The Life-Long Struggle, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. You died to the law as a means of elevating your status before God and others. You died to the law as a means of saving yourself.

You died to the law as a means of guaranteeing security in the future. And you said, my only hope is the grace of Jesus Christ. And when you understand that, and when you receive his love in the gospel, that's what begins to change your heart to make you start to love God again. Thanks for joining us for another great week of biblical teaching here on Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Can you relate to the apostle Paul? He was so torn between his desire to do good and the ongoing sin in his life, and his solution was to cling desperately to the mercy of God. In our teaching today, Pastor J.D. continues in Romans 7, where Paul outlines his personal struggle with sin. We'll see how acknowledging the battle with sin and our ultimate victory over it doesn't just change how we view the fight. It also changes how we view God's grace and mercy. Pastor J.D. continues his message titled The Lifelong Struggle.

Colossians 3, verse 9, he says, put off the old self with his practices and put on the new self. What's interesting is that he calls them both selves. They're both us. They're both me. I got two me's in there in one sense. Even the one of them's dead. The two selves are both in you.

They're both working against each other. Now, listen, this is what most people don't understand about the Christian life. When you become a Christian, the old self doesn't go away. He doesn't even lose his strength. You kind of think like you just sort of like become a better version of you.

That's not true. Then the old bad you is in there with all of his or her old strength. Many people, many Christians think of the Christian life like they think of it like your heart is this pot of water. And before you become a Christian, it's ice cold. And so becoming a Christian is like Jesus the stove turning on under you and all of a sudden your heart starts to boil up in warm righteousness. And then when you start to wander away from God and you get out of church and you quit reading your Bible, well, it's like you're getting away from the heat source or it's getting turned down and your heart starts to cool. And then when you start to sand, it's like throwing ice cubes in it and you throw enough in there and your heart's just going to go cold.

Right? If you want to get back close to God, you got to bring it up back on the heat source and it'll heat you back up spiritually. That's not the best analogy for the Christian's heart. Really what you have in your heart is a new nature in Christ in the spirit and the old nature of the flesh in there with all of his old strength and all of his old corruption. And if you cater to that old nature, he's going to move back in and he's going to ruin you because he's every bit the predator that he always was.

And he's every bit as strong as he always was. And he's always looking for mastery in your life. Yes, you have a new redeemed person in there, but you start out the old one and that old one is looking for mastery.

That's the first insight is that there's this constant struggle. Insight number two, knowing I have ultimate victory, Paul says, changes my disposition in the fight. Even though I wrestle with the same sinful flesh, I got a totally different disposition in it. Let me give you three ways your disposition is different in the fight knowing you have ultimate victory.

I'll give it to you as an A, B, and C. First, letter A, I know my sinful cravings are not the true me anymore. That's the old me. That's the dead me. That's not the renewed me in Christ.

It's not the me of the future. And here's why that change of thinking is so important, y'all. Suppose in your old life you had this simple habit that even before you became a Christian, you didn't like, and you didn't want to be that, but you would fall into this habit and you feel bad about it and you beat yourself up and you try some remedy. You read a self-help book.

You'd watch a season of Oprah or something like that and you get better for a while, but then you'd fall back into that old habit again. And then, and then you become a Christian, right? And then you become a Christian and you think, okay, everything's different now. That old habit's never coming back, but you still struggle with it. And you start feeling like I'm just like I used to.

By the way, this happens. Then you start looking at yourself and say, see, I'm still in a battle I can't win. And I haven't actually changed. And maybe I'm not really even a Christian because I used to have this old thing and then I got saved.

And then now I'll go back into it just like I used to. And it's, I'm in this battle that I can't win, but that's wrong. Because now in Christ, you're in a battle you can't lose. You might still struggle. And I'll tell you in just a minute why he lets you struggle even after you're saved. But in the midst of that struggle, the ultimate outcome has been determined. And as you continue to believe this, that the battle has already been won, God uses that to infuse the power of new life into you.

And here's what will happen. I promise you, you're going to start to say, yeah, I fall back into this habit sometimes, but you know what? It just doesn't taste as good as it used to.

