Living By The Spirit

Good morning, we will be in Romans again today, this week we are starting in Chapter 7 and finishing up at 8:11. While you are turning there in your bibles, I have this box here that I need a volunteer to hold for me for a while. It is not taped shut, but I ask that while you are holding it you no not look inside. The contents are very valuable and has the power to open up whole news worlds you may not have considered before. You will find the contents of this box gives you an advantage over others who do not use the very thing inside this box. I may or may not give you permission to look inside the box while you are holding it, in fact you may go the rest of your life never knowing what it was that was in the box. Perhaps I can get a young person to just hold this with them during the sermon today. Let me pray again before we start this journey through the text as even Peter noted in 2 Pet. 3:16 regarding the letters of Paul that “there are some things in them that are hard to understand.” Father I pray that you would give us clarity today as we look at your Word. I ask Father that I would be rightly dividing the Word as you have promised greater judgement for those who would be teachers. Lord Jesus I ask your presence to be felt in the hearts and minds of those here as we are transformed by you in your very word. Holy Spirit I ask that your power would move us all along today giving us insight and understanding of this challenging passage. I ask these things from within the loving covering of Jesus sacrifice. Amen. So, beginning in 7:1 we read... 1. Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? This letter was written (1:7) “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be Saints” Here in 7:1 he is referring to these same people as brothers and reminding them that they are more than just aware of, they know the Law. This is all of the Christians in Rome, not just the formerly Jewish, but he is bringing attention to the Law, in this case the Mosaic Law. We know this is referring to the Mosaic Law specifically because Paul introduces it in 5:13 and shows in 5:20-21 that it is the combination of the Law, when applied to sinful man that results in death and bondage for humanity. So, by bringing up the Law again Paul sets the context for the example he is about to use to explain the point he previously made in 6:14 “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” He is going to explain how it is they are not under the Law. 2. For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. Paul specifically chooses a woman as the subject in this analogy because according to the Law practiced at that, a Jewish Law-abiding man could write his wife a letter of divorce and be free from her, but a Law-abiding woman was bound to her husband until he died or chose to divorce her, or she died. In this case sin, being the previous husband, was never going to die or release her, so her only path to freedom was her own death. Only in this case, a radical exchange was made on her/our behalf as we have died to the law not in our own bodies, but by the body of Jesus. This is exactly what Paul means writing, 4. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, … Notice, it is not by Jesus’ good teaching, the example he set, the moral agreement with His morals, but by actually being incorporated in some way or by some manner into the body of Jesus. And this is for a reason, back to verse 4, …so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. This is very much like the argument Paul made last week (6:21-22) “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” You are freed from one thing, but that doesn’t make you objectively free, it makes you free to be in Christ, which incidentally is the type of freedom all of humanity was made to enjoy. Being “free” to marry whomever you choose or “free” to consume whatever mind-altering drug you desire is not real freedom, it is simply choosing what slave master you are going to obey. There is no such thing as libertarian freedom, that is freedom to arbitrarily choose from an unlimited number of things without influence from God, because it is God who decrees the consequences of our choices to us before we have made them. There are always going to be constraints for created beings. You cannot just choose to stop eating because you do not want to be a “slave to food” unless you are willing to pay the consequences of hunger and eventually death for that choice. Similarly, for gravity, working or not working, obeying God or obeying sin, etc… Paul argues that by dying in Christ to the Mosaic Law we have in some way been freed from something the Law was doing to us because of our nature, not because of the nature of the Law. In V. 5 we read what that is: 5. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Paul is saying freedom from the Law liberates us from death that resulted from our sin. Now, this is a hard saying, that the Law aroused our sinful passions. Let me make an illustration for you. Imagine you are driving and your phone keeps buzzing alerting you to new text messages. You know you should not text and drive so you are resisting, but just ahead you see a stop light turning orange and you decide to slow way down to catch the red-light and then read those messages. Now you are sinning here against only yourself, texting and driving, but once that light turns green, and you do not notice, the person behind you, usually it is me, patiently gives you a mild honk to alert you to the light change. While you were stopped at the green light you were sinning against humanity in a most grievous way, but once the law (the honking car behind you) made you aware of the consequence of it, you are not feeling differently about having sat stopped at a green light then when you were just texting and driving unaware of the situation. Similarly, when we disobey our conscious doing what we know is wrong we are sinning, but when God gave the Law He made it known to the people that this disobedience was not generally or vague, but it also specifically grieved God. The law has aroused our sinful passions, but also bringing up anger against the other driver. Think about the box, you really want to know what’s inside of it don’t you? I mean it could be a stack of $100 bills just waiting for you to reach in there and get ahold of them. And doesn’t knowing you aren’t supposed to look make it even more tempting to sneak a peek inside? This too is like what the Law has done. 6. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. The Question was: How are we free from the Law. The Answer was: by dying in Christ with an analogy and explanation and verse 6 we see Paul’s conclusion. Paul’s conclusion: The Law did not actually bring freedom as some expected, but rather it brought bondage. Bondage that we are now free of by dying in Christ becoming bound to the Spirit. Now that conclusion raises another logical question and starts another three-fold pattern of question / answer with explanation / conclusion by Paul in vv. 7-12: 7. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? Paul’s next expression me genoito is a Greek phrase that is emphatically saying NO! It has the idea of don’t even let the thing have being or do not even let it enter into one’s mind. It is a Greek adaptation of a common Hebrew interjection chalilah, translated frequently as “far be it!” and used 21 times in the OT. Maybe one of the most interesting verses is Gen 18:25 where it is used to indicate that God is neither unrighteous nor unjust. It carries the idea that whatever it is describing is profane and therefore forbidden. It is used 15 times in the NT, 10 times by Paul in Romans, twice in our text today, as answers to questions he finds ridiculous. We have already seen 5 uses: Is God unfaithful? 3:3-4; Is God unrighteous? 3:5-6, Is the Law null if we are saved through faith? 3:31; Should we sin more so grace can abound more? 6:1-2; Does grace mean we get to feel good about the occasional picadillo? 6:15; So why am I belaboring the point here in 7:7? Because we need to recognize the degree of wrongness associated with the idea of impugning God’s Law by equating it with sin, that is equivalent to attributing evil, unrighteousness or injustice to God. We will see this expression again in 7:13; 9:13-14; 11:1, 11. By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” Paul is going to entertain the thought in spite of his direct fervent denial “me genoito” that one should even think that way. We should recognize here that God frequently and graciously condescends to us to explain to us what should be obvious, but we fail to grasp out of our prideful and sinful natures. There are no questions that are out of bounds to ask one’s loving heavenly Father. This and the other nine questions answered that way should reaffirm that to us. We have already considered how it is that the Law brings us knowledge of sin and Paul chooses the analogy here, not of marriage like the explanation of the first answer but of coveting. The KJV translates this word as “concupiscence.” It makes me want to ask the person reading to cover their mouth when they sneeze, but it is a real word that basically means lusting or craving against your reason. This type of urge drives many of the sins against other people. Remember that the foundation of all the law was built upon the love of God and the love of one’s neighbor. If you covet your neighbor’s home, wife, title, whatever, you are transgressing many of the commandments of God. Paul elaborates, 8. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. Our sinful natures build tension within us to do that thing we are told not to do. The Law is a mirror that reveals that nature to us. This is why Christianity is about drawing close to Jesus not about learning a new set of rules. If it was merely a different or relaxed set of rules, we would just become disobedient and continue sinning against those rules. This is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of Christianity for people who are outside of Christ. They ask the wrong question: what must I do to inherit eternal life? Instead of: Who must I turn towards. Consider the difference in how this question was asked in Acts 2:37 and in Luke 18:18-22. In Luke’s account, the rich young ruler affirmed he had kept the Law and Jesus told him to give up what he possessed and what? Come, follow me is how verse 22 ends. In Acts, Peter just finished explaining who Jesus was and what the Jews had done to Him. We read they were cut to the heart and asked what they should then do. Do about what? About having disowned Jesus, abandoned His calling. Peter said they should repent, that is to turn back towards Jesus. When we see the Law through the eyes of Jesus, when we recognize that breaking the Law is grieving the Son of Man, we have a different perspective about it. Paul goes deeper by sharing his own conversion experience: 9. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Did you know that there was a time in Paul’s life where he thought he had been perfectly obedient to the Law? Philippians 3:6 reads “as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.” This explains how he felt justified persecuting the church to the point of overseeing the stoning of Stephen. Imagine the better than though attitude one must genuinely have to watch a person be pummeled to death with stones. But there came a time for Paul when he saw the law differently, sin he said came alive for him and he died. 10. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. He recognized that the pride he had been holding to for his freedom through obedience to the Law was actually the very thing that was convicting him before God and because he was sinful it was holding him in bondage. 11. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. It was not the Law that deceived Paul, but his sin manipulating him with the Law and this brought about Paul’s death. This now introduces Paul’s conclusion. 12. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. OK, so the Law is Holy and Good and Righteous. But Paul, are you saying that something Holy, Good, and Righteous resulted in your death? Again we have another series of Question / answer with explanation / and conclusion by Paul in 7:13-25 13. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? What do we know about the way Paul answers this seemingly logical question? By no means! Paul again has to correct the error in thinking that has crept again by the thinking of the reader in attributing to the Law the consequence of death. The most memorable illustration of this I have heard is to imagine that the Law is like a trampoline. It is fantastic. It lets you do things you could otherwise not do. Like backflips. At one time I could do a backflip on a trampoline, but without one I could do a smash my face into the ground in an awkward pile of pain, embarrassment, and disjointed limbs. You can also help your friend get really good height on a trampoline by transferring your “jump” to theirs by timing your landings. Has anyone ever done that? Now if the trampoline represents the Law, we would be the ones jumping, but because we are sinners, we would have broken legs. Is a trampoline where you would want to be with 2 broken legs? It isn’t the fault of the trampoline that you are suffering, it is the nature of your condition relative to the trampoline. If we were not sinners, like Jesus was not, then the Law would bring about life not death, AS IT DID FOR JESUS WHEN HE LIVED ACCORDING TO THE LAW, NOT ONLY FOR HIM, BUT ALSO FOR THOSE OF US WHO ARE IN HIM. So, the rest of verse 13 reads: It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. Where is that box I asked someone to hold onto? Have you looked inside of it? Is it the box that makes you want to know what’s inside? Is it because I told you that you could not look inside that makes you want to do so? Is it something inside of yourself that responds to being told not to look inside that gives you the urge to do so? Paul has argued thus far that it is the sin inside of us that was revealed by the Law and that sin caused death in us. But he began this chapter saying we had died to the law, however, we know there still the presence of sin in us and this is what Paul uses to explain this reality of freedom from the Law which because of our sin bound us and condemned us to the deathly consequence of that sin. Go ahead and open the box and let’s see what is inside. At this point forward, the text shifts from the past tense into the present tense. Paul is explaining his present reality. There are theologians and pastors who try and make the text describe Paul’s life before he was in Christ, but they do so because they do not like the theological consequence of reading the text in light of Paul being saved through faith in Jesus. This is bad hermeneutics. You don’t get to decide what you want to the theology to be and then go back and read the text that way to affirm what you want. For example, the next verse: 14. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. Does being “sold under sin” sound like the description of a person who has been bought by the blood of Jesus to you? It does not to me either. You cannot even argue that Paul is distinguishing between his spiritual nature and his carnal natures if you read the rest of Paul’s writings. For example, 2 Cor. 5:17 reads “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” So, to resolve this difficulty they have had to contend Paul must not be referring to his present reality, but to some former reality. Now here is why you need to put on that thinking cap. Is the Kingdom of God at hand or not? Jesus challenged the Pharisees in Matthew 12:28 “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” The choice is either Jesus was casting out demons by the power of Beelzebub or by the Holy Spirit. Clearly it was by the Spirit, therefore, the kingdom of God has come upon us all the way back in 30-33 A.D. However, I do not see calves and bear cubs napping together, lions eating grass nor anyone letting their children play near the cobra’s den as in Isaiah 11:7-8. So just as there is real salvation in Christ for us today, we still get cancer, broken limbs, suffer financial loss by those who take advantage of us, grieve over