I'd like to press on just a bit
further in our considerations that began yesterday in
the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans.
I am certainly well aware of the fact
that this is extremely familiar territory over which
we're traveling, but it's, I'm certain you have
found out in your Christian life that oftentimes
you walk the same old paths of Scripture
and suddenly there lies a nugget at your
feet that you hadn't noticed before, a nugget
of truth, and you say, how come I
missed that the last time?
Or I didn't see that when I was
reading it before.
And so we mustn't discount the importance of
passages in the Bible that we know so
very well, and therefore I do not hesitate
too much to speak on this in this
area of Scripture.
Just a brief moment of review, however, the
connection between this great eighth chapter of Romans
and what has preceded it seems to be
a very logical connection when we remember that
the apostle is using the connecting word, therefore,
to tie in what he has been saying
in previous chapters to what he wants to
say now that's a very important subject matter,
which namely is that there is a dynamic
provided for the kind of life that God
is expecting us to live.
Call it by any name you wish, victorious
life, abundant life, overcoming life, whatever, there is
a high and lofty standard of Christian living
that ought to characterize God's people, and in
these days in which we're living, one fears
that there ought to be more emphasis upon
the victory over sin that is provided for
us in our inheritance in Christ Jesus.
Now, Paul has said that there is a
new law in operation in the Christian's life.
It is the law of the spirit of
life in Christ Jesus, and I'll not repeat
by way of review here our rather clumsy
illustration which we used yesterday of the book
that was sustained by holding it aloft, but
remind you again just this much that even
though that book was apparently defying the law
of gravity, nonetheless the law of gravity was
still in operation, and if for one second
the strength of the hand that supported that
book should be withdrawn, the law of gravity
would take over immediately and draw the object
to the surface of the earth, or to
the platform.
And so, we mustn't think that because we
are saved and have been living for maybe
some years or some length of time in
triumph over sin in our lives, a measure
of triumph at least, that we have arrived
at a state of perfection.
There are some believers who have taught that
it is possible to arrive at a state
of perfection while we are still in the
flesh.
They talk about sinless perfection, and I recall
when I was first converted, I got introduced
to a people who had an old-fashioned
Methodist camp grounds in the southern part of
our state, and I was intrigued by the
warmth of these people, and so I went
to some of their meetings, and they would
have their testimony times, and I heard some
astonishing testimony.
People would get up and say, I was
converted 12 years ago on the 15th of
March 19-whatever, and then I was sinlessly
perfected on August the 12th, some six or
seven years later, and thank God I have
not sinned for 17 years.
I was awed by those testimonies, and I
thought, isn't that wonderful?
I wonder how you get there?
Until somebody said, have you ever talked to
that brother's wife?
She could tell you quite a different story
about his sinless perfection, but they were deadly
earnest and sincere.
They honestly believed that the Christian could arrive
at a state of perfection in this life.
He could have the old nature removed, much
as one has a truth extracted, and it
would no longer exist.
Now, I'm opposed to that teaching for a
simple reason.
It just ain't so, and it doesn't work
out in Christian life and experience.
Furthermore, it is in contradiction to what seems
to be the clear teaching of the scriptures.
So, the law of sin and death is
still operative upon the new creature in Christ
Jesus.
It is there, and it will take over
and conquer if it be allowed to do
so, and it's that that Paul now addresses
himself to in the little segment that follows.
The law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has indeed made me free from
the law of sin and death, and then
he goes on to say that the purpose
of God in verse 4 is that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in
us.
Now, that is a great statement, that the
righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in
us.
Does that mean that the kind of righteousness
or righteous life which a keeping of the
law of Moses would have produced is a
possibility in the new life in Christ Jesus?
Is that what he is saying?
That what the law, before the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus came
on the scene, the law of Moses couldn't
produce what it demanded of people, and the
reason was because of the weakness of our
flesh.
See, there was no strength in the flesh
so that it could produce what the law
said God demanded, God expected.
But now, something brand new and excitingly new
has been introduced.
