May 28, 2017 To Be God’s Children by Pastor Josh Sheldon

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May 28, 2017 To Be God’s Children Romans 8:12-17 Pastor Josh Sheldon

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We'll turn, please, again, your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, and we'll begin at verse 12.
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I'll read through 17, that'll be our text for this morning. In your Black Pew Bible, that's page 944.
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So once more, hear the word of the Lord. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.
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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.
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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,
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Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirits 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 be also glorified with him.
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You know, our spiritual father is, of course, none other than John Calvin, whose shadow is everywhere to be seen in the work of the divines who wrote the 1689
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London Baptist Confession of Faith, our confession of faith. Modern scholarship has dubbed
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John Calvin the theologian of the Holy Spirit. Did you know that?
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Our spiritual father, Calvin, who wrote and developed most of the doctrines and the theology upon which the
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Reformed Church stands, has been called by modern theologians the theologian of the
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Holy Spirit. That's because he spent more time explicating the work of the Holy Spirit than almost any theologian before him, and more,
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I would argue, than most theologians before him or since he made it clear about the work of the
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Holy Spirit. B .B. Warfield said this about the work of John Calvin and his work to us in the
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Holy Spirit. He said, "...in the same sense in which we say that the doctrine of sin and grace dates from Augustine, the doctrine of satisfaction from Anselm, the doctrine of justification by faith from Luther, we must say that the doctrine of the work of the
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Holy Spirit is a gift from Calvin to the church." I read this to you because the burden that Paul has, and Paul, of course, writing under inspiration of the
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Holy Spirit, that's why we say this is the Word of God, his burden in chapter 8 is that we should know the work and the person of the
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Holy Spirit, who we call the third person of the Trinity. I sometimes wonder when we are before God in heaven, we're seeing
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Jesus as he is, I sometimes wonder if he might ask us, where'd y 'all get this ranking from?
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This number 2, this number 3, now there's a sense to it, I'm being a little bit facetious, but they're all
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God, all three persons are God as much as any other of the persons of God, but there's an ordering to them.
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The reason I say that the way I did is because I want us to be a church, I want us to be
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Christians that do not put so much focus on God the Father that we forget that God the
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Spirit, or God the Spirit that we forget God the Son. In other words, they are all working together, have worked together.
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The salvation that we glorify in, the salvation that we revel in is a work of the triune
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God. And here in chapter 8 of Romans, it is the Holy Spirit who has taken center stage.
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We talked about this when we began the chapter, that prior to this he's only mentioned once or twice in the entire letter, chapters 1 through 7, he's only in there a couple of times and now, having established for us the need for the gospel, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation for all who believe, to the
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Jew first, but also to the Gentile, meaning to all who believe.
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And then going through and showing us that the gospel is absolutely necessary, there's nothing but the gospel that can save us, that it's nothing but the gospel which shows us the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
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And finally, we come in chapter 8 to this work of the Holy Spirit and what he has done for us.
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His burden in verses 12 through 17 in chapter 8, I would argue as a whole,
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Paul's burden is to guide us into this deeper understanding of his work, of the Holy Spirit's work in us.
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And here in these verses before us this morning, the Holy Spirit gives us a real and an inward confirmation that we are
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God's sons and daughters and for a purpose. In order that we might live now as his children in full confidence of our ultimate destiny.
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I believe that's the point of this pericope, as we call it, this section, this one thought that Paul has within this overall thought of chapter 8.
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This inward confirmation, this witnessing of the Holy Spirit, giving us confirmation that we are indeed his children, his sons and daughters.
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And that for the purpose that we should mortify our sin, that we should put aside the deeds of the flesh, as he calls them here.
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The whole of Romans 8 has this motif, this idea, running through it, the premise that God is worthy of our fullest confidence.
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All his word is true, all his promises are yes and amen in Jesus Christ. And he's a reliable God, he's a true
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God. He never misleads, he never fails to keep his word.
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And it's the Holy Spirit, as we're learning in chapter 8, and I need to warn you, just tell you, not warn you so much because that sounds so dreadful, let me tell you, we're going to take our time in this chapter.
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As I looked ahead, as I planned ahead, we have at least four, and it may be five more sermons, just in chapter 8.
