Book of Romans, 8:2 - The Truth of Our Righteous Walk, Pt. 1 (12/08/2019)

The Preservation of Romans 8:1 and the Reliability of the Text

Thank you, Ron. Thank you, Glenda. That was marvelous this morning. I thoroughly was blessed. Good to see each of you today. I guess, I suppose, we'll keep Children's Church here since Parker's the only one.

You can stay, Parker, unless you want to go preach to him, Ben. I may have to. You may have to. Thank you. I want to welcome Robert and Rebecca Vickers for being with all the way from Garland to visit with us today.

And the Elmors are almost here. They're friends of the Elmors. And they'll be here any minute, probably walk in right when the pizza gets here. That's usually when they get here. So good to have each of you today.

Turn with me, if you would, to Romans chapter 8 this morning. And we spent, I think, five, six weeks on verse 1. And now we spent a Sunday on verse 2 last time. So we'll continue with verse 2. Actually, we'll go a little beyond verse 2 today.

So first thing I want you to notice this morning is that the last phrase in verse 1 is identical to the last phrase in verse 4. And some people have, higher critics, the people who think they can critique the Bible and show where there are errors in it, call this an interpolation.

And that it was an error of the copyists. Well, if you ever read about the copyists and how brilliant the people who copied the Bible throughout 2 ,000 years of history, and even before that in the Old Testament time from the times of Moses until Christ came, they could stick a pen through the book and name the words they hit.

Those kinds of people were not inclined to make errors, especially not an entire phrase this long that's identical to one just four lines up. And they wouldn't see that. And what their practice was, if they made a mistake, after they've already copied 1 ,000 pages, if they made a mistake, they would burn the entire document and start over.

So I don't think they made a mistake here. It's an insane idea. And people who try to fix the Bible are bound to be embarrassed someday when they step into heaven and they see that it is exactly what God said it was.

It is God-breathed and it's God-inspired right down to the last generation and protected and preserved until the last generation. So we have the word of God. So that's not it. This is a divine Holy Spirit-led reason why this phrase is the same in verse one and verse four.

So let's pray and we'll talk about it some more. Lord, thank you so much for giving us this time of the week to study together. And Lord, may we hear your word as you speak to our hearts. May your Holy Spirit teach us your word.

And Father, may you use it in our hearts and lives to be useful in this world and our generation among others. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. All right, so let's just start out here looking at verse four, Romans 8, verse four.

That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. The problem of this, listen, this chapter is not simple. It's difficult, especially verses one through 12.

You have got to study and study and study to understand what is being said here because it doesn't fit anything that the natural man would tend to believe. Doesn't fit anything that your family and friends and even preachers would have tended to have told you about how salvation works.

It doesn't fit any of that. It's totally beyond this world. It is a heavenly chapter. The whole Bible is that way. But this came from a place that's not a place where there is no time into space and time and it was given to us by our Lord and we need the Holy Spirit's help to even understand it.

But you also have the help of all the other scripture because the scripture sheds light upon scripture. So it's not difficult if we study. It's only difficult if we don't study. So this takes quite a bit to understand.

But now verse one, here is the problem. There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. And Harry Ironside and other critics of the Bible wanted to put a period there and say that the next phrase isn't there really in the originals.

Who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. But the problem with that is it was quoted by early church fathers in the second and third century and where'd they get it from if it wasn't there? And then later Bibles omitted it.

So you see they got caught. You can't mess with it. God preserved it. All right, so it's there. And here's the problem with it. People tend to look at that last phrase and they want that to be the cause of your salvation.

In other words, you've gotta walk not after the flesh but after the spirit if you want to have no condemnation. So that's works salvation. That presents a problem for those of us who know that the vast majority of the scripture very clearly teaches that we're not saved by works.

And so it presents seemingly a problem. But if you study the whole chapter, you'll see it's not saying that. In fact, even the verse isn't saying it. The truth is the second part of verse one is the effect of the salvation, not the cause of it.

And as Spurgeon so eloquently said, an effect can never be the cause of the cause. So the second half of the verse is the result of our salvation. It's the effect of it, it's not the cause. The cause of the salvation, if you want to find it in verse one, is being in Christ.

And how does that happen? Only by spirit baptism. The Holy Spirit has to call you. That's called the effectual calling. He has to visit you. And he has to open your eyes which were blind and your ears which were deaf, open them.

And he has to speak to you clearly, the gospel, or you'll never hear it. And that's called the calling. And that has to happen while we were yet in our sins, hath he quickened us. He made us come alive from the dead.

