Rom 8|2 - The Truth of Our Righteous Walk, Pt. 2 (12/29/2019)

Christmas Reflections, Family Memories, and the Gift of Humbling Lessons

Thank you, too, for bringing us the music today. That last one was an interesting song choice because it has a lot to do with the sermon today. So good job, Holy Spirit. Good job listening to him, whoever picked that one.

But that's great. I had the opportunity over Christmas, one of my best gifts that I was given by my five-grown children was that they went back and found, oh, five or 10 videos. I'm talking about the tape kind of videos of them when they were children.

And then all the way up through Matt and Ben when they were kids. And they had it turned into digital and then bought a new Apple TV. I had an Apple TV, but not a new one because the new one will actually play those on my TV set.

So now I can watch the old videos. So we sat and watched quite a few of our family when these guys were little. And so it's really amazing watching them when they're little because so many similarities to the grandbabies now that are about that age.

But one of the things that happened was there was an old sermon in there, a video of me preaching Mother's Day right before Brother Otis came, when you say maybe a few, because Ed Klein was still here in some of them.

And he ran some of them off. So it was just before Brother Otis came. Might not have been long before. So when do you think he came? You guys were pretty soon, so 1998? Yes, of 98. So that was five years before they came.

Wow, that's frightening. Well, that makes a little bit of sense. But I remember this, a couple of things from watching myself preach. I had beautiful, dark hair that was darker than Katie's, about that same color, though, and thin.

And I had this little cockiness to me that I didn't realize I had, which one could call pride. But I had it, and I didn't know I had it. But I'm watching me, and I'm going, you needed some work. And the first thing I said, Paul was sitting next to me.

First thing I said when they turned out, when it switched to something else, I said, it's amazing to me God didn't kill me. Paul just busted out laughing. He just laughed and laughed, but I'm in it. And so, let's see.

So the other thing, a couple of things I was thinking about that one was the hair. It sure was nice to have hair. Well, again, another thing I thought was, what does the Lord go through to create a preacher?

And then I think, well, what does the church go through to let him create a preacher? It was awful. This is a terrible sermon. But then I pictured this. When Brother Otis first came, my dad was still with us.

And most of his life, he was what you would call a baby Christian. He just didn't, he had an interest in everything in the world except the Bible, pretty much. I mean, he had vast interests and was good at a lot of things and knew a lot of things.

But for some reason, the Bible wasn't one of them until Brother Otis came. We had prayed that God would bring somebody my dad would respect, a man that he would respect. Because he didn't respect very many men, actually, for whatever reason.

But Brother Otis showed up and my dad started growing. So for the last decade of his life, he grew in the Word and grew in the Lord. But he got to the point where he loved to be the greeter. So if you were new, man, he would catch you coming in that door and shake hands and be nice and find the perfect pew.

So he put Otis right where Bill is, right there, and Miss B right next to him, right there. And they stayed there for 13 years. And the third Sunday they sat there, they came and joined the church. And about the fourth Sunday, they brought you guys.

And y 'all, pretty much a couple of more Sundays, maybe, joined the church. And then Bill and their whole family. And then because of that, I think Mary Ann right in there at that same time. And they were all disciples of Brother Otis.

So that's how we met. And I remember about the fourth Sunday, it was after he joined, he came here because he got kicked out of the largest church in town because the people loved him more than the pastor.

And the pastor got jealous and got him fired, got him removed from the church in an interesting way. But a mutual friend of Otis and mine told him you should go down to that little bitty church down there on Country Club Road and check that out because you'll probably like that preacher.

It was a female who had been here many times. She was in the ministry and did puppet ministry all over the state. But she loved coming here every year because she liked my preaching. So she told Otis, you might like his preaching.

So that's why they visited. And they never left from the first time they visited. So we ended up getting the person who was the man who taught the largest church in town at that time was Northside. It may still be.

It's huge. He was the man who taught all the Sunday school teachers how to teach. And he ended up here. And so for 13 years, he was with us. And so many of the rest of you ended up here, too, with him.

And that was awesome. And the church, since that point, has never had any dissension or any problems of disagreement of any kind. And I always felt like Brother Otis brought that austere face that people were afraid because they knew he loved me.