Despite the weakness of our flesh, and it
still is weak, and it still has appetites
and desires that sometimes shock us, despite all
of that, there has now been introduced into
our experience a new law.
It is that law called the law of
the spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
Because of our union with him in his
death, burial, and resurrection, his risen life is
now operative in us.
This is not an academic thing merely, this
is a reality.
Christ's risen life is in you and in
me.
We have a new life, and with that
life comes a law that governs that life.
Now, since that has happened, we have been
set free from the domination and control of
the old law of sin and death, so
that now what the kind of life and
righteousness which the law of Moses was expecting
and demanding, it can be produced in us,
in the believer, in Jesus Christ.
It can happen.
However, however, there is now introduced a condition
in that phrase, who walk not after the
flesh but after the spirit.
You see, while it's true that the victorious
man was a man in Christ, it does
not necessarily follow that all men in Christ
are victorious men.
That's a reality of life.
In Christ there's a law of life by
which we may live above the level of
the average and the ordinary life.
There is, it's true.
If we find and follow this spiritual law,
then a victorious life is the effect of
a triumphant cause.
But, the important point in this first section
here is to note that it is not
only the application of a new law, but
it is the identification of the believer with
a new walk, a new lifestyle we call
it in our more modern language today, that
issues in this kind of life.
So, this means some discrimination and decision must
be made as to how we shall live.
All of this is not automatic.
There are some elements, some phases of the
kind of life that he's talking about here
that depend upon decisions that we make, and
he's going to raise that issue right now,
and talk about it, and we'll think a
little bit about it too.
From the natural world comes an illustration.
There are two factors that govern life, and
the psychologists and the philosophers of our day
are always in conflict as to which is
the dominant factor in life, heredity or environment.
Okay, now we're placing a great deal of
stress today upon the traits we inherit because
of our genes, and they'll go back to
genetic origin as for explanations of why we
behave the way we behave.
Because, you see, after all that is the
business of psychology.
Their business is to find out why we
tick the way we tick, and how we
can get unpicked and tick a different tick.
They play with the machinery of the clock,
and they want to get us back in
balance, and so they argue that it may
be your heredity is the way you are
the way you are.
You inherited this trait or characteristic or whatever,
and it becomes the dominant factor in your
whole experience.
Then there's the other school who says, while
not ignoring totally the importance of heredity, nevertheless
it's your environment that is the most powerful
factor in your growth and development, and the
way you behave.
And it is argued then that the whole
purpose of environment is to sustain life, with
which I guess we have no argument.
Our physical environment is the air we breathe,
the water we drink, and the food we
eat, and the atmosphere in which we live,
and move, and have our being.
Our environment then becomes a very important factor
in our life.
I think Paul is now saying this, as
far as heredity is concerned, you've had a
good and proper birth.
You are born into the family of God,
and you are a child of God, and
you haven't because of that you have inherited
his very nature, and his very life, sinless
life.
There's nothing wrong with your birth as a
Christian.
Then why do we behave the way we
behave?
Why do we act the way we act?
And let's be honest and brutal with ourselves,
we don't always behave and act properly, so
do we now.
I'm ashamed of how I act when I
get in my automobile these days, and drive
down the road.
First of all, I'm extremely impatient with a
lot of other drivers, particularly young girls in
these red-hot cars they're driving, who hit
90 miles an hour as easily as you
can imagine, and go whizzing right past you,
and even cut you off.
Boy that's when my fuse sputters, see, and
I want to say things, I do.
I say look at that gal driving, where
do you think she got her driving?
Then I'll go after her.
That's why I haven't got the kind of
buggy she's got, and she can beat me
up.
So my kids, in order to keep my
blood pressure from going through the top of
my head, my kids bought me a gadget,
and in this gadget, which I haven't used
very much, it, you plug it into your
cigarette lighter in your car, and when you
are mildly upset by what happens, you push
button number one, and it says, you know,
and you say yeah that's how I feel,
but if you are a little bit more
upset, you push button number two, then it
starts to go, and if you really have
had it, you hit button number three, and
it sounds like a fire truck.