The Holy Spirit did it. It is purely a work of the spirit. Man plays no part in it other than to receive it as an effect. The cause is the Holy Spirit saves us. The effect is we walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

It's not the other way around. Now can we prove, you see some very brilliant people such as John Calvin and, man I just, Pink, Arthur Pink and others have pointed this out that the second half of the phrase is the effect, right?

But do they just do that because they wanna believe that way or does the Bible bear it out? Well, that's what we're looking at now. But as you go through verses two through 12, the Bible just sits here and further explains it, further explains, even uses the mathematics of the Bible, of the grammar in the Bible.

If you understand logic and math, it's in the passage and we'll see that. We saw a little bit of it last Sunday. I'm gonna do it one more time because it's not easy, especially without a whiteboard. I should have probably brought the whiteboard but I don't wanna write that much.

It's too much. So I'm gonna get you to write it in your mind, picture this. So think about this now. We've got verse one, it says, there is therefore now no condemnation of them which are in Christ. Let's let that be the first part of the verse.

We'll call that A. Who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, let's call that B, all right? Now you've got verse four, drop down to verse four. We'll cover the other verses in a minute but drop down to verse four.

So that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Well, the last phrase is still B if we're gonna do math here. It's the same phrase, so that's B.

The first part where it says that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, let's let that be C. That's the third idea. So we have three main ideas in these two verses. Now, I was struggling for this last time, Bill.

We both missed it. It's not the commutative law. It's called the law of symmetry. The law of symmetry is where if you take an equation, let's say there's an equal sign between this and this. This is A, this is B, and it's equal.

You got an equal sign, all right? The law of symmetry in math means you can flip them this way and they're still equal, all right? The difference, you got A here and B. Turn them this way, you got A here and B.

So if A is equal B, B is equal A. You can flip them. Does that make sense? So what I wanna do is I want you to picture this. Look at verse four, and I want you to use the law of symmetry. By the way, these are not only mathematical laws, they're logical laws.

They're used in logic as well. Take verse four and just flip it because it's okay to do that mathematically. The two sides are equal. One is equal to the other, so you can flip them. So let's just take verse four and let's switch it around to where it reads this way.

You put the second phrase first. So we're gonna say those people who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit are the same people, as the first part of verse four, as they that the righteousness of the law are being fulfilled in them.

So I'm just gonna let that, and when we do it that way, it matches the same format as verse one. So now A and B, and then verse four you got B and then C. Now what happens when you get that in that arrangement is you now can bring in the transitive law of math and logic, which says this.

If A equals B and B equals C, then A equals C. Are you with me? It's easier on a blackboard, okay? If A is B and B is C, then A is C. That's the law of math and of logic. So once I have these verses configured this way, it makes it easy to see because what happens is you end up with the conclusion that A is equal to C.

Now what does that tell us? Well, if you take them and you read them this way, verse one, leave it like it is. There's therefore now no condemnation of them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit.

And you take verse four and you use the symmetrical law and you flip it, now it reads like this. Those who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit are the same people as those in which the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in.

So those who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit is the same group of people as those in which the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in. That's what that verse says if you just use the law of symmetry.

Now you can take the transitive law, A equals B, B equals C, and you can say therefore being in Christ is equal to those who the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in. Now that's just math, that's logic, and the math of it proves that the idea of the righteousness of the law being fulfilled in a person is not the cause of the salvation, it's the effect of it.

Being in Christ is the cause, and the effect is that you are then having the righteousness of the law fulfilled in you by God. It's not that you can do it, it's that God does it in you and considers it to be done, considers it to be a fact.

The salvation comes from being in Christ, not from living right, but living right comes from being in Christ and being saved. Because when you're saved, the Holy Spirit quickens you, which means he brings you to life, but he also places himself within you and he's sealed within you, and God now lives in your body.

You can't be the same, even if you tried to be the same. You have to change, and you do begin to change, but the change is not the cause, it's the effect, and the effect can never be the cause of the cause.

And so it totally proves mathematically that verse one, the second phrase is in there on purpose. It's trying to tell us clearly that if we had a large congregation where you had 1 ,000 or 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 people claiming to be Christians in the room and I were to preach verse one to the saved sheep, what their ear would hear is there is now no condemnation for me because I'm in Christ.

But to those who profess to be Christians who weren't really saved in that congregation, I preach the same verse, what they're going to hear is who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, and they're going to think, well, man, I walk after the flesh.

