Romans 7 vs. Romans 8 — Leonard Ravenhill

The only thing to think particularly about is, I don't know why the speech is in this chapter, it's got quite a level, as a matter of fact, but I don't think there's anything much further beyond what is said in this kind of text, where Sister Solon was talking about a few minutes ago, it cuts you down to size, kind of thing.

More than all these things, there were more than concrete through him that loved her. The text is a lot easier that he said, just that there were more than concrete. He talked of his own experience, that situation with him, and said, of course, poor Heather meant this.

You know, like you never had another in-law like mine, that's another problem. He didn't mean that, he just said more than concrete in general, as he says in all these things. And it's interesting in itself, if you just read the chapter, at least seven times in the chapter he mentions things.

You remember in Rodney Wilkinson's book, he and the greatest poem of love that was ever written. And I was thinking of the thing, Spirit of the Living God, a little Irish lady, the one of our fellowships, Emily Wilson Carmichael, and I've got my friend to back some of these books.

Emily Wilson Carmichael, she wrote another verse to that love letter, and it's well worth knowing, for the same thing as Spirit of the Living God, she wrote, Love of God, eternal love, pour thyself through me.

Nothing less than tell you, love, do I ask of thee. Fill me, flood me, overflow me. Love of God, eternal love, pour thyself through me. But then in that same poem, Paul says about this love, this divine love, and it is this kind of contentious love, he says it dared us all things, it believed us all things, it hurt us all things, it endured us all things.

It was about to tell you, I think that Fred, I think it was about to tell you that Fred, that immediately Adam broke his relationship with God from that moment he got interested in things. And he's been interested in things ever since.

And I think that as we go on in our Christian life, very often what God has to do is cut us off from things. He cut us off from this thing and that thing. When you get saved, you give up all the bad things.

You may disagree here, but when you really get through with the Spirit, you give up the good things. It's the good things that are the enemy of the bad things. The letter of God says that we have fellowship with, who did it say, fellowship with who?

No, no, no, that's what we thought. As he said, we have fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ, and with one another. Very often we make fellowship with each other, a substitute for fellowship with him.

So the good is the enemy of the bad. This meeting tonight, as good as it may be, and I hope God will contribute something to our faith and soul life, spirit life really, but it is no substitute for communion with him.

Our fellowship is with the Father. I need one another. I need Jesus Christ, his Son. But I can make fellowship with Sister Mary over the phone in the morning. I get the kids off, and it wouldn't be great when I get back to school, and I can yawn over the phone and hold them at my heart, and I can talk to Sister Sue for 20 minutes.

Oh, I enjoy that every morning. I sip coffee and talk to her. Well, you couldn't get fellowship much better, could you, than sitting in a lady's bed, drinking coffee and having fellowship? But it's a process, again, to fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

But again, going back to that, we get involved in things, so many things, so many things. Paul says again, what things are going to be accounted for at last, as I may gain Christ. And there's nobody who can tell you.

Nobody has ever lived a spiritual life after they've been saved. You know, I say sometimes, strategically, lots of people are looking for a book on six easy lessons on how to become a saint. Well, there isn't one, but if you find one, please send it to me, and I'll make you one promise I won't read it, because it will be full of nonsense.

But I'm not six easy ways to become a saint. Sometime, we'll be coming next week, if you want this, but then I'll be away for about a month or five weeks. Then when we come back, as the Lord wills, I'd like to make a series of studies that expand this, because revelation is progressive.

All revelation is progressive. I don't care who you've heard, and I don't care how many times you've swung on the chandelier to lay a slap on your tummy, they're mentioning us. The fact is this, that nobody under heaven, not the apostles or anybody else, has ever explored all the possibilities of these days.

They're still an unfolding. God has something for us in our day that he didn't have for people's sake. I was saying, rest of his day, or some other day, because they were not living in the atmosphere that we're living in now.

