Book of Romans, 8:2 - Salvation is the Cause of a Righteous Walk (12/01/2019)

Well, now we're in Romans chapter 8 verse 1. If you turn there, we're actually going to be in verse 2 now.

We've been on verse 1 for at least three months probably and you know, it strikes me as fascinating that Christian people will take a passage or a chapter like Romans chapter 8 and just read through it quickly and move to the next thing.

There is the information that God gives us here through the Apostle Paul is deep water.

Okay, it's not, you're not swimming in the shallow. You can't walk and have your head above this water.

You got to be able to swim and even dive deeply to get anywhere near what the

Holy Spirit's teaching us here. Anywhere even close to what he's teaching us here. And most of the world at large misses it.

The Jewish, those folks, Jewish folks who are not born again completely miss it.

The ones who claim to be Christian and yet are legalists completely miss it. Even great commentators,

Brother Bill, that you and I would read such as, is it Harry Ironside?

I know it's H. Ironside. I think it's Harry, isn't it? I mean, you've got, you can go look in my study.

There's a whole shelf with his books in it. He misses it badly.

Arthur Pink probably got it right. But I know Mr. Spurgeon got it right.

But a few, most of them miss it. And I think it's important to make a note.

It's good to use commentaries, especially when you're a new Christian starting out.

And then even now I'll look at it from time to time. And I know Bill does, but you don't need them nearly as much once you've read through the

Bible scores of times. And you kind of, because why is that? Because the Bible sheds light on the

Bible. So you eventually learn where to go in Scripture and let the Scripture tell you what this passage means.

And you don't need the commentators. And half the time they didn't do that. And they missed something somewhere and they didn't quite get it right.

So you have to realize that when men write, there are errors, obviously. So always look at it and kind of wink at it and say, okay, that's good that you think that.

Now let me see what I think. And then ask the Holy Spirit to teach you what it means. That's the best approach.

But usually the times when you know you get it right is when you know you have the context right, you know you have the grammar right, you have the word definitions right, and you have been able to find other scriptures that shed light on it that are very clear, maybe more clear than the passage you're studying, right?

And this, listen, this passage is not meant to be clear. This is difficult because it's deep.

I don't mean to say difficult in the sense that you just can't get it. It's just you can't get it with a quick reading. You got to dig deep and study hard to get

Romans chapter 8. And so there are many places such as Galatians chapter 2 and chapter 5 that are far more simple reading that shed a lot of light on the complexities of this.

And we may get to that today, probably won't though. Well, we've been in Galatians quite some time coming into this just with verse 1.

But to get verses 2 through 12, you're going to need to go back to Galatians a little bit too.

It's interesting how the Lord, the Holy Spirit writes, you know, using human penmen and their personalities and everything, their education, their lack of it, everything, to be able to create these different passages that shed light on each other so that He teaches us what

He wants us to know. So let's pray and we'll get started here on verse 2. Lord, thank you so much for your word.

And it is why we're here today. We do love the singing and the beautiful music from Kenner.

Thank you for giving her the gifts that you've given her and giving her as a gift to us. And especially on days like this when she can be here and she's willing to play for us.

And Lord, thank you for Brother Ron and his ability to lead us and bring joy into our midst even before we get into the word of God.

And thank you for sometimes you give him bits of the word of God to share with us before the main sermon.

And we thank you for that. We thank you for Brother Bill's Sunday school lessons and Charlotte and the others who work with other age groups.

Thank you so much for giving us your word through these gifted people. Now, Lord, take our attention to the passage at hand, for it is truly majestic.

And we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Kenner, it was nice for you getting us ready for Christmas there. That was super.

And do you have to soak your hands in Epsom salt after playing something like that?

I mean, that would that is yeah, I'm sure. Wow. Awesome.

All right. Well, we can't do Romans 8 2 without Romans 8 1.

So even though we now know what it means, let's read it together. Romans 8 1 says there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

And let's remind ourselves what we've already learned about this verse is that when you look at the person that's speaking about in verse one, the person where there is no condemnation for this person.

This is exactly the same person who we were reading about in chapter seven. And if you look at the end of chapter seven, this is a person who's saying, my goodness,

I can't seem to do what I want to do for God. And I find myself doing what I hate, doing things

I know I don't want to do for God. And, oh, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death is the same person.

Chapter eight, verse one speaks of who has no condemnation on his life. Now, think about that, because most commentators miss that.

