Romans 8:1-8 (The Spiritual Life, Part 1, Pastor Jeff Kliewer)

What a privilege that we could proclaim the Lord's death by taking communion. Just by taking this cup and this bread, we remember him but we also proclaim to the world that Jesus died and that he rose from the dead.

Let's pray. Father, as we turn now to your word and open the text of scripture, we pray that you would speak to us, Lord, and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We pray for power from on high right now in this building, in this room, as I preach, Lord, that you would give me the words to say by your Holy Spirit and that you would give all of us ears to hear your word and power to live in obedience to Christ, victory over the flesh, in Jesus' name.

Amen. Pastor David was from Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, and he had a beautiful country church. A couple hundred people, just glorious landscape. It was on top of a hill. Well, one night he was watching TV, as was his tradition, to watch a couple hours of television before going to bed.

This was in the 1950s, so it was one of those knob-tube turn-on things. And he would spend a couple hours a night watching TV when he realized that everything he was watching was boring and trite and meaningless.

And so he felt like the Lord was telling him, sell the television. I don't know how he explained that to the rest of the family, but he did decide that he would put out a fleece. He would put the television on the market, put it in the newspaper, and if he got a call within an hour of the newspaper coming out in the morning, then he would go through with it and sell the television and devote those two hours a night to prayer.

Well, sure enough, 27 minutes in, the phone rang and someone wanted to buy the TV. So he sold it and began to pray. And in those seasons of prayer, middle of the night, each night, one day the Lord spoke to him about the teenagers and the gangs in New York.

That he should leave his country church and go to New York and minister to the kids and the teens in gangs there. Well, his first effort to do so turned out to be a debacle. He ended up on the cover of the newspaper because he was waving his Bible wildly in front of the courthouse and he embarrassed everybody, including himself.

But he decided to go back. And before long, he began to make contact with the leaders of these gangs. One of them was named Nicky Cruz. He was the leader of the Mau Mau's gang. He invited him and all of the gang members to come to a crusade.

And for the crusade, he invited a young girl from a Spanish-speaking church, 14 years old, her name was Mary, to come and sing, opening with How Great Thou Art or some song like that. For five nights, this young girl would sing and he would preach the gospel.

And as the week went on, the gang members became increasingly attentive. The first night, they were cat whistling and they were making obnoxious noises. But by the last night, they were listening carefully.

And then Pastor David Wilkerson prayed this at the end of his sermon. God, I have said everything that I could say. There's nothing more that I can do. I ask that your Holy Spirit come now and help the people.

He prayed this prayer and the young girl Mary stood up and sang once again. And as she sang that last night, Nicky Cruz, the leader of the Mau Mau's gang, came walking down the aisle, tears streaming down his face.

He knelt at the altar and prayed to receive Jesus as his Lord, asking that the Lord would change him from the inside out. And in that moment, he was changed. He left the street life. He became himself an evangelist.

And so many of the gang members, they were even rival gangs in the building. So many of them came to Saving Faith that night. David Wilkerson would go on to plant Times Square Church, which was one of the great and is one of the great churches in this country.

He also founded what is called Teen Challenge. Teen Challenge helps people caught in addiction to get clean. And they have a success rate of more than 70%. After five years, more than 70 of those who go through the program and complete it are still clean from drugs and have not fallen back.

The government was amazed by this because the government programs have a success rate of anywhere from 1 to 15%. So to have a program where 70 of the people are truly delivered, it blew their minds and they commissioned to study.

And the government found the same statistic as Teen Challenge had published. You see, what the government could do is offer therapy and help and support, but not the power of the Holy Spirit. And it was the power of the Spirit of God that truly set so many people free.

But what about that young singer, 14 years old? She grew up in church. In fact, she herself was a pastor's kid. But as she got into her older teen years, she fell into temptation. The power of the flesh overwhelmed the traditions that she was taught as a young girl.

And before long, she was entangled in sin. She married an unbeliever. And she was out of church all through her 20s. She was a prodigal. She had left the faith until in her early 30s, her four-year-old daughter asked her, who is Jesus?

And something sparked in her a memory of her childhood. She went back to church. Here's a picture of Mary to this day. She's the one seated right here. Surrounding her are a group of women who she discipled when they were teenagers.

Because for the next 45 years, when she came back to the faith, she mentored more than 500 young girls in Christianity. And this is her being honored by some of them. Here's the point. Whether you're a drug dealer, entangled in the sins of the street, or a church kid growing up with tradition, you need the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit of God in your life to overcome the flesh.