I don't think there's a devil who's ever had such a good time as he's having right now, both outside of the church and inside of the church, as far as that goes. And there's no such thing, there's nobody this side of eternity has yet arrived.

And I know there's some little excuse groups that won't let you pray with them, because you're not mature enough, you see. Five years from now, I'll try again. But right now, you're just not mature enough.

You don't know why there's some chance of spare milk when there's almost zero, but nobody on earth has yet arrived. I've been a Christian for, I can't tell you how many years, but more than half a century, anyhow.

I've been preaching more than 50 years, if that helps you, but I should preach better than I do. But the fact is that with all I know, I know very little. Revelation is progressive. God is continually developing us, preaching, until we only go to a certain height.

The blessing, I don't know, shall we say, is that in 15 years, as tall as you did the first 15, you'd have to lift a roof around here. But they go other ways. They go mentally, they go emotionally, they go spiritually, we hope.

I look at you in the errors of our makeup. We can't. God is so vast. Next week I'd like to talk and leave you with it, because it can steer it over for a few. I want to talk about worship, which I don't think, frankly I don't think one person in a hundred Christians, maybe even thirty-four Christians, know much about worship.

But that again is another area. Here is the challenge to our hearts tonight. Romans 8 and verse 37. And all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loveth us. You're looking, but I'm not saying you're cheating.

But if you weren't looking, how does Romans 8 begin? Right. All right. And it begins, no, therefore. That is, therefore, now no condemnation. How does it end? Crucial separators from the level job. So the chapter begins with no condemnation, and it ends with no separation.

But it doesn't say there's no tribulation. In fact, the whole thing between the two is packed with tribulation, distress, famine, slavery, nakedness, fraud. You can't paint a picture. I used to paint when I was younger.

I paint now with a brush about so wide, but I used to paint with a little brush. And I learned one thing at the beginning. You can't paint a good picture without shadow, you see. And I was always trying to have what Dr. Stallman called a collective ministry, because somebody wrote to us the other day and said, would you come up to our group?

And it's four or five hundred miles away from here. And we got tired of just, again, not that it's wrong in itself, but when you do it most of the meeting and all the meetings, you try and get blessed.

That's foolish. You could do the same thing on Soul Train. The thing is, but they got to the place now where things were beginning to calm down. They came out of a dead church into a lively church with excitement and fervor and you clap your hands and you sing and you lose your job.

But they say, you know, there's something missing. It's all up in the air. It's a balloon. It doesn't get down. It's got nothing solid. And again, I mean, he's enjoying it. I don't know if it was a great time, but you know, tomorrow when I go home again, I go, I feel bad tempered.

No, no, that's not the right way. Another good man, if you want to read after him, Dr. James Stewart of Edinburgh, says he wouldn't believe a man is really born again if he has a bad temper. Now, see, that always would have worked.

On the basis of 1 Corinthians 5, 17, that if any man is in Christ, he is a new creation. He's not an old creation. In fact, he is a new creation. And when God makes all things new, he makes it new. Therefore, he argues, he said, if a man still has a bad temper, he's missed somewhere on the air of his regeneration.

All right. So, the chapter begins with no condemnation. That is, no condemnation. And again, with no separation. But it doesn't say that there's no stipulation. In fact, there's an awful amount of it listed here in this chapter again.

Now, what's his first reaction to a text like that? In all these things, we are more than conquerors to him that lends us. You know, there's no sharper division, not between night and day, or hardly between heaven and hell than there is between Romans 7 and Romans 8.

Now, when you go home, or sometimes, read right through Romans 7, take a pencil, and every time you come to that, you know, that little awkward thing, I, I, I, I, you just put a line under it. You know, I want to do this, I can't do it, I don't want to do that, I do it, it's not I, it seems irrelevant.

Take a pencil and go down and mark every one with a red pencil, I, I, I. And then take a green pencil and mark how many times the Holy Spirit is mentioned in Romans 7. You won't have anything to do because he's not mentioned at all.