Now fortunately, it all happens inside your car,
and nobody outside can hear it.
That's the one complaint I have.
I think it ought to be hooked up
to a loudspeaker system on the roof of
my car, so that the other drivers can
hear my frustrations.
Well here I'm, what am I doing here,
confessing all these sins of mine, but whether
it's driving the car, and the loss of
temper, or impatience, or you know, whatever it
is, why do we act the way we
act?
Maybe there is some misfunction in our adjustment
to our environment, and one scientific definition of
life was this, life is the correspondence with
our environment, with its environment.
Life is correspondence with its environment.
Now with that in mind, Paul says that
there are two walks, two choices of ways
of life that a Christian can live.
Who makes the choice?
You do.
I do.
The choice is not made for us, but
we make the choice.
It is ours to make, and you may
walk after the flesh, or you may choose
to walk after the spirit.
Now that opens up for him a fairly
lengthy discussion about this whole subject of walking
after the flesh and after the spirit.
See what he says, they that are after
the flesh do mind the things of the
flesh.
Now what he means by that, this word
mind, this verb used here means to pursue,
or to set your heart on something.
To set, as it says in Colossians 2,
set your affections on things above, not on
things on the earth.
And so he says those that walk after
the flesh, they have set their affections, they
are pursuing, they've set their goals and their
heart on the things of the flesh.
Not by way of contrast, they that are
after the spirit, they set their minds on
the things of the spirit.
Now that seems to me to be the
crux of the matter of Christian conduct.
What is it that dominates one's life?
What is our chief interest in life?
What are the things that control us?
Now you know that we can get into
nitty-gritty debates on smaller things, lesser things,
if we're not careful.
You know we get into debates, and I
have my own opinion about what Christians should
do, um, whether they should attend movies, or
the theater, or play cards, or should dance,
or drink, or smoke.
And you know something that has happened, a
phenomenon that has occurred in our time?
Little by little, what used to be, if
you recall, some of us can recall it,
we had sort of a five cardinal sense
that we said Christians ought not to be
indulged, or ought not to indulge themselves in
smoking, drinking, dancing, going to the movies, I
don't know what the other was, other things,
but what was it?
Oh, playing cards?
Got to look out now, because we got
rook chapters, you know.
I know some Christians have a rook night,
they meet together for rook once a week.
You cannot try them away from that night
either, it gets to be a controlling thing
for them.
Well, you know what's happened, the phenomenon is,
it's interesting, the smoking situation has been pretty
well taken care of by the American Cancer
Society, right?
Anybody that's got any two grains of common
sense doesn't smoke.
It's only idiots who do it anymore, who
want to commit slow suicide, but it's got
nothing to do with spiritual prohibitions, or whatever,
just you've got any sense, you don't smoke,
because of all the terrible things that can
happen to you.
When it comes to dancing, well, that's sort
of out, when one looks at that, I
just can't imagine seeing Christians go through the
gyrations of what we see on television today,
and they call it dancing.
It's a different kind of dancing a few
years ago.
Now, the movie problem is another problem, except
you know what's happened to it.
Now, with our videos, we can go out
and buy anything that you see on the
screen, and show it in your home, so
long as you pull the shades down, and
the elders who pass by don't see you
indulging in watching in your home what you
would have watched, or would not have watched,
rather, in the open theater, and so it
goes across the board until nearly all of
these prohibitions find some logical explanation as to
why they no longer ought to occupy the
time and the attention of the Christian.
Well, maybe when that set of prohibitions moves
off the scene, a new society may produce
a new set of prohibitions, and so we
tick them off and say Christians ought not
to do this, and this, and this, and
this, and this.
I had a man one time who said
to me, you know, I don't know what
you preach to your people, but I think
you must use a rubber hose.
I understand that when your members go out
the door and shake hands with you on
Sunday morning, you say to them, you go
to the movies this week, and if they
say yes, you bell them over their head
with a rubber hose.
