11 Deliverance from Sin (Romans 8.1-12)

Krisan Marotta: Okay, we are in Romans 8 today. I love this chapter. I'm glad we finally got here. And thank you all for coming, because if you didn't come, I couldn't come and do this on so please. Come on, don't leave now. We're getting into the really good stuff. All right. As a Christian, you've probably observed things about yourself that you can't explain. You know, something changes and you don't know what happened. Perhaps you, you know, you found that you used to really enjoy the party life and now it has no appeal to you, or or you once enjoyed gossip, but now it's it kind of lacks any enticement. And or the other side is you may be reading through scripture and you think, you know, you've read this verse a hundred times, but all of a sudden you think, oh, I see. And there's a whole nother level that you didn't get, that now you get. Or maybe it's a hymn, you know, you hear a hymn or a Christmas carol or something, and all of a sudden the words move you in a way that didn't move you before, and you don't really know how it happened. That I had an experience like that this week. Um I have to confess, I'm not really a generous person. I grew up in a non-Christian household where money was the idol. That was, you know, the thing that that you had to hold tightly, followed closely by career, but career was really just an avenue to get money. So I like to call myself a savior, a saver, but I think I'm really a miser. So when we were first married, my husband would like have to pry the coins out of my hands, you know, to give them away. Because I just worry myself into a tizzy, you know, if we if we gave money away and then the dishwasher broke, what would we do? Um so it's I know it's very embarrassing. But a strange happened this last month. Um, Dave and I were involved in a ministry and they had a financial need, and I found myself actually wanting to help. And we were talking about, you know, how trying to help them out and figuring out if we could give money to them and how much. And and I was found myself wanting to do it, and there was part of me that was going, Who is this woman talking? You know, because it's not me. I'm not like that. I've never been like that, and I don't know how it happened. Um so there was part of me that I could see I really wanted to help, and part of me that was going, Since when? How did this happen? And on one level, I really have no idea how the change happened because I didn't do it, and I am not that kind of person. But on a theological level, I know how it happened, and that's the subject of our passage today. And just to give you a uh visual image, I want to take you before we get to Romans to Psalm 1, because he gives a metaphor that I think is the same thing that's going on in our passage, and this is probably a familiar Psalm to you. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. And then these next two verses are what I want to call out for our passage. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night, and he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and in all that he does, he prospers. And then the psalm goes on to talk about the wicked. It's that image of being trees planted by streams of water that I want you to keep in mind as we study Romans 8, because that's essentially what Paul's going to talk about today. And notice the progression he gives in the Psalm. First you delight, you want to do the law, then you meditate it, it becomes part of your life, it becomes a priority in your life, and then you see the fruit, then you see changes happening. And I think what Paul's gonna argue in Romans 8 is it is the Spirit of God that accomplishes these things in us that brings about this deep eternal change, and he's gonna explain in Romans 8 how that comes about. Now, just review where we are in the book because you've got to keep all this in context. I hope you could do this by heart now without me staying. So if I tell, you know what, I won't put you on the spot, but chapters 1 through 5, he argues that we are justified by faith in faith alone. So he makes his case in the first three chapters. At the end of the third chapter, he announces that there is a way to be justified, it's by faith in Jesus. And then in chapter 5, he says, So what? Now that we've been justified by faith, what does that mean? And it he argues that it gives us a reason to rejoice because we have been singled out by God to be made holy and glorious, and that our hope is guaranteed because God loves us and the promise is up to him to keep. So in chapter 6, he starts a new section where he's taking kind of objections or questions to this gospel, and we've seen three so far. The first objection was that Paul's gospel implies that we should sin more in order to glorify God, and Paul says no, because part of the gift of grace is setting us free from sin. So to continue to pursue it would be to make a mockery of the gift. The second objection was, well, okay, maybe we shouldn't pursue sin, but there's no reason not to, because now there's no threat, there's no punishment. And Paul says there is still a reason not to sin, and that's death, as we've talked about over this these last few weeks. Death as the decay, the brokenness, the fallenness, the corruption of life. And