Studying His Word and His Works

Listen to the study here: Romans 8:1-11

Read here: Romans 8

Review

• Calvin on the theme of Romans: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.” Romans 1:17 and elsewhere.
• IMPORTANT: Paul wrote the letter to the saints (1:7), and the letter is about the gospel, which is a reminder we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. 
• Luther: Simul iustus et peccator = At the same time, righteous and a sinner! Romans 3:23-25
• In Ch. 1-3 Paul shows us our unrighteousness, and God’s wrath against that, and the switches to Christ’s righteousness as our covering, the propitiation of our sins (Romans 3:25) as the final sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the promise to Abraham, who had faith before any works
• Faith being “counted” or “credited to our account” as righteousness is mentioned 11 times in Chapter 4! If “none are righteous” as Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, then this saving faith must be a gift from God.
• Ch. 5, We now have peace with God, access to God, and hope, because of what Christ did for us while we were weak(v. 6), sinners (v. 8), and enemies (v. 10). Christ did this “at the right time,” (v. 6), connecting Christ’s work on the cross and God’s plan of redemption to real history (not just a myth or legend).
  • Atonement(5:6-11): Jesus satisfying God’s wrath for us through His sacrificial death on the cross.
• Ch. 5 and 6 describe federalism, this idea of one man making a difference, for righteousness (Jesus) or wickedness (Adam). 
  • Ch 6 ended with lots of words pointing to the new road we are now on with Christ, the sanctification road.
    • Service is the key word, “slaves” used 8 times
    • “Present yourselves”(5), “Leads to”(5)
• Sproul: “our regeneration, our rebirth was the work of one Person, God. It was not a joint venture; but from the moment we take our first breath of regenerated spiritual life, it  becomes a joint effort.” the work of one Person is what salvation is about. The joint venture is what sanctification is about. Ch.6 ends and we continue into Ch.7 describing what this “sanctification road” looks like to walk down. We were on the sin road that leads to death, but now we are on the grace road that leads to eternal life.
  • I think a lot of Ch. 7 is like that grizzly bear video from last week (Trapped Grizzly is Grouchy || ViralHog) That team effort Sproul is referring to is what ALL Christians have a hard time realizing. Christ alone sets us free from our sin, but often, we don’t come out swinging. We prefer the easy life. I mean if we are tied up, we don’t have to do anything or fight anything, right? We have a fake version of peace. What Paul is describing in Ch 7 and elsewhere is that the Christian life is more complex. Yes we have the peace/access/hope now, but we also have the greatest Warrior of all time living in us! The only way to have any “want to” to do right, or love His law (7:21-22) is if Christ is in us. We have no righteousness otherwise, or if we do, it is actually self-righteousness and self-preservation. That “want to”, that ability to “consider ourselves dead to sin” (Romans 6:11) in even the smallest capacity, should forever be a HUGE confidence booster to us and reassurance of our salvation. It is a reminder to NOT stay in the slave cage, those chains are broken! Run, you are free, and with Christ in you, you can fight for His glory now.
    • In reviewing, it’s good to remember a lot of what Paul is saying is challenging to interpret. Not all theologians agree. Take for example the “wretched man that I am” of Romans 7:24. Some believe Paul was describing his pre-Christian life. I also heard another pastor, Doug Wilson, teach that most of this passage is describing Israel, and that Galatians 5 is a better place to go to see how the sin nature after salvation affects us. But, when you read Galatians 5, it does seem to parallel Romans 7!
      • The “sold under sin” of v. 14 suggests there is no way Paul is referring to the Christian walk here. So maybe this is more about Israel. But then the last paragraph seems to be describing the fight we now have as Christians, our sinful flesh waging war against our mind that is being transformed through the Spirit in us. I think the passage is describing what it is like to walk with and without Christ. Jesus came to save Jew and Gentile, so of course you could say this passage is about Israel. But I think Paul is talking about human beings, not one of whom is righteous (3:10), but can become righteous through Christ alone(4:22-25), and walk a sanctification road that leads to eternal life (6:22).
