The Spirit Is Life

Do you want to be spiritually minded? Well, you don't close your eyes and hum. That's not spiritual minded. A spiritual mindedness is to dig deep into the Word of God, to learn it, to treasure it, to memorize it, to make it your second-by-second nourishment. Welcome to Redoing Your Mind on this Tuesday.

I'm Lee Webb. There's little question that we lead busy lives. We are preoccupied by work, family concerns, the bills that keep piling up, and we have even more to worry about now than we did this time last year, the economy, our health, the state of the world. But today, Dr. Derek Thomas will remind us that all these things are just distractions from what really matters. Well, let's read together in Romans 8, picking it up now at verse 5. 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. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. I want to see three things in this passage this evening, three statements that are true about every Christian.

And the first is that the Christian is alive. Now, I don't mean that he or she has a pulse. I don't mean it in the soulish sense.

I don't mean that. I mean that the Christian is alive as opposed to being dead in trespasses and in sins. There are contrasts that Paul introduces here, the contrast between walking according to the flesh and walking according to the Spirit. There is a walk, a Christian walk, and it is a very different walk from the walk that is according to the flesh. Or Paul uses the contrast of living according to the flesh and living according to the Spirit. Or as he also uses here, minding the things of the flesh and minding the things of the Spirit. One is a way of death.

The other is a way of life. The natural man, and you see he refers to the natural man in verse 7, the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot. So, the natural man is dead in trespasses and in sins. His will is bound to his nature. He cannot serve God. Indeed, he cannot please God.

And it takes supernatural, sovereign energy of God to bring that person out of a state of death and into a state of life. Think of the metaphors that the New Testament implies, the one in John chapter 3 where Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus. Unless a man is born again or born from above, unless a man has experienced that sovereign work of regeneration in his heart, in her heart, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

He cannot enter the kingdom of God. John 3, 3 and John 3, 5, he's speaking to Nicodemus. Nicodemus is the great Bible teacher. He's the one who knows the Scriptures inside out.

He is the preeminent conference speaker in Israel. And Jesus is saying something to him. And John, I think, wants you to understand this. He has great understanding. He has a profound understanding of Scripture. And Jesus is saying, unless you are born from above, you cannot see, you cannot understand. And you know what Nicodemus said?

I don't understand what you're saying. Underlining the fact of his great need that he was a Bible teacher, but he wasn't really a Bible teacher, but he wasn't regenerate. He was still dead in trespasses and in sins.

We need a new birth. And Paul here in Romans 8, when he's talking about the person who walks according to the Spirit or who minds the things of the Spirit or who lives according to the Spirit, he's saying that this person is alive. Verse 6, to set the mind on the flesh is death, the mind on the Spirit is life. Think of another metaphor in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5 21, if any man be in Christ. And in English, we provide a verb. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.

But the verb doesn't exist in the Greek. If any man be in Christ, new creation, something of the new creation, something of the new heavens and new earth, something of that order of existence that will be forever has perforated into the here and now, something of the not yet has perforated into the here and now, a new creation. Every Christian is alive with a life that is a testimony to the life to come, that something of eternity has perforated into our life right now.

We have a glimpse of eternity just perforated into our very existence. Sinclair Ferguson, who has been my friend for over 40 years, would often end his sermons. I had the privilege of ministering alongside him for two years at First Presbyterian Church in Columbia. Sometimes at the end of a sermon, he would say, isn't it a great thing to be alive? Isn't it a great thing to be spiritually alive? Isn't it a great thing to be a Christian? We are alive.

We're not dead. We are alive with a life that will continue forever. Well, the second thing I want us to see is that the Christian lives for God by demonstrating what Paul calls here, spiritual mindedness. It's a continuation of the fourth verse, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. It's what he refers to in verse five as living according to the Spirit. Or in verse 13, if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. What does he mean precisely here by engaging in spiritual mindedness?

Well, I have a little test for you. Roughly about the same time as I was reading John Owen in 1974, 1975, I picked up probably the year before a little book, a little booklet by John Stott. And I have a great affinity for John Stott. I was converted through reading his book, Basic Christianity.

I owe my life, my life, my spiritual life to him. I owe it to God primarily, but I owe it to John Stott instrumentally. And John Stott wrote this little booklet.

It was called Your Mind Matters. Now, this was written in the sixties, late sixties, in a time, mid-twentieth century, when evangelicals, especially in Britain, were deeply suspicious of how seminaries and so on were teaching at a very intellectual level and a strain, I think, of pietism, that what we needed was something more spiritual rather than intellectual. And somewhat of a false synthesis, I think, crept into evangelicalism in the mid-twentieth century in Britain between spirituality and intellectualism. And so John Stott was addressing this and addressing it in a way that this was for college students.