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Before we get to chapter 9, we're going to understand, as best as I can explicate it to you, this work of the
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Holy Spirit of God, who, God willing, is in you. If you're a child of God, if your faith is in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, if you have repented of your sins and fled to the cross and found there forgiveness of sins, the
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Holy Spirit is in you. As I was saying earlier this morning, and this is the person of God that we are focusing our attention on.
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And I said there's five more sermons, that means we've been preaching on for two months of Sundays, and I think we could stay there for a lot longer to really understand the work of this person, this third person, as we call him, of the
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Trinity. There are two lines of thought that are converging here in these verses, chapter 8, verses 12 to 17.
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On the one hand, we have the way the Holy Spirit works within us to give us confidence in our relationship to God, and then we go on to the lifelong business of eradicating our sin, an endeavor
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I would suggest to you is completely impossible if it is attempted absent full faith and confidence in God's character and our status, our standing with him.
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We'll speak about this later, but I want to put this thought out to you. That as we go through this life, as we mortify, as the
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Puritans like to say it, and I like that word, mortify our sin, put it to death, crucify it, as we go on recognizing and getting rid of our sin,
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I'm going to suggest to you that if we do this without full faith and confidence and trust, and as much as we can have knowledge in God and his spirit, we'll fail.
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Because it is by God's spirit that we accomplish this in the first place. And we must trust him.
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We must have full confidence in him to lead us in this way. So that's one stream of thought that's in these verses, and secondly, there's a long stream of redemptive history that I believe comes to a glorious conclusion and climax here in what
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Paul says about our adoption as sons. So I had Conley read from chapter 4, where God calls
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Israel his son, let my son go, and if you don't let my son go, your son is going to pay the price.
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This is my son. And I will have him to worship me. Adam was
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God's first created son. And Adam failed to remain true to the duties and the character of a son.
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Which is what God called Israel out of Egypt for. That's what Adam before that was supposed to be.
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And since that time, since Adam's fall in the garden, as our
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Lord said in John 4 .23 to the Samaritan woman, God has been seeking who?
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True worshipers who will worship him in spirit and truth. We could say true worshipers who will worship him as sons and daughters.
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A moment ago I said sons and daughters. Paul uses three terms and he never says daughters.
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But the three terms he uses are very close to each other. They're almost synonymous. In verses 14 and 15, he uses the word sons.
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He uses children in verse 16 and he uses heirs. Joint heirs with Christ in verse 17.
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At no point does he use the word I used, which is daughters. I want to point out that sons includes our sisters in the
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Lord. It includes you if you have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a general term. Out of Egypt I called my son.
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That meant the whole nation. That meant men, women, boys, girls, children, adult.
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We could go on and expand that a bit. And we could say Jew, Greek, free, slave, men, women.
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And I make that point by way of just as I go through this message, when
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I say son, when I say adopted sons, that sort of thing, it includes us all who have faith, regardless of any of those distinctions.
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The first two verses that I read to you, they form a passage. They form sort of a bridge between what came just before and what follows.
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They speak to us of our duty as sons to mortify our sinful, our ungodly ways, called in verse 13 the deeds of the body.
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Verses 14 and 15, when we get to those, they speak of our sonship to God. And then finally as we go through this, verses 16 and 17 will speak to us of the inner witness of the
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Spirit, how He assures us of our sonship and the ultimate promises that follow or that inherit to us because of that sonship.
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All of this, all of this to confirm to us that we are secure in God. God would have us to be that, secure and confident and assured.
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And that's not in us. That's not in our ability. That's not in my discipline, my ability to knock off three different sins a week or anything like that.
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This confidence, this assurance we have is in the character of God who's making these promises to us and witnessing to us by His Spirit of those.
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I can't overstate the importance of this, that this certainty that we are to have is not in ourselves how well or how much or how fast we put to death the deeds of the body or how often or how loudly or how impassioned we cry out,
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Abba, Father. It is God's character that's at center stage here.
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We have much work to do. We are to put to death the deeds of the body. But this is all because of God and who and what
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He is and what He has done for us and is testifying to us by His Spirit. Verse 12, if you want to look at that again.
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So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. So, so then, those two words, so then, it brings us back to verses 9 through 11.