None of us has the power to overcome the flesh in the flesh. We need spirit to overcome flesh. Turn with me to Romans chapter 8. We study the first eight verses today. You can't understand Romans chapter 8 unless you've spent some time contemplating Romans chapter 7.

In Romans chapter 7, the problem is presented. And the problem is not God's holy law, the 10 commandments and all of his righteous commandments. Those are good and righteous and holy. And Paul, in his mind, agreed with the commandments.

Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not steal. Yes and amen. The problem was that in Paul's heart and mind, as in ours, there was another law. Making war against the law of God. It is the law of the flesh, of sin and of death.

The enemy is within. So that on one hand, Paul, with his mind, agreed with the law of God. But in the members of his body, he wasn't able to carry it out. And he says, what I want to do, I don't do. And what I don't want to do, that's what I keep on doing.

Wretched man that I am. That's the problem of Romans 7. It's like the dead of night. And Romans 8 is the breaking of dawn. It's like being starving to death, so hungry. And Romans 8 is the meal. Romans 7 sets us up for Romans 8.

So when we come into the therefore, it's with reference to the problem of sin in the flesh. And how we can't defeat that on our own. We need help from outside of us. Let's read it. Romans 8, 1 to 8. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. 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. Jesus Christ not only paid the penalty for our sin, but he also instituted a new law. The law of the spirit of life.

And this law overpowers the wretch-making law of sin and death. The problem of Romans 7 is that there is a law that we cannot conquer. A principle. And that is our sin nature. Indwelling sin. We can't overcome it.

Try as hard as we may, we keep falling down. The effort that we put in to getting this victory never works. We need help. And notice the note of triumph that begins the eighth chapter. There is, therefore, you would expect the next part of the sentence to be condemnation.

Because of this indwelling sin that even Paul, the great apostle, can't defeat. But the answer is not condemnation. Rather, no condemnation. This verse right here, Romans 8 .1, is one of the most beautiful verses in all of Scripture.

There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Condemnation is associated with judgment. It means that there's no hope for you. You're bound to be punished. You're bound to be ruined.

There's no life. There's nothing good to come. Picture a building inspector in Mount Laurel. And he comes upon a building that's so decrepit, with so many electrical problems and so much going on, that he condemns the building.

What does that mean if the building is condemned? It is no longer fit to be occupied. There's no more use for it. The only thing left to be done to this building is a giant wrecking ball that's going to take it to the ground.

It's condemned. This is the judgment that would rightfully fall on each of us, as Matt so eloquently put it, in regard to our sin. Sin is a big deal. It's flagrant. It's rebellion against the creator of the world.

And he would rightfully condemn us and send us to hell. As much as the world rejects about that and thinks that that's extreme, it's because they undervalue the holiness of God. Condemnation is due to us.

But this beautiful verse says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Now. Now. It doesn't say that come judgment day at the great white throne, we'll hopefully be found innocent.

It says there is now no condemnation. We have already been justified through faith in Christ. Spurgeon puts it this way. The believer in Christ receives a present justification. We are today accepted in the beloved.

Today absolved from sin. Today acquitted at the bar of God. The verdict has already been rendered. The punishment meted out in Christ. He paid the penalty of our sin. And now we are credited as righteous.

Not an account of any good we've done, but because we are in Christ Jesus who did the good on our behalf. Now, I want you to notice something at the end of this verse. Does anybody have a little one that points you to a footnote at the bottom?

Be honest. When you see the footnotes, you skim past those most of the time, right? Well, this week I kind of geeked out. I put on my nerd glasses and I thought to myself, let's investigate this footnote.

Where it says, some manuscripts add, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. And I thought to myself, well, why is there a difference? And should it really be there? Kind of an important question.

Are those words Holy Scripture? Or have they rightfully been left out of the ESV and the NASB and the NIV? There is a difference between the translations at this point. The King James Version and the New King James are based on what are called the majority text.

These are texts that were discovered in the Byzantine Empire, like Syria, from the 5th to the 16th century. And 95 of all the ancient manuscripts come from that cache of manuscripts. But in 1881, Westcott and Hort published a new discovery.

And these came from Egypt. They date back earlier than the ones from the Byzantine Empire. These Alexandrian texts date from as early as 175 AD to the 400s. So they're earlier. And the new translations like the ESV, they will take into account those newer texts and often conclude that some of the wording in the King James from the Alexandrian texts, you following me?