They mess it up because they'll try to say something like, well, Roman chapter seven is Paul before he was saved in Roman chapter eight,

Paul after he saved. That's false. It's all Paul saved. It's all the saved

Paul, or they'll say, well, chapter seven is dealing with carnal

Christians and chapter eight is victorious Christians. No, it's Paul. It's like the same person.

And it's not the Holy Spirit didn't put chapters. It's just all one letter. There aren't even any verses.

It's a letter. So you have to take it all in the context of the whole and then you have to take the different parts in the context of the whole.

And yet each part contributes to the other. And so chapter seven, chapter eight go together. It's the same person that in itself proves that the second half of verse one is not a condition for salvation.

It is an effect of salvation where it says those that walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

That doesn't mean you have to walk that walk to be saved. It means you only have a chance at that walk if you are saved.

That's what it means, because your general walk includes chapter seven. Oh, wretched man that I am.

And I dare say the folks in this church, just because I know you're real and you're honest and you're walking with the

Lord and in the word, you probably share that prayer to the Lord more than any other prayer. Oh, wretched man that I am.

Why am I like this? But that proves you're saved because the goats don't care when they sin.

They love it. But a sheep can't stand it when he gets in the mud like a pig. He doesn't like it.

He wants to be all cleaned up and totally clean. And so here we see that this is the same person of chapter seven.

So we learned that the in other words, we have no condemnation upon us while we are still in this fleshly, imperfect body.

We're the ones who have no condemnation while we're in this imperfect state that we're in. And that's what it's actually saying.

So many people miss it. The place where we do things we don't want to do, where we can't seem to do the things we do want to do for God, sometimes this is the very group of people who have no condemnation while they are still walking in this imperfect state.

Now, why is that? Because the first part of the verse says there is therefore now no condemnation for those which are in Christ.

And that's the key. That's the cause of salvation is that the Holy Spirit came to you at one point in your life and called you with an effectual calling.

He called everyone. He gave the gospel. That's the universal calling. But he called you with an effectual calling, which is theological term simply means he taps you on the shoulder, lifted your eyes towards the

Messiah and said, this is your shepherd. And you knew it for the first time. And that's what saved you.

While we were yet in our sins, had he quickened us, the Holy Spirit saved us by calling us and by doing innumerous things to us immediately upon that moment, such as giving us

Jesus's faith, such as changing our mind about who God is, is not us.

We figured that out. It's not us. It's him and giving us his love and so many other things.

That's why we don't have the condemnation. But now you can't discount the second part of the verse who walked not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

And so all of the rest of this chapter, going at least down through verse 12, sheds more light on that phrase and why it's even there.

Now, what's sad about this? There are some seemingly great scholars the world calls them great, such as Ironside, which

I don't, I don't call, I've never read his books. I got them from Brother Rocky. I won't read them because I don't,

I don't, I don't respect him as, as the greatest scholar that I could spend my,

I don't have so much time. Right. So I don't read him. I don't recommend that you read him.

And, uh, but he's your, I mean, I, I refer to certain things to see what he thought

I did when I was younger. And, and, uh, this one I ran across and it's really bizarre, but I've seen others who say the same thing and what they will actually say.

Uh, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but the second phrase, uh, verse one, you may not have noticed yet, but it's identical to the second half of verse four in the

Greek. It's exactly the same letters and words down to the letter. And so there are scholars who say this was a mistake that the copyists made and that it is an interpolation where he, they either on purpose took that phrase and stuck it in at the end of verse one.

Or they accidentally did it. Now I've studied manuscript evidence.

I've studied how copious the persons were who did the copying. It is said that they could take a pen and stick it through the manuscript and name the words it hit.

I don't know if that's true, but it said that they were that accurate and that if it didn't hit those words, they would burn the entire document, even if they'd spent three years building it and start over.

So I don't think that they would miss a whole huge phrase, only four verses up and not see that.

Do you, and yet Mr. Ironside says that's what happened. And many others, textual critics say that that's what happened.

They also say, well, this is not found in the, uh, Westcott Hort text. Well, of course it's not because that's a

Roman Catholic text and it's also a trash text and it's not the word of God.

So, um, that's not the solution. Now, why, why do you think Mr. Ironside being a

Christian man would say, well, I don't think it even belongs there. Well, his whole argument, which

I have here, I probably won't take time to read it to you. He just says, look, our salvation is not caused by our walk.

So saying that who walked not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, that shouldn't be there because verse one is talking about our salvation and the cause of our salvation is that we're in Christ.

