This is a reiteration from verse 1. It is a distinction between the lost in the flesh and the saved in the Spirit. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not the ones that walk in the flesh, but the ones that are saved in the Spirit. He's not saying there's no condemnation if you behave yourself. That would undo the whole idea of salvation through grace and Christ alone.
But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans chapter 8 as he begins a new message called Saved vs. Unsaved. A righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. We learn from verses 1 and 2 that some Christians in the days of Paul lacked blessed assurance. They weren't so confident about their salvation.
And usually that's connected to their failing to obey, having these, you know, weak moments. Well, if that weren't the case, he would not have had to tell us in verse 1, therefore there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. But it was necessary for him to say that then, and it is necessary to say it now. These first 11 verses of Romans 8 are a contrast between those who are saved and those who are lost, between those who are in the Spirit and those who are not in the Spirit. Woven into these 11 verses are distinctions between, as I mentioned, the saved and the lost, the ability to witness, and then finally the glorified bodies of the believers, our faultless immortality of the believers. And so I want to get right to verse 3 because I think I've got a few things that might be a little surprising, hopefully in a good way. Verse 3, for what the law could not do and 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.
Well, that first line, for what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh, he's saying the Mosaic law that Moses gave to the Jewish people was a necessary step in God's plan for salvation. No question about that, but it wasn't strong enough. It was strong enough for what? It was good enough for David, for Daniel, for Joseph.
Well, Joseph, you know, not so much because he came before Moses. But what was it not strong enough for? Well, two things primarily. One is that it could not take away sin. This is why John the Baptist, referring to Christ, said, who takes away the sin of the world because it wasn't taken away before then.
We'll get into what that means. The second thing that the law could not do is name who took away the sin. That's not something we got until after Christ came. The law could not finalize the saved sinner's eternity.
It couldn't get us all the way in. Thus, the parable Jesus gave about Abraham in Sheol and the rich man speaking to him. For those of you who are familiar with that, you need no commentary.
For those of you who are not, it's a good section to look up. God did by sending his own son. For what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own son. So from here to verse 11, he is contrasting the saved and lost. God sent his son to do for me what Moses' law could not do. As I already said, that's where I'm getting it from.
I'm not just pulling these things out of a hat, at least I hope not. It tells us that it is not enough to have a Bible only. This tells us that the law was not enough. It's not enough to have a Bible. It's sort of like God was saying, yeah, battery's not included.
You've got one of the main parts, but you need more. The law could not take me into heaven. In John's gospel, no less than 34 times, Jesus says that the Father sent him.
No less than 34 times. And it's a critical part because this is what Paul is saying God did by sending his own son. Well, he's telling us what Jesus was already preaching. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 8, therefore he says when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive.
Well, what could that mean? Well, it means that when Christ was crucified and gave up his spirit, that those who are in the righteous side of Sheol, the underworld, was when righteous people died before Christ. They did not go to heaven. They went to the righteous side of Sheol, their spirit, who they were, their soul. And after his crucifixion, he delivered them to heaven and thus the meaning of Ephesians 4. Therefore, when he ascended on high, when he went to the Father, he led captivity captive. He took the captives with him.
They now belong to him. So without Christ's work on the cross, there'd be no salvation. We get that.
That's the easy part of this section. Without the presence and ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, however, there would be no application of that salvation to us. The revelation would have stopped in the world, but it continues. And Christ saw to that. And that's why he said to his apostles, speaking of the Holy Spirit in John 16, when he has come, when he, the Holy Spirit, has come, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment of sin because they do not believe in me. Of righteousness because I go to my Father and you see me no more.
Of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged. However, when he, again the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. And then continuing the ongoing work of Christ through the Holy Spirit for us, for the loss. However, Jesus said, when he, the Spirit of truth has come, he will guide you into all truth. He's doing that even now to this day.
That has not stopped. And so going back up to Paul's word, God did by sending his own son. Okay, the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the giving of the Holy Spirit. He said, I'm not going to leave you orphans. I'm going to send you the comforter, the Holy Spirit. And this is what he's going to do. He's going to convict. He's going to guide.
He's going to be with you. And we're carrying on that work. And so Paul says, in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin, God sent his son in the likeness of sinful flesh because of sin. That's why Christ came. To destroy the works of the devil.
To seek and to save that which was lost. This is his humanity. He took on a human body. The body that he took on was in its fallen state.
Hear me out. He was not. He's sinless. He condemned sin in the flesh, in that human body, his humanity, an imperfect body like ours.
It was susceptible to aging, to hunger, and to fatigue, etc. Of course, he did not sin. Adam was created without sin. But he had the capability to sin, and he proved that. Christ was not created.