Then you cross over the bridge out of Romans 7 into Romans 8, and take a pencil in Romans 8 and mark how many times the I is there, and it's only there twice, in verse 18 and verse 38. It says in verse 18, for I reckon, you see, in verse 38, I am persuaded.

Now, it can't put us there, it is personal. But Romans 7 is 31 times the I, I, I, I, I, and no Holy Spirit. Romans 8 is 19 times the Holy Spirit and no I, except on the two red daisies where there can't be anything else.

So plainly, Romans 7 is a sin-centered or a self-centered chapter, and Romans 8 is a Christ-centered chapter. Or, if you want it in college language, shall we say Romans 7 is ego-centered and Romans 8 is Christian or Christ-centered.

Now, Romans 7 to me is a graveyard. Or, if you like, Romans 7 is a funeral march and Romans 8 is a wedding march. Here is a man bursting out with ecstasy. Hallelujah, there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

Romans 8, verse 37 says what? I think when he says Romans 8, verse 37, I can do all things through Christ extensively. I put it this way as I was praying the other day, this is an exclamation and jubilation for liberation.

You see? We are more than conquerors, he said. Now, what can you do? I mean, if you are dealing in that text grammatically, what can you do? Therefore, we are more than conquerors through him that loveth.

There are only three possible approaches to a text like that. Number one, it's written by a guy I don't know what he's talking about. Another way I put it in military language, here is a man in uniform.

I remember, I've given my age away, but I can remember before World War, never mind World War II, my cousin came to our home. He joined one of the crack regiments in England. He was about 6 '2", had a red jacket on and blue trousers and he was a straight as a ramrod.

Marched along the street. Boy, I thought he was the king of the world. Oh, I told her she's not my cousin, isn't my cousin. That's my cousin. He was one of the crack regiments, 30 men from England. He let you know that he was in the crack regiment and oh, it was difficult to get in.

I happened to see him just once after he came home after World War I. He was a wreck. Boy, he was a straight as 6 '2", when he went out. When he came back, he was beaten up. He was sliding his feet, they'd done massive surgery on him after Schroedner had torn his bum up.

There was a great deal of difference about the young guy that said, boy, we're going out to fight and conquer and do this, and the man that came on was battle scarred. Now, the man that said we're more than conqueror, threw him that loved us into the youngster with his buttons all polished and said, we're going to do the job.

He's a man who's straight, he's torn up, he's back in bed, he limps, he's a mess. You say, well, how do you know? You're guessing. No, I'm not. After all, if he tied you to a whipping post and lashed you 195 times, and that's what he said, he said five times I was beaten with rugs, 40 strikes saved one.

So you make 540 makes 200 on my computer. Five less, because there were only 39, is 195 lashes. He was in the deep, a night and a day, that's 36 hours. He was in readiness, in fasting, in painfulness, in tribulation, in distress.

He just goes through the whole range of trial and temptation. And what's more, he lifts them again in this chapter. Because he says in verse 38, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other scripture.

Now, you can't get much further than that. Even when he's lifted all that in, he says, neither things present, nor things to come. In other words, he puts his shoulders back, and if you pardon the rather, what might sound a vulgar phrase, he spits in the face of the devil and says, look, there's nothing that you can invent that can separate me from the love of God.

You've tried about everything, it doesn't work. And I'm so confident in the Lord Jesus Christ, that I'm absolutely sure that there's nothing you have that can separate me from the love of God. And that a sufficient way for me to be more than conqueror, to end at London.

So, first of all, I say, when I talk of this, that this is a statement of somebody that's ignorant and irresponsible. Just saying, well, of course, you can be a victim and everything. I don't care whether you live in a palace, or a prison, or a pigsty, or whether you have anything to say to the Jews.