then he adds, the law was no incentive anyway, because the law forced us to rely on ourselves, and all we had was more sin. So the law didn't make us better people, it showed us how sinful we are. So then there's a kind of a follow-up question. Well, if the law then just promotes our sinfulness, it must be an evil thing. And Paul says, No, the law is good because it taught us the truth. It alerted us that we're sinful and that we need a savior. So it did a wonderful and valuable thing for us. It showed us how sinful we are. And that takes us through chapter seven, where he's finished the last challenge and he described what I'm going to call moral paralysis, just to sum up everything we talked about last week. He goes through chapter seven and says, now we have this problem of I want to be good, and I lack the ability to be good. So on the one hand, I agree with the law, I want to keep the law, I desire to keep it, and on the other hand, I can't, and I find myself doing the very thing that I don't want to do. Um I'm trapped in my sinfulness. So whatever I thought would control my sin, whether we want to call it willpower or muster or resolve or whatever mechanism, determination, it didn't work, I would still find myself sinning. And he ends that chapter with wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death? And that dilemma I'm going to refer to just for shorthand as our moral paralysis of being trapped between our desire to do good and our inability to do it. So chapter eight answers that question, and that's what I want you to keep in mind. All of chapter eight is really explaining why faith in Jesus is the solution to that problem. So he's going to argue there is a way out of that moral paralysis, and it's faith in Jesus. And he's going to explain why that works when obedience to the law didn't work. So we're going to look at the first 11 chapters today, where he explains that question: why faith in Jesus promotes obedience when the law did not. And then 12 through 29 is really an exhortation against legalism, of kind of, if all I've said is true, what how should you respond? How should you live? Now I have to warn you, it's hard to break this chapter up, and we're going to do it in three pieces. And my breaks are rather arbitrary because it's really one flow of thought, but there's so much in it, I didn't want to try to cover it all in one session. So what I'm going to give you today is an overview of the whole chapter, the whole argument. Then we're going to look in detail at the first 11 verses, and then we'll come back after Thanksgiving and look at the next two pieces. But when you're studying or you're reading or you're doing your homework, read the whole chapter because it's really one thought. My breaks are rather just arbitrary for the sake of time. How much I thought I could get through. So the first thing to remember is the question he's answering is how does faith in Jesus solve the problem that he just described in chapter 7? And that's the main goal of what of everything he's going to say. So we we're in this position where we want to do good and we don't have the ability, wretched man that we are, wretched people that we are, how do we get out of that? And he's going to explain how there's a way out. And here's the argument in brief. And this is it really, if you look at this and you go, how did she get that from the first eleven verses? It comes from the whole chapter. I'm giving you an overview of the whole chapter. So the first thing he's going to say is, left to yourself, you can't make yourself holy. And he's going to call that your flesh. So left to your flesh, you have, you are stuck. You do not have the resources to bring about moral obedience or to make yourself holy. And we know why, because we read chapter 1, we learned back in chapter 1 that God, in his wrath, abandoned us to our sin and death. So when we rebelled and turned our backs on God, in his wrath, he turned his back on us and he withdrew life at that point. He's the only source of holiness and life and goodness, and he's not offering it, and all we have is sinfulness. So that was the language of he abandoned us to our sin and death. He made us prisoners of sin and death. So the only way to become holy is for God to make you holy. We can't, in and of ourselves, left to ourselves, produce it somehow from within. So he's going to argue the unbeliever lacks the spirit of God and thus has no possibility of being holy. Because you're under wrath, and God hasn't imparted his spirit to the unbeliever. So the unbeliever, because he or she lacks the spirit of God, has no possibility of being holy. The believer, on the other hand, now, once Jesus solves the problem of God's wrath and God can turn back to us and draw us to him, he gives us his spirit, and that gives us the resources to become holy. So the resources of God are available to the believer in a way they were not available before when you were under the law or under wrath. Now, um, with so the the essential point is without the spirit we have no hope of becoming holy. With the spirit, we have a guaranteed hope of becoming holy. And he's gonna argue through this chapter that there's a direct correspondence between that. That the more we genuinely trust in the Spirit of God to make us holy, the more