Enmity Toward God
Notes
Transcript
In Romans 8:1, Paul set out a basic theme that “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and has been working to prove that is the case beyond doubt. A critical and fundamental component of understanding this correctly is to realize that this “uncondemned” status is distinctly bestowed upon those who are described as being “in Christ Jesus”, as being differentiated from the rest of humanity.
His great purpose throughout this entire chapter is that we would comprehend why it is that those who are in Christ Jesus are no longer condemned, why we who are in Christ Jesus may never again fall under such condemnation, and on account of that great reality that we would, in the words of Romans 5:2, “…boast in hope of the glory of God.” That we would have the utmost assurance in the fullness and finality of salvation through faith like that of Abraham in the finished work and person of Jesus Christ.
And so it is vital that we understand precisely what it is that God – not we ourselves – has accomplished in order to bring this uncondemned state about.
And so, over the last several sessions, Paul has been pulling back the covers to reveal to us the true, unadulterated nature of man apart from God; revealing to us how we ourselves were before God “rescued us from the authority of darkness”, before He “transferred us to the kingdom of the Son of His love”.
For it is only when we begin comprehending that awful reality that we may begin to truly appreciate our present condition, those of us who are “in Christ Jesus”.
And so we’ve realized that those are are according to the flesh continually, intentionally set their mind on the things of the flesh, their mind is actively fixated on the things of the flesh. And the mind that is set in that way upon the flesh is death. Here-and-now death; a complete and utter inability to change its condition.
And then last time, we realized that such a mind does not subject itself to the Law of God. A mind set on the flesh refuses with the whole of their being – their reason, the affections of their soul, the choices of their will, their fleeting emotions – with all that they are, they dispute the existence and authority of God, they dispute His Law and His right to require it, they dispute that they themselves have transgressed it.
But this “not subjecting itself to the law of God” results in an utter and complete inability to please God. And it is this reality to which we are turning now this morning.
What relation does “death” have with this “mind set on the flesh… not subject[ing] itself to the law of God”? That is the question to which we now turn this morning, as we continue our study of this remarkable chapter!
Let’s pray before we begin.
O Lord our God, our injured, neglected, and provoked benefactor of all goodness, when we think of Your greatness and Your goodness, we are ashamed of our insensibility, we blush to lift our faces toward heaven, for we have foolishly erred. We have gone on neglecting You, when every one of Your rational creatures ought by right to love You, to take every care to please You. O Lord God, show us Yourself within Your Word. Show each of us our own self, and show us our Savior, and make Your holy word live to us, that we may glorify You, and Your holy Son. Amen.
Paul declares in Romans 8:7-8 that the mind set on the flesh is death because…
because the mind set on the flesh is at enmity toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.
Now last time, we in a sense jumped ahead to focus on what it means to subject yourself to the law of God, but today I want to point out that that refusal is on account of that mind’s emnity toward God. And it is vital that we understand this enmity, for it is a fundamental aspect of our understanding of the nature of man, and one that all too often gets glossed over.
After all, it’s very easy if we are not careful to consider this as a shorthand to say that we and God are enemies, and in our minds leave it at that. But to do so short-changes us, and leaves us with a deficient view of reality, and casts a very different perspective than what the apostle Paul means for us to understand.
“Enemy” is a fairly surface-level word, and covers a very wide range of possibilities that largely have to do with position and posture.
After all, nations have “enemies”. In many ways even within nations, the very political parties vying for control of that nation often view each other as enemies. We ourselves at times have had personal enemies, whether on the schoolyard playground or as teenagers, or as young adults as we mature more and more.
The point is, we are used to the idea of an enemy, and that carries a fairly loaded set of ideas in our heads.
By nature, an enemy is an adversary or an opponent, they are in a sense defined by that conflict between each other, and we can easily consider them from a sort of third-person point of view. But an enemy of today, may well be later reconciled in some way, that even lasting friendships develop later. There is a good and reasonable hope for some negotiation, some truce or reconciliation which resolves the conflicts or disagreements that caused them to be enemies in the first place. Being enemies with someone, we learn even as children, is not something which lasts. How many times have children come home from school saying that “so and so isn’t my friend any more, we’re enemies now”, only to be back playing at recess with each other later that same week?
There is hope for a relenting on one side or the other to concede, whether reluctantly or wholeheartedly we nevertheless no longer feel we are enemies with each other. The United States and Great Britain, for example, were once enemies with each other, but now we consider each other allies and friends. The North and the South were once enemies with each other, but that conflict ended and a lasting friendship has formed between states and between people – they are enemies no longer. Lines which once divided have faded into history, those who were once enemies become friendly toward each other in the face of some great danger to both.
The point is, however, that this is a summarily false and shallow view that denies the nature of the relationship between man and God, for “enemies” focuses entirely on the present relationship between the opposing sides, a relationship that can be seen and described in some measure by not only everyone involved, but also external observers.
