Freedom: The Greatest Chapter in the Bible, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Often hear people say, well, trying to get back with God. What they mean is they want to get involved in some kind of religious self-improvement. I want to be a better person.

I want to pay a little bit more attention to God. But listen, Christianity, plain and simple, is surrender to a person. All of you surrenders to all of Him.

The nature of surrender is that it's total. Otherwise, you're just looking at Him like a suggestion giver. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch.

Let me ask you a question. What if the worst effect of sin is not how it hurts you or someone else, but how it actually cuts you off from the Holy Spirit? In today's teaching, Pastor J.D. continues to walk through Romans 8 and shows us how the amount of spiritual power in our lives is directly tied to how much we have surrendered to the Holy Spirit. When we surrender to God's Spirit, we're free to walk in righteousness and resurrection power.

Ready to hear how to make that a reality? Let's join Pastor J.D. in the greatest chapter in the Bible, Romans 8. All kinds of Christians have different ideas about what it means to walk according to the Spirit. It's a great question.

Let's just keep reading. We'll let Paul answer his own question. Verse 5. For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Walking according to the Spirit is accomplished, in other words, by setting your mind on the things of the Spirit. Notice, by the way, it doesn't say setting your mind on the Spirit. It says setting your mind on the things of the Spirit. The reason I draw that distinction is because a lot of Christians are obsessed by the Spirit, and when you get really spiritual, you think that you relate to Him all the time, and you're always hearing His voice, and so they're thinking all the time, like, ooh, I just had the hair in the back of my neck stand up. I'm wondering if the Holy Spirit is speaking to me. All right, I think I've told you about the single guy who says to me, like, well, the Spirit of God, the pastor, just really told me to ask this girl out. I'm like, well, tell me about that.

Right? And be careful when you're telling me about it. And he's like, yeah, well, I was driving down the road, and I was thinking about this girl named Lauren. Oh, just thinking about her. And all of a sudden, I look at this billboard, and man, the background color of that billboard was the same color as her eyes. And I noticed that the last two digits of the phone number that this law firm was telling me to call was the same as her age.

And just then, Lauren Daigle's music comes on the radio, and it's the song, This Girl. And I just knew Jehovah Jireh, He is speaking to me and telling me to ask her out. And I'm like, bro, I'm not totally sure that may not be the Holy Spirit.

It sounds to me like the preamble to a restraining order, if you're really going to ask me, and I'm going to be honest with you, but I just wouldn't go with that. He's not saying that you got to focus all the time on the Spirit. He's saying you're focusing on the things of the Spirit.

He's not a force. He's a person. And setting your mind on the things of the Spirit means thinking about the things that the Spirit thinks about. It means you love what the Spirit loves.

It means you seek the things that the Spirit seeks. Because that's what you do when you're in fellowship with somebody, right? When you're good friends with somebody, you like to get together and talk about what you both love. If you both love hockey, you get together and you talk about hockey.

If you both love eating steak, you get together and you eat a steak. All right? That's what friendship is. So when you're in fellowship with the Spirit, then you are talking about and thinking about and dwelling on and living out the things that the Spirit loves.

All right? What is it that the Spirit loves? Well, the Spirit loves God's glory. The Spirit loves truth. The Spirit loves beauty. God's beauty loves justice and righteousness. The Spirit loves God's church.

He loves people. Philippians 4-8, whatever things are honest and true and lovely and of good report and just, think on those things. These are the things the Spirit loves. The Spirit loves the fame of Jesus and the spread of his message.

People being saved, delivered, and empowered. Here's the key. As you dwell on those things, the Spirit and you are in fellowship.

And here's the thing. Where the Spirit is, so is his power. And when his power is there, your life will begin to bear fruit spiritually.

Here is what people do not get. The fruits of the Spirit are simply, listen, the results of the Spirit's presence. The fruits of the Spirit are simply the result of the Spirit being in the room.

And wherever he is, they simply start showing up. And the Spirit is present in you insofar as you are dwelling on the things that delight the Spirit. So when you think on, participate in, something that grieves the Spirit, well then that makes your heart inhospitable for him. And as his presence fades from your life, so do his fruits.