obedience we will see. And that the more we trust in ourselves to make ourselves holy, the more sinfulness we will see and experience. And he is gonna argue there's a direct correlation there. You trust in God, you will get obedience, you trust in yourself, you will get sin and death. But be very, very careful with that. And we're gonna talk about that a lot because that concept is greatly abused. Because Paul is also gonna argue, yes, there's a direct direct correspondence, but it's part of the gift. So my trusting Jesus, and to the extent to which I do that on a daily basis, is part of the gift and part of God's process. It is not something that I manufacture, it is not something that I muster up or have to learn the magic technique to do. And he's gonna argue that this is a process that God takes us through step by step, day by day, of maturing, and that every day moves us closer to that goal, but it's not something we manufacture. It's not, there's no you know, five-step plan to becoming more of a faithful person or you know, twelve steps to obedience. It's up to God to strengthen our faith. Remember chapter five, your hope will not disappoint because God loves you, because it's up to Him to give you there, to get you there and to get you your inheritance. So while obedience is not guaranteed at any given moment, it is now possible in a way it was never possible before for believers, and it is guaranteed in the age to come because of the Spirit of God. So he's gonna argue we've solved this problem of our moral paralysis because now we have the Spirit of God, and that makes obedience possible in a way that it was never possible before. It doesn't guarantee that tomorrow I'm going to be perfect, but it guarantees I have the chance and that God is working to get me there. Um and eventually he will get me there. Okay. Let me just define some of the terms he uses in here, and then we'll we'll look in the deep at the details. He's gonna you'll see this term coming up a lot in the flesh and in the spirit. What does he mean by that? I I would define it in this chapter when he talks about in the flesh, I am it's everything I am apart from God. So self-reliance. And this is not the moment by moment situation. This is who I am. I am either a child of God or I'm not. I'm either in the flesh and am a believer, I am not a believer, or I'm not. So, by definition, someone who is in the flesh is an unbeliever. So I don't think he's talking about our physical body, he's not talking about worldliness, he's not talking about inappropriate desires or or uh misplaced passions, but the me who is apart from God, the me who is depending only on myself or self-reliance, everything I am apart from God. In the spirit, on the other hand, is someone who has the resources of God available to them, or has the spirit of God. And again, I think that's my identity or my destiny, my status, if you will. Am I justified or not justified? Am I forgiven or not forgiven? So someone in the spirit is by definition a believer. And I think when he's using those terms, he's not talking about the moment-by-moment situation, but who am I really? Underneath, what's the promise I have? Do I have the promise of faith and hope and the inheritance in the kingdom of God or do I not? Okay. Now this is different than he uses the terms walking in the spirit or being in the spirit and having a mindset on the spirit, and then the flip side, walking in the flesh, being in the flesh and having a mindset on the flesh. When he uses those phrases, I think he is talking about the moment-by-moment choice. So in any given moment, am I living as if I am trusting on the spirit of God or not? Now, my status hasn't changed. I am a believer if I have the spirit of God. I can't lose that, but I can live as if it's not true. Or I can live as if it is true. So I think that's what he's got in mind when he talks about having a mindset on the spirit or walking according to the spirit. That in those phrases he's not referring to my ultimate destiny, what's ultimately true about me, but at this particular moment, what's the object of my trust? Am I trusting in myself or am I to to bring about righteousness or holiness, or am I trusting in God's Spirit to bring it about for me? So if I'm trusting in myself, I'm walking in the flesh, or I have a mindset on the flesh. If I'm trusting in God, then I have my mind set on the spirit, and I'm walking in the spirit. It's true, there is an underlying reality that I am a believer or I'm not, and that does not change. I can't lose that status. So he's going to argue that the believer has the option of doing either one. The believer can at any moment be living as if they are saved, living as if the spirit is, they are trusting in the spirit or not, but the unbeliever does not have that option. The unbeliever can only rely on themselves. Now, this is probably the most important thing I'm ever going to say. So if you haven't learned anything all semester, please learn this. This next thing. So I'm hoping, praying that it can have the same effect for you. You cannot walk according to the Spirit by the flesh. Think about that. We hear this and we think, great. She just told me there's a one-to-one correspondence between obedience and faith. So the more faith I have, the more obedience I