It makes no object of victory. But it isn't somebody in a field that's saying this. The second thing is to say, well, it's an unvalid statement of a super-optimist. I mean, you could say to somebody, supposing somebody sees a text written and says, what do you mean about text that says, well, it's philosophical, you know, it's a state, if a kind of guy says, well, hit me on the chin, it doesn't make any difference, I've still got my brains, you know, he can't beat him anyway.

You could say, well, I don't think it's philosophical, it's theoretically, I haven't tried it out. Or, if you like, you could say even it's theological. Or, if you want to come down to it, you might even get down to the stage where you say to yourself at least, well, I think it is, it's practical.

You see, this isn't some youngster going into war again. It isn't a man that sat down and started to build a tower and wasn't able to finish it. It isn't a statement of an unbalanced super-optimist. It's an expression of experience.

Because elsewhere he uses the same meaning when he says, I can do all things. You won't hear much about this usually. We're so blessed with gifts and other things, we keep bringing the changes, but get off them for a minute.

How is it working out in your life? Paul says, I can do all things, not some things, all things. We are more than conquered through him that loved us. He uses the same word in 1 Corinthians 13, and it's a pretty rough word there, you know.

When you come to think of that word, it's a difficult word. But he says, what did he say? He says that this loved us all things, and it believed us all things, and it helped us all things, and it endured us all things.

Now, that's pretty comprehensive. It covers the whole of life, doesn't it? In other words, Paul's saying there isn't a thing that can come into your life on any given level, physical, mental, spiritual.

Because if you sort the things out at the end of Roman race, you'll discover he's not talking about things you can see. He's talking about, always, he's talking about things you can't see. He says, what can separate us?

Child tribulation. Well, tribulation could be physical, but it can be mental, too. Distress could be physical, it could be mental, too. Imperils of the soul. He can't put a sword through my spirit, but he can put a sword through my body.

So I could be suffering physically. This man's trials are not on this level at all. This man's trials are on a different level entirely. Because as the word of God says, the more money you get, the more possessions you get, all you do is increase your headache.

If he owned all the houses on this floor, I don't know whether by the day he does, I'm not going to ask, but supposing he owns all the houses from here to the end of the street, and suddenly they say, well, there's going to be a tornado, and it's coming right down that street.

Now, if he owns 50 houses, he's got 50 times more worries than if he owned one house, hasn't he? It's been going off a lot the other way. I remember once a tornado came up when we were up on the other side of Chicago at Rockford, and it happened to hit the Chrysler plant.

Well, I think the best way to hit it is going to hit anybody. It's better than hitting poor houses. But, you know, it picked those trials up, and it took them right across the road, the tracks, and men found documents out of the green spaces 20 miles away.

It picked this up and just, boy, there's a lot of searching for such a thing, you know. Now, some people didn't bother to say, well, I don't own the house anyhow. This old boy, now he's going to attend to the plumbing and do a few things he wouldn't do.

He's going to have to rebuild the house, so the hurricane's going to be good. But, you see, there are levels that Satan can get to some people and he can't get to other people on. And it's no good saying, well, oh, but I got robbed.

That doesn't bother me. Well, maybe the thing that's getting you down doesn't bother him either, you see. There are temptations and trials and distresses. Temptation in itself is a big, big, vast area that I'm not going to even get into tonight.

All right. Paul, then, in Romans 7, he's got a dark, bleak chapter. It's bonded. How does he finish? Remember the illustration he used at the end? At the end of that chapter, he says what? He says, well, I'm tied up to certain laws.

Now, if you go through the chapter, you'll find four or five laws in Romans 7. But in Romans chapter 8, there's another law. In Romans 7, one law warring in his members. Remember that chapter 8? A different one.

Now, I say that on any level that you come to, even if supposedly we end up in concentration camps, which we could do, I wouldn't doubt that at all. Supposedly we lose, the government gets to a socialistic, a communistic state, and we lose all our independent rights, property, ownership, and everything else, which could happen.