Well, he's right about that. That is the cause. But to say that shouldn't be there is to say, well, if I don't think it's there, then

I'm bigger and larger than the word of God. I can just cut that out because I'm not happy with it. And it makes me have to study harder to figure out why it is there.

Right. That's exactly what he's saying. Now, it's interesting because Arthur Pink, who's one of my favorite, uh, commentators and scholars of the scriptures.

Uh, he said this about Harry Ironside one time. Um, he said, you know,

Mr. Ironside took exception to the fact that one of the books I wrote because Arthur Pink is very strong on the sovereignty of God.

And Ironside took offense to a book that, um, Arthur Pink had written and Ironside had a huge church and Pink was the person who had a huge following for a short period of time.

And then sometimes his preaching was so correct that people would not want to hear it.

And so he wasn't always the most popular preacher. Uh, Pink wasn't. Ironside wanted to be a big megachurch preacher, that type of person, only it was probably far more scriptural than the current megachurch preachers.

So I'm not saying he was that bad, but nevertheless, Pink asked him, he said, you know, you're criticizing me for something in my book.

He said, did you read my book? And Ironside said, no. He says, matter of fact,

I don't know that I've ever finished any book. And Arthur Pink quotes him on that.

So, I mean, he was not a studious person and he certainly missed this.

And here's the irony behind it. And I'm sure Arthur Pink laughed when he read this, but Ironside said, careful students of the original text discover that the last part of Romans chapter eight, verse one in the

King James version is an interpolation properly belonging to verse four. Um, so when he goes on, so he's just wrong about it.

So let's, let's take a look here. I mean, that's, that's the easy way out. And if you take that way out, you just take a pen knife to the scripture and say, it's easier to interpret this if it's not there.

But let, but let's assume for a minute, God put it there on purpose. How about that? If he did, why did he put it there?

Well, we've discussed it a lot, but when you start looking at verses two through four in particular, but all the way through verse 12, it sheds a whole lot of light up to verse one, as does all of chapter seven that came before it.

It's almost like a focal point in Romans where everything before it points to it and everything after it points back this direction to it.

And if you don't have all that, you'll never understand what verse one means. So, uh, we definitely have already learned that the second half of verse one is an effect of the first half, not the cause of it.

The first part is the cause. The second part's the effect, not the other way around. Uh, those who are in Christ have no condemnation and it is because they are in Christ that they walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Now, the next thing we learned, if you remember, was that word walk. If you look at the

Greek grammar of the word, you can't really say that, um, that the word is, well, how do

I put it? You can't really say it's in what we would call in English a continual tense, because in Greek there is no continual tense.

There's only present. There's aorist, aorist, which is like with no respect regard for time. It just means it just happened.

Present. There's future tense. There's past tense. There's present, but there's no present continual.

And you'll read a lot of authors who will say, oh, this is in the present continual tense in Greek.

And there isn't one, which is, which is not good. But, uh, Greek does have a thing called that some scholars call the aspect.

It's not really the same as the tense, but it's the aspect of the particular word.

And you can only get that from the context and combinations of other words around it.

But still it's, it's how the Greeks speak. So there is, there is a sense of continual writing in the

Greek. It's just, they don't have that as a tense. Does that make sense? It's more subtle and you must pick it up by the context and the other words and sentences surrounding it.

In this particular, uh, area where it says who walk, not after the flesh, but after the spirit, the word walk is in the present tense, but it's actually present participle, which in English you would put an ing after it.

So you could maybe translate it this way. Those who are walking, not after the flesh, but are walking after the spirit.

You see? So in English, there's an obvious continual concept, like it still happened, like it's present tense, but there's still walking, right?

So it's a continual concept. In the Greek, it has that also, but it's not as clear.

It's more subtle, but it is the aspect of it. And what's interesting about it, one way we can know that is it's not in the aorist.

If it were aorist, what would it mean? And I'll say this, most verbs are aorist in Greek writing.

I mean, if you just count them all, there's going to be millions of them compared to present, future, or past. There's way more aorist is used.

They love to use that tense when they speak. And the Holy Spirit loves to use it when he speaks.

So this is not aorist, and aorist means punctiliar action without regard to time at all.

So since the time is mentioned, that it is present, the Greek mind normally means present, continual, or else they would have used aorist.

Does that make sense? So this is, I just wanted to know a little bit why I believe it's in the continual tense, because you've heard me say that it is.

But this is why I believe it is. I believe it means those who are walking, not after the flesh, but are walking after the spirit in the continual aspect of that.

Now, if that's true, then what God is talking about in Romans 8, 1b is a broad, general direction of the walk of life.