And you know what? It doesn't bring the sense of satisfaction, false satisfaction that it used to. And I'm starting to lose my taste for it.

Why? Because it is no longer expressive of your real self. In your innermost being, you are delighting in the law of God.

And as you reckon yourself that way, those desires grow larger in you. And that's why sin doesn't seem to fit you anymore. And those sinful habits are like Lazarus's grave clothes. When Jesus called Lazarus out of the grave, the first thing he commands Lazarus to do is take off his grave clothes, which is kind of an odd thing to say, but it's because living people should not wear dead people clothes.

I had a friend one time who was an undertaker and I was asking him just questions about the different, the embalming process and all that. And he asked him about the suits people wear when you go buy a casket. And he said, well, some people will get buried in like a favorite suit. He said, but a lot of times it's included with the package, you know, when you pay for this and it's a suit that we provide. He said, but the thing is, he says, it's only only, I don't know if all of them are like this, but his business was, he said, it's only about half a suit.

So we don't want to waste material. So it only like covers about halfway back there. He said, so it looks like a real suit, but it's actually not a real suit. So I started thinking like, well, what if there was a resurrection today, right? And somebody gets out of the grave and he's got this suit of clothes on, he looks good from the front.

He started walking around, you look at him at the back and you're like, you need to be changing some clothes right now because a living man shouldn't wear a dead man suit. And what Paul says is that's the way sin is with you. It used to be the greed kind of resonated deep with you. And it used to be that these simple things resonated deep with you, but it's just not you anymore. And so when sin tempts you, you start recognizing, yes, this appeals to a simple thing in my flesh, but that's not the real me anymore.

I remember hearing a story one time about a guy who was before he became a Christian, was a real philanderer and cheated on his wife with multiple different women. And after he becomes a Christian, he turns away from all that and he's out on some trip and some woman that he had had a thing with comes up to him and he starts to like, he doesn't even know her. And she keeps getting in front of him and she's like, hey, don't you, she calls his name. She's like, it's me. It's me. He says, I know, I know, but it's not really me anymore.

I know it looks like me, but there's a new me, a redeemed me. Here's a second way that knowing I've got ultimate victory changes my disposition and the fight, letter B, it means I can be confident even in the most discouraging of seasons, even when it feels the darkest. December, 1941 was a very dark time for England. The war, if you know anything about World War II history, the war was not going well for England. But that morning, December 7th, 1941, that Sunday morning when Winston Churchill first heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and his memoirs, he said, he went in and he called FDR, the president of the United States.

He called him up and he gave him his condolences. And he said, FDR said back to me, he said, well, Winston looks like we're all in the same boat now. Churchill later wrote in his memoir, he said, no American will think it is wrong of me to proclaim that here in the US was now on our side was the greatest joy to me, even in the midst of the tragedy, because I knew that England would now live, Britain would live. The rest of the war was simply proper application of overwhelming force. I went to bed for the first time in years and slept the sleep of the saved and the thankful. In truth, I mean, really nothing had changed in the strategy of the war, right?

I mean, it was still a dark day for England and Hitler was still in the offensive and they were still being outmatched and outgunned. But he said it was the entry of overwhelming force that caused me to sleep, the sleep of the saved, even in the midst of the darkness. In the Christian life, the Holy Spirit is that overwhelming force. His presence in you assures you of victory. And that means that even on the darkest of days, I can find encouragement.

It might look like my internal Nazis are wreaking havoc and they're on the offensive, but their defeat has been ensured. Y'all sometimes as your pastor, I still look at my heart and I get so discouraged. I mean, if you were going to read J.D. Greer's journal, the way that you're reading Paul's here in Romans 7, you'd find questions like, why do I still struggle so much with self-control?

Why does pride still pop up in my heart so naturally and so quickly over the dumbest reasons? Somebody came up to me a while back and they were like, J.D., you're not just a great preacher and a pastor. You're a truly great man. I'm driving home and I look over at Veronica and I'm like, Veronica, how many truly great men do you think there are in the kingdom of God?