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And I'm not going to repeat all that for you right now, except for this, that verse 11 is the promise made personally to each believer by the indwelling
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Holy Spirit, the promise that you will be raised up from the dead. You will be resurrected as was
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Jesus Christ. By the same Spirit who raised Him up. So then, because we follow in Jesus' resurrection, given that fact, given all that Paul argued that we covered last week, so then, therefore, accordingly, as a consequence of that, we are debtors.
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We are debtors. The negative, not to the flesh, really focuses on the positive.
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If not to the flesh, then who are we debtors to? Well, we're debtors to the one who is center stage here in chapter 8, which is the
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Spirit. And His statement here also brings forth an assumption. It's one that we don't often give a lot of thought to.
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Where chapter 5 tells us that by birth, we carry the weight of Adam's sin, we are guilty already of Adam's sin, because he represented us when he did his one act of disobedience.
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If that's not enough, now we learn that we've also inherited a debt.
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We are debtors. A statement of fact. It's an inherited debt.
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It's one that we passively became responsible for. It's sort of the way that our grandchildren, maybe even our children, are going to pay for the massive and expanding national debt today.
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It's one that simply comes upon you by birth. And when it comes due, it won't matter who initiated it, only that it gets paid.
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Debts are like what John Adams once said about facts. Do you remember this?
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John Adams said, facts are stubborn things. They don't wiggle very much. They don't have much room for negotiation.
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They're stubborn. Facts are just what they are. Debts are like that.
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They have to somehow be satisfied. A debt has to be paid. So Paul's thought here is something like this.
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The fact that the indwelling Spirit of God is bringing you life now and promises to resurrect your mortal body just as he did
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Jesus' that brings an obligation, it brings a debt to the purveyor of these promises.
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That is to live our life now under the rule, under the dominion of God the Holy Spirit to whom the debt is owed.
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So what do we note here? We owe a debt to someone or something for who and what we are.
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Debt is to the flesh or debt is to the Spirit. You're born with a debt to the one. Of course, the debt is to the other.
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It's by conversion. It's by the promises that he gives. But we owe a debt. And what is the debt that we owe?
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Well, in either case, whether you owe to the flesh or you owe to the Spirit, the debt you owe is to live your life according to the ruling principle of the one to whom you owe the debt.
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To arrange your life, to live it out, to walk in the ways of that one to whom it is owed.
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Now, debt in the Bible has some different shades of meaning. It could be a literal debt, as in Jesus Christ's parable of the man who owed 10 ,000 talents to his master.
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Well, he simply owed them. It was a debt. It was the money. It was a literal debt. Debt can be a moral obligation.
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Paul says in Romans 1 .14, I am under obligation both to Greeks and barbarians. Romans 15 .27,
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speaking of the gift to the poor saints in Jerusalem, he said, indeed, they owe it to them.
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It's a debt. Galatians 5 .3, if you try to keep part of the law, you are obligated.
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You are in debt to keep the entire law. So debt can be a moral obligation.
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Debt is also sometimes presented, the word for debt is also translated properly as sin.
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Forgive us our debts as we forgive others. Forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others.
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Or some translations, trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Luke 13 .4
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is an interesting one. Jesus says, do you think that they, meaning the ones who died when the
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Tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders, worse debtors?
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Well, in our current passage, it is moral obligation that really fits best. The debt owed, the obligation that must be paid, is to conduct ourselves in accord with one of two ruling principles.
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The principle of flesh, or the principle of spirit. Now once that debt is paid, of course, the reward is collected.
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Look down, please, at verse 13. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die.
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But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. What was
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I speaking of before? See, the debt has to be paid. Debts are stubborn things. Debts don't give very much.
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They don't like to negotiate. If your obligation is to the flesh, you must satisfy what is owed by living according to that ruling principle.
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Upon satisfaction of its demands, after you've made all the payments, by living according to it during this life, the payments, if you will, those payments that you've made, you get your reward.
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When you get, as it were, from the bank, and it says the mortgage is paid, in this case, death.
