Thank you, you can be seated please. Thank you guys. Friends, it is just a delight to bring to you the first portion, women's chapter eight. I'm excited about it.
Last few times I've substituted for Ted, we've gone for five, six, part of seven. And the first part we're gonna do is really drill down on the five, or, four, but I had to add just one more verse. So we'll look at the first five verses of Romans chapter eight. And so while you're finding that in your Bible, let me just make a few contextual points.
A point in the first six chapters, Romans has been eventful. Paul told us all of humanity is condemned to God's wrath and punishment because of our sin and corrupt nature. And then he described in chapter three, God's provision for our sin through the propitiation of Jesus Christ. So in Romans, Paul is really focused on God's righteousness and how do we attain to God's righteousness?
And he's saying, by the works of the law, you can't, you can't on your own. And further in chapter three, he says, and you don't even want to. But then he brings Jesus Christ in into chapter three and says, Jesus was the propitiation for our sins. He brought about justification.
And then he told us, so the way to achieve, the way to attain to God's righteousness is by faith in his son. And then in chapter four, Paul gives us examples of what his faith looks like. He gives us the examples of David and Abraham to very flawed men who had faith in their, in their Savior. And then in, in chapters five and six, Paul develops this concept that he is, theologians call it union with Christ, that our faith in Christ knits us together so much with Jesus that it can't be broken.
And Paul says, we are buried with him in baptism. We're raised with him in the resurrection. And all of this comes by, by God's grace. It's nothing of our own.
And so as we, as we end the first six chapters of Romans, we're told to walk in newness of life and things seem to be going really well. But the last time we got together here, we talked about the latter part of Romans seven. And that was a bit of a downer because Paul, the great apostle, a wonderful Christian, was really, really struggling with his sin, even as a mature believer. He was depressed, he was frustrated, he was agonizing.
And so what did he do as a result of that? He put his eyes back on Jesus. And he wrote one of the greatest chapters in the Bible where under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he writes things in this chapter. I'll give you a few examples.
He writes verses like this. If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also graciously give us all things? That's one example out of this incredible chapter.
Here's another one. No, in all of these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. Final example, nothing else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And that's just the beginning.
Chapter eight is packed with those kinds of verses that are meant to assure us that God loves us and that God keeps us and that we won't lose our salvation, meant to assure us that God has us from beginning to end, later in the latter part of Romans eight, Paul says, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined, those whom he predestined, he called, those whom he called, he justified, and those whom he justified, he glorified. God has got us from before the beginning to the end, the glory. And so that is the point of this chapter. God had Paul write this chapter to show us that the assurance, the guarantee of our salvation depends not on our ability to obey God's law or to perfectly obey Jesus, but rather on the love and the grace of God, the unbreakable nature of our union with Christ and the continuing presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
So Paul wants us to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our salvation is secure if our faith is in Christ. And so this is so important to remember because our enemy can shake us. The enemy, our enemy, the devil, the father of lies, the accuser of the brethren wants us to forget about what God has done and is doing, and he wants us to put the focus back on ourselves and how weak and feeble and frail we are. So he can stifle our Christian experience and squash our effectiveness as believers.
So these introductory verses to chapter eight are the foundation of the chapter and are some of the greatest verses in the Bible. I can't even believe I get to stand up here and teach them. They might seem basic, but they express deep truths. And while you're thinking about, well, these do sound kind of basic, let's remember who's writing them.
And let's remember why he's writing them. The great Apostle Paul is writing these in his greatest torment over his own sin, and he's reminding himself of what Jesus has done for him. He's reminding himself of his justification and his sanctification. So I've given you a taste of what's to come.
Let's now look at the passage. Let's look to God's holy and inspired word. And for the sake of context, I'm going to start in chapter seven, verse 21. So go back one page or so, another paragraph, and we'll start at verse 21 of chapter seven.
So let's listen now to the reading of God's holy and inspired word. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God and my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
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. Moving on to chapter eight now, 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.
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. 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. 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. That ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word. Let's pray together. Our Lord and our God, what marvelous words you allowed Paul to write for us.
We know we get shaken and buffeted. We know our faith isn't perfect. We know that we're still full of sin, but yet we have these words to assure us that your grace is greater than all our sin. And lightness now, encourage us, show us your greatness.