If they say no, you say fine, you
can go and come back the next time.
He said, it seems that way because your
folks are afraid to do all these things.
Well, he was misinterpreting the whole situation, but
we can argue and debate these little nitty
gritty, but that's not the thing that Paul's
talking about here.
The flesh is a whole new approach to
life.
It has a thousand different aspects the flesh
does.
One does not have to indulge in what
we have just talked about as fleshly pursuit
in order to escape being called fleshly.
You can be obsessed with other habits, other
things.
Gossip is a bad thing, it's of the
flesh.
Putting down other believers, being highly critical of
other folks, being unmindful of other people's feelings,
being cold and callous and un-Christlike in
our judgments of others.
This rises from the flesh out there in
that world that we're not a part of,
because we've been separated from it by our
relationship to Jesus Christ.
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
Men in the corporate world climb up on
the fingers of others on the ladder as
long as they get to the top.
They care not who gets crushed on the
process of moving upward.
A selfish goal, as the aggrandizement of the
flesh.
That's what Paul's talking about.
Are all of these things what occupies your
thinking, what obsesses you, or are there other
things that grow not out of our fleshly
nature, but come from the Holy Spirit of
God?
Divine things, the things of the Lord, so
that the music of God attracts us.
We want to be with God's people, we
delight in the things of God.
He says that's minding the things of the
Spirit, so that if you mind the things
of the flesh, you will be one who
lives after the flesh.
And that is what he calls being carnally
minded, to be carnally minded.
And he says it issues in death.
Now, in a moment or two, he'll say
something else, and I will reserve this comment
if we can get to it, about what
he means by that.
But to be spiritually minded is life and
peace.
Now, let me explain, says Paul, why this
is so important.
The carnal mind is enmity against God.
I think he has reference here to the
mind of a man who is unregenerate.
Our old nature, there it is, that nature
we inherited from our parents, they inherited from
theirs, they from theirs, and so on.
And that fallen sinful nature has no time
for the things of God.
In fact, there is developed in it a
strange animosity toward God.
It is enmity toward God, and it isn't
subject to the law of God.
No way.
In fact, if it should in any sense
want to be subject to the law of
God, it finds that it is incapacitated.
It cannot be.
It cannot be subject to the law of
God, because it is weak, it is poison.
The old divines used to talk about the
total depravity of human nature.
What they meant by that was that man
is made up of at least three intrinsic
and basic elements.
His intellect, his emotions, and his will.
And they said that sin, the disease of
sin, had poisoned all departments of public, of
personality, of human personality, so that man was
a totally depraved creature.
In his intellect, he was incapable of really
understanding and comprehending God.
I wish we could get that across to
some of our young people.
When I became a student at New York
University, I took some courses under ungodly men.
I paid a lot of money for those
courses, not what they're paying today by any
means, but I think I was paying $75
an hour.
And you have a five-hour course, a
four-hour course, and that's a lot of
money.
And I figured that I'd take this course
from this man.
He's a philosopher, or he's a historian, or
whatever, and I want to get my money's
worth.
So, when he talked about philosophy, or he
talked about psychology, or sociology, or history, I
said, because I was a Christian then, I
said, Lord open up all the pores of
my mind, so that I can take in
all the wisdom of this man.
He's expert in this field, and I want
to soak up everything he says, so that
I'll not forget it.
But, you know, it wasn't too long.
In fact, the end of the first hour,
I realized this man wasn't a Christian.
Now, he had so many doctor's degrees after
his name, that he had more letters in
his degrees than he had in his name.
He was a smart man, brilliantly educated, but
when he talked about God, you know, he
became an imbecile.
He really, overnight, I mean instantly, he was
an imbecile, an idiot.
He didn't know what he was talking about.
He denigrated God.
He dishonored God by the way he spoke
of him, and with what scorn he often,
or they often, spoke about divine things.
And so, I said, Lord give me an
automatic opening and closing process in my brain,
will you please?
The minute that professor talks about God, would
you let all the pores of my head
be closed up, so that I don't hear
a letter word he's saying?
