Romans 8:1-17, The Epic Journey, Dr. John Carpenter

Romans 8:1-17 and the Journey from Condemnation to Glorification

Romans chapter 8 be reading from verses 1 to 17. Hear the word of the Lord. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

For God has done what the law Weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own son the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us.

Who walk not according to the flesh? But according to the Spirit for those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

To set the mind of the flesh is death. But to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You however are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin. The Spirit is life because of righteousness if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you.

So then brothers we are debtors not to the flesh. To live according to the flesh for if you live according to the flesh you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry ABBA father.

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are Children of God and if children then heirs heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also may be glorified with him.

May the Lord at his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Would you like to take a trip? Would you like to embark on an epic journey a long trip that changes your life. I bet Mike and Nancy's and We're missing Tina and Joyce, but Jesse's first trip from China To the United States across the Pacific Ocean I assume a journey to the east to get you to the west to America.

I bet you that was such a journey. Well for me 35 years ago this year. I made my own epic journey after graduating from college in Birmingham, Alabama. I have been led to go to Fuller Theological Seminary.

There was just one big problem for me. It was in Pasadena, California. About 2 ,000 miles away. I hadn't traveled anywhere really by myself up to that time. And if I were to gonna go there it was gonna be a long journey and as it turned out an epic journey I Set out on a small blue Pontiac 1000 hatchback with everything I owned in in it to drive West the first leg of the journey with Memphis.

That was a familiar or route from Birmingham, Mississippi To tennis Memphis, Tennessee connected to I -40 across the Mississippi River to my grandmother in West Memphis, Arkansas Hollywood our bust on the car and then the next day across Arkansas, Oklahoma stayed in a cheap motel in Amarillo, Texas then into New Mexico and I remember thinking is across the New Mexico line.

I think now I'm halfway there. 50 of the trip is over and they got one of these large green road signs. Show you how far the next destination is and it said on it, Los Angeles 1007 miles there. I am miss the actual picture.

I was halfway there and I still had over a thousand miles to go across New Mexico Arizona. Into the tip the southern tip of Nevada a car got stuck in the desert sand going off-road really dumb thing to do and there I slept on the ground Beside my car near the banks of the Colorado River and I woke up the next morning to the howls of distant coyotes.

And then I drove across the desert interior of Southern, California and finally made it to fuller my ultimate destination fuller seminary and The Los Angeles where the same day the Pope had arrived and so they changed the name of the Hollywood sign to read Hollywood and we went to the beach and I looked across that blue Pacific Ocean and I thought surely This is the end of the world.

That was an epic journey. Not only individuals but cultures have their own epic journeys for Western culture. We have the the Odyssey the story of Odysseus trying to get back to Greece from the Trojan War.

There's the stories full of monsters and mythological gods and military exploits and fights and tragedies in China. They have their own kind of version called journey to the West about a Buddhist monk traveling from China to us to India.

With a few disciples, especially the Monkey King Sun Wukong and like the Odyssey It has its own fights, but being Chinese It doesn't take itself so seriously. More comedy than tragedy. Sun Wukong become the comic relief of the story.

The story is kind of a cross between the Odyssey and the Three Stooges. Imagine those together the people from people from all over the world though like epic journeys. Now Romans is an epic journey. The entire book takes us from sin.

Remember The wrath of God is being revealed how it begins it takes us from sin to salvation and what is often called the Roman Road and this passage in particular is an epic journey from condemnation to glorification from hell to heaven and like a journey any journey it has.

Like any journey has three stages in the beginning the long distance traveled and then ultimately the destination here. There are three legs to the journey first is justification and verses 1 to 3 and then there's sanctification verses 4 to 17 and then finally we arrive at glorification so You want to take a trip?

Justification: No Condemnation in Christ

The journey here begins in verse 1 with something that has already begun. It's already in progress. That's why it says therefore. There is therefore Because of what he's already established Earlier in the letter that we are made right with God through faith alone that Christ obeyed for us His righteousness is imputed to us that we as believers have died with Christ and risen with him with a new nature Free of sin and that even though yes still evil lies close at hand.

Ultimately God will deliver us from remaining sin through Jesus Christ because of that because of what God has done there is No condemnation. For those who are in Christ Jesus now condemnation is punishment.

It's the guilty verdict declared by the righteous judge handing us over to the guards to suffer our sentence wrath. It's condemnation is just anger against our crimes. Condemnation is damnation that we were told back in chapter 2 is what we deserve on the day of wrath.

That's what we were Heading toward that had been our destination our destination had been condemnation. But then God began on us on a new journey in a different direction toward Glorification those who are in Christ Jesus who trust him to act for them.