It's happening in other countries. Why not here? We're heading up pretty fast anyhow. The Rockefeller's not a guy who sees the best. Supposedly we lose all that, and I say to you, we could be more than constant.

Well, it sounds a bit exaggerated, because by the beds we're staying early tonight, we don't learn anything about tribulation or despair. Well, of course, we're not going through the tribulation, praise God.

Oh, I see. Well, you know, there are two things that amongst other people don't like to do. Number one, not many of us embrace suffering. If you don't love suffering, you don't go, you don't keep running to the dentist and say, I wish he'd yank his tooth out.

I wish he'd pull it out, just for the change, you know. I'd like to know where they are, let's keep going and going. We don't want to lose any teeth. We don't embrace suffering. And people don't like to suffer, and secondly, we don't like to die.

And if you have a lot to do, get out of both of them. Don't you? You don't have to suffer, you don't have to die. Pop goes the weasel, out we go. The only thing is, it so happens that Harold broke out in China a few years ago, roughly twenty-five, and I happened to have met a man whose friend was challenged not so long ago, coming through Formosa, because when he stopped off to see some Chinese and he greeted them, oh, they said, those men in that house are great.

In fact, they come from Hunan, probably, just like he used to be. And he went in and greeted them, you know, he's eloquent, and he's Chinese, he's an American, but he speaks Chinese like a native. So he goes to these men working, little yellow men working away there, ironing and doing other things, and he greeted them, and they took notice of him.

So he greeted them again, and they took notice of him. And so the first time he said, oh, I see now, I see. Of course, you haven't seen me for thirty-five years, and I've gotten a bit fatter, and I've lost my hair, but I'm your pastor.

I'm so-and-so. He said, look, I'm Pastor So-and-so. And he said, the man looked with tears in his eyes and said, not pastor. Not pastor? What then? False prophet. False prophet. I never told you the wrong thing enough?

Oh, he said, I used to have a banner, and I used to keep your heritage, and, uh, but the man said, look, you told us? Sure, but you told us the Russians were going to come and invade this country and rape the women.

And break in the banks and burn the churches and tear our Bibles up. Just as they come over the border, you're going to be raptured, and you're going to see your churches smoking, and you're going to see blood in the streets, and you're going to see your Bibles being torn up, but the Lord won't let one hair of your dear little head suffer.

You're going to be cut away in the rafters. The man said, the only thing that happened was, my dear wife was torn out of my arms, and my children were thrown in fetters, and my church was burned, and my Bibles were torn up, but there was no rapture.

And maybe I mentioned this before, the man in Canada is 70-odd years of age. He went through the Russian Revolution, and he told me that the fundamentalist pastors were a greater heartache to the Christians than the Communists were.

Because they told him it was coming, they said, Nazar will be murdered, the streets will flow with blood, you'll lose all your rights, it's going to become a prison camp, Antichrist is going to reign, and John says one of many Antichrists.

The only thing is, you'll be raptured, and you won't see it. But he said, I happened to live through the Revolution. You see, very often we see through our American lenses, if I had yellow glasses on tonight, everything would be yellow, if I had blue glasses, everything would be blue.

And there was a dangerous teaching, and I never tried to do this, and God helped me. I don't have to brainwash people. You've got a head, you've got a mind, and remember the word of God says, if you don't master your family of four, you have to live according to the life that God gives you.

Now, if you think there's going to be a rapture and you're going to get out, all right, but supposing you miss it and you end up in a concentration camp, you won't shoot at me for one thing, you might be arguing with some other pastor or somebody else and say, well, why won't we condition?

You see, because God's business isn't just to make us happy, God's business is to make us holy. The reason I'm saved and from the time I'm saved until I die, God is knocking me into shape, in my judgment, for a position to rule with him in a millennial age and to rule with him in eternity.