the loss of loved ones. All of those things are the result of fallen sinful humanity and are still present realities. This is known as the “already / not yet” mystery of the kingdom. Paul is here telling us that the reason we think this way, and the reason we continue to struggle with sin is because we have yet to receive a new body that is living in the new eternal world. The new nature we have gotten is promised to us and a down payment is made by God by indwelling us with His Spirit which we will see Paul refer to later. Every Christian that has either slid into or leapt headlong into sin at some point recognizes their sin is destroying them, runs contrary to their beliefs, and requires them to repent. The alcoholic wants to give up drinking, but he still has to deal with the physical results of the chemical addiction. He will still be tempted by people who perhaps do not know his past and offer him a drink socially possibly reversing years of sobriety. Listen to the description Paul gives for that type of situation from his own experience: 15. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. Please do not misunderstand, Paul is not saying here that it is excusable to sin because it isn’t me. It’s not like the Family Circle cartoon where the kids blame some imaginary character “Not Me” for breaking things around the house. He is saying you shouldn’t be surprised when it happens, because sin is a serious thing. So serious in fact that all of humanity is accursed to death under it and the whole of creation has been groaning for relief since the first sin occurred! He is pointing to the motivation for sin being found in that fleshly sin nature that is still alive. In fact for some it fights even harder once a person is saved because they have not learned to trust in Jesus instead of trying to do God proud by overcoming their failures in their own strength. That just points their thoughts and attentions on their past sinful behaviors. We are called to draw close to God, take every thought captive and put it before the Word of God. We are to flee temptation no dwell in it because somehow we think we are stronger people now that we are Christians. This is Paul’s evaluation of that thinking: 18. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21. So I find it to be a law Here Paul has switched to using the term Law not to describe the Mosaic Law, but a general principle of life that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, Back to the Mosaic Law 23. but I see in my members another law Back again to the law of sin brings death and as sinners the Mosaic Law incites sin in us waging war against the law of my mind This is the one Paul is delighting in, the Mosaic Law and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. This seems like a hopeless cycle with no apparent end. Here is Paul, and Apostle of God, who recognizes within himself the war between the nature of his flesh which is still sold under sin that he has to do battle with every day, he commands the church in Colossae to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” (3:5). It is sometimes so much of a struggle for him that he has the conclusion: 24. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? First of all, do not make the same mistake the early church did by thinking that there is something defective about having a physical body. There were actually early Christians who were so convinced of this that they would erect a pillar to live on and rely on random strangers passing by to give them food and drink for their survival because they thought they were being super holy and honoring God. This is not the point. The point is made by Paul in Philippians 2:12 where he writes “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” We are to trust in Jesus to lead us through the trials of our lives. We are to trust in His forgiveness when we repent. But we are also foolish to think we will ever get to a point in our lives where we no longer sin on this side of eternity either by our physical death or transformation at His second coming. The death of Jesus “Justified” us before God. That is the same word in Greek as the word translated “Righteous” only instead of an adjective it is a verb. Maybe we could make up the word “righteoufy” or something to help us see what is going on. This is a status. When you enlist in the Army, you are a soldier. That doesn’t make you a Green Beret, you have to go through training for that. That is the process of Sanctification. This Sanctification is what works are doing. They do not make us any more righteous before God, but they do show us to be justified before others as James 2:24 says in his epistle that we are not justified by faith alone but by works also, meaning that we are not shown to be justified because “faith without works is dead.” These works also confirm to us the status of our salvation. If our lives have had not observable fruit of the Spirit since we confessed Christ as our savior, then we should “each of us judge ourselves soberly” as Paul will later argue for in this letter. Finally, these sanctifying works also bring us heavenly reward. That is why Paul looking forward exclaims: 25. 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. It seems strange to end a sentence that begins praising and thanking God for what Paul must recognize as deliverance from that wretched man if Paul is still going to have struggles with his flesh in overcoming its desires. Should he think that he is somehow going to miss out on an eternity in the company of Christ because of the presence of this dying flesh he knows he has? 