There is no condemnation in their future when they reach their goal. There won't be condemnation there. That's another way of saying that we are justified we are made right with God and their final destination our final destination if you're in them.

At the end of the journey, there will be nothing that God will condemn you for the journey begins with justification. He explains how this journey gets started in verse 2 for because. Explaining why there is no condemnation because the law the spirit of life looked at that last week.

Remember the law the spirit of life in Christ Jesus freed you from the law of sin and death. That is the principle that the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ. Jesus what God did for us in Christ had over Came is overcoming the other principle that the wages of sin is death and he continues in verse 3 for what the law was powerless to do the law meaning our law keeping or the Keeping God's law what it was unable to do because it depended on our flesh.

It depended on our sinful nature on our performance. Ourselves with a will that is bit by depravity. We couldn't change our destination toward condemnation because we really didn't want to even when God's law Either in the Bible or in our conscience told us to do what is right.

We couldn't Perfectly obey and so we couldn't change our destination toward condemnation, but it says God did in verse 3 God has done Justification be right with God and free of condemnation is entirely God's work.

We couldn't do it. God did it. That's how this epic journey begins by God doing for us what we could not at all do for ourselves. And he did it by sending his own son in verse 3. Paul is using his terms very precisely he says in the likeness of Sinful flesh in other words Jesus he looked like if you saw him he looked like another sinful person.

The same kind of body, but he wasn't really simple his flesh his body wasn't simple. It's a real body. It was a likeness of sinful flesh, but no sin. There was no fleshiness. There was no carnality in his real Physical body he was sent for sin to deal with what was leading us to condemnation instead of condemning us.

He condemned our sin. Jesus was punched and beaten and flogged and whipped and had thorns pressed down into his scalp mocked and abandoned by friends Nailed to two beams and hoisted up and left there to die forsaken suffering condemnation because He became our sin.

He was in our place. Condemned in his body our sin was punished and executed. The result of that is that there is no condemnation left. For those who were in him when he was on the cross, there is nothing for God to hold against us.

He expended God has expended exhausted all his anger on his own son on the cross. So for those who are in Christ Jesus, there is no more anger left only a good relationship with the Father that's justification.

God does it and we can't that's how the epic journey begins and so now we're on our way a journey begins with justification being put right with God and then proceeds to sanctification if justification and Regeneration that's being a new creature if being being made and born again.

If that's the point the journey begins the origins the starting place and Glorification is our final destination then Sanctification is the name for the journey itself. It's the trip. It's it's the movement from one point to another.

It's I -40 West. On my way from Alabama to California. I went through eight states, Mississippi, Tennessee Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona Nevada. Now on our way from condemnation to glorification.

We have to go through eight Experiences and we've already looked at one of them the first the origin justification then there's the intention our transportation our inspiration our fixation our habitation our mortification and finally know our adoption.

Sanctification as the Spirit-Driven Journey

First the intention. Why is there no condemnation? Now, what's what's the purpose of there being no condemnation? What is God's intention and justifying some people? Making them right with him. Remember it's only for those who were in Christ.

Jesus is not for everyone. But why does he do that for them now some people's intentions of people's intention and being? Trying to get forgiven for their sins by God is simply to be free of guilt and condemnation but not for the Lord.

That is they want to they want to be lawless and masterless and also guiltless. They intend on being free of hell. But not free of sin. Here starting verse 4 the Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus became our sin offering.

He suffered all of that in order that this is the purpose no, this is intention. Not just to give us get out of hell free card. But that the righteous requirement of the law Might be fulfilled in us. There's the intention the intention is not just again get a get out of hell free card.

But that the righteous requirement when I said the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. That's why God Has some people in Christ that he does not condemn whom he justifies Regenerates so that these people will fulfill God's requirement of the law.

Jesus died for us so that we could become the kind of people the law told us to be. But that we couldn't be Because we were too sinful. All our intentions work were selfish they were bent inward and so we were incapable of making it to God's Intention fulfilling the law.

We couldn't fulfill the right requirement of loving God with all our heart and mind and soul. And strength and we couldn't love others as ourselves, but God had other intentions. Jesus became sin for us so that we could reach his intention and Transform ours and love God supremely and others sincerely.

So on this road of sanctification our Transformation is his intention. How are we to get there. What's the transportation. Are we just kind of carried along? Are we flown first class as we're waited on by the stewardess?

Just are we just kind of hope of float along, you know, no effort no exertion or sweat or pain. You know, just let go and let God know we have to. Walk, he says walk walking is our mode of transportation.