And Veronica was like, probably one less than you're thinking right now. Okay. So why do I feel jealousy and resentment toward people more quickly than I feel love? Why is my first attitude usually one of suspicion or resentment? Why do I delight in the misfortune of others sometimes? Why do I almost never instinctively give people the doubt? Why is my first impulse to assume the worst about them? Why has gossip come so much more naturally to me than praise? Why is generosity so hard for me?

I don't know. I don't know if I've ever told you this before. I remember before one of our generosity initiatives here at the Son of Church, it was like a few months away, but I knew it was coming.

And so I knew it was coming. And I told Veronica, I said, hey, maybe we should go ahead and spend that money now on that redecoration project that you wanted, because if not, we might get convicted during the series and we might feel like we need to give it away. But if we go ahead and spend it now, then we won't have the option of giving it away. What is wrong with your pastor's heart that he would think that way going into a generosity initiative? Or even more fundamentally, why are my affections for God so cold? Why is it that my desire for repentance is so weak? Sometimes it's not that I want to do good, but I get tripped up.

Sometimes I don't even want to do good. Friend, God even hears that cry of desperation. He says the broken and contrite, he will not despise. You see, deep down, I've made a decision to seek God. Deep down, I want to change. I want to want God more. And that's what repentance is. Deep down, I've delighted in the law of God and said, that's what I want my heart to be. And so see, I call out to God on behalf of my broken cold heart, just like Paul called out, what a wretched man I am.

Who's going to rescue me from this body of death? Seminary didn't do it. I got a PhD in theology, and I didn't do it. I've memorized all kinds of verses, and I didn't do it.

And I've read all these books, and I didn't do it. And I've tried all this discipline and all this law. Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? How come my pastor at church like this, and I preach every weekend, and I do all these things, and I'm still wracked with this body of death?

Who's going to deliver me? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. To learn more about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com. While you're there, you'll find tons of free resources like the Ask Me Anything podcast, our daily devotionals, the entire library of Summit Life broadcasts, and much more.

But on top of these free resources, every month we select a premium resource for our supporters. This month we are excited to offer you the first part of a two-part Bible study through the Book of Romans written by Pastor Tim Keller. This study is a great way to glean even more from our teaching series in Romans, and it's a great tool to use by yourself, with a friend, or with a small group. We'd love to send you a copy as a way of saying thank you for your gift of $35 or more to this ministry.

You can give right now by calling 866-335-5220 or by visiting jdgreer.com. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. One more way that knowing I've got ultimate victory changes my disposition in the fire letter C. I know God uses my ongoing struggle to grow my appreciation of grace. That's what you see happening here with Paul at the end of this chapter. It's like Paul collapses in worship, right? He just collapses at the end of his journal writing. He says, how awful am I?

Who's going to deliver me from this body of death? It's only Jesus. And he ends this chapter not boasting in his mastery of the law. He ends this chapter just adoring and admiring God's grace. Of all the books in my library, one of my favorites is an old book written by John Newton, the writer of Amazing Grace in the 16th, 17th century. John Newton wrote Amazing Grace. He went on to be a pastor. He was never really successful as a pastor judging by the world standard, so to speak, but he had a small little church. One of his main ministries was writing and encouraging other pastors and other believers.

And thankfully we got a collection of his letters and I got the full collection and I got the abridged version. And there's one of the letters in there and I read these every two or three years and I go back to it all the time because it is so encouraging. John Newton writes it when he's 83 years old, 83 years old. He writes to another pastor and he says, you know, I always assumed that after walking with God for 40 or 50 years, now that I'm 80, I've always assumed that I would have made more progress in the Christian life that I actually have. And I wonder now at 83, why the temptations of the flesh are still as strong in me as they were when I was a young man. This man is talking about at 80 years old, after a lifetime of preaching, he's still discouraged at how strong some of these old temptations are. John Newton is expressing this as the pastor and he says, here's my conclusion. He said, I always assumed that growing in grace meant that I would get to a place where I no longer felt like I needed that much grace. He said, what growing in grace actually is on this side of the resurrection means growing in our awareness of our need for grace.

In fact, if you want to write this down, these are my words, but I'm summarizing what he says. Growth in grace means growing in your awareness of your need of it, not getting to a place where you no longer feel like it's necessary. And God will sometimes let you continue to struggle with sin because he is trying to grow your admiration of grace.