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Eternal separation from God. Conversely, conversely, if what you owe is to the
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Spirit of God who gave life to you, the Spirit of God who promises to resurrect you, if your faith is in Christ, if that is the one to whom you owe a debt, if it is according to His ruling principle that you live now, not satisfying the whims of the flesh, but putting to death the deeds of the flesh, living in that way, then the satisfaction of your debt, when it's paid and you get that certificate that says mortgage paid, debt satisfied, that issues forth into eternal life.
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That's pretty easy to understand. Now, I used to think that John, our author
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John, was the one who was so black and white. You read John's gospel, it's dark, it's night.
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Meaning it's, excuse me, it's day, it's night. So it's good, it's bad.
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It's black, it's white. It's right, it's wrong. Very clear distinctions. That's in John, that's in all his letters, that's in the book of Revelation.
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He always reminds me of the old cowboy movies. You remember where the bad guy wears the dark clothes and no matter what he does, they're always dusty.
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He could come out of the cleaners and as soon as he steps on the wooden plank sidewalk, he's dusty and dingy and bad looking.
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But the good guy, with all his white clothes and the spangles and everything, he could ride on the trail for days and he's still white and good.
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That's the kind of black and white I always saw him. But Paul is like that too, isn't he? It's flesh or spirit.
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It's the worldly ways or it's godly ways. You either are in Adam or you're in Christ and there's no gray area between the two.
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And here in 8, 12 to 17 of Romans, you live according to the flesh, you will die, you will have eternal separation from God.
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We're speaking of eternal dying, condemnation, or by the spirit.
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And then eternal life with God. It's black, white, it's one or the other. What is this style of life then that we're obligated to?
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I mean, this would be an important question. If the choices are so distinct, if it's one or the other, what is it that we're obligated to?
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What is this debt that we owe? How do we pay it off, if you will? Well, it's death to sin.
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That's what Paul's talking about here. Death to sin. We owe a debt to the Spirit of God and that debt is paid by our constant effort at identifying and then putting to death.
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Again, the Puritans like the word mortifying. Mortifying our sin. Any sin that is exposed.
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Exposed by the reading of the word of God. Exposed by the indwelling Spirit as He makes us more sensible to ourselves and who
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God is and what God has done. Whatever comes out.
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By deeds of body, Paul doesn't mean to drive us towards a platonic dualism where anything physical is evil.
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I mean, read Proverbs, read Ecclesiastes, even the Song of Solomon that would rail against any such thing.
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He speaks of living according to the flesh. He means to give vent to the desires of the natural man.
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Galatians 5, 19 -21 gives us an illustrative list. It's only illustrative.
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It's not comprehensive. It can't be comprehensive because we're ever inventing new ways.
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If we look at the world outside of us or around us, there are things happening that are becoming legislated that you can't go against anymore that half a generation ago we wouldn't have even thought of.
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And they come at us in this great flood. So I'm going to read this list from Galatians 5, 19 -21 as just an illustration of the types of things, the deeds of the body that must be put to death.
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But don't take it as a comprehensive list. Understand that the world around us is constantly inventing new ways and sometimes we're inventing new excuses.
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What are the deeds of the flesh that need to be put to death? This death that we owe to the Spirit? We are debtors not to the flesh?
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What's left out there? It rings all the more strongly by its exclusion.
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We are debtors to the Spirit. Now here are the deeds of the flesh. Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
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Those are the most dreadful words in that whole list. Things like these. To live by the
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Spirit is not to do them. To live by the Spirit is to recognize them, to repent of them, to put them to death, to be done with them, to set them aside.
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That is in fact the debt we owe, this lifelong enterprise against sin.
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John Stott puts it this way, Mortification is a clear -sided recognition of evil as evil, leading to such a decisive and radical repudiation of it that no imagery can do it justice except putting it to death.
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Clear -sided recognition of evil as evil, which means no excuses. And I would argue the
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Holy Spirit testifying within wouldn't allow us for excuses. We have to repress the truth that He witnesses to us to do that.
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But it's to recognize evil as evil. How do we do so? Well, plain reading of the text of the
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Bible everywhere would tell us what is evil. And it doesn't compromise. It's the black and the white type of thing.
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It's the good, the bad. It's here it is. There's no wiggle room.
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There's no compromise for it. Recognize evil as evil and make a decisive and radical repudiation of it that is so intense and so decisive we can say it's been put to death.