      • So, even though there is some ambiguity, pretty much all of Romans 7 applies to Christians. Everything he writes in Ch.7 is in the present tense, as if describing his life now. The entire letter is “to the saints,” to Christians. So much of Ch. 6 and 7 are about breaking bad habits from our pre-Christian life. We have a new identity now, a “Holy Spirit download,” a covering of Christ’s righteousness, and the only way we can grab ahold of this new identity is because Christ did a work in us. The only way we can walk out of that cage, or better yet, charge out of that cage, is because Christ did a work in us. But, from Paul’s experience, he finds it a law that when he wants to do right, evil lies close at hand (7:21), which could be describing his life as a Jew, or his life as a Christian. So what do we do then when evil confronts, run back in the slave to sin cage? No, we train and we fight! Just like the grizzly, we come out ready for “Paul’s law” to take effect, and we come out swinging against it. 
    • Here is alist of reminders from Romans of who believers are in Christ now. As disciples of Christ, it is good to think about things like this to better understand our identity in Christ:
      • I am Your servant (1:1)
      • I am not ashamed of the gospel (1:16)
      • Because your Spirit is in me now, I will honor you as God and give thanks (1:21)
      • The penalty for my sins is death(6:23). I should already be dead, but God’s kindness led me to repentance (2:4) and to eternal life as a free gift (6:23). It was because of Him that I even had the ability to repent at all, and I will continue to repent daily as Jesus taught us to (Luke 11).
      • God created mankind perfect, but Adam sinned and his sin was imputed to humanity, and creation was cursed as well. Christ was born perfect and stayed perfect, and was the final sacrifice for sins. My sins were imputed to him (4:25), and His righteousness was imputed to me(4:23-24). 
      • God saved me while I was a weak, sinful enemy of His, and I rejoice! (5:6-11).
      • I have been reconciled to God through my Lord Jesus Christ (5:11)
      • Grace alone in Christ alone led me to believe, it is through His righteousness I am being led towards eternal life instead of eternal death (5:21). 
      • I am no longer enslaved to sin (6:6)
      • I will consider myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:11)
      • I will present myself to God as His instrument for righteousness (6:13)
      • By God’s grace, sin, and it’s penalty of death, no longer has dominion over me (6:13-14)
      • I will read your word and commit it to memory so that I remember what You have said my new identity should be like as a slave to righteousness (6:17-18)
      • I am walking a new road now, one that leads to sanctification. Evil forces want to knock me off this road, but with Christ in me now, I will fight to stay on this road that leads to eternal life. (6:19-22)
      • I am under new management now, I belong to Jesus Christ. My purpose now is to bear fruit for God (7:4)
      • I am aware of “Paul’s Law,” that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand (7:21). Therefore, I must fight, but sometimes when I fight, I lose. But I will stay humble, repent, fight again, and win the next battle! I am not going to win every battle in this life, but the fact that I want to is a reminder that Christ is in me,and sin no longer has dominion over me(6:14). In Christ I have the power to flee the cage of sin and run out free to knock evil down. Satan wants me to wallow in every failure, but Christ wants me to repent and move on, remembering that in Him, I am more than a conqueror! (8:31-39).
      • Through Christ alone, I can mentally focus on serving God alone, taking every thought captive and making it obedient to Him (2 Cor. 10:5). But I must also remember I was born with a sin nature, a natural propensity towards doing evil. That old nature is dying, it no longer has dominion, Christ does. I am set free from that and God will no longer condemn me! (8:1-2)
      • Because I am in Christ, I am the bear in that video, and I can flee the enemy and fight and win when he attacks.
      • And that was a long review!