It's talking about the broad, general direction of that life, not occasional, immediate actions of good or bad.

You see the difference? It's like a walk. It's not like a happening. It's a walk. It's almost like in the

Greek and in the English New Testament. We understand that when we see that someone is a, that he is involved in sin, singular, it generally means a habitual lifestyle of sin.

But when it says that they have sins, it's like a one -time occasion that perhaps was a mistake that they happened.

But it's not their lifestyle. It's not their habit. You see the difference? So in that sense, once we're born again, we are not sinners.

We are saved people. We're not sinners anymore. Sinners are goats. Okay. Sinners could be lost sheep for a season, right?

Until they get saved. But we're not sinners in that sense anymore. In fact, Brother Otis wouldn't let you call any Christian a sinner because he used that Old Testament concept that a sinner is like a son, a child of Belial.

Okay. But we are people who sin from time to time, right? So if you understand all of these differences in the grammar and the understanding of the words and the difference between continual general direction of life as opposed to individual mistakes we make, and I don't want you to get too picky on me using the word mistake.

I know that's not a good word either because we usually do them on purpose, right? You stop laughing with me there.

But anyway, don't we? Yeah. Oh, only me? Okay, whatever. So when you look at the second part of verse one, it's not talking about the fact that we never sin, that there's only no condemnation if you never sin.

It's not saying that. It's saying this, though, and I think all of what we're about to study is going to prove this.

It's saying, look, if you don't have a general walk and lifestyle that's moving away from sin and how you grew up, the sinful state you were born in, moving away from that and moving towards being more like Christ, you're still under condemnation because you ain't saved.

But it's not the fact of the walk that makes you say that's the result of it. That's the effect of being saved.

You see, it's really kind of simple when you've studied a bunch of other stuff in the Bible. But just if all you have is this passage, it's difficult.

But still, I think we got it, don't you? So so the walk, just the grammar there helps in the continual aspect of the verb.

So we're talking about a broad, general direction of life, not occasional, immediate actions of good or bad. Walking in the spirit is a lifestyle.

But listen to me, it is a determined, a determined general direction of the life determined both by God and by us.

So God determined it in Ephesians chapter two verses, specifically verse 10.

We know eight and nine are more popular. We know what they mean. I probably messed this up. I'll try to quote them because I don't have them here.

But how does it start out? Romans two, eight, for by grace you're saved through faith and not of yourselves, the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

And then verse 10 says, for we are his workmanship created unto and for ordained unto this purpose that we would do good works.

Right. So the not only were we foreordained to be saved, we were foreordained to do good works.

That's the walk. So let me ask you this. If you have a person who's sitting in church claiming to be a

Christian, oh, well, I'm one saved, always saved. You believe in that? They'll always ask that question. You know, you know, sitting in church saying all the right talk, but their predominant life outside of Sunday morning is a walk of the flesh.

What does that tell you? They don't have the effect and you can't have the I mean, the fact doesn't cause the cause, but the cause always has the effect.

So what does it tell you? It tells you to pray for that person, maybe share with them from time to time if you get the opportunity, because that person may be deceiving themselves.

They may not be a sheep or they might be a lost sheep still and they need to get born again. If they're a goat or a tear, keep irritating them with the truth so they leave.

It's the best idea there. Right. So notice that the last phrase in verse four is the same identical word for word phrase as the last part of verse one.

Some have said this is a copious error or an interpolation. I disagree.

I believe it is a Holy Spirit designed emphasis. And the emphasis is that the whole book of James is true, because what is the book of James?

It is nothing more really. It's a little bit more, but not much more than a book of effects. It is a book that says if you're really saved, it will affect you in this way and you will become this person rather than the old person you were.

And this is what you look like. These are symptoms of salvation. If you don't have them, you probably don't have the cold, right?

You don't have the itchy eyes. You don't have the runny nose. You probably don't have the cold, but it's not the itchy eyes and runny nose that cause the cold, is it?

Those are just symptoms. So all of the works that James talks about that we are doing are not the cause of our salvation.

They're the symptom of it. Likewise, the second half of verse one is a symptom of the fact that you are in Christ, you see, but you have to have the symptom.

And I hate to say you have to have, because then you think, I mean, or you're not saved. What I will say is you will have.

You will have a predominant walk, not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

And where you've got to look up what the word according means in all of these little words, because this is such important information, because it really does put a divide between salvation by works versus salvation by grace.

And yet it includes works. How do we get that? You know, how do we understand that it includes works?