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Compare the conclusion Paul reached in 3:20 with this conclusion. Paul is not claiming that we are free from judgement, 2 Cor. 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” was written to Christians also, but rather the ultimate consequence of condemnation to eternal hell and death would not be in the future for Christians. This is because we are not judged according to the Law. Paul explains: 2. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Neither use of the word “law” here in verse 2 is referring to the Mosaic Law, but rather to the unbreakable association “law” between the Spirit of God brings life and the law that sin brings death. 3. 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, This verse shows that God the Father is credited with what God the Son, Jesus came in person, not sinful person but “the likeness of sinful flesh” to do and that person accomplished a work that the Law was unable to do. Namely: 4. 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. Think back just a few minutes to the struggle Paul was describing. Here we see the trinitarian God giving us a way to overcome that struggle by walking according to the Spirit. We get to participate in our sanctification in a different way that we did in our salvation. In justification, however, we only provided the sins that needed redeeming. In sanctification we choose to walk according to the Spirit. This choice is empowered through that same Spirit and once started by replacing our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, it is carried on through a transformation in our minds. Paul elaborates what this looks lie by contrasting life lived in the Spirit with life lived in the flesh in 8:5-11 He begins by making the claim 5. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. The end results of death vs life and peace are eternal conditions, not necessarily contemporary ends. It would be a poor expectation that we would have peace with the world if we are behaving and setting our minds upon Christ. 7. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. 8. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. These 2 verses describe what the lost sinner does in their mind and Paul makes it clear that even those things that look to us as good works are not done from the correct motivation and therefore do not please God. 9. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. Paul is explaining that the Spirit is indeed indwelling those who are truly redeemed. Incidentally, notice that the same Spirit is attributed to God and Christ. This is another example of the trinity affirmed in Scripture as well as that of the full deity of Jesus with the Father and the Spirit. 10. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. This is that promise and down payment I spoke of earlier. This is what Paul means in Ephesians 1:13-14 when he writes, “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guaranteed of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” It is also what Paul points to as a great seal of truth when he writes to the Corinthian church in 2 Cor. 1:21-22 when he is breaking his plans to visit them after having just written them a severe letter following what he called a “painful visit” in 2:1. You see Paul wanted to reassure them that he was a man of his word and that “it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.” Phew! That was a ton of information. Let me summarize and give some quick application. We learned last week that we are no longer slaves to sin because we have been set free from the Law. This was done by our death with Jesus. This did not mean that the Law was sinful, nor did it mean that the Law which is Holy, Righteous, and Good, was the reason that death has visited us. Both of those conclusions are made because our thinking is defective as a result of sin. We could not use the Law to free us from that power of sin because our very flesh was given over to sin. But Jesus came in the likeness of flesh, having real flesh only without the quality of sin. Therefore, when he lived according to the Law it was satisfied, when he died the penalty was paid, and the connections between sin and death are not reversed for those in Christ. This is a real truth, established within us by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God, yet there is still a time we wait for to have our flesh restored to its original created state. Between now and then we can trust in God by the power of the Spirit to give us victory over our flesh. This comes not by focusing on what bad things we have done, but by growing our relationship with Christ. Christianity is about drawing close to and glorifying God. It is not about obedience to a set of rules. Ask yourselves when you begin to feel bad about some sin you have committed, who am I trusting in? Is it me and my ability to follow rules, or is it Christ and His promise to forgive me when I repent and turn back towards Him? If you are trusting yourself, you will be let down. As the worship team comes back up I want to ask again, what question have you been asking? Is it “What must I do to be saved?” or is it “Who must I know and trust in?” Only one of those questions leads to everlasting life…