That's sure. It's slow. Sometimes tiresome putting one foot in front of another day in and day out, but we're not carried along. Sanctification is not just a religious experience of Sunday morning gives us our little jolt and then it doesn't matter how we live the rest Of the week.

No, it's a steady a paced application of ourselves. Consistently daily. It's the way we live. Walk in verse 4 is synonymous with live in verse 5. Otherwise, they mean the same thing we grow in Fulfilling the righteous requirement of the law loving God supremely and others sincerely by living it out every day.

There are no shortcuts or ways out. The road is sanctification the intention is transformation. Our daily walk is The transportation and the Holy Spirit is our inspiration. There is much about the Holy Spirit in this passage.

In verse 4 God's intention for us is fulfilled. Not if we walk according to our sinful nature the flesh but if we walk by the Holy Spirit in verse 5 we are to live according to The Holy Spirit he is our inspiration we need his power just like you need gas to drive to California the Holy Spirit gives us the power the energy the impetus the strength every day to continue to walk down the road of Sanctification that's being more like the Lord this growth and holiness.

The sanctification is not a matter of just painstaking conformity to a list of rules. It's not just an exertion of a grim willpower. I will make myself do what is right. That's law keeping. That's that's really the flesh and he says that doesn't work.

That does never pleases God. It's though but some people think well, okay you started out this and we're justified by faith. Just by by grace through faith and but now you've got a you've got to obey.

You've got to put in the work as though this epic journey started with something only God can do. Justification but carrying it out now is totally up to us. No. Yes, we do have to apply ourselves every day.

We have to walk toward the intention of transformation. But we can't even do that by ourselves. We need the inspiration the breathing into our hearts and lives of the life of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual growth is not a do-it-yourself project.

It is rather a journey of the Holy Spirit producing his life in Our lives like growing grapevine. We can have the seeds we have the soil you got the fertilizer the lattice the water we think we have all the ingredients.

But if the life doesn't come From the seeds they don't start to sprout they start to grow that life. That we don't have if that doesn't happen. There's nothing we can do and so too with spiritual growth.

We can have the you can have the ingredients and have the Bible you have the church with the time for prayer. But if the Holy Spirit doesn't come and breathe life into all that We're dead. This is all about our epic journey from condemnation to glorification along the road of sanctification and so the main purpose of the Holy Spirit here isn't To give us a thrill.

You know escape from reality kind of like the same reason some people other people take drugs get a feeling get a high. To escape from the realities of their life. Or to give us an excuse to do what we really want to do.

Anyway, you say the Lord led me to do it or to not do what we should do. Some people say, you know, I feel led to Leave my husband or I don't feel led to go to church. No a purpose of the Holy Spirit in our lives why he is resident with us is to lead us to more and more sanctification spiritual growth.

Learning to love God supremely and others. Sincerely the problem with ignoring the Holy Spirit is the same problem with ignoring your car's need for gas. Ignore the fuel gauge what's gonna happen you think?

Eventually, you're gonna run out and you're gonna be stuck beside the road. Looking for help. You need the power of the Spirit to be at work in your life. We can't make it on this epic journey without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

It's right Paul tells us elsewhere in Ephesians pray to be filled with the Holy Spirit. The fourth thing we need is a fixation. That is a preoccupation on the things of the Spirit. Spiritual things and verses 5 to 8 starting verse 5 Paul makes a contrast.

Comparing two things contrasting two things those who live according to the flesh. By the power and the inclination to the sinful nature set their minds on the things of the flesh their thoughts their ambitions their goals their whole life is Set on achieving those things now.

They could be immediately sinful things like hurting someone or getting drunk or indulging in sex out of marriage or they could be outwardly socially acceptable things getting rich. Gathering a lot of money having the nicest house and cars and clothes expensive vacations luxuries.

Maybe the biggest reputation. Maybe they're focused on making successful. Business, that's all they could think about is the business or maybe they don't care about money. They they only love they think love for themselves.

And so they're focused on now that ultimate what they have the ultimate relationship when now in our culture. We just call the relationship a romance and they are sure that is the meaning of life. Or they want a big name they want to be esteemed for being the best athletes scholar or pastor.

It's all about them. And so those things too are according to the flesh. They are fixated on that and being that way with their life fixed on themselves at the center. They they deeply offend God. The only rightful sinner of their life and so even if they do get religious.

Maybe they see religion is in an angle to further their interest their preoccupation what they're really fixated on. It's a way to advance their cause still their religion doesn't please God at all being according to the flesh.

They are he says incapable of pleasing God ever say otherwise. No matter what they do how moral or how religious or how hard they work how many rules they keep they will never please God. By living according to the flesh their life fixed on themselves.