Here's a question. What if the greatest danger of sin was not whatever bad effect it has on you or somebody else? What if the greatest damage of sin was that it cuts you off from the Spirit of God? I ask that because Christians always evaluate sin, it seems like, by how bad the effects are. And they'll say, well, I mean, this is a little sin, it's not that bad.

It's a little thing, it's not going to do any real damage. But what if the worst effects of sin was that it grieves the Holy Spirit and cuts you off from fellowship with him? The fruits of the Spirit are produced by fellowship with the Spirit, and you are in fellowship with him insofar as you think on and dwell on the things that delight him. Paul continues, now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit, he says, well, see, that's life and peace. That means fruits of the Spirit. The mindset of the Spirit is life and peace in you. Where the Spirit goes, so do his fruits of life and peace.

What drives him out? The mindset of the flesh. You say, well, what's the mindset of the flesh? In verse seven, Paul is going to summarize it as hostility to God.

Hostility to God in Romans would be defined according to the five selves, okay? Self-will, I want to do what I want to do. I may give up service to God, I may tip my hat to him, I may try to be a good person, I may let him be an influence, but ultimately at the end of the day, I want to make the decisions.

I'm okay with God being a real influence on me, but I want to make the decision. Self-will, here's the second characteristic, self-glory. I really want to be the point. I want everybody talking about me, I want them thinking about me, I want them looking at me. I'm not concerned about how they're looking at God, I'm worried about how they're thinking about me. Self-gratification means I will like my desires fulfilled, even if it means that I've got to transgress the will of God to get them fulfilled. Then there is self-righteousness. I think I'm going to distinguish myself above others and I'm going to earn my place, all right? Self-righteousness, I'm going to show that I'm good enough. And then the last one, self-sufficiency, I'm good enough. I'm going to get good enough that I can overcome and I can do this, even apart from the power of God, I just think about what I can accomplish.

Sin, I've told you before, is the big I problem. It's that I, my will, my glory, my gratification, I'm good enough, I can accomplish things. Self, self, self. Fellowshiping with the Spirit means putting God in each of those places where previously you had self. So instead of self-will, you say, well, not my will, but yours be done.

Whether I'm talking about what job I take or where I live or what I do with my money or whom I date, it's not my will, but yours. Self-glory means it's not about me, it's not to us, but to your name, O Lord, be the glory. Self-gratification means you say, hey, look, my bread, my satisfaction is to do the will of the Father. Self-righteousness is where you say, hey, I know that all my righteousness is a filthy rag and that my righteousness is complete in you because you have become my righteousness and you are my goodness, Christ my righteousness.

Self-sufficiency is where you say, I can't, but I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Those are the things of the Spirit. As you think like that, the Spirit surges in you. Listen, at any given point, whether you got a Bible in your hand and a smile on your face and a worship song in your mouth, at any given point, there's either a self-focus in your heart or there's a God focus. If it's a self-focus, you're grieving the Spirit of God. It means when I'm standing in church and I'm singing worship songs, but I'm thinking more about what I want to accomplish or I'm thinking about what people are thinking about me, I'm grieving the Spirit and driving him away. And with him go the fruits of spiritual life and peace. Or you're thinking like he thinks in fellowship with him and the result of that is the Spirit is present and he's producing the fruits of the Spirit in you. Again, what if the most devastating effects of your sin, what if the most devastating effect was not any damage it caused to you or somebody else? What if the most devastating effect of your sin was simply that it grieved the Spirit of God and it made him pull away? And with him goes life and peace. Verse seven, the mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it's unable to do so. You see, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. This is Paul recapping what he's unpacked in chapter seven. He's like, there's a flesh, there's a simple nature part of you that's totally against God.

It's totally for you. Saying, when he says in verse eight, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. He doesn't mean by that, let a person without Jesus can't ever think a good thought or perform a noble action. It just means at the core of who they are, they're more loyal to themselves than they are to God.

And that makes them displeasing to God no matter how good and kind they are in every other part of their life. Imagine you got a guy in a rebel army, a rebel army who looks after his comrades. He's really good to his fellow soldiers. He keeps his uniform clean and pressed.