Some of the wording got added in over the centuries because the earlier texts don't have those. So this sent me on a wild goose chase. And I asked the question, these early manuscripts, and you'd probably appreciate this, Jeremy, being a Princeton historian, probably lost everybody else at this point.

But when I began to dig into the manuscripts, I said, well, which manuscripts? What is the earliest manuscript that we have of the Book of Romans? And sure enough, there were four early manuscripts from the Egyptian-Alexandrian textual tradition.

They are labeled with a P in front of it, which stands for papyrus. And the earlier number represents an earlier discovery. So the four discoveries are papyrus 27, P40, P46. And in 2012, they just discovered another one.

It was discovered by none other than the founder of Hobby Lobby, Steve Green. He's also the one that put it on display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D .C. So what often happens in the newer translations is they will say the earlier manuscripts, such as the ones I referenced, don't have this verse.

Therefore, they leave it out. But you want to know what I discovered when I looked up P27, P40, P44 and Steve Green's manuscript? None of them had Romans 8 -1 in the extant text. Some of them end at Romans chapter 8.

Steve Green's is only Romans 9 and chapter 10. But none of the early texts, none of them have Romans 8 -1. So you want to know what that means? We can just boil it all down to this. That footnote should be in there.

There is no justification from the Alexandrian text types to leave it out. None of them contain the phrase that got pushed to the footnote. And I think it's significant, partially significant. By the way, guys, the textual differences between these discoveries and those are at such a minor level, it doesn't affect the general meaning of the scripture.

No doctrine hangs in the balance. In fact, look at the end of verse 4. That very phrase appears there as well. Who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. So no matter which version you use, you're going to get that text.

But what I'm telling you is by leaving it where it first belonged, there is a repetition. And Paul does this throughout chapter 7. There's often a repetition where he says the same thing again and again to drive home a point.

And this phrase should be in verse 1, not only because it was never missing, but secondly, because the flow of the text makes more sense. The start of verse 2 says, for the law of the spirit. That word for grounds the argument.

It gives the seedbed for the plant that comes out of it. And what was the argument? If you leave that phrase off, you're left with propitiation. That Christ died for our sins. There's no condemnation.

We're justified. But if you have that phrase, then that becomes the nearest antecedent. What is it? Who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. This is important because in Romans chapter 7, Paul mentions the personal pronoun to describe the struggle with the flesh.

He mentions that pronoun again and again. I have note of how many times here. I believe it is 47 times. 44 uses of that pronoun. I, me, my. What I want to do, I can't do. My flesh. But notice the change that happens in chapter 8 verse 1.

He's no longer talking about me, my, I. 20 times in chapter 8, he references the spirit. The spirit of the living God. And this church is the answer to your struggle and to mine. What did Jesus say in John 14 to 16?

He said, it's better for you if I leave and return to the right hand of the Father. Think about that. How could it be better for the church if Jesus himself, who is with us in the flesh, goes back to heaven?

Here's the one that could open blind eyes and perform any miracle. Why is it better if Jesus goes to heaven? His answer was, because if I go, I will send to you the comforter, the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth.

And then he'll go on to say, he is with you, but he will be in you. The third member of the Trinity is often forgotten. And he's sometimes even cut right out of the text. But he is just as important as the Father and the Son.

And the argument that Paul is going to develop through the rest of this chapter is that it is that third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, who empowers us to life and godliness. That we do not have to walk in the flesh and be enslaved to sin.

As we saw in chapter 7, here is the victory. Verse 2, for the law of the spirit. This is the idea. He's giving us the answer to the problem of chapter 7. Has set you free. This is how you were to think.

Having the spirit, you're free from the law of sin and death. So now we've introduced three laws. The first law is the law of God, the law of Moses. It's holy, righteous, and good. But the second law is the law, the principle of sin that dwells in us.

Indwelling sin. And these two are in opposition. I like to picture it like this. That you were going about your business, trying to live life. But you got captured by Hamas. And you were taken down into a tunnel under the earth.

And there you discovered a pool of water. And you were plunged into that water. Now water itself is good. It's the stuff of life. But this terrorist had you by the neck. And he was holding you in the water.

The water was good. It's water. You needed to live. But here it became the instrument of your death. Because another principle was holding you down in it. The law of God is like that water. It's holy, it's righteous, and it's good.

But you're drowning in it. Because there's another enemy, another principle. That's killing you by the good thing. And you can't defeat this enemy. He's too strong for you. You're gonna die. But what I see here in verses 2 and 3 is that God does by another law what you cannot do for yourself.