And that's the condition of everyone outside of Christ. That's why it is he says literally it is impossible for them to please God. It's impossible to get them to submit to God. Oh, you can get fleshly people to look like they obey the you get them to obey some rules you get them an incentive.

You tell them this is for your own advantage. Way to get what they really want some prosperity. Preacher tells them, you know, you give me a dollar. You'll get a hundred back or whatever it is. You can get them to give.

You manipulate them in the right way or scold them. But the fleshly don't obey God from the heart. They are unspiritual and so they don't see any real interest in spiritual things at best. They'll be just bored with the Bible in prayer and church.

Even if they cut if they go even if they listen to it, even if they go through the daily routine. But their heart is not obeying God and when God's Word really begins to challenge them. When they're told that they can't serve God in money that they have to humble themselves to serve.

Then they'll get angry in verse 7 the mind that is settled of the flesh. It's fixed on whatever this thing is my money my reputation my business by whatever my romance. The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

Otherwise, it's God's enemy. It's not just it doesn't just say doesn't hostile it doesn't say well, I respect your views. I respect that you're you know as a spiritual person, but I'm just not into that kind of stuff.

No, it is provoked to hatred hostility by the Word and the Spirit. And so the result is in verse 6 death. We are to be different. You however Are different you're not in the flesh. Our fixation Is to be on the Spirit.

The Spirit in us makes us interested in spiritual things the Word of God. Worship the body of Christ the church the work of evangelism and missions. Sure, we can work in business. We can play in sports.

We can live in the world. We can seek to get married or educated but the center of those things. What is all fixed around? Is God the Holy Spirit Christ Spirit of Christ. Our focus and all that we do.

Whatever it no matter what it is in this business and this activity this sport this relationship this job the school Is to help me love and serve God. That's our fixation and the result he says peace we can live like that on this epic journey because of our Habitation.

Who we are in and who is in us. First in verses 10 to 11. We are not in the flesh. But we are in the Spirit. The Spirit is our habitation where we live not only the power but the place. He's the realm.

He's the dimension. Beyond just a religion about regulating bodies and teaching our minds. We live in him. There is a spiritual reality that we live in now. You're in the Spirit because the Spirit is in you notice.

This isn't just an experience for just a few elite Christians who have some kind of special gift and They're the ones with the Spirit. And verse 9 which believers have the Spirit dwelling in them as his habitation.

Which believers. Which believers have the Spirit dwelling in them as his habitation on earth. Spirits living on earth, where's he living? He's living in his people. Which believers is he living in? It's only a select few.

They're really committed. The ones who are on fire. Are there believers without the Spirit put it another way? Well, he says anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. So everyone who belongs to him every true Christian has the Spirit of Christ.

He makes his habitation and every believer in verse 10 if Christ is in you. Even if your body is dead, I think he means if it's dying. It's mortal because of sin yet. The real you is still alive with him because he put you right with him your habitation Will be with him if his habitation is now in you.

Well, finally verse 11 our habitation will eventually be in our in glorified bodies that is raised from the dead immortal. We are meant to live in bodies. Our bodies our bodies are not the sinful nature.

They aren't shameful. The body is not shameful or crude or carnal. Jesus was God in a body, you know. He had a really human body. Our bodies in Genesis are created by God before there was sin. We were intended on being physical creatures walking in the spirit.

Fulfilling God's intention of loving him and each other. And now. Sure, we may have to go through a a stage of our journey. When we are without a body It's not like traveling without a home. But at the end of our journey When we reach that final destination We're back in a body and That's the resurrection our glorification and our ultimate Destination.

Mortification, Adoption, and the Final Destination of Glorification

Our sixth experience on this road of sanctification is found in verses 12 to 13 putting to death the deeds of the body. This is what it's called mortification. Verse 13 it literally means to kill. Put to death execute hand someone over for the death penalty.

Our remaining sinfulness in us. Tries to do sinful things. Through our bodies through our hands what we touch through our mouths what we taste or say through our eyes. What we look at through our feet where we go in verse 13.

We must put to death as mortify. The sins at work in us kill them. Notice the conditional sentence in verse 13. There's a condition if. There's a condition if by the spirit I was not by rule-keeping not just by sheer willpower and I'm making yourself do what you really don't want to do.

But by the spirit if by the spirit you put to death that is you mortify you kill those sins then. If you keep the condition, the condition is if by the spirit you put to death these sins then the result.

You will live. The Lord Jesus said in Luke chapter 13 verse 24 strive or agonize to enter through the narrow door. That is to make it through this epic journey. You're going to have to agonize. Put sins to death.