He's brave. He's got a great work ethic. He's always truthful with his superiors. He's always punctual.

He always stays later to make sure the job gets done. Every single one of those are good actions, right? But they're all done in the context of hostility to the rightful ruler.

You would never expect that king, that ruler, to hear about that rebel's conscientiousness or his punctuality or his kindness to his fellow rebels and be pleased by his conduct. Because even though those were good actions, they were done in the context of hostility to God. That's what Paul is saying. He says, verse nine, you, however, you're not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If indeed the spirit of God lives in you, if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now that word live, by the way, in Greek, it means permanent resident, not like he just becomes an occasional visitor, which addresses a question that a lot of Christians have about when you get the Holy Spirit. There are some Christian traditions that teach that you get the Holy Spirit after you're saved in some kind of second blessing, the baptism of the spirits, second experience after you become a Christian, later you get the Holy Spirit.

By the way, I would bet that a number of you grew up in traditions like that. I've had people say to me before, they're like, hey, you're a great preacher and you're obviously saved, but have you received the Holy Spirit yet? I always actually open my Bible to Romans eight and I'm like, well, what does verse nine say? If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to him. It means if you don't have the Holy Spirit, then you're not saved, which means that when you put your faith in Christ, you receive the spirit. That is the baptism of the spirit.

That's how Paul describes it. 1 Corinthians 12, look at it. He's talking about salvation here. By one spirit, we were all baptized into one body. The spirit baptizes you into the body of Christ and that's your salvation.

You say, all right, well, wait a minute. What about in the book of Acts? I've seen that there were groups of disciples that received the Holy Spirit later.

Yeah, it's a great question. What you're having in Acts is you're seeing God fulfill his promise and he's trying to convince the Jews that he's keeping his word to take the gospel to different people groups. And so every time it goes to a different, like a new people group, God signifies it through some miraculous display.

I've heard it described like this. When New York City got water back in the 1910, 1920, something like that and the running water first came in there. Every time it would go into one of the new boroughs in New York City, the mayor would go out and there'd be a big ceremony and he'd cut the ribbon and it'd be a big hoopla about it. But it wasn't like he did it for every house thereafter.

He just did it for each new borough. So in Acts, what you have is different groups of people that are being bestowed the Holy Spirit on them and there's a ceremony, but that's not indicative of what happens to every person from that point on. Paul says the normal thing is when you put faith in Christ, you receive the Holy Spirit. Each episode, Pastor JD answers actual questions submitted by listeners just like you using biblical wisdom and practical advice.

Unsure what to think about a current debate in culture? How should we live in light of truths found in scripture? Pastor JD tackles the toughest questions that you can drum up. You can access Ask Me Anything with JD Greer by visiting jdgreer.com slash podcasts or by searching for it on your favorite podcast platform.

Don't miss a single episode by subscribing to the podcast today. So if you're a Christian, you got the Holy Spirit. And Paul would say that the amount of spiritual power from that point on that you were experiencing has nothing to do anymore with how much of the Holy Spirit you have.

The question from that point on is how much of you, how much of your heart he has. Are you in fellowship with him? Are you dwelling on? Are you thinking on and participating in the things that please him?

How much of what you're doing grieves him, right? Paul ends the section, now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead lives in you, well then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his spirit who lives in you.

I see three big takeaways from those final verses. Number one, the Christian life is not gradual self-improvement. The Christian life is fellowship with the spirit.

And listen, if some of you would embrace that, that would be a game changer. Because you're probably used to evaluating sin based on how bad the effects are. And you're trying to grow yourself spiritually.

Stop it, right? The way that you grow spiritually is simply by welcoming the Holy Spirit into your life and wherever he comes, he's gonna bring his fruits with him. And it means when you grieve him and drive out his spirit, it means his fruits are gonna go away and that's why I keep pressing into you. The real damage of sin is not the effects. The real damage of sin is that it grieves the Holy Spirit. And when the Holy Spirit goes, so do his fruits of life and peace.

If you really understood that, it would, watch this, it would start to make small areas of compromise in your life every bit as devastating as big ones. Because what makes a sin devastating is not the action. What makes a sin devastating to you is it drives out the spirit of God. And that means even small areas of rebellion, small areas of compromise grieve the Holy Spirit and they cut you off from life and peace.