Because he's such a dummy when it comes
to divine things.
Teachers in our beginner's department of Sunday school
knew more about God than he did.
Why should I listen to his truck, huh?
So, I closed my head.
Then, when he turned away from divine things,
and he talked about natural things, I opened
my head again, because he was a man
expert in that field.
But, you see, the natural mind, the mind
of the man who's unregenerate, has been poisoned
by sin, so that he cannot think right
about God.
His intellect is twisted and poisoned.
It can't even be subject to God's laws.
As far as his emotions are concerned, he
doesn't like to have God in his knowledge.
He doesn't want to talk about God.
We find that true in our contact with
people on the street, don't we?
The minute you talk about God.
If on an airplane, somebody says to me,
I remember an experience, somebody said once, I
was riding by myself, my wife wasn't with
me, I was by myself, and this person
was a talkative person.
You get them sometimes.
You want to sleep, but they want to
talk.
But, this fellow said, I finally got around,
he said, what do you do for a
living?
Well, what am I going to say?
The minute you say Bible teacher, or preacher,
they turn away.
So, I said, I smiled as sweetly as
I could, and I said, I'm a hagiologist.
Oh, he says, that's so.
Now, I knew he didn't know what I
meant, I knew that, so I just let
him stew in his own juice for a
couple of minutes longer, and then he finally
said, and I expected this question.
He turned, he said, what was it you
said you were?
I said, a hagiologist.
He said, never heard of that before.
I said, no, I don't suppose you have.
Well, he says, and I knew he was
going to come to this question.
I just knew it, but I wanted him
to maneuver himself into a corner.
He said, I'll tell you this, whatever that
is that you do, you look like you
are enjoying it.
I said, man, I'm delighted and thrilled with
it.
I wouldn't be anything else than this.
Well, he said, what in the world is
a hagiologist?
Now, I knew he was going to say
that to me.
Oh, I looked at him as though, you
dummy, don't you know?
But, I didn't say that.
But, I said, don't you, I did say,
I guess, don't you know?
No.
A hagiologist.
Why?
I thought a lot of people knew.
You see, that comes from a Greek word,
hagios, which means holy.
My job is to go around the world
trying to make people holy.
Oh, and he moved over a little bit.
Almost as if, oh, I didn't know you
had a communicable disease.
All of a sudden, that man didn't want
to talk much anymore, because we talked about
God, and God was interfering with his thought
patterns, you see.
So, he didn't like that very much.
He wasn't comfortable.
The natural mind is not comfortable with God.
Its emotions are not attached to God.
As far as the will of man is
concerned, that's been bent all out of shape,
and he cannot be obedient unto the law
of God, so that intellectually, and emotionally, and
volitionally, man is a creature who is way
out beyond the circumference of the life in
God.
Now, he says, you certainly don't want to
have a mind like that, because the carnal
mind is envy against God.
It is not subject to the law of
God, neither indeed can it be.
So then, they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
They can't please him.
It's impossible for them to please him.
But, you are not in the flesh.
He doesn't mean they were not alive.
Of course they were alive.
He meant you are not in that circle,
in that environment, which we call the flesh.
The principle that will dominate and control your
whole life pattern.
You're not in that anymore, but you're in
the spirit.
You're in that realm in which the Holy
Spirit is in control, and he dominates all
of your life, and all parts of it.
If so be that the spirit of God
dwell in you.
Now, if any man have not the spirit
of Christ, he is none of his.
He doesn't belong to him.
And, if Christ be, notice these it's running
down through here, quite a few of them,
and if Christ be in you, the body
is dead because of sin, but the spirit
is life because of righteousness.
See, the body happens to be the vehicle
in which is deposited this sinful nature.
Like a flower pot, the contents are in
the pot, and so he says, if Christ
be in you, now something has happened to
you, and this vehicle, this body in which
the old nature has been deposited, this body
no longer has its legal claims upon you.
It's legitimate demands upon you.