Help us to glorify you now as we go through and discuss your word, a Christ name we pray amen. So this passage describes some of the most basic and fundamental aspects of the Christian faith. And to some of you, maybe who have been Christians for a long time and others who may understand the basic elements of the Christian faith, let me reiterate what I said previously, that the person writing this is the Apostle Paul, a person who learned directly from Jesus, who wrote much of the New Testament, and what does he do when he needs to get refocused? He goes back to the basics of what Christ has done for him in terms of his justification and what is being done for him in terms of his sanctification.
So basic, some reminded, some of you may have heard this, but I've reminded of the great pro-football coach, Vince Lombardi. So when the Green Bay Packers would start their preseason camp every year, Coach Lombardi would take a football and hold it up and say, gentlemen, this is a football. I'm also reminded of the great college basketball coach, men's college basketball coach, John Wooden, UCLA, a one, I believe, 10 national championships. So he would get these star players from all over the country.
And the first thing he would teach them to do is to put their socks on right and to tie their shoes correctly. Now why would he do that for such star players? Because he knew if they got blisters during the game because their shoes weren't tied, right? Or their socks were on wrong, they'd have to come out and they might lose the game.
So fundamentals are critical because without fundamentals, games get lost, truths get forgotten, and Christians can get defeated. It's no wonder that the author of Hebrews tells believers to pick up their drooping knees and arms and remember the fundamental truths of Jesus and his role in the beginning and the perfecting of their faith. So it's worth thinking to ourselves regarding this passage. If this is good enough for Paul to remind himself of what's been done for him and his standing in Christ, then maybe we should make this our starting point as well.
And so if you're thinking about outlines, this is gonna kind of go verse by verse, but in verse one, Paul explains that the overall problem of the human race, which is condemnation by God because they can't attain to his righteousness, Paul explains that problem has been solved for those who are in Christ Jesus. So in verses two and three, Paul will go on then and tell us how the problem was solved and who solved it. In verse four, Paul will tell us why the problem was solved and in the second half of verse four and in verse five, Paul will say to us that the problem will always be solved. It's not a temporary fix.
So let's look at verse one, the solution to humanity's greatest problem. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the foundational sentence of Romans chapter eight, the foundational sentence for all of our shorts. And it's really interesting as you go through Romans and so I'll do a little commercial.
We have a class on Romans, it meets back here every Sunday at 930, we've been in it forever. We take our time, but you find that Paul keeps, as he goes through Romans chapter by chapter, you find that, oh yeah, he talked about that in chapter five or six or three or whatever. So he keeps bringing what he says is so dense that he has to go back and bring it forward and say now remember I talked about this and here's how we're continuing to apply it. So that's what he's doing here.
And so let's, so words are important and Paul doesn't use any throwaway words. So what I wanna do here is talk about the word, some of the specific words in this verse. So first of all, there's therefore, what is it, therefore, therefore? Well it points back to chapter seven, verse 25.
Right after Paul says, wretched man that I am. He looks to Jesus and he reminds himself that his Savior took the penalty for his sins and fulfilled God's law on his behalf because he couldn't. So by looking to Jesus, he's reminding himself that to God it's as if Paul did keep God's law because Jesus did it for him. And Jesus' righteousness was credited to Paul.
It's as if he's saying, despite the frustrations over my sin that I just wrote about at the present time, something incredible has happened on my behalf to declare me not guilty because the only person powerful enough to do that loved me so much that he took the penalty that I deserved. It's like Paul is saying on account of Jesus, I'm not guilty and I'm acceptable to God despite my current flaws, failings and frustrations. That's the therefore and he moves on and he says, now. Well now is present tense and it's from the past.
It has, right? There used to be condemnation for everybody. We'll talk about in a minute here what condemnation means, but there used to be, but there now is not. And there won't ever be.
I mean now it could be, you could say, well, okay, there wasn't before and it now isn't, but maybe there will be in the future. But there won't be based on what we're about to look at. Remember, there used to be total condemnation because as we talked about in chapter five, we came from Adam. Adam was our representative.
All of us fell and all of his sin and failings were attributed to the entire human race. But for believers, that condemnation has been removed forever and he moves on to the next word, which he says, no. There is therefore now no condemnation. So there's no shred of condemnation, not even.