And he's trying to put you in the same spot Paul found himself in at the end of Romans seven, where you're just saying, oh, wretched man or woman that I am, who's going to deliver me. And you say, thank God it's through Jesus and his promise, because I still see that my body and my flesh are sinful. It's like CS Lewis would say later, reflecting on the same thing, he would say, sometimes watch this, sometimes God will let you struggle with a lesser sin to keep you from the greatest one. You know what the greatest sin is?

It's not lust, not sex, not drunkenness. The greatest worst sin is pride and complacency. And what CS Lewis said is I realized that God has let me struggle with some sins and he's never let me quite shake them because he wanted me to always find myself in a place of adoration of God's grace and sometimes growing in grace is not getting to a place where you no longer need forgiveness, growing in grace is getting to a place where you realize how desperately you need God's grace. And that's where Paul ends all this in Romans seven is he ends it in adoration and praise of the cross, just a heart filled with worship. So here's what you got in Romans seven. You've got Paul's description of himself as a religious person with his conscience submitted to the law of God, but his heart chafing against it. And so Paul turns in desperation to God's grace in Christ. He needed forgiveness where he couldn't keep the law and he needed Christ to change him in his heart so that he loved the law. Yet even after accepting Christ, he still struggled with his simple heart.

And now he wants to know how to change. That's what makes that analogy in verses one through six with all the strange stuff about the woman and about the husband, such a perfect and brilliant illustration watch because it shows you how you can learn to love God's law again, how you can learn to be righteous. Before you met Christ in the gospel, he said, you were married to the law, right? The law is how you found your acceptance.

If you thought, if you kept the law enough that God would accept you. And you thought that really being really fervent about the law is how you would produce righteousness in you. You were married to it. But what you found was that it actually wasn't producing the fruits of righteousness.

It was producing the fruits of death. Like Paul says, like me, you might've thought that you were zealous in your love for God, but you were actually zealous in your love of the law and your love of yourself. You were devoted to the law.

You were devoted to it because you thought it was your means of salvation. But when you became a Christian, when you accepted Jesus, you died to that law. You realize the law couldn't save you, that only Christ could save you. What that means is that you died to the law as a means of elevating your status before God and others. You died to the law as a means of saving yourself. You died to the law as a means of guaranteeing security in the future. And you said, my only hope is the grace of Jesus Christ.

And you receive that as a free gift. And when you understand that, and when you receive His love in the gospel, that's what begins to change your heart to make you start to love God again. It's like the apostle John would say in 1 John, we love Him because, because finally God got our attention and then we listen to the command to love God. We love God because He threatened us with hell if we don't.

No, we love God because He first loved us. It was the recognition of the love of God for us that produced love for God in us. We looked at this command to love God. And like Martin Luther said, we felt the dilemma of the great commandment, right?

The dilemma of the great commandment is God is commanding us to do something that by definition cannot be commanded. How can you command somebody to love something? The analogy I always use is tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, I think are the product of the devil.

I hate them. But if you were to tell me that I had to eat mayonnaise and tomato sandwiches, you could command me. And if you're a big enough boy, you might even compel me. But there ain't nothing, no command of yours, no force of yours is going to make my heart love those things, right? Love cannot be commanded. Love is there or it's not. On the other hand, if I really did love those sandwiches, you wouldn't need to command me to eat them.

I just do it naturally. Martin Luther said the dilemma of the great commandment is God is commanding us something that by definition should not be commanded because if we love God, we would need to be commanded to do it. And if we don't love God, no command is going to be able to change that.

That's the dilemma. And he said the way that God produces love for him in us is not by exhortation but by revelation, not a command to love God, but a revelation of the love of God. And when you experience that, when you get married to it, when you die to the law as your husband and you get married to Christ, that starts to produce that kind of love and joy in you. Tony Evans describes it. He says it's like when you go into a house, you can always tell the difference between a grace dog and a law dog. A law dog is a dog that the master, his relationship with the master is basically one of control.

And the master is like, you better be doing this. And if not, he's got that paper, you know, rolled up paper, he's going to be beating the dog. He says that kind of dog is always sort of whimpering in the back.