The Apostle said that it is through many tribulations too many trials. Sleeping on the sand in Coyote Territory. You must enter the kingdom of God. The epic journey of sanctification is sometimes hard agonizing trying.

The epic journey is a violent battle with sin in which we either kill or be killed. Around any turn there could be sin. Ambushing us we have to be alert and you'll be ambushed by. Disappointments by your own sins in your own body or by people who say they love you.

But then they fail you by temptations by false teachers by the lure like in the Odyssey the siren song. What seems so pleasant seems so alluring. Some sin some affair. The attraction to live for? For wealth or for ease.

For money-making for self-indulgence. To make it successfully to the end. Will take your Exertion its self-denial your agony you're refusing to give in cutting off the temptation. Cutting off the bad relationship willing to make less money by closing the shop if you have to to go to church.

Not allowing ourselves to have even a little bit of something that we can't control. Humbling ourselves by confessing our sins. Not not being driven by ego and pride when we're offended taking correction being teachable.

Telling and accepting the truth even when it hurts we kill our sins. By stabbing them with what hurts them the most. The truth of God's Word. You need the power of the Spirit to put to death every sin that would try to come out through your body.

That's Mortification. So we're on this epic journey of sanctification begun by God alone with justification. We've got the intention of keeping the law that is glorifying and loving God and others the transportation walking through every day the inspiration of the Holy Spirit the fixation on the spiritual habitation you in the Spirit because the Spirit is in you and then the mortification as you put to death your sins and then finally you will have the great joy of Adoption.

Notice this thought here. First all believers have the Spirit of God dwelling in them. Second the Spirit leads every believer on the sanctification highway and third while they're going Through this world.

That's hostile to God. They're led by the Spirit and one of the things the Spirit tells you. One of the ways he leads you. Now maybe he won't tell you always so clearly who you should marry or what you should study in college or what job you should?

Take what flavor ice cream is your order at Baskin Robbins? But he tells you personally in verse 15. He does tell you. Paul here promises to his people one thing that Holy Spirit will tell. Every one of his people in verse 15 in your hearts.

He will tell you. You are a child of God. You're my child he will say. God gives us a spirit of adoption. It's a heart that relates to him as father and that changed heart that they used to hate God it was hostile to spiritual things that had been afraid a slave who cringed in fear and dread or maybe a bored rebel.

Who just didn't care at all for God couldn't be interested but now is a dear child who cries out to this same God and with love and yearning father. The Holy Spirit communes and loves and draws and speaks sweetly to us.

Not only an inspired doctrine on paper, but something we feel. We hear in our heart. Something that blooms or blows up in us awesome overwhelming incomprehensibly joyous assurance that we are the children of God.

You know in your heart that yes father I am your child. One of the results of that first Justification started it on this epic journey. Is that all of us who face no condemnation? Aren't just legally cleared by kind of an impersonal judge.

It's good. He let us off but no, it's not just that he he gets personal. We are immediately from the start of this trip. Adopted into his family. He doesn't just say not guilty. You're free to go. He says not guilty and I adopt you.

You're my child. You're in the family of God now, we're not natural-born children of God and sharing fully his nature. We're not like Christ. We're not little gods who can evolve to being as God now is we're still creatures.

We are but we are adopted sons and daughters. We are sharing fully His love we have been selected by him and Now included in his family with all the other adopted children and now we have the amazingly gracious privilege of calling out to God as father father in heaven.

How we love you. The Holy Spirit is our adoption certificate. Not just a cold Statement on paper because here even the doctrine on paper tells us that he gives us a warm experience in our heart. We know that we know That God loves us and has embraced us as one of his own.

And if we're his children Which we know in our heart Then we can be sure that we are his his heirs. That is he will give us all that belongs to him we inherit it all we inherit everything we'll get the family treasures and this Is the final destination?

On our long journey. Previewed already in verse 11 where the Holy Spirit in us promises eternal life even for our bodies Resurrection that will eventually be all that we were intended to be sinless perfect immortal Triumphant physical spiritual beings inheritors of the vast wealth of the owner of the universe sharing everything with our elder brother Jesus Christ himself but don't forget as we're traveling along this highway to that final destination of glorification.

That sharing everything with him then Means sharing some of his sufferings now cheap motels stuck in the desert sand sleeping on the ground the howls of coyotes long treks through empty desert all of that part of the journey but the destination is more than worth it, so We've gone from being condemned by God the wrath of God being revealed now no condemnation.

We've gone from hating God hostile to God unable to please him to being his sons and daughters loving him crying out father To him yearning to please him every day and eventually when we reach our final destination.

Enjoying and glorifying him Forever. Are you on? This epic journey.