That was the audience, I think, that he was addressing. And he based it on Psalm 32, be not like the mule that needs to be driven by bit and bridle, but use your understanding. Psalm 32, use your understanding. And he sort of launched the book based on that text to use your understanding matters.

And he begins with a sentence. I didn't check whether this was the actual first sentence, but it's at the very beginning of this little booklet. The major secret of holy living lies in the dot, dot, dot, fill in the blank. The major secret of holy living lies in the mind, was what he said, in the mind, because he believed that what you think affects the way that you behave. Now, without going into faculty psychology and all of that mess, surely we can agree, we can agree that the way you think about something affects the way you do something. Your whole approach to life is governed by the presuppositions of the way that you think about something. We can use the term mindset to be spiritually minded. What is this mindset?

And there's a contrast here. There's a mindset that minds the things of the flesh. And there's a mindset that minds the things of the Holy Spirit. Now, when he talks about flesh here in verse six, to set the mind on the flesh is death, he's using it in a different way. Sometimes the word flesh in John, for example, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and verse 14, and the word was made flesh. He's not saying he was made sinful flesh.

The whole point of Romans 8 and verse three is to contradict that. But he was made flesh, flesh and blood. He was a human being. He wasn't an apparition. He wasn't a ghost. He didn't just seem to be a human being.

He was an actual human being. He had a belly button. He was of Mary. There was an umbilical cord that tied him to his mother, Mary. He looked like Mary. He never looked like Joseph. There would have been a time in his teenage years when he was in the carpenter shop before his, before Joseph died. And, you know, the sun would be shining on him and you'd look at him in profile and you'd say to yourself, something about his jaw, something about the color of his eyes.

And you'd say, he looks just he looks just like Mary. Well here, when Paul is using the word flesh to set the mind on the flesh is death. To set your mind on that which the flesh, the sinful flesh, Adamic flesh, corrupted flesh, iniquitous flesh, flesh that isn't born again, flesh that doesn't know anything about this resurrected life, it leads to death. So the natural man is the one who lives according to the flesh. Now, to be sure, the natural man has moments when he glimpses the transcendent. The natural man can sometimes, despite himself, what Paul says in the first chapter of Romans, that they, they not only can see the eternal power and Godhead of God, but it gets through to them.

It's not just something that's out there objectively. It actually gets through. They actually get it, but they suppress it.

They, they hold it down in unrighteousness. John Owen and I, I'm going back 45 years, but I remember vividly reading this, this question in his treatise on the duty of spiritual mindedness. He asked a question, what do you think about when you're not thinking about anything in particular? You know, sometimes we're so fixated in what we're doing. Our mind is going a hundred miles an hour because we're on a project.

We're on a mission. But I'm talking about those times when you're sitting in the chair and daydreaming, you're not thinking about anything in particular. Where does your mind default? And John Owen said, it's a great test of your spiritual mindedness. It's a great test of your spiritual maturity. It's a test as to how far you have grown in sanctification. It's terrifying, isn't it?

When you think about it. Well, there's an advertisement. You may have seen this advertisement.

And it's an advertisement on behalf of a company that's teaching English to foreign students. And they're in this sort of bunker and the instructor has come in to where this person is and then leaves. He's given some instruction. He leaves the room and over the loudspeaker comes a message. Mayday, mayday, we're sinking.

And this happens two or three times and the instructor doesn't come back. So he gets on a microphone and he says in very pronounced German accent, what are you sinking of? Well, it's the question that Paul is asking you here. What are you thinking about?

What are you thinking about? Do you remember what John Calvin said in the institutes in book one, chapter 11 and section eight? That man's mind is a perpetual factory of idols, factorum idolorum. So what does it mean to be spiritually minded? The spiritual here with a capital S to mind the things of the spirit. What do you think the spirit minds? Now, that would be a course to our course in seminary. That would be a, if RC were here, it would be a 24 lecture series. What would the Holy Spirit mind?

And I've only got a few minutes. Let's think about a few of them. Things that are dear and close to the Holy Spirit. Scripture. Holy men of old wrote as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. All Scripture is breathed out and the very language of Theopneustos, it's the word spirit, wind and spirit, that the Holy Spirit is like the wind. It blows, but you cannot see it.

All you can know is its effects. All Scripture is the product of God, the Holy Spirit breathing out. God breathes and you've got Scripture. God speaks. What Scripture says, God says. And every jot and tittle, the product of the Holy Spirit, the greatest gift that He ever gave us, for which men like Thomas Cranmer gave their lives in the flames in order that you and I might have access to it in our common tongue.