He's always been. He was incarnated, incapable of sin. But still, in this body, I believe that Adam, if had there been no sin, there would have been no deterioration with the aging.
Sort of peaked out, and that would have been it. But sin entered the world. And now we do age, and we do deteriorate. And this is the kind of body that Christ assumed to get the work done. And that's what Paul is referring to. In the likeness of sinful flesh. Yes, fallen flesh. Not what God created us to be, but what we became through sin. On account of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. Now here, flesh is flesh and blood.
But as he moves through it, it becomes metaphorical. It becomes an emblem of the lost, that fallen state. This is echoed in Hebrews chapter 2, verse 14, if you need another witness from Scripture on these things. Verse 4 now of Romans 8. That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Well, Christ is our sin offering. Our propitiation.
He is the one that has paid the price for our salvation, thus that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. When Adam and Eve sinned, they realized that they were naked. That now was a problem.
It wasn't a problem before. But sin factored in. And God, to cover their nudity, which was just a revelation of their inward realization of sin, he slew animals to cover them.
Innocent animals. And that became the standard of sacrifice. And Christ, of course, fulfilled it in its ultimate sense. Christ is our righteousness in blood by grace through faith.
Just like that. Ephesians 2. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God. Incidentally, grace is not just kindness, the grace of God. It is undeserved kindness. There's no way to detach that part from the kindness of God. The kindness that God shows anyone is undeserved because everyone is a sinner and God is pure.
And this is what makes it so incredible, so fantastic. But I've had some problems with how most commentators interpret this section of Scripture. I've always been troubled by it. It has always left me feeling that I'm not doing enough. That I go into the flesh and somehow, you know, I'm now not in the Spirit.
And so I want to cover some of that. Again, looking at verse 4, he continues to say, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. So you could say, well, wait a minute, the benefits of salvation are for those who walk in the Spirit, not in the flesh. But what about when I get in the flesh?
Have I been disqualified? Am I no longer a believer? That is not at all what it is saying. This is a reiteration from verse 1. It is a distinction between the lost in the flesh and the saved in the Spirit. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not the ones that walk in the flesh, but the ones that are saved in the Spirit.
He's not saying there's no condemnation if you behave yourself. That would undo the whole idea of salvation through grace in Christ alone. And this carries through, again, to verse 11. Here, in verse 4, the flesh refers to life without Christ, life in the fallen state.
Otherwise, the whole section, again, becomes difficult to apply to my own life. When I would read this and I would hear commentators say, well, you know, God will keep you from getting in the flesh. His Spirit will come upon you and you will, well, he's missed a lot of opportunities with me, if that's the way it is. And as a pastor, I've even come into contact with more Christians who get into trouble. But they love the Lord.
They know who their Savior is, and it is a weakness of the flesh. So I do not, I do not think this section is saying to us that God will empower you to overcome your flesh, and that's that. God does help us.
He does help us, restrain us from the outflow of the flesh, but not all the time. Sometimes it's our duty, it's our work. The responsibility is not all on Him.
Because then we could just conveniently say, well, it's your fault, you didn't stop me. Not how it is. It's more complicated than that. And yet, on the other side, it's very simple. The salvation that the Lord brings is not a complicated thing for us. And that's why we are saved through grace by faith. So the Spirit dwells within believers and empowers us to desire the will of God.
A great distinction. A person in the world could hate a drug addiction for what it has done to them and their loved ones and their life. But their motive is not Christ.
It's not, well, that's, I mean, that motive doesn't go away. But the main thing, the main thing that troubles the believer is that we're disobeying our Savior, our Lord. These are emblems of salvation. Nicodemus had to be born again in the age of Messiah. Not something that he was faced with before Christ came, but once Christ came. Once Christ came, the Jews could not remain the same. That's the story of Saul of Tarsus becoming Paul, the apostle. Everyone now subject to this change since Messiah has come. And that's why Paul spent his life and the apostles, but mainly Paul, taking the gospel to the Gentiles.
Things could not stay the same. And so we do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit means we're not lost. We know who Christ is.
We don't roll that way anymore, but we now live in the Spirit. And then verse 5, for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. Looking again at the first few words of verse 5, for those who live according to the flesh, that means those who are lost. You're not saying the Christian that's having a hard time.
That's another story. The distinction is not between weak believers and strong believers, but between true believers and unbelievers. Maybe I should say that again in the context of what he's saying here in verse 5. Again, 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, the things of the Spirit. So again, the distinction is not between the weak believer who goes into the flesh from time to time and the strong believer, because strong believers go into the flesh too.
It is between the true believer, the Spirit, and the true unbeliever, the flesh. So remembering the first 11 verses are contrasting salvation with the absence of salvation, the saved versus the lost. We are not redeemed by the life of Christ. We're not redeemed by the teachings of Christ. We are redeemed by His death and resurrection. That's what the whole problem was when Peter tried to keep Christ from going to the cross.