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And with that in hand, from verse 13, let's move on to verse 14. For all who are led by the
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Spirit of God are sons of God. You know, the biblical idea of a son is one whose character reflects his father.
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And you get a sense of this when you read about the kings of Judah. 2 Chronicles 34, verse 2 is typical.
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It says, Josiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of David his father.
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And he did not turn his side to the right hand or to the left. David was his father, or we could say
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Josiah was his son because he lived according to that image, according to those precepts that David would have.
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You could see David, King David, the greatest of Judah's kings, you could see King David in his son and, of course, his great -great -great -great -grandson quite a few generations away, but you could see
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David's image in him. Now, it's the same principle we find, though it's a bit more negative, in John's Gospel, chapter 8, verse 44, where Jesus said to the
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Pharisees, You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desire.
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You see, what we do, what you do, it proves your lineage. It proves whether you're moving forward from the
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Spirit or from the flesh, whose son you really are. Sonship is something more than just birth.
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Sonship means to reflect your father. It means that people can say that the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
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To be a son in the biblical sense is to be like your father.
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In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that peacemakers will be called sons of God. Then he tells us to address him,
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God, as sons addressed. He called him our father, our father who is in heaven.
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Following this idea of sons, remember it means daughters, it means slave and free, it means male, female, Greek or Jew. Following that idea,
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Jesus later tells us, therefore you shall be holy as your heavenly father is holy. What does this mean?
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It means to act as a son, to reflect your father. Be like him.
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That's a son's reasonable duty. One can trace the whole flow of redemptive history with sonship.
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God created Adam to be his son, to love him, to worship him, to obey him, to reflect him as he lived out the stewardship he was given.
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In a word, to trust him. The Exodus, many generations later, that was a great act of redemption which had as its one primary purpose restoration of sonhood.
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To redeem his son out of Israel. Say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, let my son go so that he may serve me.
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The prophet Hosea reminded Israel of this. Hosea 11, verse 1. When Israel was a child,
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I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. So Adam, then
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Israel, then the kings, they all had in common one thing. They failed.
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Adam sinned. Hosea says later of Israel, the more they were called, the more they went away.
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They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burnt offerings to the idols. Even the best of Israel's kings committed at least one major act of treasonous mistrust.
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Uzziah's heart swelled with pride. Esau, he sought human rather than divine healing.
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David, we all know about. Hezekiah took credit for what God had done for him and allowed his heart to be puffed up as well.
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And then there's you and me. No one of us can claim to be any better a son than any of these were.
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So what do we do? What are we to do then? As with anything else in our relationship with God, when we see these things come out, when we look at this whole history and all these men who failed so consistently and miserably, there's really only one place to look for answers and that's the
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Bible. And in the Bible, there's only one answer that's given us and that's Jesus Christ, God's eternally begotten
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Son who became flesh. God, the Son who lived with the same temptations, the same struggles that we have, yet without sin.
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We could say that He never failed to be God's true Son. You see, where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.
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Adam was offered the chance to fulfill God's purposes His own way, the quick way, the easy way.
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Sort of a fast food approach to spiritual health. Jesus was tempted by the same devil who tempted
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Adam. The same devil tempted Him to inherit the kingdom on terms other than God's.
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Where Adam accepted, Jesus declined. Think of Israel.
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God's Son who He called out of Egypt. They spent 40 years succumbing to temptations. Jesus Christ, God's Son, spent 40 days triumphing over temptation.
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Matthew chapter 2 verse 15 says that Hosea's prophecy, out of Egypt I call my Son, finds an ultimate expression.
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It finds a fulfillment. It finds a satisfaction. It finds a Son who never failed.
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Who at every step reflected God as a Son should. God's only begotten and beloved
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Son, Jesus Christ. We've already covered this from previous chapters, so I'll be a little bit brief about this.
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I'll say it very simply. His obedience, Christ's obedience,
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His Sonship, His proper Sonship, His non -failure,
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His obedience is by faith yours. Credited to your account if your faith is in Him.
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Paul says very clearly that what He did on the cross, we were in Him, being represented.
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Our sins being punished in Him and so forgiven. For the current passage, that means that His perfect Sonship is yours too.
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Move on please to verses 15 and 16.