I know what I did last night, and so maybe I am still condemned. That's what they're going to think, and that's what the Holy Spirit wants them to think. But he doesn't want the believer to think that.

The Holy Spirit doesn't want the born-again believer to think, oh, well, I sinned last week, so I must not be saved, because the verse says there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ. So what we find is the second part of the phrase is not talking about individual acts of sin.

It's talking about a prevalent walk, a prevalent lifestyle, moving away from sin towards being more like Christ. That's who the in Christ are, and that's how they live. Otherwise, they're total hypocrites, and that's what the verse one and verse four are saying.

So I like the math of it, though. Therefore, we can put it this way. Those who are in Christ are the same people as those who have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in them. Being in Christ is therefore the cause, and having the righteousness of the law fulfilled in that person is the effect.

Then those who are in Christ are equal to those who have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in them. In fact, as we look through verses two and following, now the scripture will prove it. We just proved it mathematically and logically, but now the scripture will do it.

So let's continue. What's interesting, after you read verse one, verse eight, chapter eight, verse one, you're gonna find at least four places in the following verses that begin with the word for, and the word for in English means because.

So these are gonna be four different ways in which God tells us the because of verse one. Why is verse one true? Why is it true that if you're in Christ, you walk not after the flesh but after the spirit, and how can that be true when we know we're not perfect yet, are we?

We sin still sometimes, don't we? So how can it even be true? Well, because, because, because, and because. It's gonna tell us that. It's true because of this, it's true because of number two, it's true because of number three, it's true because of number four.

My friend Myron Golden gets so upset when he goes and hears preachers preach nowadays because he says, you know, they think you gotta have a bunch of poems, and you gotta have a bunch of stories, and you put all this stuff, and one little snippet of scripture in there, he said, he said, don't they realize the Bible has the sermon in it?

The Bible's got the points and the sub-points right there in the Bible. Well, this one's got them all here. You got four becauses, although it uses the word for, it just simply means because. So let's look at it.

Why is it true that those who are in Christ are those who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit? Why is it true that those who are in Christ are the same people that the righteousness of God is being fulfilled in them as they walk?

Why is this true? Number two, verse two, because for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. That's the first reason why it's true. Now, let's think about this a minute.

I doubt that we'll get to all four of our reasons this morning, but we'll get to at least one or two of them. Let's look at this a minute. Because the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, so here we're talking about being in Christ, right?

What does it mean again? The Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ spiritually. That's called spirit baptism. It means he connects us to Jesus Christ and to the Father and to each other. It is a spiritual connection that takes his place, takes his, that's good preaching, that takes place at the moment you are born again.

You are immersed into the body of Christ. Attached to, if you wanna say. Immersed is the best English word. You're just immersed with God. You have God around you. You have God in you. You're connected, all right?

So that connection is the first because. The law of the life in Christ. Now we are in Christ. Listen, that is in the passive in Greek. That means you didn't do this to yourself. Someone greater and bigger than you did this to you.

He placed you into Christ. It is an act of God. The Holy Spirit baptized you into Christ. He spiritually connected you to Christ because of that law of being placed into Christ, it has made you free. Now look at this.

Free from what? Two things. Free from the law of sin and free from the law of death. Now think about that a minute. We're talking about how can it be that we walk not in the flesh but in the spirit just because we're saved?

Well, the first reason is because since we're in Christ, Jesus Christ, the law of the spiritual walk, the spiritual life where we're connected and walking with him, holding his hand can cause us to walk on water.

We can't do that by ourselves. But since we're never by ourselves, we can now do it. Now if you wanna think living a few hours without sinning is a miracle, I think it is. In this body of flesh that we live in, it is a miracle.

It's tantamount to walking on water. It's walking in a higher place on a higher level. But we can do it because we're in Christ. That's the first reason. Really, there's 100 ways we could say it, but that's what it's saying.

So the law of life in Christ has made us free from the law of sin and from the law of death. In other words, being in Christ has set me free from the action that sin has on me. It has set me free from the action of the sin nature upon me and free from the action of death upon me.

Now let me ask you something. Are you gonna die physically if the rapture doesn't happen in the next 100 years? We are. So it doesn't mean we're set free from physical death, does it? But what does it mean?

Jesus said, whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. So what does it mean? Spiritual death. All right, so if this is telling us that we have been set free from the law of sin and death, but it doesn't mean physical death, it means spiritual, then it doesn't mean physical sin.