God doesn't have any lingering doubts. He doesn't have any regrets, no hard feelings, no reconsiderations, no doovers. He knows you still sin. He knows I still sin.
But he's not going back on justification because it's not what we did. It's what Jesus did. There's no condemnation. In Psalm 103, God says, through the Psalmist, as far as the east is from the west, so far your transgressions removed from you.
Our sins, because of Jesus, have been thrown away. We were buried with him. Paul says in Romans 6, and we read earlier in the service, we read from Isaiah 55, that God remembers our sins no more. He says, through the prophet, he will abundantly pardon, abundantly, totally, completely pardon.
Nothing left. That's very counter to what Paul wrote in chapter 7. And it's what oftentimes seems counterintuitive to us as we go through our every day. How could I think that?
How could I do that? Why would I say that? And so we're going, is there a sin? There's a sin?
Another one, another one, another one, another one. And it's all building up on us. But yet Paul is reminding himself and us. There is therefore now no condemnation.
And by the way, what is condemnation? Well, it's eternal punishment for our guilt. It's bearing the full brunt of God's wrath. Jesus summed it up in Matthew 25 when he said, he's talking about the sheep and the goats.
He says, then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. That's condemnation. The eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels and everyone else who doesn't have faith in Christ. That's pretty serious.
But there's none of that for those who are in Christ. For those who are in Christ, we are, as I said, we have union with Christ. Paul solidified that. He created that concept for us and he brought it home hard in chapters five and six.
He said, we're not in Adam anymore. He's not our representative because you've taken Christ by faith. He's your new representative. And when God sees you, he sees Jesus and you are connected to him forever and ever.
We've been transferred from the kingdom of darkness, where we all start into the kingdom of Jesus. And we'll say more about that in a few minutes but the point that Paul makes over and over again, when he says in Christ, he says, you are inseparably united with Jesus. And Jesus talks about this in John 10 and 17 and John 10. He says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life. They will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of my father's hand. That is union with Christ and with the Father.
In John 17, Jesus says, he's praying, his high priestly prayer, praying for the Father. He says, I end them and you and me. That they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you set me and love them even as you loved me. So never forget, brothers and sisters, you are inseparably united with Jesus if you have proclaimed faith in him.
So that's verse number one. That's how the greatest problem in the world, the greatest problem for humanity was solved. So that Paul is saying the problem was solved. Now he's about to tell us in the next couple verses how it was solved.
So verse two, how the problem was solved for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. So here we have two different laws, two different purposes and two very different effects. One sets us free and the other imprisons us. So let's talk for a minute about the law of sin and death.
This goes back to what Paul was discussing in chapters five and seven of Romans where he spoke about the law of God condemning our sin and he spoke of our enslavement to sin as our result of our union with Adam. That's in our natural state and the corresponding judgment and punishment from God that comes from that. And in the case of God's law, we know it imprisons us not because there's anything wrong with the law because Paul told us the law is good in Romans seven but because of how our sin responds to God's law. So Paul says that our sinful nature naturally rebels against God's law because we start out we're born as God's enemies.
And so we're naturally opposed to God. The law of God shows that God's holy requirements for righteousness for living, but our natural state brings out our sin because we don't want God to tell us what to do because we're born into a different kingdom, kingdom at war with each other. Paul says because we can't keep God's law, we do one of two things. We either realize that we need a Savior and reach out to Christ or we reject Jesus.
And we're judged by our inability to keep God's law and that needs to condemnation, which we've been talking about. Paul says, he's teasing an opportunity through the commandment, Steve me and through it through the commandment killed me. So he was a surviving state being dead in sin prior to putting his faith in Jesus. And he said sin killed him by making him rebel against Jesus.
He also said after five that God's law, the reason it came in was to increase the trespass. In other words, to show us the stark hideous gap between God's righteous requirements and our sin. The law came in to show us how bad our sin actually is. So we're imprisoned by this law of sin and death because we can't escape God's wrath and judgment unless we look to Jesus who kept the law for us.
Which leads us to the bright side of verse two, the other law, which is the law of the spirit of life has set you free from this law of sin and death. So I mentioned before that the Holy Spirit transfers us, Paul tells us in Colossians, transfers us from the kingdom of darkness in which we're born under Adam's representation and condemnation and transfers us to the kingdom of Jesus. So the visual picture that comes to my mind, and this might be a little too graphic, but so we're in this prison cell, it's dark, it's nasty, it's filthy, we've got goo all over us, it's smelly, and we might think we're okay. Because that's all we've ever known, that prison, that kingdom.