It's dead, really, and this takes us way
back to chapter six, where we're to reckon
ourselves with being dead in Christ.
But, now this new principle, the spirit of
life is life because of righteousness.
But, if the spirit of him that raised
up Jesus from the dead dwell in you,
he that raised up Christ from the dead
shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his
spirit that dwelleth in you.
What does that mean?
Well, obviously, the Holy Spirit is the one
who will, to whom I think of the
divine trinity, will be assigned the mysterious task
of putting back together the dust of our
bodies, and raising them from the grave, and
presenting them in heaven for the new body
in Christ.
The Holy Spirit becomes the divine factor or
personality who works in the quickening, bringing back
to life of this mortal body of ours.
That refers to the resurrection.
There may also be, may I say this,
there may also be some reference to the
idea that even now, while we're living in
this mortal body, there is a quickening, a
rejuvenation of this body by virtue of the
fact that it is indwelt by the Holy
Spirit.
If it's true, listen, if it's true that
our bodies are the temple of the Holy
Ghost, then their bodies are clean.
They should be, and we are living this
new life in a clean body.
And so, there has been a quickening, a
quickening of our mortal body by his spirit
that dwells in it.
Therefore, brethren, now he comes to the bottom
line, and we better come to it too.
Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the
flesh, to live after it.
That's past.
For if you live after the flesh, you
shall die.
There are some sober passages in the scriptures
that we sometimes pass over too rapidly.
It may well be that some believers have
given themselves over so totally to a life
dominated by the fleshly, sinful nature, instead of
controlled by the Holy Spirit, that God says,
that's enough.
Is it possible to shorten one's life here
on this earth by the way one lives?
I think that's possible, and it may well
be that some believers please don't go out
and say I said this of all believers,
it may be that some believers have had
their time cut short because of the type
or kind of life they have deliberately chosen
to live.
And it's not a spiritual life, and therefore
they are a disgrace to the name of
Christ.
They don't bring honor to him, they don't
bring glory to him.
It's far better that they should be at
home in heaven than that they should be
allowed to continue living on the earth in
a disgraceful condition.
But if you, through the Spirit, do put
to death the deeds of the body, you
shall live.
What is the bottom line of everything?
Oh, in order that we might please him.
Please him.
That's it.
Have I chosen in my life, now that
I'm a new creature in Christ, and I
have the indwelling Holy Spirit, have I chosen
that the whole environment of my life shall
be that which pleases the Lord?
I don't mind whether it pleases you, or
you, or them, or they.
Does it please the Lord?
That's the important thing.
There's a rather fine story told about Verdi
and his operas.
They say that when he first performed one
of his famous operas in Italy, it was
such a brilliant performance that at the conclusion
the whole audience rose, and the applause was
so great it made the whole house ring.
Wave after wave and wave after wave of
applause, it seemed that they weren't going to
let Verdi go.
He stood in the midst of it all,
seemingly unmoved, and up there in one of
the high balconies was a man.
Verdi fixed his eyes on that man.
It was Rossini, his maestro, his teacher, and
all Verdi wanted was just one indication from
Rossini that he had done well enough to
please the maestro, and when he received that
little sign that he had done well enough,
the maestro was pleased, then he was willing
to accept the plaudits of the audience.
When it's all said and done, my friends,
to receive the Lord's approval is the most
important thing, isn't it?
To live our life so that when we're
finished, he says, I know you chose to
live after the Spirit, not to mind the
things of the flesh, but to mind the
things of the Spirit of God, and I
was pleased with that.
Lord, we pray that thou help us to
desire above everything else, day by day and
every day, to be pleasing to thee, to
search for the eye of God, to see
if there is in it the glimmer of
satisfaction, and when we come to the end
of the journey, and the whole of life,
the pattern of it put together, we want
thee to say, well done, pleased me.
Help us so to live, Lord.
We need the empowering and strengthening of thy
Spirit, who dwells within us, to overcome the
flesh with all of its appeals, and to
live triumphantly for him.
We give thee thanks in Jesus' dear name.
Amen.