It includes a life that must be lived well. How does it include that if that's not what saves us?

But it does include it. So why is it there? And all of the rest, at least down through verse 12, is going to help us to understand it even better.

So let's look at verse four. We'll go back to verse two in a minute. But verse four says that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

The same exact phrase that's in the second half of verse one. So verse one says those who are in Christ.

Who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Those who are in Christ walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Right. Verse four says that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

Now, if you think back about your math, and I know you guys that are teachers like this stuff, because the only reason is because since you teach, you still remember it.

Those of us who don't use it anymore, forget it. Right. So it makes you think you're smarter than we are, but you're not.

You just, you just deal with it every day. Right. We don't use it anymore. But there's this thing, Brother Bill, I know you know about this called the transitive law of math.

It's also a law of logic, the transitive law. Some of you will remember it probably from, let's see, what would it be?

Would it be geometry? Let me think a minute. Yeah, it'd be geometry, where you're doing proofs, because that comes under logic.

That's probably the only place you got a taste of it in high school. If you take philosophy in college, take logic, you'll get a lot of this.

But let me remind you, because as soon as you hear it, you'll remember it. OK, listen to this. All right. If A equals

B and B equals C, then A equals C. Got it.

OK, that's just a fact, it's a law, it's a law of math, it's a law of logic. So I want to apply this law to verses one and verse four, because it were really,

I don't know, I wish Mr. Ironside had done this so he wouldn't have mud on his face.

Wouldn't you hate to write a string of books and in the books you got something like, oh, that doesn't belong in the Bible.

And then you get to him and say, I wrote that, son, why'd you say that? I don't want to be that one. But he did a lot of good things and said a lot of good things, too.

So and he is a saved brother. So and we have to admire him for his scholarship.

I just wish he'd finished the books that he started. But anyway. When we look at this transitive law, it's going to really help us to see that actually the first the last part of verse four is by divine sovereignty, also the last part of verse one.

Because by putting it in verse one and verse four, it helps us understand verse one, which is the difficult one to understand.

And let me show that to you. And if I wish I had a whiteboard up here, I could do it better so I could you could visually see it.

But you'll just have to picture this right here. I'm going to write it right up there. OK, so A equals B, B equals

C, therefore A equals C. So let's let

A be the first part of verse one in our math problem here. So being in Christ, the idea of being baptized into Christ by the

Holy Spirit, being placed into Christ at the moment of our salvation. So now we are in Christ.

We're spiritually attached to him. He spiritually indwells us. We're attached to the father by the same

Holy Spirit. We're attached to each other. We are immersed into one another, into Jesus, into the Holy Spirit, into God, the father, all at one time by this act of the born again, born againness.

That very moment when the Holy Spirit baptized you into Christ accomplished this for you while you were yet dead in your sins, hath he quickened us or made us come alive?

How do you do it through baptizing us and placing us? And I don't mean water baptism. This is spirit baptism by placing us into the body of Christ.

And so that's what the A part of the math problem is. We are in Christ. It involves the fact that we died when he died.

It involves the fact that we were buried with him. It involves the fact when he came out of the grave, we were raised in Christ and now he is seated in the heavenlies and we're in Christ seated in the heavenlies right now while we're down here having trouble.

Think about that if you're having trouble in your life right now. Just realize you're in Christ. So literally, you're already in heaven, too, with him.

Look around and see that stuff. It'll help you with this stuff down here, because that's where we really the new man is connected with Christ.

We're just as much there as we are here. Why? Because we're connected by the

Holy Spirit to the son and to the father, not just to each other down here in this battleground.

We're connected to headquarters, too. All right. So think about that.

Now, A means we're in Christ. That just covers so much. Our very justification.

And all of our salvation, past tense of it, present tense of it, future tense of it, all of it surrounds this being in Christ.

None of it works without us being in Christ. God, the father, can't even love us without us being in Christ. He can't forgive us without us being in Christ.

He can't not see our sin unless we're in Christ. But we are in Christ. So he doesn't see our sin.

The father's not even aware we've ever sinned. That's what justification means. It's been wiped off.

It's been cleaned and taken away and removed. And that's what the father sees because we're what in Christ.

So that's a got that in our math problem. All right. Now, B, let's let that be the second phrase in verse one.

Those who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. So that involves your walk.

So A is your salvation, your justification, you know, the fact that God was propitiated.

See, some people get mixed up. They think a good walk is what propitiates God. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Our walk doesn't impress God at all. OK, like you want to clean up your act and be a really good

Christian next week. He won't love you one bit more. He won't be impressed with you one bit more.