A lot of our friends and neighbors and relatives are in that kingdom and that's what they know and I think it's all good. We can't get out of there on our own. But the Holy Spirit comes and he enables us to put our faith in Jesus and he says, come on, let's get out of here. We're going to a different kingdom.
We're going to the kingdom of Jesus. And he cleans us up through the blood of Christ. And he makes us acceptable to God. We can't do that on our own, we already know that.
Because in chapter three, Paul told us, no one is righteous, no not one. All have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. And once again, the reason that we sin is something very deep and profound, and that is because Adam, sinned against God and took us all down with him. So the Holy Spirit comes on this rescue mission, this amazing rescue mission and sets us free.
What does it mean to be set free from sin? What does it mean to be set free from sin? I still sinned, Paul just wrote about the fact that he still sins. What does that mean?
Well, if your faith is in Christ, you are free from the penalty of sin, from the rule of sin and from the power of sin. Before Christ, it was impossible to not sin. And we were doomed to receive God's wrath and punishment for all eternity. But in Romans chapter six, Paul told us, we're free from the rule and the power of sin.
He explicitly tells us that sin will not have dominion over you. He's saying that as a fact. And why is that? Because Jesus' atonement for sin, set us free from sin.
I'm reminded of, it seems like a long time ago, I spoke about John eight, and Jesus is talking about, and now I'm sort of winging this, so I might have to forgive me if I don't remember it all correctly. But Jesus is talking about slaves and free. And he's talking about, if you know the son, the son, you are free indeed, the son will set you free. Brothers and sisters, if we're in Christ, we have been set free.
And so that is how the problem of condemnation has been solved. That's part of it. But Paul continues in verse three. And he says, 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. So Paul starts here by contrasting God's grace, love and mercy against his written law. And this is something that Paul has been discussing throughout Romans. Law versus grace.
By grace you are saved, he'll tell us in Ephesians. Paul continually tells us in Romans that obedience to the law won't save us, not because God's law is bad, but because we're sinful and condemned by nature, and can't even begin to help to attain to God's righteous requirements. So what did God do? In Romans chapter three, Paul says, now the righteousness of God is made manifest.
It introduces us to the work of Jesus Christ. He says that we are justified and that we're declared righteous by faith in Christ as a free gift. Not because of anything that we did, but because God put Jesus forward as what he calls a propitiation for sin by his blood. We talked about propitiation a lot in our Romans class.
We actually studied Hebrews in our Romans class because Hebrews talks a lot about propitiation. And that basically means satisfying God's wrath through his atonement for our sins. And Hebrews chapter two has a great summary of this. It says about Jesus, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect.
Every respect. Jesus had to come in human form just like us in every respect, fully God and fully man. Why is that? So that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
What does a priest do? A priest mediates. A priest goes between God and the people. And what does the priest do?
The priest makes sin offerings. Back to think about the Old Testament. Well, Jesus made himself the offering, the ultimate offering. And so he had to be made like us in every respect.
The author of Hebrews says, and Paul says, by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh for sin, for the purpose of condemning sin, of getting rid of sin, as far as the east is from the west. So far has he removed our transgressions from us. Paul talks about condemning sin in the flesh in Colossians two. It's really wonderful.
He says, and you who were dead in your trespasses, you were condemned. And in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, with Jesus, union with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses. Same, no condemnation. Forgiveness all our trespasses.
Not one is left. Well, how did he do this? He says, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
So all those requirements of God in his law. Think of the 10 commandments. I broke this one. I broke that one.
Breaking this one, the list goes on and on and on and on, forever. What Jesus did was he took those, he nailed them to the cross. And God said, those are all taken care of. Those are fulfilled in Christ.
He took it another step further. He disarmed our enemies. Paul says, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. Our enemies are defeated.
We're triumphant. We don't always feel like it sometimes, but it's the truth. We are victors in Christ. Now why would God do this?
Well, inherent in this verse, verse three, is God's great love for us. This is the backbone of everything that we're discussing in these verses. God did this all for us when we couldn't do it ourselves and didn't even want to because he loves us. He loves you beyond your wildest imagination.