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These are the last two really for this morning. 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,
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Abba Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirits 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 be glorified with Him.
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You know verse 15 starts with this negative affirmation of the
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Spirit's work. It tells us what we did not receive from Him. We did not receive a spirit of slavery.
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Now think about this for a moment. Think where we come from to get to this point in Romans 8.
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Chapter 6 verse 6 says, We know that our old self was crucified with Him, that's Jesus, in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
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Verse 18 then says, Having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.
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You know slavery is sort of like debt. You are enslaved or indebted to one or the other, to the flesh or to the
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Holy Spirit, to worldly ways of sin or to the righteous ways of Christ.
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But Paul says here that you did not receive the
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Spirit, the idea, the way of living if you will, of slavery, to fall back into fear.
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That's not what we received. And slavery to sin is a spirit of fear. It's fear of abandonment.
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Worldly ways are ever changing. Sometimes it's breathtaking. As I was saying a moment ago, what made you accepted and loved one day might change direction as quickly and easily as the winds and suddenly you who are loved and lauded are offensive and reviled.
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Worldly ways are slavery. And it is fearful because it's ever changing. You can't keep up and you need to change your whole world view every half a generation or so.
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There's fear of failure. Slavery is fear of failure, is it not? It's how hard it is to measure up.
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There's a constant pressure to be accepted and it's real and it's very powerful. Peter acknowledges this in 1
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Peter 1, 4, 4. He says, With respect to this, this being your abandonment of your old ways, with respect to this, they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery and they malign you.
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Too many Christians live with almost the same sorts of fears but they direct them towards God.
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Fear that God will reject me. Fear that I won't measure up. This is what
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Paul is saying. We did not receive. We did not receive from God what you get from the world, which is fear of rejection.
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Constant failure. And as I was saying, the things you must believe, the things you must affirm, change so quickly.
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And so if we're going to be accepted out there, it is a fearful thing. It's really hard to keep up with.
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Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never changes. When we read his word, take it at its plainest meaning.
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It's a firm and sure and eternally secure word. It will never fail you.
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But do you ever bring your insecurity from the world to your relationship with God?
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I think we all do that at some level. This fear of abandonment, this fear of not measuring up, this fear that I didn't accomplish enough, this fear that I didn't pray long enough today and tomorrow
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I won't mortify enough sin and I won't sing loud enough in church and I won't go to enough prayer meetings and so God is going to be angry at me and a bolt of lightning is going to consume me or at least rebuke me.
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Do you ever feel in your relationship with God that you just don't measure up, that you're just not good enough, that you're just not cutting it?
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I want to give you some encouragement. If you feel that way, you don't measure up.
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You never did measure up. You never will measure up. Let me encourage you with a couple more things.
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That spirit, that idea is different than the one Paul says is of the Holy Spirit.
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We'll speak in a moment about what it is that he does give us, but for now let me tell you it is not fear.
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He did not give you a spirit of fear and fear here in these verses means anything that detracts you from your confidence, your full trust and hope in God and what he has done for you in his
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Son and communicated to you by his Spirit. Anything that detracts from that is a spirit of fear and it's not from God.
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It is not the Spirit who gives you that and that is a characteristic of fear -filled slavery, not sonship with God.
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Not sonship with God. Fear is a useless emotion. You or I can never have measured up or satisfied
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God's righteous demands. Read Romans 1 -6 again. When you go home, read them again. You cannot measure up.
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You cannot have done it. Fear accomplishes nothing.
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And this fear that I'm speaking of here is not fear that is reverence for God. That's the way the word is often rightly used but that's not what is here.
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Here in these verses, the spirit of fear which you don't get from the Spirit, which the
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Holy Spirit does not give you, that fear is terror, intimidation.
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It's not respect for God. It's being scared of him. The world ought to be scared.
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The world ought to be terrified of God. But not you.
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Not you, his son. Not you, his child. His daughter from wherever you came.
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Jesus Christ on the cross took upon his person all the consequences of our sin.
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It's all been exhausted in him by God the
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Father pouring his wrath, his fury on his son as he hung on the cross. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ and you were in him when those sins were reconciled or resolved, so have no fear.
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God's anger has been satisfied. Be encouraged.