Here's the second implication. Coming to Christ is not a return to religion. Coming to Christ is a surrender to a person. I often hear people say, well, I'm trying to get back with God.

I have these conversations all the time. I'm trying to get back with God. People see me in Starbucks, run to me in a restaurant, store, hey, you know, yeah, yeah, I've come to your church a few times. I'm trying to get back with God. I'm trying to get back into church. What they mean is they wanna get involved in some kind of religious self-improvement. I wanna be a better person.

I wanna pay a little bit more attention to God. But listen, listen. Christianity, plain and simple, is surrender to a person. All of you, all of you surrenders to all of Him. The nature of surrender is that it's total.

Otherwise, if surrender's not total, you're just looking at Him like a suggestion giver. You know, when I took the driver's head, the guy sitting next to me had this big old brake. That's all he had.

Do y'all have this? The big old brake coming out. And it meant that he could stop that car any time he wanted.

And in fact, he did it like after we'd been out about five minutes just to show me that he had it. So I wanted to turn and he just like slammed on that brake and like, you know, slam in there. And what he was showing me was, you think you're in control of this car. And I'm letting you drive, but I can stop this car anytime I want to. I could vote. I'm the driver.

I could vote about where we should go. But ultimately, he had the veto power. He had not surrendered the car to me. So surrender means I take my hands off of, and it belongs to you. When you come to Christ, He doesn't come, you basically turn over the brake. And you're like, because I would describe probably some of our spiritual lives that way.

Is it Jesus is speaking to you? And you're like, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Let's go over here.

That sounds awesome. Oh, I'll do that. But every once in a while, you're like, nope. You push that brake in and the car comes to a halt because you've never actually surrendered it to him. You've kept that brake right in place. To be surrendered to Jesus means you take the brake away.

You cut the brake out. I love how C.S. Lewis says it in mere Christianity.

This is awesome. Christ says, give me all of you. I don't want a certain amount of your time, a certain amount of your talents or money. I don't want a certain amount of your work.

I want you, all of you. I've not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman. Good news. I've not come to frustrate that. I've come to kill it. No half measures will do. I don't want to only prune or a branch here and a branch there. Rather, I want the whole tree out.

Rib the brake out of the thing. We handed it over to me. The whole outfit, all your desires, all of your wants, all of your wishes, all of your dreams, give it all to me. Turn them all over to me. Give yourself to me and I will make you a new self in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange, I will give you myself. My will shall become your will. My heart shall become your heart. That's fellowship with the spirit and it begins in total surrender. Here's the question.

Have you done that? Stop trying to be religious. Stop trying to strike a bargain with God. There's only one deal, only one deal that Jesus will ever make and that is he will give you his righteousness and his resurrection power in response to your total surrender. There's no other negotiation that he'll enter into.

Here's number three, third implication. I've got hope even when I feel dead. I got hope even when I feel dead. Like Paul, even though I'm still frustrated at my own personal deficiencies. Remember, this is right after Romans 7. Like Paul, I'm like, hey, man, I'm just frustrated because even after all these years of walking with Jesus, I still feel so spiritually immature. Paul says, I know, but in Christ, I know I'm headed to ultimate victory because the spirit of God is at work in me. He is producing righteousness in my heart right now and one day, one day he's gonna deliver me physically from this body of death and he's gonna take me into a world without corruption or pain or death and I can't wait.

That's why you can feel Paul screaming throughout this chapter. Right now, he says, already, I've got the beginnings of this resurrection art. I see Jesus changing me and one day, one day I'm gonna have a completed resurrection art and it's gonna be accompanied by a resurrection body and I'm gonna live in a resurrection world and that means if I'm struggling with some sin, see, that means that struggle is not the end of my story. No, because the spirit of God is within me and that means that this struggle, as bad as it is, I know it ends in victory and that means if my marriage feels dead. It means if your marriage feels dead, that's not the end of your story either because the spirit of God is within you.