So they did not mess with me while he was here. In fact, one or two of them did. And they were gone within a week from this place. And it turned out to be good, probably. And I still care for those people that left.

Still friends with some of them. Some of them, not so much. But we'll be in heaven. It's that kind of thing. But I'll never forget Brother Otis. About the fourth Sunday, Charlotte and myself and he and Miss B were the last four left.

Everyone had gone. We're walking down that sidewalk. We had already locked up the door and everything. We're walking out. And Miss B and Miss Otis walking behind us. And Otis got his arm up around me like this.

And we're walking like this down the sidewalk. His face is like right there. Okay, and I'm one of the few people that ever saw him smile. I know some of the rest of you did, a little bit. Especially Kenner, probably one of the only.

She and I are the only two that saw that very often. Dave got to see it a few times because he would let down at coffee sometimes. Not all the time, though, but sometimes. And you never wanted to be late to his class because you walk in late to his class, he'd do this.

And then he'd do this. As soon as he could hear, I guess, by the time you got seated, and then he'd just start teaching, wouldn't say a word. But you knew what he meant, right? So it was great. But anyway, so he's got his arm around me.

His face is right here. And he says, Brother David, and I had figured out who he was by that time, by the way. The first day he was here on the way home, I told Charlotte, I said, you remember that dude we heard about?

Maybe 15 years ago, this old man that was teaching Bible studies and had four or five of them a week with people from different cities and all different denominations coming. I actually wanted to go meet him, but I procrastinated and never went to meet him.

I said, I bet it's him. And I didn't know, he just looked godly. So I said, I bet it's him. Sure enough, it was him. That's who it was. But anyway, so I knew all that by this fourth Sunday. So here he's got me, we're walking down, right down this sidewalk, he says.

He looks at me in the face, he says, Brother David, you understand the word and you understand God is sovereign, but I want you to understand it better. And he took his arm down and I just smiled and said, thank you, Brother Otis.

And he got in his car, I got mine, I looked at Charlotte and I said, you wanna know what he just said? And I told her the whole story and I said, he just doesn't know what I know. So when I watched that tape, I figured out exactly what I knew when I met Otis.

That's where I was. I'm not playing it for the rest of you. They love me, all right? So I'm not playing it for the rest of you. But I will tell you something, Brother Otis saw something I didn't know.

He saw a little bit of pride, he saw a little bit of lack of knowledge and he saw a great study, someone he could mess with for 13 years. And thank God for it. But he messed with all of us. And the rest of you too, because a lot of stuff you hear me say comes from things that we learned at coffee together.

So, or that he taught me. I don't know, the thing I got from that, and I looked at our little family and where we were at the time and how we got where we are. One thing I learned, you will never, and for the young people, you'll never, as you get older, there's things you don't like.

Like for example, hair at this age is kinky. It's way more like body hair than head hair. That's all I'll say about that. But it's like it's kinky and yucky. And your knees don't always work great and stuff.

And a lot of that stuff, you know, you don't like it. Okay. But you know what is the truth? You will never wish you could go back because you don't want to have to relearn the lessons you've learned again.

You've already learned them. You don't need to relearn them and you'd never want to go back. Now there's some days you would love to go back and live. He was running. I wonder why. I know, but why was he running?

I guess everything's okay. Oh, I bet someone may be trying to get in the front door or something. Yeah. Well, now he's walking. I think he's okay. But anyway, you know, you'll wish you could go back and live specific days with those little kids.

Like you should have seen Katie in her little dress. She looks so gorgeous. But I'd love to go back and live a day. But you wouldn't want to go back and have it like it was because Lord has taught us some things and some of it through hard lessons, correct?

So anyway, that's kind of the big highlight of my Christmas was that gift. And it was really neat, really super. I don't know how many hours and hours it took for those guys to do that for me. Turn with me if you would to Romans chapter eight, verse three.

Christmas, God’s Sovereignty, and the Meaning of the Season

I don't know. It's like, another thing about Christmas to me is there's a lot of stuff. I mean, it's, you look at the world at large and you're happy that they, I love John King's sermon about how, even though Christmas is kind of, we know he wasn't born in December 25th.