So and yet the walk is important because we're witnesses in light in this world.

So it is important, but not to impress God. That's where people get this so badly wrong. That's a rabbit trail, but it's important rabbit trail.

So so now we have a we're in Christ. We're saved. We have no condemnation because we're in Christ.

Now we have B. We walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, the predominant direction.

We've turned our backs on our old nature that we came in the world as and the things we did and the people we hung out with in many ways.

And we're walking towards new friends, new Christian brothers and sisters, a new goal.

We were going to be like Christ. So that's B. OK, now what's interesting is

B is also found in verse four, isn't it? A is not found there. B is the end of verse four.

So help me out here, Bill. What's the law that says if I have an equation,

I got the equal sign here that I can turn it this way and it's still true commutative. So let's use the commutative law should put in the notes because I remembered it last night.

But to use the commutative law and take verse four and just turn it this way. Could you do that in your mind?

So that now the same B that's in verse one is the beginning part of verse four, because I turned it and I've got it here.

And so then that brings us to C and that's found only at what originally was the first part of verse four.

But now I've rewritten the Bible and used commutative and switched it, turned it where it's the end of verse four.

All right. So and C is going to be this, that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us.

That's C. OK, now let me read verse four like it is in the scripture and I'll show you what

I mean by commuting it. All right. Verse four, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.

So I'm just going to switch that around and say those of us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit are the same ones who have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in us.

Verse four. So now I've got B first and C last. So now I've got A equals B in verse one, B equals

C in verse four. So now A has to equal C. So what does that mean?

That means that the first part of verse one is equal to the first part of verse four.

So I know without the pictures up here, that's hard to follow. So let me just read it this way, let me just read to you what it comes out to be.

Those who are in Christ, that's A equals it's the same group of people.

As those who have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in them.

Now you say, well, who on earth analyzes scripture like that? I don't know me.

I do almost all the time, but I don't need a lot of commentators anymore because I find that God has embedded to a mathematical precision, everything you need in the original languages and in the context and in other scriptures that we won't get to today because I wanted to have fun with the passage at hand.

But you go into Galatians chapter two and chapter five, they shed a lot of light on what I'm saying.

But listen, we just proved it without those mathematically. So what it is saying is those who are in Christ are the same exact people.

They are equal to the same group of people who have the law fulfilled in them.

Now, there are so many cult groups that come and you're going to see it if your young people need to know this, they're going to say, wait a minute now, you know, see, you ignore verse four in Romans chapter eight.

It says that you have to have the law fulfilled in you. I mean, you've got to keep the law. That's what they'll say it means.

That's not what it means. You would have a thousand verses easily that that would contradict if that's what it meant, because that would be teaching salvation by works, wouldn't it?

That you have to keep the law. Oh, verse four says you've got to have you got to fulfill the law. It's just that Jesus helps you do that.

Well, I don't know about you, but I love Jesus. But I have trouble with keeping the law sometimes.

All right, so I'm not fulfilling the law if that's what it means, if it means keeping the law to the extent that I could be saved by that, which is what they mean.

The cult groups, when they teach it, they're getting into legalism. But it doesn't mean that because mathematically we've shown that those who have the law fulfilled in their life are the same people who are in Christ and that in Christ is what caused it.

So it is a position that we find ourselves in after having been born again, which we had nothing to do with.

The baby has nothing to do with his birth. We just find ourselves awake and in God's family.

Now, do you think if your father is the father, the creator of all that is, and your brother is his son,

Jesus, that you ought to live right? Go like this.

Yeah, because otherwise you are a hypocrite because you are a child of the king.

You have been regained. You have the father's genes, not the genes of your parents anymore.

Those have been slain. Those have been crucified. You have God's genes and you are like him.

And if you don't live like him, you're a hypocrite. And so am I. So obviously we ought to walk not after the flesh, but we ought to walk after the spirit.

And we have the opportunity to do that because we are saved. But doing that did not cause our salvation.

Our birth caused it and we had nothing to do with the birth. Is that clear enough? All right.

So people have so much trouble with this. Those who are in Christ are equal to those who have the righteousness of the law fulfilled in them.

Now, let me ask you, who do you think that causes the righteousness of the law to be fulfilled in those of us who are not perfect?

Christ does in all of the rest of the verses between two and twelve, we're going to prove it.

But we had to do the math just because it's fun. Now, there's another way you can look at this as we move into verses two and following.

Verse one again says there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ, the great cause.