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You never did do anything that would please God. You never did, you never could.
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None of us could. Jesus Christ. He pleased
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God. Remember from heaven the Father said, this is my beloved son in whom
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I am well pleased. Hear him, the exclusive. Hear him. He who paid for your sins.
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He who suffered God's wrath on your behalf. He who carried you, as it were, to the cross with him and represented you on the cross.
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And all the fear that we should rightly have of God, all the terror that everyone should have of God because of who he is and what he will do to sinners.
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All of that terror is gone if you believe that Jesus Christ paid it all.
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It is Jesus who on the cross sets us free from sin and all its ultimate consequences. And I say ultimate because as we've said, sin surrounds us everywhere.
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We see it in the temptations of the world. We see it in the evils of society. We see it as our bodies age and weaken.
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But the ultimate consequence, the final, eternal consequence of sin which is eternal separation from God, this being the one consequence most to be feared, most to be scared of, that thing which should terrify everyone, that fear is taken away.
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That fear is not what the Spirit of God witnesses to our spirits. Jesus who died is
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Jesus who paid for our sin. The Spirit who awakened our souls and made us able to comprehend and believe this.
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It is God who applies Christ's righteousness to you. Jesus said this in John 8, 36.
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So if the Spirit sets you free, you are free indeed. And I said that wrong.
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So if the Son, excuse me, if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
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You see, the adoption that the Spirit witnesses to you, not conditional. God's election is without precondition of anything, moral purity or anything else.
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If God's election were preconditioned upon something good in us, some moral or ethical perfection or even really goodness that approached anything close to God, if that were the condition, none could be saved.
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If there were any precondition to it, we'd all be condemned. And the only way out of this fix is
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Jesus Christ and He who paid for all that. No, the adoption that the
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Spirit witnesses to you is not one of fear. It is not one of slavery. It is one of confidence in the person and the work of God.
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The great hymns say it over and over, don't they? Jesus paid it all.
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All to Him I owe. My sin, not the part but the whole, is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.
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In Wesley's great hymn. No condemnation, now I dread. Jesus and all in Him is mine.
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You see, you owe a debt. We all owe a debt. Years ago when we still had a mortgage on our house, it would sometimes get purchased by investors.
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And we'd find out in the mail that we now owed Acme Mortgage Factors or whoever the company was that bought our mortgage.
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Well, if your faith is in Jesus Christ and His cross, your debt, the one owed to the flesh, has been purchased by Him.
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It was owed to the flesh, it was owed to the world, it was owed to the devil. And the same way that our mortgages got bought, well not the same way, by analogy the same way that our mortgage got bought by another, now the obligation was to this other.
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So, your obligation is to the spirit. It's only the same obligation by way of analogy to live according to that ruling principle.
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No longer the flesh. When our mortgage got bought, we had to make the same exact mortgage payment.
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They couldn't change the terms on us, but now if we take this to the spiritual analogy, the terms do change.
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You still have a debt, but no longer to sin but to righteousness. No longer to go ahead in your own power, your own strength, your own whims, but according to that led by the
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Spirit of God. All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God is what Paul said. Not to overpress the metaphor, but our every mortification of every sin, be it large or small, each one is in a manner of speaking that payment, that discharge of the debt that we owe.
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Original obligation was to the whims and desires of the flesh, the ways of sin and death. Now it is to the
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Spirit and the ways of holiness and righteousness. These are the paths He leads us to. This is Psalm 23, goodness and mercy following us all the days of our lives.
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This is God's Spirit who did this by declaration. Therefore, having been justified by faith, and that makes us
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God's children, and it is He who now leads us in sanctification, making us more and more
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God's true sons as we more and more recognize and then put to death our sin.
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The second half of verse 15 says, but you have received the Spirit of adoption. And here's the great antithesis.
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You didn't receive this other one that I've been railing against for the last half hour. You did not receive that, not slavery, not fear, not fear of abandonment, not fear of failure, because what we deserve to be abandoned for, the failures that we did, those have been answered by Jesus Christ, so we don't have those anymore.
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What did we get? Verse 15, you have received the
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Spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba, Father.
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Adoption as sons because we're in Jesus Christ, because our sins in Him were answered.