That's like, that's the winter solstice. That's when the pagans do all their stuff. So why in the world do we have it? And I never had anyone stand up, pull up and say, well, it's because God's sovereign and that's how he made it be.

And I thought, whoa, okay. I won't mess with that much anymore. That's true. I never thought about that. God put it there for a reason. It was no accident. Didn't slip past God that it ended up being December 25th for Christmas, did it?

Yeah, I love it. So that idea that he made, I thought was a great idea. And what's so funny, I went home and Charlotte was reading Spurgeon to me like she always does every day almost. And you want to hear what Spurgeon said about Christmas?

And guess what he said. This was like the night after John preached here. That sermon, she said, she starts reading it to me and he says, you know, a lot of people in the world don't like Christmas because they think it's worldly.

And we know Jesus wasn't born, you know, this time of year. He was born in October, probably October 4th. No, he didn't say that. But he said, yeah, whatever. But he said, but I'm glad God in his sovereignty put a time for us to talk about Christmas and for our families to be able to be at home and spend time with their families.

And I wish they had more time. It sounded just like his sermon, you know? And then he mentioned how, you know, people in the whole world are talking about Jesus now. And that's a good thing. It sounded just like John King's sermon.

So I thought he must have cheated and got that from Spurgeon. So I texted him and I said, do you ever read what Spurgeon said about Christmas? And he comes back and says, no. I said, well, you should read it because it sounded like you.

Anyway, it was great. Well, we're off the sermon now of Christmas and we're back into verse by verse. So let's look at chapter eight, verse three. And the whole discussion in verses two through 12, at least, is trying to answer verse one and why it says what it says.

There's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. All right, now, it begins to tell us why that premise is even true because I think you may remember we had a message on verse four where the last phrase in verse four is identical to the last phrase in verse one.

And some people say that's a mistake and an error in the Bible. Duh, you wanna make a mistake? Let me tell you how to make it. Say there's a mistake in the Bible. You just made a mistake when you said that because there won't be one, right?

So, but it was put there for a reason and we even used some mathematics. If you remember, math and logic allow you to say that if A is equal to B, then B is equal to C, then the conclusion is A is also equal to C.

So, what it turns out is verse four ends up pretty much having a whole lot more light on it, I think, if you understand that than if you didn't understand it. So, we'll get back to that verse four in a second, but once we did all that, we went back to verse two and came on down through and looked at the fact that in the following verses, after verse one, there are a whole lot of verses that begin with the word for, F-O-R, and it's like God is telling us here's why that's true and here's the second reason why that's true and here's the third reason and here's the fourth reason and he's saying, I really, really want you to understand how true this is, and what's interesting is as I looked at myself preaching five years before Brother Otis came and before a lot of you guys showed up here, and I saw how terrible it was and I said, and I realized the fact, well, I was in God's hand at that time, too, and it made me think, I wonder how bad I am now.

You know, it's like when I look at myself, Lord willing, I live to be my mom's age, and I'm 90 and I'm looking at myself preaching 60, 30 years earlier, how bad will that look? And it's you that are the guinea pigs now because it takes God a long time to build a preacher.

And a servant, all of us, to be who we're supposed to be, it takes a long time, so a lot of people have to put up with a lot of stuff to get us there, but that's part of God's plan, too. It helps them, doesn't it?

It helps them grow in character to put up with us. So he's telling us, you know, when we really take a good look at ourselves like that, it's humbling, it's very, very humbling, and that's a very good thing because God says he sort of cradles those who are humble and he pushes away the prideful, so it's good to be in that humble position.

But you can start asking yourself the question, you know, golly, you know, why, how bad am I really? Have you ever thought about that? Like, how bad am I really? Why does God love me? Why did he love me when I used to preach like that?

How could he love anyone who would preach, it was legalistic, if you want to know the bottom line on the sermon, it was just fundamentally independent, Baptist, legalistic, it wasn't any scripture in it, if you can believe that now, at least I use scripture, right, I didn't hear one verse in it, and it was a Mother's Day sermon, so it was a topical, which I don't like.

But anyway, why does he, like, why does he love us like we are? And this whole passage in Romans chapter eight, verses one through 12, is all about that. So it's good that God took me through that as he brings me back to where we were before the holidays here.