Intro

• Key words: Spirit(11 times, as in Holy Spirit), flesh (10), mind (5, 7 if you include end of Ch. 7), set (6, your position, your place).
  • In 7:14-25, “I” was used 26 times, but 0 times in 8:1-11. I think Paul is showing the extremes as a Christian, when we don’t set our minds on Him, we are “I” focused, so we have to set our minds on the Spirit and be “we” focused. 
• In Ch. 6 we saw some warnings about not falling back into sin. Ch. 7 and 8 show the new complexity we have as believers, with Ch. 7 reminding us of our sin nature we are born with and still have. Ch 8 will remind us the Holy Spirit is now in us, that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us so we are no longer under condemnation. With this new complexity requires a relationship with Christ to grow over time. Schreiner refers to this as the “already but not yet” of Pauline theology, that we can still crawl back in the cage of sin even though Christ broke the chains and set us free. We can be free, but not realize exactly how free unless we set our minds on Him.
  • I believe you have to cherry pick Scripture to conclude Ch. 7:13-25 is about our pre-Christian life. Yes it has some similarities, but that is because believers still have a dying sin nature. Looking at 6-8 together, 7 is right in the middle and focuses on the dying “sin side” of believers, while 8 focuses on the new “Spirit side” of us, and how the Spirit side trumps the sin side by a country mile! Otherwise, Ch. 8 wouldn’t say things like “no condemnation now”. The Spirit side is the vastly superior “much more” of grace, of Christ’s righteous covering, Romans 5:9-10. 
• Verse 1
  • No condemnation
  • If we are in Christ, the outpouring of God’s wrath at the last judgment will not include us!
  • Think about the word conDEMNation, sounds like “DAMNation,” right? So, “no condemnation” means “without damnation.” Christians are without damnation! It’s not, “Well, I’ll be d*#!$!”, it’s actually “Well, I won’t be damned!” haha
  • Sproul says we super underemphasize God’s damnation. We can actually read the verse as “there is no damnation,” but it’s like that is too strong for us, because that word is used to curse and express anger, so we are trained to avoid it.
  • Verse 1 ends with the reminder that in Christ, we are on a new road now, the “Holy Spirit road”, the “walk in newness of life” road (6:4). Act like it, and repent when you don’t!
  • Verse 1 also reminds us that there IS damnation for those not in Christ Jesus.
• Verse 2
  • Christ opened the gate, broke the chains of sin slavery, you are free, Christian!
  • Law of the Spirit of life refers to the principle, the major premise, the standard, the rule, etc. He is referring to the gospel, eternal life for all who believe Jesus saves us from God’s wrath that is due to our sin. 
  • The law of sin and death refers to the moral law, the 10 commandments, etc., whose penalty for breaking them is death.
• Verse 3
  • Due to Adam’s sin and the subsequent curse imputed to us, the law cannot save us. Our flesh is corrupted, weakened, it says. God sent His own Son in our likeness, treated him like a sinner even though he wasn’t, to pay the penalty for sin for all time and for all who believe. Through Christ, God condemned sin to hell.
    • We are to consider ourselves dead to sin (6:11), but that doesn’t mean we are completely dead to sin. We are to identify that way though, and we can if Christ is in us. Christ dealt the death blow, our sin nature is not coming with us when we go to Heaven. Simul iustus et peccator!
      • Sproul says we are like dogs returning to their own vomit, we keep falling back on the idea that we can save ourselves by our behavior, good deeds, morality, etc. But we can’t, Jesus saves. He is going to prove that it is Him alone who saves by allowing us to still sin in spite of our freedom. Imagine thinking you are completely free from sin! How much pride that would develop inside of you. How much self-righteousness that would take. And how dangerous that could be to others because now you think you can justify all your actions, which could lead to some terrible things! It’s almost like we act like the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 is for unbelievers, it’s “them” that need to ask forgiveness of sins. It’s “them” that need to forgive those who have sinned against them. Our sin nature and the bad habits it has created keeps sending us back to a self-righteousness, whether it leads to pride on the one hand or self-loathing in our sin on the other, forgetting that Christ paid the debt, we are free, and therefore can repent! 
      • Sproul says Paul has come at this from every angle, to help us get rid of the idea that we can save ourselves, to abandon self-righteousness in all forms, because it is worthless compared to Christ’s righteousness that now dwells within us.
        • The Gospel in a nutshell: God has done what the law could not do.
          • Sproul: “What the law could not do is give us Christ; God gives us Christ”
    • Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not that Christ “was” sinful flesh or identified with that, but that he was like a human in every way except sin.
      • Sproul: “Jesus was born as Adam was before the Fall. Jesus was not in bondage to a corrupt nature.” This is why Jesus is referred to as the “Last Adam,” (I Cor. 15:45). Adam couldn’t handle the temptation and ended up cursing us all. Jesus handled the temptation and ended up saving all who believe!
• Verses 3-4
  • Walk according to the Spirit.
  • The verses describe two roads, which connects back to what Sproul said about regeneration being Christ’s work alone. After that it is a team effort. Before salvation, there is only one road we can walk, that is the flesh road. After salvation, we can walk the Holy Spirit road, but we have to keep our eyes on Him in order to avoid the ditches. Every single time we do that, turn to Him instead of the flesh, that is God reminding us that Christ is in us. We have no ability to stay fixed on Him if the Spirit is not in us. Maybe more importantly, we can’t get better, more skillful at keeping our eyes on Him if the Spirit is not in us. That’s what sanctification looks like. Can you keep your eyes fixed on Him for 5 seconds? Good, now try 10 seconds. 1 minute. 5 minutes. That’s what sanctification looks like. We train for all kinds of stuff, we can train to focus on Jesus, too.
    • God sent Christ to condemn, to “with damnation” our sin in our flesh.
      • Sproul said Jesus “went to the cross to receive the punishment for sin by the Father in order to remove our sins. That is the gospel.” 
    • Following rules cannot save us, whether that is trying to keep the 10 commandments, the over 600 Jewish laws, Mormon temple rituals, Catholic indulgences, etc. 
    • Throughout Romans, Paul has gone back and forth between righteous and wicked. In Ch. 7 he didn’t talk about Holy Spirit hardly at all, but in Ch 8 he talks about it a bunch. At the beginning of the letter he was describing how the wicked don’t acknowledge God and are unthankful, and how God gives them over to a debased mind, contrasting that with Abraham’s faith being credited as righteousness. Now Paul is talking more about the life of a Christian, that we still have fleshly desires, that we are set free from sin, but we still have that sin nature we were born with and are therefore susceptible to temptation. The less we focus on the Holy Spirit in us, we get the Ch. 7 result. The more we focus on the Holy Spirit, we get the Ch. 8 result.
• Verse 5
  • Using verses 5-11, let’s contrast fleshly living with Holy Spirit-infused living:

