Expound: Romans 8:1-27 - Part B

When you say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes within you. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead, the fleshly control, the body control.

You don't have to be controlled by the old impulses anymore. God is within you. Before we begin, we want to let you know about a resource that will deepen your knowledge of God's Word even more. Joy in the midst of hardship is a hallmark of the Christian life.

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That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Romans chapter 8 as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. Now we understand what Jesus meant when he said to his disciples who were all bent out of shape that Jesus would be leaving them. No, you can't leave us.

You just said you were going to leave us. And he goes, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go, I can't send the Holy Spirit. But if I go, I will send the Holy Spirit to you. And Jesus went on to describe the glorious work of the Holy Spirit, bringing things to remembrance, empowering us for service. So it's to our advantage.

Now Paul is tapping into that advantage. As he says, law of the Spirit, capital S. And verse 4, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, capital S, that is the Holy Spirit. Now I have to unravel something for you because it can be a little bit mystifying. In verses 2, 3, and 4, Paul uses the term law.

Notice it in your Bibles. But he uses it in two different ways, but he means two different things by it. So when we think of law, we think of something that is a dictate, a regulation, a regulatory principle, a legal regulatory principle. Like you can't go over the speed limit, there's a law. You can't do this, there's a law. Or we think of it in terms of the law of Moses, right?

You shall do this, you shall not do this. All of the stipulations written in legal parlance. But there's another way in which the word law is used. And that is it means principle or driving force or that which motivates or controls. So in verse 2, he says, the law of the Spirit, that's not the law of Moses. That's not a legal mandate, a legal requirement. He's speaking here about the driving principle.

The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death, the driving principle of sin and death. So we speak of the law of gravity. It doesn't mean that the United States Constitution wrote gravity into law. And therefore gravity exists because it's one of the laws in our country. Not that kind of law, it's a principle.

Or we speak of Colum's law of electrostatic or electromagnetic force. Or we speak of the law of self-preservation. We mean something different by that, right? So there is an impulse in us naturally, a principle that drives us to do wrong. But now, now by the Holy Spirit, there's an impulse, a principle that drives us to do right. That's the idea of the law.

But it's used a second way. And that is in verse 3. He's speaking now of the law of Moses. What we know is the Old Testament law. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh that the righteous requirements of the law, that is the law of Moses, might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. So God gave a law. But the law couldn't fix me. Like He said in the previous chapter, the problem wasn't with the law, the problem was with me. And somebody said, amen, right?

Problem is with you, Skip, and she's right, it is. So the law is spiritual, but Paul said, I am carnal. I am fleshly.

I'm not as spiritual. So the law was unable to fix me. The law could point out I had a problem. The law, like a mirror, could point out I'm dirty, but the law cannot cleanse what I see.

Can't fix me. God made that apparent even from the beginning when the children of Israel, when Moses said I'm going to go up and I'm going to hear from God, the children of Israel who did not want to get near that mountain because of the lightning and the thunder and the noise, they said, yeah, Mo, you go. You go. Go, buddy, go. Go up there.

We're not coming near. You go up and you listen to God and you tell us what God says and you come back down and give us the word. And whatever God tells us, we will do. That's what they said.

Famous last words. And God responded and said, oh, that my people had such a heart to obey. God recognized they couldn't do it.

They wouldn't be able to do it. He was giving the law as a standard whereby we have a standard of reference that shows us how far we fall. But it can't fix us.

It was temporary. Yes, there were sacrifices that covered over the issue, covered over sin, dealt with it on a temporary basis until the fullness of the time. Galatians 4 for when God would send his own son. Verse five, for those who live according to the flesh. Set their mind on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit. The things of the spirit for to be carnally minded, fleshly minded, only thinking of gratifying.

Your flesh. To be carnally minded is death. To be spiritually minded is life.

And peace. Because the carnal mind, the fleshly mind, the old you, the old man, the unregenerate self. The carnal mind is enmity or hostile against God. For it is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be, so then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. That's a pretty good description of you and me.

BC. Before Christ, before we were saved, we lived with the mind on the flesh. To gratify fleshly desires. To gratify ourselves. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said don't worry about what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, what you're going to wear, for after all these things the Gentiles seek.