So that's how the problem was solved and who solved it. Now let's talk about why, verse four. Why the problem was solved. 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 Christ's Atonement not only forgave us our sins and trespasses declared us righteous before God. Now is something that our attempts to obey God's law couldn't do because we were dead and sin. And when we say righteous, that means acceptable to God. And it's the result of God lovingly providing Jesus for our Atonement and the Holy Spirit, as Paul says here, for enabling us to have faith in Christ's work on our behalf.
And why did he do this? So we might be righteous and have fellowship with him. It is not amazing. Think about that.
The God of the universe wants to have fellowship forever with you. And he loved you so much that he is willing to sacrifice his son for that to happen. Taking it a step further, while you were his enemy, Romans 5 says while we were still sinners and his enemies, Christ died for us. So moving to verse five, why the problem will always be solved.
It says 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. So this problem, this massive problem, overarching problem of condemnation by God will always be solved for sinners because we have the Holy Spirit in us, continually transforming us throughout our lives to make us more like Christ. Jesus promised to send the helper, the comforter, and later in Romans 8, Paul will say that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when we don't even know what to pray for.
And as Lord willing, we go further into Romans 8, Paul is going to have way more to say about the Holy Spirit. But here, he's saying that what we think about, and how we think about life in general, has fundamentally changed. So as Paul says, he says in 1 Corinthians 2, that we have the mind of Christ. Now we think completely different from those who do not have Christ.
That we're being transformed into the image of Christ. Paul will tell us later in chapter eight. So this verse in particular, walking by the spirit, living according to the spirit, setting the minds on the things of the spirit, that challenges us. We're challenged here to see a contrast between ourselves and those maybe our friends, relatives, whomever who don't have faith in Christ.
There should be a fundamental difference. This is one of the primary ways we can be sure, we're true Christians, not because we're perfect, but because we think and we act differently. What we value is different, how we approach life is different. Everything about us should be fundamentally different from people without Jesus in their lives, people who are still in the kingdom of darkness.
And so summarizing what we've covered, we've seen that the overarching problem of humanity, that of being condemned eternally by God, has been solved permanently by those who are in Christ Jesus. Paul told us how the problem was solved by the work of the Holy Spirit, by God providing Jesus in the flesh and by Jesus defeating sin at the cross. He told us why the problem of condemnation was solved, because God loves us and wants fellowship with us, and we have to be righteous in order for that to happen. And then he told us that the problem is solved forever because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
So as we start coming in for a landing here, I wanna just say that in this passage, Paul has been speaking to those who have faith in Christ. But you'll notice very importantly, that there's another group of people indirectly mentioned in verse one and directly mentioned in verse five. And that group consists of people who have not placed their salvation, placed their faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and the salvation of their souls. And that group of people, they're still under total condemnation.
What we have said here does not apply to those who are outside of Christ. So if you're one of those folks, your condemnation is still in effect. And you're in great danger. The elders of this church care deeply about your soul and don't want that for you.
So I would hope that you would make today that the day that you turn to faith in Christ. And if you would like me, Greg, Kyle, any of our deacons to speak with you about that, please let's do that. We want you to become one of God's precious children. And for those of you who are in Christ, Paul has been speaking to you in order to assure you that you are truly saved and in Christ, not because of anything that you've done, but because of what the triune God has done.
The Father provided Jesus. Jesus did His atroni work. The Holy Spirit has rescued you because it enabled you to have faith in Christ. It enables you to continue on your Christian walk.
And so brothers and sisters, when you're down and when you're disappointed, as we always get, because of your sins and failures, don't keep focusing on yourself because that's exactly what your enemy of the devil wants you to do. Instead, join the Apostle Paul in focusing on these basic, fundamental yet remarkable verses in Romans, chapter eight, verses one through five. Let's pray together. Our Lord and our God, how great and merciful and gracious you are.
While we were your enemies, doomed to help, shaken or fiss at you, not even wanting to go near you, you came and rescued us by the power of the Holy Spirit and the blood of Jesus Christ, so that we could be your precious children and have fellowship with you. Thank you for that. Guide us, sustain us, help us to become more and more Christ like we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Let's stand and sing our hymn in Christ alone.