And they're not all going to be the same. Rule over five cities, rule over ten cities, rule over one city. Everything's going to be the same for everybody. Some are going to be beaten with many stripes and some with few stripes.

But I think I've said this before, let me say it again, that sometimes I think that the sign of God's blessing in the Old Testament is prosperity. That's the proof of God's blessing in your life, prosperity.

But in the New Testament, it's adversity. Isn't it strange that the greatest man that ever lived after Jesus, I think the greatest brain was the Apostle Paul, and never once did he desire a material thing that says, could you bring my clothes?

I'm sure that in this jail if you could bring it, it would be pretty helpful. But what does he say? He says, I want to fill up the sufferings of Christ. I want to still live like Jesus Christ. I want to bear burdens in the day.

And he says, I've sorrow of heart, I've great sorrow of heart. He talks more about sorrow and anguish and burdens for the lost world. In fact, in Romans 9 where he says, I could wish myself a curse for my brethren, that doesn't sound like quite jubilation.

Now, there's no doubt about it, he had joy because he expresses that. But you see, he's not hopping on one leg all the time. As I said today, you've got two feet. Now, it's an economic day and Jews are getting scared for themselves.

Why don't you hop on one leg? And when you've worn that shoe out, hop on the other, you know. I mean, you don't have to go around on two legs, everybody else does it. It's a silly habit, nobody knows why we do it.

But anyhow, you say, well, no, no, we've got two legs, we just keep balance. Sure, sure. And this is the whole secret of the spiritual life, keeping balance. Not shutting that thing out, not taking too much of this thing, but by the grace of God, in the spiritual kingdom, keeping a balanced life.

Romans 7 is darkness and Romans 8 is light. Romans 7 is a funeral march, Romans 8 is a wedding march. Romans 7, he says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this bed? What's he talking about?

You know, there are a hundred and twenty different parts of crosses, from the cross on which the Prince of Glory died, as Isaac Ross said when he wrote it before Wesley's day, he wrote where the young Prince of Glory died.

There's a cross like that, we call it the traditional cross. There's a cross like a letter C, where a man was crucified and his head was knocked back. There's a cross like a letter X, where they stretched a man up, his arms and his legs, and stretched him out.

There's a cross like a tree with just a big copper pipe and they pushed a man's body on and turned him around and left him hanging at whatever angle he thought that. But the most cruel death, maybe, of all that the Romans had was to take a man who had murdered a man and hang him to the body that he murdered.

They would lay the corpse on the ground, they would lay the man on top of it and tie the living hand to the living hand, the living leg to the dead leg, the trunk to the trunk, the head to the head, then stand him up and say go on, carry that body.

And he carried that dead body. Now that's the most pernicious, horrible death. Because when he went to sleep at night he could try and find a place where he could at least stretch out, and when he woke up in the morning his eyes were caught and he saw along what happened.

The death in that body became to want his own body. Now that was the most cruel death. And Paul said, I have in me a body of sin. Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well, if you read old scopes, he was the only person that knew everything, of course, apart from the Lord, but if you read scopes, you'll discover he said, well, a scope is nowhere deliverance.

Well, then there may as well be a Mormon, or a Jehovah's Witness, or a Biblical, and there's no deliverance from sin. If you don't get into trouble when you preach salvation to being saved from sinning, from your sins, it's when you say, but you can be saved from sinning.

And doesn't it say in Matthew 1 .27, after it's all in the name of Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins. You see, sin and righteousness, they mutually exclude each other. If you put light on in this room, the darkness goes out.

If you turn the light off, the darkness comes in. You can't have them both, you have one or the other. Now, of course, you hear people say, I mean, it sounds so holy, doesn't it, to say, oh, well, you know, as good as we are, we're saved, and we're filled with the Spirit, and the Lord's been good to us, but you know, all our righteousness is a filthy rag.

Oh, come on, why don't you read a bit lower down in this chapter? Everybody quotes it as though it's a holy thing to do. But I happen to read a book that you read called the Bible, and it says in the first essential of John that he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he is righteous.