Say it ain't so. What did Jesus say to him? Get behind me, Satan. I have got to go to the cross. I am the propitiation. I am the sacrifice. Through my blood sinners get to heaven in no other way.
It is. That's why Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. My blood and my body, he takes us to the cross. And of course, the natural outcome of his, the spiritual outcome of his cross is the resurrection. The unsaved, they set their mind on things without this rebirth in Christ.
He is not the determining factor of their life. Flesh, again here, is the soul outside of Christ. And so when he says they set their minds on the things of the flesh, he is saying, Paul is saying, the flesh is a mindset of the lost. Jesus exposed Satan's influence on Peter's thinking in the verse that I just referenced, Matthew 16, verse 23. This is when, of course, Peter said, you can't go to the cross.
Don't talk like that. This is what Jesus said to him directly. But he turned and said to Peter, get behind me, Satan. You are not, you are an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men.
That's the flesh, that's the lost state. Cain, King Saul, Balaam, Judas Iscariot, Doeg, all of those run mindful of the things of God. Their interest was about themselves. They did it their way. Of the 12 spies that went in to Canaan, 10 came out of that factoring God out. They came out of that experience of spying out the promised land with a fallen mindset, with a mindset in the flesh. Only Joshua and Caleb, in their mindset, factored in God. God was in their equation.
It made all the difference. In fact, the spies were not told to go spy out the land and come give their opinion. They were told to report what they saw.
But those 10 spies decided they also wanted to share their fears with everybody. And it didn't end well for them and the rest of the nation, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb. It says here, but those who live according to the spirit, in contrast to those 10 spies, in contrast to Saul and Cain and Balaam, those who live according to the spirit, even if weak, but the unsaved, live without the indwelling spirit. That's why they're not saved. When you are saved, you come to Christ, you're the spirit of Christ. You're born into the body of Christ. The things of the spirit, the spirit-filled, born-again person, you can turn, not now, but if you want to see the contrast again, Galatians 5, 19-21, there's the flesh. Galatians 5, 22-23, there's the spirit. And these two fight it out in your life.
In one form or another, they're going to fight it out. We're very good at forgetting our wrongs if we let ourselves. That's why when Jesus caught the woman in adultery and he marks on the ground, they were very reluctant to show any mercy until he had to hold their feet to the fire to get them to see that they're not all that.
And it wasn't only the Pharisees that pull little moves like that. We're all capable of it. And thus Jesus said, pray this way, lead us not into temptation. Temptation to sin is an ugly enemy. But what's so particular about temptation is that it is tailored to our involuntary urges. It is customized for you. You might not have a problem with A and B, but D and E might give you a problem.
Don't worry about the missing letters of the alphabet. It's just an illustration. Temptation is some serious stuff. And usually once it's come, it's too late.
And so Jesus said, pray that you enter not into temptation. There are a lot of self-righteous people that have not committed some pretty serious sins because they haven't had a chance to do it. They may not even be aware of that. Let's just take, for example, someone who, you know, maybe they say, I've never stolen anything from anybody. Well, maybe you can put them in a situation where they would steal from somebody.
Maybe you could put a big bag of money on the table and all of a sudden they realize I can take this and get away with it. Even the thought begins to make the person stumble. And so the contrast, again, between the saved and the unsaved in this chapter are inescapable and that's why he says the things of the Spirit in verse 5 and goes right into verse 6, For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. So if I read this verse, as almost all of the commentators like to say, that, you know, if I'm not getting the upper hand as a Christian, if I'm thinking carnally or behave that way in a weak moment, as David did, as others did, then it's death for me. But that's not what it's saying. That's not what Paul's saying.
Not at all. He, again, he is saying outside of Christ, for to be carnally minded is death. He's saying to be outside of Christ is death, thinking and living against him. A lost soul remains lost without Christ. That is the fact of the Gospel. Rejecting Christ never ends well. We try to tell people that.
A lot of people scoff and resist. Some get saved. The unsaved are physically alive but spiritually dead. That's lost versus saved. And so he continues here in verse 6, But to be spiritually minded, here's the contrast, is life and peace. Well, this is blessed assurance. This is not a condition, well, if you become carnal, you get angry at somebody, you're having a hard time forgiving them, you're carnal.
That's death. It's not that easy. God gives space for us to repent, to get our act together. And this is evidenced as he talks to the seven churches. He says to one of them, I gave them space to repent. We pick up on things like that.
They're important to us. To be spiritually minded is life and peace. That goes back to Romans 5, 1.
I think I'll read that. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 1 of Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
Nothing's going to take that. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
