Degenerate To Regenerate Through Christ

Romans 7:14-25, Titus 3:3-6, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

As we approach Palm Sunday and then Easter, where celebrate the acts of Jesus Christ! The actual life of Jesus and the reality of Who He is (God the Son) is overwhelming to the sincere believer! The true believer is overwhelmed by the reality of Christ and the reality of themselves. It is breathtaking!

Before we get into the next 2 weeks of remembering what Jesus done, let us also remember or maybe understand the why!

I preached from these places before.......but today let’s just use it as a reminder of what has been done for us and then when we come to next week and then the week after, we understand why Jesus was here!

Have you ever someone say or have you yourself said....... “Blessed and Highly Favored”?

Sometimes that is used when good things happen to us.........Well Jesus tells us that the sun shines just and the unjust and the rain falls on the same..........so what is the distinction between the just and unjust to make the just more blessed and highly favored than the unjust????

Our text reveals this Titus 3:7 “That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

We will get to that text in just a few, but just to say that the blessings and favor of God is not because we are something special, it is because of His Great Love wherewith He loved us and spared not His own Son that we might be made heirs and receive eternal life with God!

Look with me for a moment at Romans 7:14-25.........One of my favorite chapters in the Bible........There are many verses that sound hopeless and only one verse of Hope!

That tells me how great the gift of Jesus Christ, the reality of Christ can in one verse cleanse us of a lifetime of wretchedness!

I do not want to stay here long but just to point this reality out! Verse 14 and verse 25 is the main verses today.......

The first part of this chapter is written as an unbeliever comes to the reality of his sin and verse 14 on are the reality of a believer about his sin.

Paul is making an observation about his new life, that he spoke of in chapter 6, and still living in this body of sin!

In this passage we see Paul make a distinction of the mind and the body (members).....

In verse 22 Paul tells us that his inward man, his mind, his heart desires the law of God!

He desires the goodness of God, but his body rejects this truth! The outward man is pulling him toward the flesh!

The reality here in this chapter is that there is no good thing that dwells in me....

He wants to be good but how to perform that which is good he doesn’t find.

Pretty desperate revelation!

You might say to yourself, this can’t be with the new life that we have been given in Romans 6!!!

There are places in chapter 6 that seem to suggest the struggle....Romans 6:12-13 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”

He is talking to Christians in this new life......don’t let sin reign, do not yield your members to unrighteousness.

This is all still present within us, our new life is in our mind and our desire!

Do we continue in sin....God forbid! Paul declares in chapter 6, but we now because of our new inward life, we are not dominated and owned by sin!

There is a new presence within us that is pulling us away from that now and we no longer desire to sin!

Our flesh is sin and desires sin!

Now, verse 14 Paul makes an observation about himself, I am carnal, fleshly, earthy.......sold under sin!

This is the reality....the flesh battles with the Spirit, they are contrary to one another!

Sold under sin, means we were born this way, David in declares this Psalm 51.......

So “sold under sin” we don’t have to get carried away with the terms - it doesn’t mean he actively sold himself to sin to commit sin..........It isn’t that he went out and sold himself into sin.  It’s that he recognizes that there is a bondage there.

And you know, there have been times when you’ve been the captive of sin.  I’ll tell you when the times are.  Every time you sin.  Every time you sin, you lost the battle, sin took you captive, right?  And so, Paul puts all our feelings into words by articulating the basis of the conflict inside the believer.  And we all understand this perception.  We can all see that there’s sin in our lives.  It shouldn’t be there.  It isn’t the truest thing about us.  It isn’t our new self.  But it’s there.  This is just every Christian’s conflict.  There’s a sense in which though free in the new nature, we’re still bound by the humanness that we dwell in.

I really don’t think an unregenerate person can make a statement like this because I don’t think they know the law is spiritual, for one thing, and I don’t think they know they’re fleshly, for another.  And I also don’t think they’re sold under sin.  They live under the illusion that everything is okay.  That’s exactly what it says in verse 11, that sin has a way of doing – what? - deceiving.

But when the law is seen as really spiritual, then a man sees himself as so far from fulfilling God’s holy law and sees himself as unspiritual.  In fact, that’s the way the verse could really read:  The law is spiritual but I am unspiritual, experiencing a bondage to sin.

A fine Bible commentator Cranfield wrote, “The more seriously a Christian strives to live from grace and to submit to the discipline of the gospel, the more sensitive he becomes to the fact that even his very best acts and activities are disfigured by the egotism which is still powerful within him, and no less evil because it is often more subtly disguised than formerly.”

It only takes on sin to be evil!

Now, that is a pretty desperate lot isn’t it? I said all of that to get to this, so we know how important the Person and Work of Jesus Christ is......

Paul continues in verse 24 to declare that desperation O wretched man that I am!

Even when you start thinking yourself something be reminded of this!

Then look to Jesus Christ.....what happens then? Praise, Glory, and Honor, rightly directed to the right ONE!

Verse 25 declares this…Thanks be to God the Father through Jesus Christ!

Turn quickly to Titus 3..........Here we are before in verse 3 and after in verse 4-7......see if you fit into any of these descriptions?

The powerful changing factor in this is God, what is the power that changes our wretchedness?

Love and kindness in which God was, is, and always will be!

The Savior appeared Jesus Christ, He lived this life rightly before God! God being the determining factor of GOOD....not man!

Works of man will never be works of righteousness, please remember that!

When something on earth is done that is good as far as God is good, then it is from God and receives the glory for it, not man!

No works by us, only by His mercy He saved us! In our desperate state against Him, He gave His Son to deliver us from the penalty for our wretchedness!

Washing us, regenerating us, renewing us by the Holy Ghost....we no longer desire to sin, our inward man is dominated by God’s way.....

This newness, this saving, this cleansing is giving only by Jesus Christ our Savior!

We are now justified because of His grace!!!!! Made heirs and our hope is now to be with God and His Son forever!

The realization that it is no work of mine that saved me from my wretched state and that I am still not good, only the Godhead is good, this always brings me to the proper place of worship!!

The number 1 trait of the believer is humility!

When I read in 1 Peter 2..... “By His stripes we are healed”.......In that proper place of worship, I do not look to what God can do for me in my flesh.......I know what I am not to Him and what He Is! As the full text declares......1 Peter 2:24 “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.”

In closing......so as we move to these next 2 Sundays, if the Lord tarries, as we read of Jesus entering Jerusalem, understand why He came to Jerusalem......and then follow Him on through that week to the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, His trial and conviction by His own people, Him before Pilate, His immense beating and mockery that was inflicted on Him, His crucifixion and the things He said there, His burial, His resurrection, His time with disciples, His ascension, and His ever living to make intercession for us.............as we read of all this, let us not ever lose sight of the why He came ......if that is lost than the very essence of Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, and God the Father is lost!