For God has done what the law, that means the law of Moses, weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. That means Jesus became human. He himself did not sin.

It's the likeness of sinful flesh. He's fully human, but without sin. And for sin, meaning as an atoning sacrifice for sin, a sin offering, he condemned sin in the flesh. Now I want you to see that word condemned.

Because remember 8 .1, that in Christ there's no condemnation for you. There's no wrath deserved against your sin. Now we're told that God condemned the sin, the body of sin. Meaning he had wrath against sin.

And the practice of sin and the control of sin, the principle or the law of sin. And now God does for us what we could not do. So here we are drowning in our sin. And there is a blast through that tunnel.

And that man, that terrorist, which was really our own flesh holding us down, that terrorist is destroyed, obliterated by this blast of power. This fire from heaven, this Holy Spirit, this sacrifice. And he is destroyed.

And now you in that water, picture yourself baptized and drowned, the old man dead. You now risen to newness of life. The big idea here is that the law was drowning you. It was your own flesh holding you down.

But another principle, another law, Christ in the flesh and the spirit of life saved you from that body of death. So if you stop at Romans 7, you'll live as a defeated Christian. But if you keep reading into chapter 8, you see that there is a purpose to the coming of the spirit.

Verse 4, when it says in order that, in order that, that's the word hina in the Greek. H-I-N-A. And it just means in order that or so that. It is a purpose clause. The purpose of what we're talking about here.

You guys want me to get to the point? What's the purpose of all this? Verse 4, in order that the righteous requirement of the law. That good water might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Again, that's a repetition from verse 1, but it's stated here that the Christian now is able to obey the law. That good water, it's like a beautiful lake now. It's a flowing river. The law of God is pleasant to us and we are able to keep it.

We're not bound in sin, trapped and unable to escape. We're set free by the power of the Holy Spirit in us. It says in verses 5 to 8, that this is really a difference in mindset. Mindset, because the battle that we are in is a battle for, first of all, our mind, which results in how we walk, how we live.

And here we're being taught that as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit. We have the spirit of life, which is stronger than the flesh. The Roman 7 mindset would leave us thinking that we just can't help it.

I am this way and I can't change. And the sins that plague me will always plague me. But the mindset on the spirit says that I am new and that there is power to overcome the flesh. In fact, that word set, mindset, is phreno in the Greek.

It's not the common word for mind, which is nous. This, according to John MacArthur, refers to an intentional mindset. A way of thinking, of seeing the world and seeing oneself. Did you notice that it's not like many people use it?

The phrase is often used to get in the flesh, like somebody ticked you off and you got in the flesh and you socked him. A Christian who gets in the flesh, that's not the distinction here. Rather, it's positional.

Look at verses 5 to 8. You're either in the flesh, meaning you don't have the spirit whatsoever, or you're in the spirit, meaning he's come to dwell in you. 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. So we talked earlier about Nicky. What was his last name? Nicky Cruz, the gang leader. He couldn't help but run the streets until the spirit of God set him free.

Other people might look the part of a good, decent citizen, but when they go home, their mind is set on entertainment, or the home, or work, or whatever it is that occupies the flesh. They cannot devote themselves to the will of God.

It's impossible. Moreover, this is, I think, the strongest argument for total depravity, that when offered the gospel, they cannot even come. Because it says in verse 8, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

It would please God to come and accept Christ and to find forgiveness. But the idea here is that a person in the flesh is totally unable. They have a fleshly mind, and there's nothing in them that can change that.

Education can't do it. This is why education fails so often, because it cannot reform the inner man. It cannot change the human nature. And so all that education can do, whereas it can do good things with work and accomplishing things, with regard to the sin nature, all it can do is make a person a more clever sinner.

It can't reform and change the nature. And this is the idea, though, that the spirit of the living God came to dwell inside of us. You know what else Jesus said? He told us that it's better for us if he goes to the Father, because then he'll send the spirit.

He said, the spirit has been with you, but now he will be where? In you. This is a dispensational change. In the new covenant, something changes. So in chapter 7, wretched man that I am. That's not how we're to think in chapter 8, because there is a victory over that.

That's why Todd Friel's show, Wretched. I don't love the title. It better describes the old man than the new. Likewise, recently, Vodie Bauckham said that the strongest, the wisest, and the godliest men all had something in common.

They all fell into sexual sin. And that can be applied directly to us. The strongest, Samson, he fell three times. He married the Philistine woman, and then he fell to a prostitute. And then Delilah, time and again, the strongest man fell into sexual sin.