So look at verse three. For what the law could not do, you might as well say, for what being perfect, for trying to be a perfect human couldn't accomplish, in that it was weak through the flesh, all right, so God tells you right there, he made us this way on purpose, he loves us, but we're fleshly, and so what the law couldn't do because we're fleshly, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, which is what Sunday School is all about here the last few times, Jesus being born into this world, what all that was about.

So God sent his son in the likeness of sinful flesh for sin, and through that, he condemned sin in the flesh. In other words, in his physical body. So God, in his physical body, that's who Jesus was, God with us, right?

God in his physical body, first of all, died for sin, it says, so he died in our place to settle the justice part, the law part, to propitiate a righteous God, and secondly, he condemned sin in the flesh.

So in his body when he died, he killed sin. Now if you remember, we ended the last sermon by telling you about a wonderful book that was written in the 1600s by a man named John Owen, and back then they didn't know how to do Brother Myron titles, they were more like David Mitchell titles, really long, and then my staff has to shorten stuff up for me, but he didn't have staff, so here was the title, The Death of the Death, I'm sorry, start over.

It's hard to even read. The Death of Death and the Death of Christ, colon, a treatise in which the whole controversy about universal redemption is fully discussed, that's the title. So they have shortened, they reprinted the book back in 1959, I think, and they shortened the title from his original title, but think about this, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ, he was talking about verse three, Romans eight, verse three, it was the death of death, it was the death of condemnation.

So on the cross, Jesus destroyed the very thing that would have destroyed us, and he had to do that because the law was insufficient to do it because of our flesh, not because of the law, but because we are fleshly and we can't keep the law and so it would have only killed us.

So Jesus had to come in a human body, God with us, and he had to die in our place, that's what the phrase here, for sin, he came in sinful flesh for sin, he died for us, in our place, and secondly, he had to destroy sin and death, which he did.

So we talked about that verse last time. Now, the law of walking in Christ has accomplished what the law of Moses could not. It couldn't do it because of our flesh. It was impossible for the law to deal with us in a saving fashion.

Therefore, God sent his son Jesus into the world as a man, as the God-man, because of sin, and as a substitute of sin, for sin, and to condemn sin in his physical body. And then last time we read Isaiah 53, four through six, which I won't do again, but it's so beautiful, where it talks about he died for us, he died for the sins of his people, it says.

It's interesting, it doesn't say he died for everyone in Isaiah 53, it says he died for the sins of his people, which is exactly what Calvin taught and it was correct as it ends up. All right, but then that brings us to verse four, Romans chapter eight, verse four, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

And we use the transitive law of logic and math and we take that together with verse one and we can correctly say that verse four could also be said this way. So look at verse four and I'm gonna read it how you could say it if you apply the laws of logic.

And I'm applying it to the fact that verse one has that same phrase, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. And in verse one, it says the person who does that is the person who is in Christ.

So that equals that. A person who's in Christ equals the same person who walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit. In other words, it's not a condition of salvation, it is the result of it. It is something that always accompanies it.

It is the tail while being in Christ is the heads of the same coin. It never can be apart. It's always together. It's not that one is the cause of the other. They both go together, they just are. It's just how it is, it's how God made it.

That when you're born again, you're placed into Christ by the Holy Spirit. And once that is accomplished, you are a person who walks not according to the flesh, but after the spirit. Does that mean you're perfect?

No, it does not as we just discussed from my having examined myself over the Christmas holidays and found myself wanting. Doesn't mean we're perfect. It means we're in Christ. And so therefore there's no condemnation and we will walk according to the spirit predominantly, not according to the flesh predominantly.

That's exactly what it means. But all these verses through verse 12 prove that I'm right about that. I mean, I can be a little more cocky now because I'm at least using scripture. Okay. All right, so we could read verse four this way.

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who are in Christ. Because that's the same group who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Same, it's the same person.

So you can say it either way, it's equally true. That was the point of that little mathematical study. So chapter eight, verse one, says there's therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ.

Imagine that, that is such good news. Who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit because those who are in Christ are that person. And then Romans eight two says four. Now notice it starts with the word four and then there are a lot of verses after that that start with the word four.