That's how the unbelieving world lives. It only lives to fulfill fleshly desires. Now you have certain biological drives, what they call primary biological drives and secondary drives. Among your primary drives is you have the air drive, the need to breathe. And when you breathe, you oxygenate your bloodstream.

So you have that basic drive. You're underwater for a while, you got to get up because you got to do that. Got to bring oxygen to those cells. You also have the drive for water.

You have to keep hydrated, otherwise because your body is so much water, you'll die without it. You also have a drive to eat, a food drive, which replenishes energy for your cells in your body. Helps you grow. You have a sex drive. God put that drive within all of us so that you can have posterity, you have future generations. All of those things drive biologically a human being. Nothing wrong with them. But if those things control you, they can be problematic.

If the sex drive controls you, if you live only for sexual experiences, or only culinary experiences, or your desire to drink causes you to imbibe substances that are detrimental to you over a long haul, they can be problematic. We talked last week about body, soul, and spirit and having the mind, the soul, dominated either by the spirit or by the flesh. He's just continuing on that and explaining that a bit further. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But, now this is the new you, that's the old you, that's you BC, before Christ. But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If indeed the Holy Spirit of God or the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. When you say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes within you. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead.

The fleshly control, the body control. You don't have to be controlled by the old impulses anymore. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. Now things have changed. Now you live differently.

Now you think differently. Now you want to please God. You want to serve God.

Man, I remember that as one of the first indications that my life was changing. I didn't want to go to church before I was saved. I had to go to church. And when I was a teenager, I would go to church stoned high just to get through it. I would tell my friends I saw the priest fly up in the room with all the altar boys and kind of float. It was a spiritual experience, but it was brought on not by the Holy Spirit, but by the unholy spirit of lysergic acid dimethylamide, LSD. But suddenly I gave my life to Christ and I remember the afternoon that I did that. And all of a sudden I remember having the impulse, I got to get to church. I know of this church.

I was up in San Jose. I know of this crazy church down in SoCal called Calvary Chapel. I'm going to go there.

All my friends were going there. All of a sudden I wanted to read the Bible. I didn't want to read the Bible before.

I wouldn't have understood it had I tried to read it, but I had such a craving for it. So I think differently. We think and live differently. We have a new desire, but also not only a desire, we have a capability, a capacity put within us by the Holy Spirit to do that which we desire. We desire what we desire now in Christ because he put that desire in us. He put that desire in us so that he might fulfill that desire in us by giving us the Holy Spirit. So we have new desires to please him, to serve him, and a new capacity to do those things.

So you kind of mix all these things. There's no condemnation. You add the no condemnation to the Holy Spirit's invigoration, and that spells life transformation, total change by the Holy Spirit.

And he's making that evident. This is what should be in every child of God, controlled by the Spirit. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Somebody once said, if your religion doesn't change you, then you should change your religion.

Wise thinking. I've always believed this. I've always had this as my religion.

Really? Has it really helped you or done any good? Because if not, you may want to think about switching. And you'll find that Jesus, unlike a religion, gives you the capacity to serve him, love him, be changed by him, walk in him, enjoy him. And he puts the Holy Spirit within you to do that. He makes you holy. By the way, that's the purpose of the Holy Spirit living in you. Well, why is there a Holy Spirit to make you holy? Wait a minute. I thought God's job was to make me happy.

No, it's not his job. The purpose of the Spirit is to make you holy. But I guarantee you, when you're holy, you'll be happy. Best, quickest way to happiness is holiness. Live to serve and please God.

You'll be the happiest person in town. Well, it gets better. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death, the old word was mortify.

I'll get to that. If you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Paul is simply saying, look, you have no obligation to your old self, to your sinful fallen nature, even though it wants you to know it's there and demand that you do something for it every day. Your old nature will say, what about me? What about my needs?

Feed me, feed me, feed me. You don't owe it anything. However, you do have a responsibility and an accountability to the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and is working in you. He was the one that led you to Jesus Christ for salvation. You're a child of God because of his work. So you owe the old nature nothing, the flesh nothing. But we do have a responsibility, what you might say an obligation, to the Holy Spirit.

Now, here's how it works. And I think you've discovered this to be true. We are either progressing in our relationship with Christ or we are regressing. I've discovered that following Jesus is sort of like riding a bicycle uphill. When I stop pedaling, I go back. So stay at it. Just one foot in front of the other. Keep going.