David, the godliest man, the writer of the Psalms, fell with Bathsheba. And the wisest man, Solomon, fell a thousand times. 700 concubines and added 299 to his original wife. Bad track record for Solomon.

But I would say, according to Jesus, the Holy Spirit in the new covenant enables us and empowers us to be more strong morally than Samson, stronger than Samson, godlier than David, and wiser than Solomon.

None of us here should ever commit adultery. It's not our part as Christians. We are empowered by the spirit of the living God who dwells in us. We are not in that Roman 7 position where we can't help it, we can't control it.

We are in control. We have self-control as a fruit of the spirit. This is Paul's idea, the mindset. He wants us to view ourselves as bought and paid for by Christ, but also indwelt by the spirit. And the law of the spirit of life is stronger than the flesh.

You are not a slave to sin any longer. You're free. And this is why I've said that chapter eight is one of the most glorious chapters in the Bible. We have four more parts to explore, but this morning it's just the big principle, the big idea that the law of the spirit of life living in you has defeated the law of sin and death.

God did what you could not do. He gave you his spirit to dwell in you, and that indwelling presence is enough to defeat the flesh. Amen? Amen. So in closing, my application, set your mind on the things of the spirit.

Galatians chapter five will say that this is not just positional, but also a matter of how we condition our thinking. And walk according to the spirit. Don't quench the spirit, don't grieve the spirit, but continue to think the thoughts of God.

Let the spirit help you interpret the word of God. First Corinthians two. The spiritual life flows from spiritual thoughts. Guys, it becomes natural to walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

That crucial phrase from verse one and verse four, when the mind is set on the things of the spirit. I got a text a couple days ago from a pastor in Kensington, and it made my day to get this text message because I had been a missionary at that church from 2004 to 2011.

And during that time, I had started an evangelistic festival, a yearly outreach that would draw hundreds, really thousands of people to hear the gospel. But there had been a falling out between myself and some of the missionaries over a marriage question, where I thought that this woman should not be with another man because she was still married to the other.

And there was reasons on the other side to think maybe her marriage was absolved. In any case, you guys know the story in Acts 16 about how Paul and Barnabas split. The two missionaries split and went in a different direction.

But years later, they came back together and Paul was even requesting John Mark. I got a text message a couple days ago from that pastor in Kensington saying, could you bring with you some of your evangelists to help us at the evangelistic festival this Sunday, today.

It's like this full circle moment for me that the reconciliation, the bringing back together, and I delighted in that. But listen, church, when I heard about that, I thought, yes, on Sunday, beautiful day, I'm gonna spend it in inner city Philly telling people about Jesus.

I can't wait. And the last thing I'll be thinking about is the desires of the flesh and the temptations, the pride and lust and anger and greed and gluttony and envy and soth, the seven deadly sins. They won't be on my mind because I'll be occupied in the things of God.

This is the idea. When you're filled with the spirit and he's leading you, it's not that you have to resist the flesh. You're just in the spirit. You're walking with God. It's natural. But when all you have is law, no spirit, what do you do?

The harder you fight against the flesh, the stronger that voice becomes. They told Adam and Eve, God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit. So what did they do? They ate the fruit. The very thing they were told not to do became so appealing till they finally gave in to sin.

This is the idea here. You have the spirit of God dwelling in you. Lastly, remember three Ps, three Ps of sin. Penalty, power, presence. The gospel addresses all three. Penalty, there is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

No penalty. Christ took it all on the cross. But the second P is the power of sin to control you and to make you obey the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life. The power of sin is defeated by the Holy Spirit who now lives in you and changes you from the inside out.

And the presence of sin will be utterly gone and discarded on the day that Jesus comes back for the church or when you die and you're glorified. So the gospel addresses more than the penalty of sin. Also the power and eventually the very presence of sin in our lives.

Let's pray for help. Gracious Father, we thank you so much for your word today and we pray that you would apply it to our lives. Just like David Wilkerson prayed, I have said everything I can say. Holy Spirit, come do the work in the hearts of the people.

Holy Spirit, change us from the inside out. Give us a passion for the things of the spirit. Occupy our minds. Give us a mindset on the things of God that we would not satisfy the lusts of the flesh. Thank you for the victory that is ours in Christ Jesus.

Fill us afresh. Send your Holy Spirit upon every believer in this room to give us a fresh filling that we would do your will and not ours. In Jesus' name, amen.