So that tells me that God did a lot of explaining to explain why verse one is true. Why is it true that if you're in Christ, you predominantly change your walk instead of walking according to the flesh like you used to, you change that walk to a walk of spiritual walk where you care more about the spiritual stuff than you do the carnal stuff.

And you think about the spiritual stuff more and more and more and you think about the carnal stuff less and less and less. Why is that true? Well, four, it starts to say because. Remember four can mean because.

So verse two says, well, because the law of the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law. So one reason it works is because I don't, I'm not having to live by the law anymore. That's not my, my focus is not on the law.

My focus is on Christ. I'm in Christ. My focus is holding his hand, walking with him. My focus is not on trying to be perfect anymore because that doesn't work. So that's the first reason. The second one is in verse three.

Four, what the law could not do, his own son condemned sin in the flesh. So the second reason it works is because when Jesus died, he destroyed the condemnation that comes to us by not being perfect. So the fact that we're not perfect is not the guiding, all most important thing.

The most important thing is that Jesus died for us in our place and took the sin away. That's what becomes important. So the whole focus shifts away from keeping the law to being thankful to Jesus for what he did.

And that'll make you a better servant. I mean, a servant who serves out of love is a way better servant that serves because he's gotta do it. He's gonna get beaten. That picture's the law, right? All right, you do it or you get beaten.

And when you do good, sometimes I'll throw you a bone, right? You're not a happy camper there as you are if the person you serve is your dad and you're his son and he says, I love you, so go serve me, right?

And I've given you everything I have, so go serve me. I've given you even my son, he died in your place, so go serve me. And he's shown you how to walk, so walk with him and go serve me. You'll be a lot happier, better servant, God knows it, and that's why we have a new testament and we're no longer under the law.

Liberty in Christ Versus Legalism

To back that up, I'd like to go out and do some scripture and let some scripture shed light on this. Look at Galatians 5, verse one for a moment. Go ahead and turn there. Guess what the Lord has shown me we need to do.

I think, of course, we'll let you vote, but, because I think you'll agree, though. I went to a, ooh, I don't know how we're gonna do it in here, though, we'll figure out a way, but I went to, visited a little church out in California, you know, week before last, and they had, I think it was kinda right over here, they had four large screen TVs next to each other and they had a software that would turn that into one huge TV, so when they were singing, they could put the words up there.

I wanna get, we don't need four in this little place, but Colin tells me they now make a huge, like a huge one, where you don't need to put four together. All right, get any size you want. I wanna put one somewhere, maybe over there, which is, I guess we'll have to put it over here, because that's the baptistry.

I don't know how we do it in here without covering up a window. Oh, I know what we do. We get rid of this, and we put it right there, and then we put a little smaller pulpit thing over here, because I wanna be able to put scripture up there, like I do when I do tradeway stuff.

You know how it's always just got the scripture, and I'm just standing over there explaining it. I like that better than this system, so pray about that. I'd like our church to invest in something like that.

I think it'd be great. Plus, we could put the words to the music up there. We could put pretty pictures, do a little rah-rah and build a big crowd. It'd be awesome. Marianne's going, I don't know about that.

Okay, so, but anyway, if you can look at this, look at Galatians 5 .1 on your phone or in your old-fashioned Bible or something. Look what it says. Now, this is, you see, I'm following up on verse three, and verse two and verse three, where it says what the law couldn't do, God sending his own son in a human body who died for us in our place condemned sin.

So that now, now we find ourselves in a situation where we're still not perfect, but we're not always holding ourselves up against the law. In reality, what we're doing is always looking in the eyes of Christ with love coming back at us and love going to him and walking that walk.

It's completely different. And so does scripture indicate that perhaps that is correct, that chapter eight, verse one of Romans, that is what it means, that when John Calvin wrote what he wrote about, Romans chapter eight, verse one, and he said, basically, all this is talking about is the death of Christ on the cross.

That's basically what he said. And is that true? Well, look at Galatians 5 .1. With regard to whether the law could have saved us or not, stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

How did he make us free? Because when he died, he condemned sin. He killed it. He killed Satan. He destroyed Satan. I don't mean he doesn't exist, but he destroyed his power over God's people, his ultimate power, let's put it that way.