Who are the same people who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit, the great effect. Why? Why is this true?

Why is it that these people walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit? Why is it true that those who are in Christ are those who walk not after the spirit, but in the spirit?

Why are they enabled to do this? Verse two begins to answer it.

Notice that it starts with the word for which means because. So it's going to answer our question why?

It could even answer the question how it starts off with because because the law of the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death.

Now, you may not have noticed, but if you follow that down through verses two through about verse six, you're going to see about four because it's at least four times.

It starts with the word for. So it's going to give us at least four reasons why this works.

This is just scripture. This is not Harry Ironside, bless his heart. This is not even Arthur Pink, although it would probably be marvelous if you read what he wrote about this.

I've got what Spurgeon wrote, which we don't have time today, but it's deep and it's beautiful and it's correct.

But but we have what God says here. And he says, you want to know why it's true that the one who's in Christ doesn't walk after the flesh, he walks out of spirit.

Well, let me give you four reasons because because because because. And here they are. So here's the first one is because number one, the law of the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death.

So there is a new law. It's called the New Testament, the new covenant. And this new law is a law whereby we walk by the spirit, not by the letter.

OK, so this new law has, in fact, set me free from the old law of having to walk by the letter.

Therefore, don't try to take verse four or the second part of verse one and make me think that I have to do these things to get saved because there's been a change here.

That's the old way. The new way, according to the Holy Spirit himself in verse two, where he says, why can it be so that we're saved by only being in Christ?

Free grace, free gift, nothing that we do, but we will walk not according to flesh, we'll walk according to spirit.

How can that be true? Because number one, the very crucifixion of Christ has set us free from having to walk the law to be saved.

We're not we don't have to do that anymore. And just knowing we don't have to do it makes it easier to do it. Not that we will.

We're not going to walk it perfectly, but it makes it easier. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

All of these are easier when you know that you don't have to do it to be saved. Your flesh tends to just like God says, no, then that's what you do.

I mean, children are definitely that way. You know, I love being around my eight grandbabies because I get to see the sin nature acted out and I get to see the parents dealing with it.

And that's what we call in scripture poetic justice. It's so awesome.

Like my kid, my kid, my first kid that chunked something across the table only did it twice their whole life.

All right. Twice. Okay. My grandkids though, I don't care if they do it 10 times, right?

Cause I'm grandpa now. So you see the difference, but what does this have to do with this passage?

Anyway, you know, you tell a kid, don't do that.

What are they going to do? They're going to struggle with that all day. Want to do it. So just being set free from the law helps.

And that, that actually is what verse two is saying. We have been set free from number one, the condemnation that the law brought to us.

The law of the spirit of life in Christ has made me free from two things. Look here, the law of sin and the law of death.

So it set me free from the condemnation. That's the sin part. I'm no longer condemned because I've been,

I've been pronounced innocent by the father. He died in my place.

I'm now pronounced innocent. And secondly, it says from death. So not only am I free from the, the condemnation of sin,

I am free from the wrath of God, which includes the punishment of sin. I'm free from both those things.

Why? Because I'm in Christ, right? And because I'm in Christ, I am now free from the condemnation of sin.

It doesn't, even though I did the sin, it doesn't condemn me because Jesus took it upon himself and died for it.

It's gone and he removed it. And now as the father looks at me, he doesn't see it. Therefore, there is no wrath of God on me and there's no punishment ever on me for it.

And therefore I can walk not in the flesh, but in the spirit, because I'm happy. I can walk in the spirit and not be burdened by a need to avoid the sins of the flesh because they're not what saves me.

Anyway, I want to avoid it because of what he did for me. Why would I want to live for the devil and make him mock

Christ by my actions? Why would I want to do something to some brother's wife when

I love that brother? Right. I mean, love is the answer to all of the law.

I'm not going to touch another man's wife in this church because there's not a man in this church I don't love with a true, unfeigned love.

Gentlemen, don't hang out with men that don't love you. Right, because they might love your wife.

You better hope they love you and that they're a Christian because this is the answer. Now, here he says that we're free from the condemnation.

We are now free from the wrath of God and the punishment. So the law of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin, which means the condemnation

I used to be under. It's gone now. And the law of death, which means the punishment for it. I will never die.

Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never what? I will never die. I am not under the law anymore.

I don't need to walk not in the flesh to be saved. I walk not in the flesh because I am saved.

Being in Christ has set me free from the action of sin and death upon me.

It has no action upon me anymore. Does that mean something? It's getting a little late in the day, but so let me read it again.