If we were “enemies” with God, there is some chance for negotiation and truce, there is a chance for compromise.
Not so with “enmity”. Enmity by its nature despises any sort of compromise, it demands to be satisfied entirely, for unlike an enemy, enmity wells up from deep inside a person. It is the coming to head of an internal, inherent hostility that, although it may bubble up and boil over, it may also lay there beneath the surface, never coming to a visible head.
Enmity is always personal, it is intensely personal, and it only can be personal. It is rooted within the innermost nature of a person, ingrained into their fundamental attitudes that can come to the surface of their behavior in myriads of ways. Enmity can never be imposed upon someone else the way enemies can develop and be identified by others.
And so, the hope of reconciliation that a mere enemy has, is far different when enmity is felt for someone; now, it’s not able to be resolved by some sort of compromise, and even if there is an open hostility and fighting that results from the enmity, though former enemies may come to terms, enmity can only be resolved by a person’s internal, personal choice. The voice we show the world can be silenced through disciplining ourselves, but in this case we must not only silence but change the voice in our head from one of hostility to one of friendship and peace.
Enmity exists entirely within the heart of a person, simmering beneath the face we show the world, yet it influences our relationships, our decisions, and our actions in profound ways. Far from being fleeting, it is an abiding animosity which shapes our very perception of reality.
But unlike the enmity we feel for other men and women, which may eventually be resolved after the root cause is sufficiently addressed and the deep-rooted emotions tied to that are allowed to subside, the enmity toward God on the part of men is ongoing, for God does not change, neither does His holy Law.
So, while we are indeed enemies with God, as Romans 5:10 declares, that open hostility and conflict is the result of our being at enmity with God in our innermost being. Every man an woman as been sold into bondage to sin through the one act of transgression by Adam, such that we love what God hates, and hate what He loves. Our desires, our affections, our inclinations, our actions all work out in our everyday life this abiding enmity we have toward God and the things that are His.
And nowhere is this enmity more evident than in our attitude towards Gods law, which is why it was so very important for us to work out last time both what it means to subject yourself to the law of God, but also to come to comprehend just how it is that every man and woman by their very nature do not actually so. Indeed, we discover instead that they actively refuse to do so.
But the thrust of what Paul is telling us, is that this Law of God is nothing less than the central issue in our enmity toward God. We see that in verse 7, when we read that “the mind set on the flesh is at enmity toward God, for”, as in, he is now going to provide us the reason why that mind set on the flesh is enmity toward God, “for it does not subject itself to the Law of God.”
Man has been rejecting God's right and authority to establish his laws over us ever since we were in the garden of Eden! You recall the scene, I hope! In Genesis 2:16–17 we read, “And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may surely eat; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat from it; for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.””
As far as our experience with laws go, this is rather simplistic and easily complied with!
But this command, this law, was offensive to Adam, for in Genesis 3 after his wife Eve was deceived in verse 5 by the promise of Satan, that "it will open your eyes, and you will like God”, we read in Genesis 3:6 “Then the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, so she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”
Now, let’s be clear, it is about this event that Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 2:14, “It was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into trespass.” Eve naïvely believed what the serpent told her, she wanted to be like God in His knowledge and so ate of the tree’s fruit, and then handed it to her husband Adam who was with her.
But Adam was not deceived. He knew that what the serpent had said was entirely wrong, that it went against everything he had been taught by God.
And so Adam willfully, intentionally set his heart against God, on account of desiring to join Eve in eating the fruit, rather than to stop her, or even to part ways with her, knowing she would die and he not.
Now, let’s be clear – up until this encounter with the serpent, Adam and Eve didn’t have any inherent hostility or enmity between Adam and God; they had the full capability to either act righteously or else to act sinfully.
But the serpent dangled the shiny bauble of wisdom and autonomy from God in front of them, and they practically jumped at the chance. Our Lord, in His rebuke of the Pharisees in Matthew 12:30 helps us greatly in our understanding here, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me scatters.”
So when Satan dangled that bauble, enmity entered into the hearts of Eve and then Adam – they desired God’s own place and authority for their own selves, rebuking and reviling His right as their creator to declare what is best for them. And when they acted out of the intentions of their hearts, they found their relationship with God had at its most fundamental level, been entirely changed; no longer were they able to enjoy the intimate fellowship with Him they once had, but they became acutely aware of their own guilt and shame – Genesis 3:7–8 declaring “And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. Then they heard the sound of Yahweh God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of Yahweh God in the midst of the trees of the garden.” Their one-time innocence was now forever shattered, each step from that point forward only served yet further to reinforce their feelings of enmity toward the God who had made them and given them His law – don’t eat that fruit, eat any other but not that one – for their own good.
