We now present Dr. Bob Jones, Sr., internationally
known evangelist and founder of Bob Jones University,
who during his earthly ministry was one of
God's great warriors for the faith.
Dr. Jones' message is one in a series
entitled, Word of Truth.
I want to read some verses from the
8th chapter of the Book of Romans, Romans
8th chapter, and read several verses, beginning at
the first verse.
There is therefore now no condemnation of them
which are in Christ Jesus, which walk not
after flesh but after spirit.
For the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus hath made me free from
the law of sin and death.
For what the law could not do, and
that was weak, through the flesh God sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh.
That the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled in us, who walk not after flesh
but after spirit.
For they that are after the flesh do
mind the things of the flesh, but they
that are after the spirit, the things of
the spirit.
For to be carnally minded is death, but
to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because a carnal mind is at enmity against
God, but is not subject to the law
of God, neither indeed can be.
So then, they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh, but
in the spirit.
If so, be your spirit of God dwell
in you.
Now, if any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his.
That's a deft and clear-cut, unequivocal statement.
The people who are in the flesh, that
is, unregenerated people, who are not in the
spirit, cannot please God.
Now, a Christian can please God, because he
has a new nature.
But the flesh can never please God.
Now, flesh here is man in the raw,
man as he is naturally.
Not what he is supernaturally, it's what he
is naturally.
Now, God has judged the flesh.
I want you to notice this verse back
up here, where he said, His own Son,
in likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,
condemns sin in the flesh.
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ came down from
heaven to earth.
He was in the form of man.
He took on a human form.
But He was without sin.
He's the only person who ever lived in
the world, walked around among men in a
human form without sin.
He had no sin.
He knew no sin.
He never sinned.
He never had to say, Forgive my sins.
Never once did He have to say it.
All right.
Now, He was in the form of man
and had no sin of His own.
But He took on Himself the sins of
man.
And when He died on the cross, He
judged man in the flesh.
There's no good thing in the flesh.
Now, a man may be attractive and kind.
He may have some good traits.
But the flesh always produces corruption in some
form.
Now, you'll see a Christian man sometime, born
again man, that'll do something wrong.
And you wonder why he did it.
Well, the flesh got the better of him.
The flesh stepped up and took over, see.
Still the Spirit's taking over, the flesh took
over.
Now, we ought to have victory.
We Christians ought to live victorious lives.
And we can, by the grace of God.
If we don't do it, it's not the
Spirit of God in us, it's the flesh
in us.
You're a Christian.
You have the old nature and the new
nature.
Now, what are you going to do with
the old nature?
Well, some people say you can have it
eradicated.
I don't think that's in the Bible.
The flesh is in this chapter here in
Romans, the eighth chapter, which is a chapter
of victory.
Some people say, Well, crucify it.
That is a reckoning of death, see.
Now, as far as my spiritual life is
concerned, the flesh is dead, see.
When I became a Christian, I became a
new creation.
A new creature, we read in the Bible.
It's a new creation.
I became a new creation.
When I became a Christian, I had something
I never had before.
I may have had certain traits.
I may have loved my mother.
I may have been kind or unkind.
I may have done something because I was
educated along a certain line.
But there wasn't any good thing about me.
There wasn't anything I could do to please
God.
So one day I came to Jesus Christ,
a poor lost sinner.
Now, I was helpless and undone.
I didn't say, Now, I want you to
save me.
I've done so and so.
You know, all the religions of the world
tell you to do something and live, see.
The religion of the Bible says live and
do.
In other words, your righteousness is as filthy
as a rag.
If you could give away everything you had,
give your body to be buried, sacrifice all
you have, and give your life to a
cause, that wouldn't save you.
You're not saved by what you do.
You're saved by what He did for you,
see.
Jesus Christ died for you.
He bore your sins as a body on
a cross.
He paid your debt.
He was wounded for your transgressions.
He was bruised for your iniquities.
The chastisement of your peace was upon Him,
and with His stripes you can be healed.
That's the only way you can be healed.
That's the only way you can be saved.
All right?
Now, when I accept Christ, I have been
parted to be something I never had before.
Something I never had up that time.
I received Jesus, and what did He do?
He gave me something.
What was it?
He gave me life, the gift of God's
eternal life.
And when He received Him, then gave me
authority to become children of God, even then
to live on His name, which were born,
not of blood, nor the will of flesh,
nor the will of man, but of God.
Now, I still had the old nature.
I had the flesh with its appetites, its
propensities, and its inclinations.
I could lose my temper.
I could sin.
I could do wrong.
And we ought not to do it, though.
We ought not to do it.
I've never justified it.
I'm not going to justify it.
I can explain it.
I can explain why sometimes I've stumbled.
But it's the one thing to explain.
There's another thing to justify.
There's another thing to defend it.
Whenever you hear people always defending what they
do, or justifying what they do, and try
to get outmundered on human justification of something
wrong, you can't justify wrong, do you?
We read in the Bible that God's grace
is sufficient.
His grace is sufficient for us Christians.
It's sufficient for you and me.
It's sufficient for all the trials of life,
and the burdens that we carry along the
road.
That's no justification for getting weary and doing
good.
That's no justification for impatience.
That's no justification for irritability.
It's no trouble to explain why people do
what they shouldn't do, and why Christians do
what they shouldn't do.
You can explain it all right.
But it's one thing to explain it.
It's another thing to justify it.
Now, you in the flesh cannot please God.
You still listen to me.
You can't please God.
It's impossible.
You just do all you can, you can't
please Him.
You can't appease God.
God has judged you in the flesh, and
man in the flesh is a lost man.
In Adam, the race died.
And all men in the flesh are judged.
Now, you are not right till God makes
you right by His grace.
And then when He makes you right, He
brings into you something you never had before.