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They were paid for by Him. And so now standing before God, we don't stand before God on our own merits, and He looks at us and says, you don't look at all like my son.
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Think of Joshua in the book of Zechariah where he's clothed in the filthy rags, and God commands the angel of the
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Lord to remove those from him and put the clean turban on him, put the clean priestly clothes on him.
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Ah, now he says, this looks like one of my children. And we in the same way, by faith in Jesus Christ, have had the filth taken off of us, cleansed and new clothes, the blood of Jesus Christ.
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So when God looks, He says, this I recognize as my son. This I recognize as my son.
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We've spoken of this before in John 17, was Jesus saying in His high priestly prayer that the love
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God has for Him, for Jesus, for His only begotten Son, that love He also has, an equal sign from that love to those who love
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Him, those who are in Him, those who are His true sons and daughters. So He looks upon them, and He sees
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Jesus Christ, and He says, I recognize this one. This is my son or daughter.
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This is my child that I have adopted. We call
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Him Abba, Father. Abba, this term of intimacy and affection. The opposite of being scared and intimidated.
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Not this spirit that I can't even approach my Father. Too often, reverence for God, what the
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Bible often calls fear, transmogrifies into this holy terror as though we're sure we're going to get smited from Heaven every time we mess up.
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The spirit of adoption says that it can't be more different. The debt you owe is the debt of a son, not a slave.
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You, by Christ's obedience to His Father, you are granted to come boldly to the throne of grace and call Him Abba, Father.
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It's an Aramaic word. It means my Father. Personally, possession, this one who
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I own, He is my Father. Abba, Father. It's the term that Jesus used when
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He prayed against Gethsemane where He says, Abba, Father, if it is possible, take this cup from me.
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Abba. And this word, this title, this approach to God, now yours.
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If you're in Christ. Abba. You know, you simply cannot be used of a
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Father who is distant, who is angry, one of whom you are terrified. It's not the name that allows for any possibility of Him ultimately forsaking anyone who was bought by His Son's blood.
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This whole passage speaks about our adoption as His sons, a fulfillment of all that Adam should have been, what
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Israel should have been, what the kings should have been, and now what we are by faith in Him who fulfilled it all.
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Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Verse 16 says,
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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.
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Our confidence, our progress as we grow in the
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Lord, mortifying our sin more and more. How does it come to us? Well, it's the inner witness of the
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Spirit. It's Him, God, the third person of the Trinity bringing us along. And it is also our full confidence in God and His character and the truth of His promises and the sureness of His Word.
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And when He says, I will never leave you or forsake you, we know that He means it.
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And when we mess up, when we stumble, when we fall, when we fail and we have to go again and confess our sins and repent before God and ask
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Him to forgive us, we know we still come to Him as sons, as daughters, as boys, as girls, as His children, because it is
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Jesus Christ who brings us to that throne of grace. It is the
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Spirit of God witnessing with our spirit, witnessing with you personally that you are
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God's child by faith in His Son. The Holy Spirit is giving us this real, this inward confirmation of all these truths.
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We can hardly move forward in this book of Romans without this full confidence, because there are some things coming up in chapters 9 through 11 that would be a little bit scary, except for this, except for the
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Holy Spirit within telling you that you truly are God's Son, God's daughter, and this in order that we might live now as His children in full confidence of our ultimate destiny, which is to be with Jesus Christ and see
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Him as He is. Amen? Heavenly Father, we give You thanks again for Your Word and for the sure and certain promises that it gives us.
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We give You thanks, Father, for the work of our Savior Jesus Christ and that because of Him, because of His fulfillment of perfect sonship, we can come before You knowing that we're adopted, that You, Lord, have brought us to Yourself and given us this wonderful privilege to call
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You Abba, Father. We pray, Father, that we would dutifully and consistently discharge to You the debt that we owe to Your Spirit, to put to death the deeds of the body, to recognize, to see the sins that we still commit as we learn, to recognize evil as evil, and,
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Father, to repent and to know that we are still, no matter what, we are still
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Your sons, Your daughters, that You, Lord, that Your decree will never change. So, Father, guide us in this process.
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Make us more and more like Your Son, Jesus Christ. And may we go forward in full confidence because of who and what