Christ our Redeemer. Amen.