Like, we're not totally set free from sinning, are we? But we are set free from the sin nature. And what I mean by that is we have a simple choice we can make. We can reach up and grab Jesus' hand and walk that way, in which case we are totally and realistically, in reality, set free from the force of sin and the power of sin on our life, even set free from the action of sin in our life while we're holding his hand.

But, so that's in the spiritual realm, but it's real in the physical world as long as we don't let go of the hand. Does that make sense? Just like as long as I'm holding his hand, I can look around in the heavenlies because I'm seated with Christ right now in heaven while I'm walking here.

But if I let go of the hand, I'm in this earthly body that could die at any minute. Right? So both are going on at the same time and both are real. So if we can reach out and grab the reality of the spiritual walk, it will change the physical life.

Just like when you die, it's not gonna be anything more than a quick blink and you will be in heaven with the Lord. And Paul said, to die is gain because I will be instantly with the Lord. I'll be in a new body, temporary body until this one's raised someday out in the future.

But I will really be there just as real as here. So this is real, but there's a spiritual plane and there's a physical plane and they're both real and they're both happening at the same time. So we have been made free from the law of sin and death.

Now, what does it mean? What's another way to put this? We're free from the conundrum of sin. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, the problem is we have a sin nature and that's our old man. But now we are a new man or woman.

We're not that old person anymore. We've been regenerated. We have God's genes. We don't have our mother and father genes, the real us. The real me is genetically inclined to the father, which means I don't sin.

But my old man is still with me and when I go into him, I can sin. Is that not true? So that's a conundrum, wouldn't you say? I mean, it's the biggest puzzle. Other people don't even figure us out. The lost world, they can't figure out a Christian because we're schizophrenics.

We'll glorify God, the one minute, the next minute we'll slip into a sin and they'll see it and say, oh, none of this is real. But they don't understand, it is real. It's just how it is and God made it this way on purpose.

Not by mistake, he didn't have to fix it. It's always been ordained that it would be this way, that he would put this treasure, the new man, in earthen vessels, which means prone to error. Why? So that God might be glorified in all.

That's the reason, God told us the reason. So there it is, it's according to the wisdom of God. Man can't think this way. It's so much higher than the thinking of man. Man cannot figure this out and unless you really go through chapter eight, you won't figure it out.

But if you ever figure it out and grab hold of it, you know more than 99 .99 of all humans on the face of this earth for the last 6 ,000 years. Isn't that something? You're smart. You're smart if you figure this out, but you didn't get it on your own.

You got it from the Holy Ghost and from the written word, from the water and the spirit. So the conundrum, we have been freed from the conundrum of sin, which is the sin nature that we still carry around with us while we're yet a new man or woman.

That's a conundrum. We're set free from that. Why are we free from it? Because at any moment we can choose not to go after the flesh. We can choose to hold the hand of the Lord and walk in the spirit.

First John says you can't sin when you do that. So you're free from it when you wanna be free. That means you're really free. Think about it. If you're a captive, do you have a choice to get loose? You don't.

If you're a slave, do you have a choice to get loose anytime you want to? No. Do you have a choice not to sin right now? You do, so you're free. You're free. So that's the first thing. You're free from the conundrum of sin.

Secondly, you're free from the condemnation of sin. You see what it says? It says because the reason that you have no condemnation is because the law of the spiritual life, the spirit of life in Christ, that is what has set me free from the law of sin and death.

Do you see that? It's not that I'm a better at keeping rules. That doesn't set me free from anything, praise God. That wouldn't be the gospel. That'd be horrible news if that's what saved us. But the good news is it's the in Christ that saves us.

It's the in Christ is the reason there's no condemnation. So we're set free from the condemnation. Why? Because Jesus Christ, and this is gonna come later. I hate to get ahead of myself. It's gonna come in the scripture.

But Jesus Christ died for us. He died in our place as our substitute, as our ransom. He died as our substitute, satisfying the law of God. He died as our ransom, satisfying the payment that had to be paid for the sin.

So we're freed from the conundrum of sin. We're free from the condemnation of sin. And we're free from the chastisement of sin. We have no punishment, no punishment for sin. The wrath of God does not come upon his children because it came upon Jesus in our place.

Or you might put the same idea this way. We are set free from the presence of sin, from the power of sin, and from the punishment of sin. It doesn't get better than that, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, there's nothing no better Christmas story than that.

So the first thing it says it sets us free from is the law of sin. Now, what is that exactly? Well, in a minute, it's gonna say we're set free from the law of death. But what is the law of sin that we've been set free from?