have. And I want to be obedient. I want to keep the law. So how do I do it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it taste like? How do I know at any given moment, am I walking by the Spirit or not? Do I do I have to have a certain feeling or a certain attitude or do I pray enough or study enough? And it's a legitimate question we all ask because we all want to avoid sin. I would bet that everyone in this room came to faith because they got sick and tired of the sin and death in their lives and the failure and the corruption. So it's a great relief to hear, wow, obedience is possible and it depends on faith, and the more faith I have, the more obedience I'll have. But the minute I try to do it, I am doing it, and I am now in the flesh. You see what I'm saying? So the harder I try to make sure that I am walking in the Spirit, the less I am actually walking in the Spirit. The minute you try to study enough or read enough or memorize enough or pray enough or feel a certain way or sing a certain way or whatever it is you do, if it's something I do, I'm doing it, and it's my flesh. It's not the Spirit of God. That's a hard thing to get around. Um I was taught as a new believer that walking according to the Spirit was the key to moral obedience, and all I had to do was walk by the Spirit, set my mind on the Spirit, and I would be obedient. And I spent I don't know how many years trying to accomplish just that. And I had my formula, you probably did too if you were in that spot. Um and I I would spend great mental energy trying to figure out am I in the spirit now or not? Am I in the do I have the right keys or not? Now I think if Paul walked in and heard me you know wrestling with the dilemma, he would probably laugh at me. Because I think it is true that the spirit is the key to moral obedience, but I do not hold that key in my hands. That key is in God's hands, and it's up to him to get me there. It's not something I do for myself, it's part of the gift. And that is amazingly comforting because that means I can't mess it up, I can't lose it, I can't slow it down, I can't get God off his plan, I can't make it work, you know, I can't mess up my salvation. So as we go through this, you gotta remember Yeah. No, sorry, you can't write it down. We I want to cut I still want to get to the details, and Libby has a lot of announcements, so sorry, I hate to be mean, but I will try to answer it. Hopefully I will. Okay. Um remember everything we've learned up to this point, chapters one through seven, and you have to bring all of that to bear on Romans 8. Because Paul spent the first two chapters, two and a half, well, almost in halfway through three, saying, We don't have what it takes to be holy. That is still true. We are sinfuls left to ourselves, we do not have what it takes to be holy. He argued then in four on that there is a way to be holy, but God is going to do it for us. Um and that's what chapter five and really chapter six was all about. So the minute I try to make um walking by the spirit a formula that I do, I am now walking by the flesh. And I had my formula. You probably I don't know if you've been there, you may have had yours. I had a certain feeling that I thought meant I was in the spirit, and I couldn't there's not really a word for it. It was kind of a combination of humility and smallness, and you know, if I got myself into that state, then I thought I was walking by the spirit, and I had this visual image that it was like filling up a s you know, a jar in the sink, and uh when I got it all filled up, then I got this feeling and then I knew I was in the spirit, but I had a leak somewhere, you know, because it it would it would all go away again. And so I d it spent all this time, it sounds really funny, but I spent years wrestling with this. Um and I think that has everything to do with the flesh and nothing to do with my spirit, because anyone can psych themselves into a feeling a certain way or working out uh of I don't know what, an R or humility. And where does Paul ever say that walking by the Spirit is something I feel? If you can find that in the Bible, I'll take you out to dinner. I don't think it's there. Um he's gonna argue that there are signs. We later in chapter eight, he's gonna say we know we're in the spirit if we're grieving over our sins and we long to be holy. So you you could argue those are feelings, but most of the time we tend to think it's kind of a worshipful attitude. So he's gonna argue you know by your reaction to your sin, but it's not this thing that I muster up. Instead, I think walking by the spirit is an intangible, invisible reality beyond my control, beyond my ability to manipulate or conjure, and it's totally in the hands of God, and it's a gift, which means it's guaranteed, it's a promise. So remember chapter four I can't earn it because if I earned it, it would be a wage, not a gift. And in chapter five, he says, Hope does not disappoint, we will. Get our inheritance because it's up to God and He loves us enough to get us there. So it's all in His hands. And also remember the purpose. He's trying to answer the question: how does faith in Jesus do what the law could not do? And He's not here to give us a magic formula now or a practical technique to live and to have victory over sin tomorrow