	Fleshly living	Holy Spirit living
Verse 5	Mind set on selfish desires	Mind set on things of the Spirit
Verse 6	Ends in death	Ends in life AND peace
Verse 7	Hostile to God
	Does not submit to His law
Verse 8	Cannot please God
Verse 9	Don’t belong to God
Verse 10		Still have that dead body hanging on(this is what 7:13-24 is about), but have life because of Christ’s righteousness
Verse 11	Your body is just dead, not gonna rise	Spirit of him who raised Jesus’ body from the dead is in you and will raise your body as well.

• Verses 6-8
  • Sproul says “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” is the biggest lie of our day. Think about what we have read in Romans 1. God “gave them over,” basically gave up on them. It’s Christians who have Christ’s righteousness imputed to them that He loves unconditionally. Everyone else is an enemy of God. The righteous/wicked theme is EVERYWHERE in the Bible. At the last judgment, God is sending sinners to hell. And now we’ve been able to properly use the words damn and hell in the same Bible study haha.
    • Sproul may be a little strong here. Yes, perhaps it is Christians alone who God loves unconditionally, but even Jesus says we should love our enemies (Matt. 5:44) and that God so loved the world (John 3:16). So, perhaps it would be more accurate to say “God hates the sin and condemns unrepentant sinners to hell.”
  • Sproul: “The life of the flesh is lived not in neutrality but in opposition to God.” It might feel like neutrality, but it’s anything but.
  • It’s about rebellion, it’s in our nature to rebel against God’s authority. A lot of people rebel against God’s authority so they can create their own authority structures. It is a big reason there are different political parties. 
• Verse 8
  • Plain and simple, a fleshly mindset cannot please God. Believers must daily do the “consider ourselves” of Romans 6:11, to retrain our minds and develop new habits in Him. Do discipleship in other words. Christ set us free to be able to do this, just trust Him to be faithful!
    • Those who are in the flesh have the condemnation of verse 1, those who are in Christ Jesus have none. Zero. Zip. Nada. No condemnation! We have a duty to respond to that, to trust that, to run from the fleshly mindset and run to the Spiritual mindset. In Christ we not only can but WILL do that!
• Verse 9
  • If the Spirit of God is in you, you are good! Did you repent of your sins and do you continue to daily? Do you believe? Have you been baptized? That is all you really need to know regarding the question “Is the Spirit of God in me?” Recall in Ch 5:3-5, that Paul says to expect sufferings. If Christ is in us, those sufferings are meant to produce endurance, followed by character, followed by hope. When we suffer, when we wrestle with the 7:24 “body of death,” we need to trust the process. Are you enduring, even a little bit? Christ is in you. In general, do you sense that you are running to God (better character in other words) more and to sin less? Christ is in you. Do you have more hope that you are eternally secure? The Spirit of God himself is in you! And that should leave us in humble awe and adoration.
• Verses 10-11: Paul reminds us that now, the “body of death” is still with us, but much more, the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is in us too! The more we turn our minds towards Him, the more we will realize this. That is what sanctification is about.
  • Think back to Romans 6:19. Back then, Paul was starting to teach us how to develop better habits. He was teaching about, as a Christian, what we are supposed to do with ourselves. He said stop presenting yourself to sin, and turn (repent) and present your members to righteousness. And not that you instantly become Jesus Christ or something, haha! No, of course not. But, as a believer, you are aware sanctification is a process. You don’t become Jesus, but you do become a better image bearer. A better reflection of Christ. You will never be Christ, but you can be better. You can be more like Him today than you were yesterday. You can train daily to race the perfect lap, not for your glory but for His.
• Up next, we will overlap a bit again and do Romans 8:9-17.