Well, man by nature is a sinner. Romans 3 .23 says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now remember, the scripture just told us we've been set free from the law of sin. What is the law of sin?

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We've been set free from that law. Man due to his nature sins. Now, in Romans 3 .23, I liken that to being a sinner, a habitual lifestyle of sin. We've been set free from that.

But also it means someone who sins from time to time. James, you don't need to look this up because we're gonna stay in Romans, but I'll read it for you. James 1 .14 and 15 says this. Now, this is kind of talks about the law of sin, okay?

And how it operates, okay? Think about this. But every man is tempted. I think it probably means you, man, like women are probably tempted. I don't know, I've never been one, but I figure women are tempted too.

I can speak, men are tempted, okay? But I think women are. Any amens out there? Women are tempted, okay. But every man, later you're saying, no, Brother David, stick with scripture. It says man, right?

No, I'm messing with you, okay. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away. All right, I can fix this. Let's put this in the new grammar like they're teaching at the University of Texas in Austin right now.

So it's no longer permissible for me to say, Joe got an eight on a par four hole. And then I'll say, he got an eight. I can't say that because that's sexist. I can't use the word he. I now have to say, speaking of Joe, I have to say, they got an eight on a par four hole, meaning just Joe, which is bad grammar, because that's plural.

Do you realize they're causing the kids to have to write that way now? And I asked my son, Paul, well, doesn't that mean they got to put a big red X because it's plural word in a singular case? Nope, if they do that, the professor will get in trouble.

So we can fix this. So let's read this. This is how it should be, obviously. Modern man is so smart. But every person is tempted when they is drawn away. There you go. That's how we should read it. It's not good grammar, but it's better.

It's not sexist. But every person is tempted when they is drawn away of their own lust and enticed. Now, I'm being funny to keep you awake, but think about what it's saying. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own fleshly lust and enticed by whatever the thing is, but it's the fleshly lust that causes us to be enticed.

And this is the, listen, this is the law of sin. This is how it operates. But does it operate that way in your new man? It has no operation at all in your new man. It's not there. You see what I'm talking about?

It has been crucified. It's dead. Think about that. It's not even there. The old man hasn't changed one whit. It's no better than it was the day you got saved. The old man is just as bad as it was the day you got saved.

The day before you got saved. It's just as bad. And this same law of sin can take place when we walk in the flesh as it could before salvation if we walk in the flesh, because we are tempted when we're drawn away by the lust of the flesh and we're enticed by anything the world or the devil wants to put in front of us.

It's that simple for him. It's that simple for the world. It's that difficult for our flesh. That's never changed. It says, then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin. So the lust itself isn't the sin, but it brings forth the sin like a birth.

It births the sin. The sin comes from the lust. You know what that's telling us? You can't possibly sin without sinning, without lusting in the mind first. It has to happen between your ears before anything happens.

Isn't that how it works? So it's describing the law of sin here. So the last part of verse 15 speaks of the result of the law of sin, which leads to the law of death. So now look at James. You're not looking, are you?

I told you not to. But the last half of verse 15 goes on this way. James 1 15 says, then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin. And when sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. So now the law of sin brings the law of death.

They go hand in hand, but they're two different things. We, if we're in Christ, we have been set free from both. Isn't that wonderful? We have already, past tense, it's positional, it's a fact, we have been set free from both.

All right, so now we talked about the law of sin. What is it? It's the fact that the old sin nature in our flesh, in our old man is prone to be enticed or to enjoy the enticement that the world and the devil can put in front of us, and we lust and then that leads to sin.

That's there in the old man. It is not there in the new man. So that's the law of sin. We've been set free from it, the scripture says though. But now what about the law of death? Well, the second part of James 1 15 says, when sin, it is finished, it brings forth death.

This is an old, old law. This goes all the way back to Genesis chapter two, verse 17, the first book of the Bible, practically the first few verses of the Bible. It says, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

And listen to this. Here's the first time this law is ever mentioned, almost probably eight to 10 ,000 years ago. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. That's the law of death, all right?

Now, it carries forward through time as we go chronologically through the Bible. We move all the way out to Ezekiel, the time of Ezekiel chapter 18 in verse four. And it says, behold, God says, all souls are mine.

That means the lost and the saved. That means the goats and the sheep. This is God the Father speaking. Jesus doesn't claim the goats, by the way. He said, I didn't put them here, Satan put them here.

But the Father says everything's mine because he created everything, didn't he? He created all things. And he says, behold, all souls are mine. As the soul of the Father, so also the soul of the Son is mine.