He's a miserable dog. He's intimidated by the master, afraid of the master. But a grace dog, when that master walks in the house, man, that dog's tail is wagging. It loves its master.

There's a relationship there. That dog just wants to be with the master and make the master happy. God wants grace dogs, not law dogs. Because, watch this, that kind of relationship produces righteousness in ways that the law could not.

That's Paul's point. That's why he says in verse four, watch here, you belong to him who was raised in the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God. Because when you were in the flesh, the sinful passions aroused the law were working in us to bear fruit for death. When you were married to the law and you were intimate with the law, remember he said the frustration was it just produced more covetousness and it produced more more exhaustion. But now that you're married to Jesus, the fruit of that relationship is actual real spiritual fruit. Think of it like a marriage. When a man and woman get married, the fruit of their love, the fruit of their coming together in love and intimacy is a child. When you think about, you know, a man and woman coming together and they make a child, they're not thinking about the mechanics and the biology and the science of making the child.

Actually, what happens is they get swept up in a moment of intimacy with each other and the fruit of that is a child. Paul says in the same way, the way that you produce righteousness is not by thinking I gotta have more love, I gotta have more joy, I gotta have more peace, I gotta have more patience. He says the fruit of it is you get swept up in this moment of loving intimacy with Jesus Christ and the fruit of that, the fruit of your worship is love and joy and peace and patience. It is resting in the love of God for you that produces love for God and love for others in you.

God's not just after obedience, he's after a whole new kind of obedience and obedience that grows out of desire and that's a spiritual fruit that can't be produced by marriage to the law and all can be produced by marriage to Christ. When you experience the freedom of knowing that God accepts you not because you can make your flesh act rightly, when you know that he accepts you by a free act of grace based on what Jesus did, you actually receive the strength to obey. The irony of the Christian life is that the only ones who get better are those who understand that their acceptance by God is not conditioned and they're getting better. The irony of the Christian life is the only ones of you that are gonna get better and that are actually gonna become righteous are those who understand that your acceptance by God is no longer conditioned on your getting better, it's a free gift of God's grace and when you cease to be married to the law and you start to say I'm accepted by who Christ is, that's when you start to get better because real righteousness is produced in you. Not a righteousness in order to be accepted by God but a righteousness that is a grateful response to having been accepted by God and that's the difference. That's how Paul ends Romans 7 in adoration and worship and that's where he wants you to be. He wants you to grow in your awareness and your worship because it is out of worship that the best and the sweetest fruits of the spirit come. God's acceptance is the power that liberates us from sin, not the reward for liberating ourselves. That is game-changing truth from pastor and author J.D.

Greer. Now J.D., Romans has a lot of heavy theology and it can be kind of intimidating, right? Yeah, you know, it really can be. You know, one of the things you should remember when you get into a book like this is God doesn't put these books in the Bible to overwhelm us with information. He puts this stuff in there so he can change our lives. This book is written not merely to inform us but to transform us. The study of this book has produced every major awakening in our country as people got back to the essence of the gospel. I believe it will transform and revolutionize your life too and so along with this series where we walk through the book of Romans here on Summit Life, we're providing an incredible personal Bible study resource, small group study resource by the late Tim Keller who is one of the biggest influences of my own preaching and ministry. He's got a great two-part Bible study.

Volume one covers Romans one through seven. It's a great thing to do alongside of what you're hearing here at Summit Life. You can do it again personally or with your family with a small group but we would love to get you a copy of that. If you'll reach out to us at jdgreer.com, you can reserve yours today. We're excited to be offering part one of this study through the book of Romans called The Gift of God and we know that it'll be a tool that will help you approach the book of Romans in a whole new way thanks to the teaching of Pastor Tim Keller. We'll send you this Romans Bible study today with your gift of $35 or more to this ministry. As always, we thank you for your generous support. This ministry would not be possible without our incredible partners. To donate, simply call us at 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220 or visit jdcreer.com to give your gift online. I'm Molly Vidovitch. Be sure to join us again tomorrow when Pastor JD opens up what he and others call the greatest chapter in the whole Bible.

You don't want to miss it. That's Tuesday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.