Being in Christ has set me free from the action of sin and death upon me.

It has no action on me anymore. Whatsoever whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

John 11 26. Jesus said that it has no action on me. It is not actionable.

The sins I've done, the sins I will do. There's no action from it that will ever come to me because it all came to my savior 2000 years ago.

Thinking about that is a rabbit trail that will mess you up if you really think about it.

Look at verse three and we'll stop after this one. Here's the second because notice it starts with four again.

For what the law could not do in that it was weak for the flesh. See, the law had to have something to go with it to make it work.

If you're going to get saved by the law, you yourself and your body had to keep that law and your flesh was weak.

So you didn't. That is the great weakness of the law. It's not that the law is weak.

The law is holy and strong and righteous, but it's weak because it's for us on the earthly plane and we're weak.

So it became weak because of us. Does that make sense? Paul, we wrote this stuff.

No, no human mind had ever considered any of this when Paul wrote this. No Jew ever thought about this and the

Christians didn't have a clue. The Gentiles knew nothing. No human ever thought about this before God revealed this into the world right here that we're reading.

This is powerful deep. This is a deep dive into God's heart and mind. For what the law could not do in that it was weak because of the flesh.

God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. In other words, he lived in the human body and he was truly a man and he sent him for sin.

That means both because of our sin and to be a substitute to die for our sins.

So it alludes to the substitutionary death of Christ, one of the most huge doctrines of all of Christianity.

So he sent his son in a human body for sin. In other words, to die in our place and also get this to condemn sin in the flesh.

So not only did he die in our place, which it was, he was our substitute. He was our ransom. He totally took our place and sin only has to be paid for once before just God.

And it has already been paid for in full. So he has now died in our place.

He died for sin. There's a lot in that little phrase died for sin. Those three words, the word for means because of he died because we did the sin.

But also means he died to take the sin away. He died to pay for the sin. In our place, substitutionary death.

But then it goes on and says in the act of doing this. Think about this, what was it that condemned us before the law?

Sin, Jesus turned that around when Satan thought he had defeated Christ by killing him. He had really killed himself,

Satan committed suicide because what happened when Christ died, he condemned the very thing that condemned us.

Think about that. He slew, he judged with his wrath the very thing that killed, would have killed his children.

God, the father, poured his wrath out instead of on those of us who had sinned. He poured his wrath out upon sin itself when he allowed his son to die in our place.

Because Jesus became sin, that's why when the Jews depicted him up on the stake, it was a snake.

It pictured Satan. That was Christ on the cross with your sins in his body on the tree.

And in doing this and in dying with our sins in his body and taking them as the scapegoat did to a place no one will ever see it again.

The father can't see it. We'll never see it. We'll never know it existed. He currently doesn't know it existed, the father, because it's been placed on the scapegoat, which was

Jesus and totally removed from us. And so in all of this act,

Jesus condemned the thing that was the only thing that could have condemned us and it's dead now. Is that cool?

So there's a second reason that the second half of verse one is true, but it's not what saved us.

It's the result, the result of this great salvation.

The law of walking in Christ has accomplished what the law of Moses could not do.

Our weak flesh made it impossible for the law of Moses to be following or to be followed in a saving way.

Therefore, God sent his son Jesus into the world. The season we're just about to enter in and you played beautiful music.

We're going to be talking about the Christmas story. God sent his own son, Jesus, to this world as a man, as the

God man, because of sin and to remove sin for sin and to condemn sin in his physical body as he died for our sin, sin, sin, sins.

So we have been freed from the power of sin and the punishment of sin all because of what he did for us.

Shouldn't we at least try to walk right? Let's stand and have prayer together. Lord, we thank you so much for your word and how you've been able to use human language to reveal your part of your infinite being and infinite wisdom and your infinite acts to our finite minds this morning.

Thank you for how you've done it, for how you gave us the written word through sinful men that you controlled who belong to you.

And yet it's your word. You're the author of it and it's perfect. And we thank you that you've preserved it perfectly for us.

May we never make the mistake of eliminating parts of your scripture because we can't figure out what you meant by it.

Guard us and help us to guard your word as a local church. Should do and Lord, take us into this remainder of these holidays coming up in the next few weeks.

So much rejoicing over the finished work of Christ, what you have accomplished for the father and for us and the great salvation that we have in Christ and Lord, help us not to forget that the responsibility to walk the walk is strongly upon us and we should have an accompanying desire.

So, Lord, help us to have that desire and Lord, go with us into this time of fellowship and bless the meal we're about to have in Jesus name.