Your word have I hid in my heart. You want to be spiritually minded? Well, Paul is saying you don't close your eyes and hum. That's not spiritual minded.

A spiritual mindedness is to dig deep into the Word of God, to learn it, to treasure it, to memorize it, to make it your meat and drink, your hourly minute by minute, second by second nourishment to grow in grace. Do you remember what Jesus said in the upper room? I will go away, but I will come to you again. He was talking about the Holy Spirit. What is the great ministry of the paraclete, the other comforter, the other helper?

It is to make Christ known to you and me. He is the personal representative agent of the Lord Jesus. Now that Jesus in His incarnate body is in heaven, He is in another realm.

He is in a parallel universe to this one. He has crossed through the veil to a place that we call heaven, and there He is physically in space and time, and He cannot be in two places at one time. His human body does not possess the attribute of ubiquity, but instead He sends His Spirit, His personal representative agent, the one with whom as the Son of God He has been in communion with for all eternity. He makes Jesus special to you. His business is always to reflect the refugence of the glory of the Lord Jesus. He wants you and I to have a big and majestic view of the Lord Jesus. What does it mean to be spiritually minded? Surely it means to have holy thoughts, sanctified thoughts, and that's what this passage is largely about.

It's emphasizing the role of progressive sanctification and how that sanctification, how that separatedness manifests itself in the realm of our thinking, of our minds, of our meditation, of our aspiration. So the first thing I wanted us to see was that the Christian is alive. The second thing was that the Christian lives for God by demonstrating spiritual mindedness. And then the third thing is that the Christian is going to be brought all the way home. You notice as he brings this little section to a close in verse 11, it actually continues in the verses that follow, if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.

Let's pause there for a second. This is the spirit of Christ and elsewhere he refers to in verse nine, for example, anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ, capital S, the spirit of Christ, the spirit who indwelt Christ, who knows Jesus best, who knows Jesus best, the Holy Spirit. And that same Holy Spirit who indwelt Jesus in the womb, as a little toddler, as a teenager, at the beginning and onset of his ministry, as he walked into temptation and trial, as he faced enemies and difficulties, as he faced the enduring penalty of the cross, it was by the Holy Spirit. And that same Holy Spirit dwells in you.

There's not a trial. There's not a circumstance that Jesus has not walked through before. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of Jesus. That we are the children of God, the witness of the Holy Spirit. And this witnessing ministry of the Holy Spirit telling us and reminding us of our identity in Jesus Christ, but also reminding us and bringing to our attention the Lord Jesus.

Because there is not a trial, there is not a circumstance that he hasn't walked through. And it is the Spirit's testimony to witness to us. The word cry in verse 15 is the word that is used in the gospels when Jesus cried out on the cross, meaning, I think, that Paul is saying that the most endearing times to be reminded of our adoption into the household and family of God, the most eloquent moments when the Spirit's testimony as to our identity as the adopted children of God is actually when we are at our lowest point. When all we can do is cry and the Spirit, the Spirit comes and he reminds us of who we are by drawing us to embrace once again the beauty and the loveliness and the attractiveness of the Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit in us, Christ in us, by the Holy Spirit. Well, let me leave you once again with that question of John Owens in his seventh volume.

What do you think about when you're not thinking about anything in particular? And let that be as it were the impulse that we would use our time wisely, that we would redeem the time by developing and encouraging what Paul calls a spiritual mindedness, a mind that minds the things of the Spirit. What an encouraging and convicting thought from Dr. Derek Thomas.

You're listening to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. Thank you for being with us today. Today's message is from a Ligonier Conference.

The theme was More Than Conquerors. Each of the nine messages was based on Romans chapter 8, reminding us of the great riches in this pinnacle chapter of Paul's letter. When you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will provide you with a digital download of each message. That includes today's message, along with sessions from Dr. Stephen Lawson and Dr. H.B. Charles, Jr. You can give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us and make your request at 800-435-4343. When you reach out to us today, we will also include Dr. Thomas's most recent teaching series, also on Romans chapter 8.

There are 12 messages in that series, and we will send you the two DVD set, along with a digital download of More Than Conquerors. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343. You can also make your request and give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Well, of all the promises God makes to us as His children, there is one that is almost too incredible to believe. With adoption, the same judge who declares you to be righteous then says, I want you to come home with me. I want you to live with me. I want you to see your new house. And when we get to the house, I'm going to show you all of my riches, and all that I possess are yours. We'll discover what it means to be heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ on this next Wednesday on Renewing Your Mind.