And that enmity has been passed down to all who are in Adam, generation after generation, each offense, each realization of the penalty for that one offense, yet further hardening hearts against God. Think of it this way… How many people do you know who have shaken their proverbial fist at God demanding “why did you let this person die?!”
In the words of Romans 5, “through one man, sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned”, “the judgement arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation”, “through one transgression, there resulted condemnation to all men”, and therefore “the many were appointed sinners”. Set down under the reign and the rule of sin – at enmity with God.
And so, men and women everywhere are themselves incapable of submitting to God’s Law, for God looks at the heart, into the very place where that enmity against Him resides.
Not only are we not willing to subject ourselves to the Law of God, but on account of this enmity we have toward God, we also entirely lack the capacity to do so, for all who are in the flesh can only be described in the terms of Psalm 2, every man and woman rages against Yahweh and against His Anointed, they all, each and every individual, meditates intently upon a vain thing, namely to take a stand against Yahweh and against His Anointed, His Christ.
But God desires obedience – that we subject ourselves to His Law, that we render obedience even ahead of sacrifice to Himself. Not only does He desire it, but such obedience is entirely warranted. He out of His own will made us not like the beasts of the fields, but created us after His own image and has blessed man over and over again, in His great forbearance He calls men and women everywhere to repent, rather than summarily destroying us for our many and repeated offenses against Him.
And yet rather than obedience, sinful man can only offer Him enmity and hatred, desiring not to bow and pay the reverent homage that is rightly due to Him, they instead despise His right over them, they reject His sovereignty and His authority, they cast Him in the contemptibly familiar and spit on His word.
And so Romans 5 throughout is absolutely correct in its continual assessment of the man or woman who is not in Christ Jesus, they are weak (v6), they are ungodly (v6), they are sinners (v8), they are enemies of God (v10).
It’s one thing to say that they have been set down under the reign and rule of sin, but it is entirely different to realize that the “sin” they have been put under is a rejection of submission to God, an enmity toward His rule and authority.
And so, we realize that as long as we remain in the flesh, as long as we remain under Adam and under Sin, there is no possibility of ending this enmity toward God. The Law can only serve to perpetuate and amplify that enmity – indeed, “the Law came in so that the transgression would increase”, Paul had written in Romans 5:20; even when the Law comes to a person, it arouses sinful passions, which work in our members to bear fruit for death”, Romans 7 declares.
The end result of all this we find in Romans 8:8, “and those who are in the flesh are not able to please God.”
Regardless of whatever they do, whatever they put their hand to, no matter how good, how noble, how righteous that cause may be, this enmity they have with God overshadows all of it. So rather than acting for the glory of God and of God alone, their aim is to wrest honor away from God. Sometimes it is for they themselves, sometimes it is for a particular cause they think is noble, sometimes it is to magnify another person, but it is always done out of the mind and heart of enmity toward God, raging and intent on standing against Him.
And on account of that underlying sentiment, even the good they do is defective, the things they do are not out of faith working through love, and any so-called homage they give to Him is with their lips only, for their hearts are far from Him, they are set against Him.
Proverbs 21:27 declares to us that “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination.” Why? Because everything they do is entirely tainted by their enmity against God.
Well-meaning men and women often say “hate the sin, love the sinner”, but the truth of the matter is that the day of the Lord is “the day of wrath”, and the day of “revelation of the righteous judgement of God, who will repay to each according to his works.” In that day, the man or woman in the flesh, whose mind is set on the flesh and things of the flesh, will experience the full and righteous wrath of the very God they spent their entire lives offending.
God will reveal His full and righteous wrath upon ever sinner who ever lived on account of their sin, for their sin condemns them. They cannot please Him, and will forever remain under condemnation.
But remember, I told you this second section is about good news and assurance. Do you feel assured? Do you comprehend the “good news” of this message today? No?
The point of Romans 8:6-8 is to bring us to the stark realization that there is no possible way that we ourselves could ever on our own change our position. Not only are we totally depraved, in that there is no part of ourselves which is ever able to turn to God in faith, but we are also in a state of a total inability to please God on our own.
So why does God command us to repent? Why does Jesus command in Matthew 28:19–20 ““Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”” ?
Because there are those who are God’s, there are those His Holy Spirit is working in to draw to Himself, to reveal to them their sin, yes – but also to reveal to them the Savior – Jesus Christ the Lord, and what He has accomplished where they could not, drawing them to repentance and saving faith.
Ephesians 2:8–9 declares of those who have already turned to Jesus Christ in faith like that of Abraham, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, so that no one may boast.”
This union we who are “in Christ Jesus” have, this same union which causes us to no longer be condemned, to be found righteous by God in that day of the Lord, is only and entirely possible because God has worked a supernatural miracle in bringing us that faith which saves us.
And so it is to that supernatural change that Lord-willing we will begin to look next time.
Let us pray!