night. He's answering how does faith solve this problem that the law didn't solve? And his answer is you have the Spirit of God at work in your life, and you didn't before. The law didn't make a provision to give you the Spirit of God, but grace does, and the Spirit of God is going to solve that problem. And that is completely good news if you stop to think about it. It means we can have absolute confidence that no matter what we face tomorrow, it's in God's hands and He's going to bring it about bring good about and bring about our salvation, which is exactly what he's going to argue at the end of the chapter. Okay. Let me go through then the details of the first 11 verses, and I'll get to your question. First thing I promise. Well, I'll try anyway. My promises aren't as good as God's. Okay, so look at verse one. 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 Jesus from the law of sin and death. So I think what he's saying is, I used to think condemnation was, he was talking about eternal judgment. I think he's got something more near to the context in mind here, and you are not condemned to stay in that spot you we just described in chapter 7. So you're not condemned to the moral paralysis or the tr being trapped in your sins that he just meant all of chapter 7 or the end of chapter 7 describing. Why are you not condemned to stay there? Because the law of spirit of love of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Here's the reason there's no you can escape that sin because you now have the Spirit of God or the life-giving spirit who is changing you and making you holy, where before you did not have that. So because of the reason, because grace, I thought the ice cream truck was coming. It's like, ooh, ice cream. Um, I'm easily distracted. Especially by food. All right. Um okay, because grace gives us access to the Spirit of God, it sets us free from that bondage to sin and death. So he's again, he's answering the question, why does grace work when following the law didn't? And the answer is grace works because the law had no provision for giving you the spirit, and the gospel does. And that's the difference between law and grace. The demands of the law are such that only the resources of God Himself can meet it, and we don't have that when we're under God's wrath. But because of our justification, because of what Jesus did for us on the cross, God can give us his spirit through his amazing, boundless grace and set us free to become righteous. That's what he's going to say in three and four. For the law, for God has done what the law we can by the flesh could not do. So, left to ourselves, we can by the flesh that is in our sinful body, because all we have is sin to draw on, we could not make ourselves righteous, but God did what we couldn't do, what the law couldn't make us do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh 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. So the law was incapable of making us righteous because all we had to draw in was sin, but God did it another way. He sent his son to die for us, to take the penalty for our sin, in order that he could satisfy his justice, and he did that in order that the law might be fulfilled in us, in order that we might become people who are now holy, who can walk according to the not according to the flesh, not trusting in ourselves, but trusting in him. So the righteous requirement of the law, I think he just means the moral demands, the kind of righteousness that's described in the law and prescribed by it, um, and those who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, people who are learning day by day to be people of faith, to trust more and more in God and to trust Him to make us holy and not do it on our own. So, verse 5 then. For the mind that is set on flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are of flesh cannot please God. So in five through eight he's saying, look, if you're trying to gain holiness through your own effort, all you're going to get is death. But if you're trying to gain holiness by trusting God, then life and peace will result. So, and I think the seven and eight verses, he argues, if you're not trusting in God, you don't even have the possibility. You don't even have the chance of being holy because you don't have the Spirit of God. So the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. Those who are trusting in themselves to make themselves holy will only experience death, but those who learn to trust in the Spirit of God will experience life and peace. And I understand that peace in the kind of the Hebrew sense, the shalom sense of the word, um, which is a very hard word to describe, but it's got the idea of wholeness or completeness or contentment or um worthwhile living. It's all wrapped up in that idea. I think that's what he's looking at. It would be the opposite of the brokenness and the death that we described earlier. Okay, then this is the best part. In 9 through 11 he says, But you believers aren't like that, because you have the possibility of life, you have the spirit of God. So let's look at that. 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 God does not belong to him. So he's saying, You're not like that. You have something that unbelievers don't have. You have if you are a believer, you have the spirit of God. And if you have that, you have everything. Because that's the seal, that's the down payment, that is the guarantee that you will become holy. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. So if Christ is in you, i.e., through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, then although you yourself have no resources to become holy, that's what I think he means by the body is dead because of sin, you don't have any under wrath, you don't have the option of being uh holy. The spirit of life, where am I? If Christ is in you, the spirit of oh, because of righteousness, that's the phrase I wanted to talk about. Um so if God dwells in you, because you are justified, you have now have a resource that you didn't have before. That is the spirit of God to make you holy. And I would translate that because of righteousness, because of your right standing before God, because you are justified, because you have been forgiven by the blood of Jesus. I think that's what he has in mind there. Not because of holiness so much, but because of our our uh justif is that a word justifiedness or justification before God. Okay, 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. That's the best news. What he's saying is, look, the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is now available to you, and if he could take Jesus, who was completely, totally, both and physically dead at that point, and raise him to newness of life, don't you think that he can bring you out of your bondage to sin and into holiness through his spirit who dwells in you? So he's saying, left to ourselves, we'd be trapped, we'd be morally stuck in the dilemma of chapter 7 of that moral paralysis of being unable to become holy. But now, as believers, we have the Spirit of God available to us, and God is committed because of his grace to see to it that we who are now dead, who couldn't obey the law even when we wanted to, now have the resources to do it. And again, it doesn't mean you're gonna be perfect every moment of every day now that you have the Spirit of God. It means you're gonna get to the finish line and you're gonna win the race. You may fail, tomorrow may be hard, and the day after that may be harder, but you're gonna get there. You are not stuck in this dilemma of chapter seven of wanting to be righteous and lacking the ability. Now you have the chance and the guaranteed hope. And he's gonna go on to argue in later in this, I don't know if it's next week or the week after, we're gonna look at that. This is a future hope, that we don't have it all yet, but we have the beginnings of it now. So the answer to the question of chapter 7, wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death, is Jesus Christ. Because now we have the Spirit of God to change that problem. So let me just take you back to Psalm 1 to remind you of that image. His delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and all that he does, he prospers. Speaking of believers. That's the image. We are now planted into the Holy Spirit, if you will. And God is making our roots run down deep so that we have this everlasting source of life and goodness and holiness. And he gives us to us freely as an act of grace and compassion because of the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's incredibly good news because it means you don't have to fear that you're gonna be trapped in sin forever, because even now God is working in you to change you, to nourish you, to make you more a person of faith, more and more someone who trusts him. Now, I don't know why he doesn't do that all at once, but he doesn't. Um, he never promises that this is an instant overnight change. In fact, he promises the opposite, that it's gonna be a long road and it's gonna be a road that involves suffering, but you will get there. And Paul's gonna go on in this chapter to say, it's worth it if we could see now, just get a little glimpse of the kind of people we will be and what heaven will be like. We would look at all of this and go, I'd do it again. He's gonna argue it, I think he uses the phrase, it's not even worthy to be compared. We're gonna look at that, what we're getting, and look at this that we go through now, as hard as it is, and he's gonna say, it's not even a comparison. There's no there's no way to even compare the two. All right, that was a quick run through. I'm sure you have lots of questions. Let me pray and then I'll let you respond to some of this. Father, thank you for being a God who saves us and changes us. And we pray this morning that you would teach us the possibilities that are contained in the words of this chapter, and that you would bring forth your righteousness in us that you bought with such a price of the death and resurrection of your son. Teach us to become more and more people who do not seek righteousness on our own by clenching our fists or gritting our teeth or striving on our own efforts, but teach us to be more and more people who trust in you and rest in you, and hope and wait, and keep stay on our knees before you, trusting in your grace. Forgive us when we set this word aside in our lives and teach us to be more and more people who place value on what you value and to want what you want. And we pray all of this in Christ's name. Thanks. Amen.