It's not just making you over when you
become a Christian.
You have something imparted to you that God
gives you, which is eternal life and salvation
and forgiveness.
We have that if we are saved.
All right, now that's in us.
But according to the Bible, that treasure is
an unearthed vessel.
You have to guard that treasure.
Now, if you and I are led by
the Spirit, which we may not always be,
we can have victory.
You don't have to be a defeated Christian.
Let's don't ever justify it.
Let's don't ever condone it.
I don't have to be defeated.
I can have victory through the Lord Jesus
Christ.
We can have.
If we walk after His Spirit, not after
flesh, see.
Sometimes we are tired and sometimes we are
worn out.
Sometimes we are on a strain.
Sometimes we don't feel very well.
And we are human and all that, but
we ought to have victory.
Now, let's make up our minds to one
thing.
As Christian people, what do you say?
We are not going to justify what we
do.
We are not going to condone it.
Just admit to it.
We confess our sins, that's addressed to Christians.
He is faithful just to give us our
sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If you were born again, that epistle of
John written to Christian people, if we who
are Christian, we born again, if we sin,
we don't have to.
No excuse for it.
We shouldn't justify it.
We read in the epistle of John, these
things right and I choose sin not.
Don't sin.
Wait a minute.
Don't do it.
But if you do it, don't justify it.
Don't sin.
But if you do sin, then what do
you do?
You confess your sins.
You say, now I'm a child of God.
I did this.
I shouldn't have done it.
I'm sorry.
Forgive me.
And trust Him for victory, not to do
it again.
And the Bible makes one thing plain.
He that is born of God does not
commit sin.
He doesn't practice it.
You know, you may stumble over a stone
on the Christian road.
But you know something?
You won't just keep going back there stumbling
over and over and over and over.
You won't do that.
Now if you are a real Christian, he
that is born of God does not keep
stumbling over stone.
Now I suppose that some of us who
have so many heavy burdens and live so
strangely in this world, sometimes we sort of
get sorry for ourselves and think, well, you
know, I just got all I can do
with all I can carry.
All that, but you can have victory.
Lord Jesus Christ will give it to you.
The Apostle Paul never had it easy.
He was misunderstood.
Christians are going to be misunderstood.
The Bible makes it plain.
The world can't understand the Christian.
A Christian knows about the world, but the
world doesn't know about Christians.
Our citizenship's in heaven.
We're pilgrims and strangers in a strange land,
passing through.
I have a body, hands, feet, eyes, ears,
tongue, mind, a human being with all the
frailties that men have.
But if I'm a Christian, I have something
that the sinner doesn't have.
I have something imparted to me, something that
God gave me when I trust Him as
my Savior and I pass out of death
into life.
We should live by the grace of God
a victorious life.
We don't have to be defeated.
We don't have to keep blundering and stumbling
and falling.
And if we do it, then let's not
justify it, let's not condone it, let's not
explain it.
Let's just say, Oh God, forgive me.
And let's stand on our feet, our Christian
feet, in the new nature that Christ gives
us.
We are indwelt by the Holy Spirit if
we are Christians.
Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is God.
The Holy Spirit.
The third person, God the Father, God the
Son, God the Holy Ghost.
That's the Trinity.
Now the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies.
Christ is up in heaven with the right
hand in the seating post.
God the Father forgives sin.
And we say, Our Father who art in
heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on
earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
Alright, now he's up there, our Father.
Jesus Christ, who was manifested in flesh and
died on the cross, is up there with
the right hand of the Father.
He intercedes for us.
He's our lawyer representing us to the Father.
To the court of the sky, he pleads
for us.
May your prince in his hands, a print
on his feet, a scar on his side,
a print of the thorns on his brow,
died to save sinners.
Yes, yes, I trust him.
Alright, then what?
I have in my body the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit that brought Jesus Christ from the
dead.
You know, they thought it was a wonderful
thing, in the Old Testament, that God, who
had eternal habit, dwelt in the temple.
He did in the Old Testament.
But God doesn't dwell in buildings.
May you have hands now.
The dwelling place of God, the Holy Spirit
is in the bodies of men on this
earth.
You and I can have victory.
I wonder if we're living that way.
Let's ask God to give us victory and
give us grace to stand, to be true,
to be faithful in all things.
Remember now, they cannot please God who are
in the flesh.
But those in the Spirit can please God.
We'll do the things that please God.
We'll live the kind of life that we
should live to please God.
You can please Him if you're a Christian.
I can please Him if I'm a Christian.
If we don't do it, we've done wrong.
We shall live so, day by day.
We'll please God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Jesus
Christ who died to save us, who is
atoning blood, and our salvation in His name.
Help us to be faithful to Him and
true to Him in all things.
We pray that You would give us strength
to meet the foe and to come out
victoriously.
Help us to trust Jesus Christ, not to
walk after the flesh, but to walk after
the Spirit, to live victorious lives.
We pray for the strength that we need
and the grace that we need and the
power that we need and we'll be all
if God would have us be.
We'll commit our lives to Thee.
Forgive anything in our lives that's wrong, blot
out any of our sins, and remember them
against us no more forever.
We thank Thee like the Father pitied His
children, the Lord pitied them in fury.
And if we know our hearts, we fear
Thee, and we want to love Thee and
serve Thee.
Make us what we ought to be and
keep us by Thy power in all the
things that have us do, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
You've been listening to the Word of Truth
with Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. A man who
went to his heavenly home after more than
70 years of influencing thousands with his compassion
for souls and the Word of God.
If you can't remember telephone numbers, grab a
pencil and jot this one down.
It's 1-800-BJ-AND-ME When you
call, tell us why you want to attend
Bob Jones University and we'll send you your
own personal opportunity profile.
Did you get the number?
It's 1-800-BJ-AND-ME