He is always renewing you. He is always making you mount up with wings on like eagles and no matter what happens in your marriage, your story ends in resurrection hope and it means if your life is characterized by some ongoing struggle, depression, anxiety, chronic physical suffering, you've seen the doctors, you've seen the psychologist, you've gone to everybody and it just doesn't seem to be able to get behind you. What this means is that when it's all said and done, that will not be the predominant theme of your life because just as sure as the spirit raised Jesus from the grave, he also will raise your body to beautiful, perfect, everlasting life and that will be the theme. That will be what characterizes your life in eternity and all these things Paul says, the body might be dead.

The body might be dead because of sin but the spirit gives life because of righteousness. That's hope and in that hope, Paul says, is freedom. Is that the life you want?

Is that the life you want? It starts with total surrender to the spirit and it starts with a commitment to grow in fellowship with him. It starts ironically enough, listen, this is the most beautiful part. It starts ironically enough by simply embracing that no condemnation. If you hear from this, go out, get better and one day you can have these promises.

You heard it wrongly. It starts with Romans 8, one, no condemnation. Neither do I condemn you. If you'll receive that, then I'll give you the power to go and sin no more. It's so easy a child can grasp it.

It's so easy that the most vile lost sinner can grasp it immediately but something that so many people stumble over. Have you ever been to a really nice dinner at a restaurant with somebody and you tried to pick up the check and you knew that you should do it because you had a lot more money than they did. But for whatever reason, they just, their pride, or I don't know what it was, but they just, you knew they couldn't afford it but their pride would not let them let you do it. And so they keep, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna pick it up.

I'm gonna pick it up. No matter how many times you offered, they just kept saying, no, no, no, I insist. Insist, it's on me, right?

You kind of leave the restaurant. You're like, I know that almost devastated you and I could have covered it. It would have been a big deal. Well, here's the same thing. If you insist on picking up the bill yourself for your sin, you can do that. If your pride stands in the way of accepting Jesus, just understand what you are agreeing to pay when you reject him because this full debt for your sin is gonna come due someday. And it's gonna be yours to pay if you insist. That condemnation will fall on you for eternity. And Jesus says, there's no condemnation in Christ.

I've already paid it. If you will embrace what I am offering to you in Christ, then you will have not just my death which releases you from the penalty of sin, you'll be filled with my spirit which will release you from the power of sin. You can choose that no matter what you bring into this place. You can choose it right now, right here, today, if you want because it's offered indiscriminately to all who will receive it.

Why don't you bow your heads, bow your heads with me. Romans 8, the greatest chapter in the Bible begins with the greatest verse. Maybe the greatest words ever spoken in any language.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Have you ever received that? It's a gift. And when you receive it, you're also going to get the spirit of God. And that spirit's gonna start to make you new.

He's gonna take that mess that you've been through He's gonna take that mess that you've made in your life, that mess you've made of your relationships and your marriage and start to make it new. If you've never received Him, you can do it right now just by saying, Lord Jesus, I receive the gift of no condemnation. If you have any questions about what it means to follow Christ, please give us a call. You're listening to Pastor JD Greer on Summit Life. JD, as I've studied Romans in the past, I've noticed that Paul references the Old Testament scripture a lot.

Why is that? Well, you know, the New Testament in its final form didn't exist when Paul was writing Romans. When Paul wants to quote from the kind of the authorized canon at that point, and he wants to ground this point in scripture, he reaches for the Old Testament. So when you're studying Romans, pay attention to whenever and however Paul uses the Old Testament to ground his argument. We get into this a lot more in this new resource written by Tim Keller that takes you to the first seven chapters of Romans. It's a great resource that you can use in a small group or you can use for individual study that will go right alongside what you're hearing here at Summit Life.

jdgreer.com You know, there's always a free resource available for download at jdgreer.com. Make sure you grab this month's Seven Stories of Hope Evangelistic Guide designed to help you share the gospel with someone in your life in a whole new way. And on top of these free resources, we'd love to send you part one of Pastor Tim Keller's study through Romans as a way to say thank you for your financial gift of $35 or more to this ministry.

To give, call us now at 866-335-5220 or give online right now at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us tomorrow when we move into the next part of the greatest chapter in the whole Bible. Thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.