Keep walking in the Lord. There was an old Native American gentleman who was trying to describe after he came to Christ, what it was like living after the Spirit, but also having the flesh. And he said, I have two dogs living inside of me, a little one and a big one, and they're always fighting each other.

And his friend said, Well, huh, which one wins? The old gentleman said, Whichever one I feed. The little one, he meant the spiritual life.

The big one had been there a long time. That's his sinful flesh. But if you feed the Spirit, then essentially you're starving the flesh. If you feed the flesh, you starve the Spirit. So feed the Spirit.

It'll win. You'll find more spiritual dominance than fleshly dominance in your life. You know, it's also like this. Our spiritual lives are like planting a flower garden. If you want beautiful flowers, you have to do a little gardening work, right?

You have to use the right fertilizer, the right kind of soil, the right kind of conditions of the soil, the right temperatures to get them to grow right. Now, a weed, on the other hand, you don't have to worry about. You never have to plant a weed. You don't have to cultivate a weed. You don't have to really try to get it to grow.

All you got to do is walk away. It grows naturally. Your old nature grows naturally. We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others, Paul said in Ephesians 2. That's our nature. That's what grows naturally, the old you, that big dog barking. So feed the Spirit because you don't owe the flesh anything.

You have no obligation whatsoever. So he says put it to death. The old theologians called it mortifying the flesh.

That's sort of a Puritan term based on this language of Paul in the old King James Version. Put it to death, mortify it, kill it. If you are struggling with areas of your old nature and you're saying, well, you know, I've been dealing with this for a long time and so I'm going to cut back on those activities.

I'm going to do it less. You'll never win. You have to starve it. You have to close the door, lock it, walk away from it and feed the Spirit. That's the key to victory. Starve that puppy that is barking.

Let it die. For as many, verse 14, as are led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God. Children of God, sons and daughters of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba! Father, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

Notice how the language changes. Sons of God, adoption, children of God. The term adoption is a very important New Testament term.

Paul uses it five times in his writings. And it means to be placed as an adult son or an adult child. In the Roman world, adoption had interesting ramifications. If you were adopted into a Roman family, you immediately, as the adopted son, lost all of the rights and privileges and debts of your previous family. And you were given all the rights and privileges in the new family. In fact, you had the same right as an adopted child as a natural born child in a Roman household. You even became a co-heir when there were inheritance laws or land passed out.

If the children would inherit an estate, the adopted child would get as much as the natural born child. So we became children of God. We were born again. Jesus uses that language. Paul uses the language of adoption.

Placed as adult sons. So we've received the spirit of adoption, verse 15, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. That's an Aramaic term, but also a Hebrew term, Abba. If you go to Israel, you will hear that frequently in the street. In fact, if you're in Jerusalem, you'll hear these little kids crying out and you'll go, I know what that word is. It's because you've read your Bible. You know Romans.

Abba, which is daddy, father. Now that's how Jesus taught us to pray to God. He said, when you pray, say, our father. It's very different from Jews before Jesus. Rabbis before Jesus never taught their talmidim, their students, to have personal relationship with God in heaven. It was very formal. It was very distant.

It was very remote. God was put off by that. And so when they pray, they didn't even call God, God. They didn't call Him by His name, Yahweh.

What they did, when you'll still hear it today in the Orthodox community. They will refer to the Lord or God as Hashem, Hashem. Hashem is Hebrew for the name. So when you want to talk about God, you say, the name said this. The name did that. How different from when you pray, say, our father, daddy, Abba.

So intimate, so different. That's Skip Heitig with a message from the series Expound Romans. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these messages coming your way to connect you and many others around the world with God's truth. When Jesus walked the earth, He was known for loving the most unloved and marginalized people in society. And He does the same today through you and me, His people. I want to ask you to consider partnering with this ministry as we expand the reach of these Bible teachings to include folks who might not otherwise hear the life-changing message of the gospel.

Here's how you can give right now to make that possible. Just search Skip Heitig through your mobile device. You can access several of Skip's Bible reading plans in the YouVersion Bible app and dive deeper into several books of the Bible to gain new insights. Just search Skip Heitig in the YouVersion Bible app. Be sure to come back next week as Skip Heitig shares how the transformation we experience in Christ here on earth is only a preview of our future in heaven. Connect with Skip Heitig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times. .