It's not imparted righteousness, imputed righteousness, Mary, it's imparted righteousness because, to use another analogy, a corrupt tree can't bring forth good fruit. And a rotten tree can't bring forth good fruit, and a good tree doesn't bring forth bad fruit.

Now, well, you say that sounds a bit like sinless perfection. No, no, it's not sinless perfection. It's not that it's impossible for us to sin, it's possible for us not to sin. Let's go on a minute. He says, well, here I am, I'm embalmed.

Call it the old nature, call it what you like. Well, he's just said in the next chapter that in all these things, in the body, in the spirit, things present, things to come, he's just taking the devil's head on every day.

He's in a concentration camp. Oh, he's living in a house where he's serving. Martha and I often stay in a home that we share over in the Bahamas, and we've got servants, and we have a couple of yachts, and we have a cook, and we have everything laid out.

It doesn't cost us a dime, that's how we like to go live there. It's very nice, the meals are served up, everything's gorgeous. And, you know, sometimes I look at those folks, and they say, oh, my wife, it's a tiring day today.

Well, that's good, you're writing texts all day. It gets very demanding, very tiring. And you eat dinner with a lady who says, oh, my Lord, my Lord, and I thought she was going to die. I looked at Martha, and I said, well, what's wrong?

Oh, I just realized, you know, I've given away a quarter of a million dollars in less than a year, and I'm not sure I've given it all away. Well, I thought she hadn't, because she hadn't given me a dime.

You see, it's not very difficult to pour out victory, but whenever you wish to have, I mean, the lady comes in and says, would you like a cold drink? Which would you like? How shall I do the steak today?

What is the menu? And you say, oh, that's just a minute, let me see. Today we have, Martha, dear, what do we have here? And so Martha writes the menu out. They have a store, they just go to the store, and anything you want, they just ask you to say, would you like this, would you like this, would you like...

And I think sometimes, boy, it's a pretty easy life, compared to some people I know who are meeting trial and difficulties, a widow that has two or three children, or somebody who's pregnant. There are so many levels on which people live.

Now, it would be easy to say to those people, well, Romans 8, verse 37 says, in all these things we have not encountered. Right, all right. He says we have a body of, that keeps him in bondage. Oh, wretched man that I am, I'm treated.

Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Well, you say, Mr. Rangel, if you went down the chapter in Romans 8, verse 8, it says, David was in the flesh, cannot please God. There you are, you see.

Aha, you see, now that torpedoes your argument, doesn't it? You've got me tied up like that, that little hole in the wall, and I'm so small I can get through it. I'm getting out through here where it says, David was in the flesh, cannot please God.

Well, just before you go through the hole, would you let me read verse 9, because it says, here not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Now, how do you get on? Hmm? I thought that's what we came to be, that it's true people.

They're not in the flesh, they're in the spirit. You say, Mr. Rangel, what's this I've got? I've got a suit. What's your suit covering? My flesh. Well, then you're still in the flesh. No, I'm not. Because there are two different words in the Greek for flesh, past and former.

One means this flesh, but the other means a fleshly nature, a lusting nature, a greedy nature, a bitter nature. Usually called the carnal nature. Now, in Romans 13, Paul says, there are a lot of laws he mentions.

Let's mention two of them. He says, I serve God with the law of my mind, because I realize everything that God says is good, and I share God's view on these things. But wait a minute. He says, with my body I serve the law of sin.

You say, that's where you started from. No, no, no. What is he saying? This body of mine, I don't care how sane we are, I don't care if we do more miracles than this human or anybody else. Other things being equal, apart from the law of coming, you're going to pay the same penalty as Adam.

Does it say? As in Adam, all that. And my body is going to serve the law of sin, because the law of sin is death. And my body is going to die, unless the law comes. That would have been wonderful if we never had to have death, wouldn't it?