He still has power when we allow it, right? But we don't have to allow it. So Jesus did this for sure. He destroyed Satan's sovereignty over us, which he had. There's scripture that says, before we were saved, that Satan moved us about at his will, all right?

So Jesus destroyed that sovereignty of Satan over us, and then he destroyed death, and he destroyed the very condemnation that the law brought us. And so look at that. God calls that standing fast in liberty.

God set us free from all that. He set us free from Satan, set us free from the flesh, from the world system, from the law itself, and he gives us this liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

That means don't go back to the law. Don't let any preacher or Jewish believer, often they'll do it, bring you in here and say, well, you really need to be worshiping on Saturday. Why? Well, because the law says that's the Sabbath.

Well, but I'm not under the law. Well, yeah, really, Jesus died, yeah, but he just died so we'd be better at keeping the law. Now, that's the angle they'll take. The whole rest of your lives, you'll hear that.

People will bring that to you. It sounds like a logical, good argument. And if you're weak-minded and weak in the word, you'll follow him and then you'll be a slave again. You'll go right back and be entangled in the yoke of bondage again, where now it's all about living better than the next person and then you'll end up preaching like I did at that sermon so many years ago where I'm a legalist.

I'm better, I know this stuff about blah, blah, blah better than you do. Yeah, well, not yet, not really, right? So you don't wanna go back to that. Verse two, behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing.

Who was his, always wanna ask when you study the Bible, ask who's being spoken to. Who was his audience here at the Church of Galatia? Well, it was predominantly Gentiles, but he always preached to the Jew first and then Gentiles.

So there were some saved Jews in the audience and maybe some Jews just out of curiosity who aren't saved yet in the audience and some lost Gentiles. So you had a mix of every kind of human there is. You had lost sheep, saved sheep, and lost goats in the room.

And he's preaching this sermon or writing this letter to this church filled with these kinds of people. And he says, if you be circumcised, Christ profits you nothing. Now, I believe he's telling the Galatian people to, when they get up and preach, preach like me, say this, say this stuff.

Well, we now know this was inspired scripture, so yeah, they're supposed to be saying this stuff. And what they're supposed to be saying is that if you think, if you're gonna tell me, okay, I believe in Jesus, but you also need to circumcise the male children on the eighth day because Moses said to do that.

If you're gonna be a good Christian, you need to do that. He said, well, if you're gonna teach that and you're gonna teach that you have to add that to his death, you have to add that, any one thing to his blood, then his blood profits you nothing, which means you're going to hell because you're not gonna keep the law perfect.

That's what it means, you're going to hell if you add something to the blood of Jesus. That's why we love to remind people around the country, it's the blood of Jesus plus nothing, and I didn't make that up, the reformers did.

You know, they made that up and it was beautiful. They used to say it everywhere they went. It's the blood of Jesus plus nothing because the Pope didn't agree with that, did he? But Jesus did. Behold, I, Paul, say unto you that if you think you've gotta be circumcised to be saved, then Christ profits you nothing, for I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law.

In other words, if he got circumcised to be saved, to please God, now he's gotta keep all the rest of the law too. Imperfection or he's not gonna make it. Christ is become of no effect to you if you believe that.

Whosoever of you are justified by the law, you're actually the ones that are fallen from grace. You can't be saved. Isn't that something? So, obviously, Romans chapter eight, verse one does not mean that the second phrase is a condition.

In other words, those who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, those are the ones who will be saved and not be condemned. That's not what it means because that wouldn't agree with this. This says, no, it's the other way around.

This says, in Galatians 5, one through four, it says, no, it's the in Christ part that's important. Right, the in Christ part is what saves you, not the second part. In fact, the second part has been done away with if you think you get there by keeping rules, right?

Now, look at verse five. For we, through the spirit, wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. In other words, it's not by works. We wait for the hope. What is the hope? The hope is we get saved, we'll be in heaven together.

That hope, we wait for that hope by faith that God has told us we are saved and therefore we just believe him. We don't have proof of it. We kind of have a little bit though because if you know that you're indwelt by the spirit, there's the earnest of your salvation.

So you have the down payments there, right? The down payment's already there but we have this hope that we will be saved because what Jesus did for us and it's by the righteousness of faith. In other words, we believe that what God tells us is true.