Romans Chapter 7

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Romans Chapter 8

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Well, good morning, gentlemen, if you would take out your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 7.
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Alright, so what we're going to do, we're going to read the whole chapter like we do each week.
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And for those of you who don't know me, I guess most of you know me, but for those who don't, my name's Keith, I'm the pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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And I come in each week and I'm going through the book of Romans one chapter at a time.
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And if you don't see me next week, my wife is nine months pregnant.
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So, in fact, if my phone rings and I leave, just know I gotta go.
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But it may be a couple weeks that I'll be out once the baby comes.
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But I've been doing Romans now for several months.
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We are in chapter 7, we're doing one chapter a week.
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And I want to preface today's lesson by saying this.
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Romans chapter 7 is historically one of the more difficult chapters to interpret.
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It tends to have good scholars on various sides of how to interpret the passage.
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So my goal for you today is to help you to understand the passage better and to give you why I hold to the perspective that I hold to.
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But if at the end of the lesson you come to a different conclusion, we're still going to be friends.
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I'm not going to sit here and argue with you because this is a passage that good men have stood on two sides of or three sides of.
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We're going to talk about the different views.
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So understand that in general, I come with a very confident perspective.
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But that's not on every passage.
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I do believe in what's called perspicuity.
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Perspicuity is a word which simply means clarity.
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I do believe the Bible is clear in what it teaches us about doctrine and what it teaches us about God and Jesus and those things.
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I do believe it has a general clarity or a perspicuity.
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That's the doctrine of perspicuity.
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But not every passage is as clear as other passages.
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There are some things in the Old Testament that are a little more difficult.
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There are some things in the writings of Paul that are more difficult.
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Even Peter says that there are people who twist the words of Paul because they're a little more difficult.
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So we have to understand that not everything is as clear as John 3.16.
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But we have John 3.16, so we have clarity in the essentials.
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And what we're going to talk about today, there are some things that aren't necessarily essential.
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And if we disagree on them, that's okay.
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So are we good? Alright.
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So let's begin by reading and then I will pray.
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It says, Or do you not know, brothers? For I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.
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For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives.
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For if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage.
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Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive.
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But if her husband dies, she is free from the law.
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And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress.
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Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
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For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work and our members to bear fruit for death.
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But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
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What shall we say then? That the law is sin by no means.
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Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.
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For I would not have known what it was to covet.
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If the law had not said, you shall not covet.
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But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.
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For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
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I was once alive apart from the law.
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But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
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The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me.
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For sin seized an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
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So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
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And did that which is good bring death to me? By no means.
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It was sin producing death in me.
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Through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
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For we know that the law is spiritual.
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But I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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For I do not understand my own actions.
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For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.
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Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good.
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So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
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For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.
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For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
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For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
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Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
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So I find it to be a law that when I do, excuse me, that I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
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For I delight in the law of God and my inner being.
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But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
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O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray now that as we seek to engage in a study of a difficult passage, I pray Lord first that you would keep me from error.
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For Lord, I am a fallible man, incapable of preaching error and I don't want to.
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For the sake of my conscience, for the sake of your name, for the sake of these men, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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And I pray that you would show us the truth in this text, help us to stay bound to what the text says.
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And I pray Lord that your word would reign supreme in our hearts.
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And Lord, if there are those here today who do not know Christ, that today might be a day where they see Christ as wonderful and beautiful and winsome, that they would turn from their sins and turn to the Savior.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Romans has a relatively, I don't want to say simple, but it has a relatively well defined structure.
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Paul spends the first three chapters expressing the sinful nature of mankind, which builds to the crescendo of chapter 3 where he says, what shall we say, or rather he talks about everyone being under sin, the Jew and the Greek.
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Both the Jew and the Gentile, both are under sin.
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And then in the remaining part of chapter 3 and into chapter 4, he begins to describe justification.
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Justification is how a sinful man is made right with the Holy God.
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And he shows that justification is by faith and not by works.
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Then he gets into chapter 5 and he continues that concept of understanding our relationship to God.
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He talks about having been justified by faith.
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We have peace with God.
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He talks about what it means to be in peace with God.
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And then at the end of chapter 5, he describes the relationship between Adam and Jesus, saying that we were in Adam when we were born, and through being born again, we are in Christ.
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Then we get to chapter 6.
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And in chapter 6, he asks a very important question.
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Shall we continue to sin so that grace can abound? We talked about this last week.
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The answer is no.
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Just because we are saved by grace, does not mean that we are given a license to sin.
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Any man who says that I'm saved by Christ, therefore my sin doesn't matter, doesn't understand the weight of sin, doesn't understand the danger of sin, doesn't understand the power of sin, and should repent of that idea.
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Because Paul says, may that idea never be that we would think that because we are under grace that we have some license to sin.
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We do not.
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So when we get to chapter 7, this is the following of Paul's statement in verse 23.
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If you look at chapter 6, verse 23, he makes this very important statement.
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He says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Okay, so most of us have heard that.
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Most of us maybe have even memorized Romans 6.23.
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The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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And then he immediately, if you can imagine your Bible without numbers, imagine it without the chapter and the verse divisions, he immediately flows into his next thought.
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He flows into this idea that he's speaking to a certain people.
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Notice what he says in verse 1.
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He says, do you not know, brothers, that I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? And that seems like an odd statement, but taken at face value, it's simple.
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Paul is saying, I'm speaking to people who know the law.
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First of all, who knows the law according to Paul? The Jewish people.
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They have the law.
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It was given to them by Moses.
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But do we think in this, and again, this is opinion, do we think that he's limiting this to only the Jews? I would say not, only because at this time, even the Gentiles would have heard of the law of God, particularly those within the church, within the Roman church.
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They would have had the Old Testament scriptures.
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They would have heard the law.
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So he doesn't say, I'm speaking to Jews only.
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He's saying, I'm speaking to people who know the law.
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And that would include anyone who knows the law, right? I mean, from just a general perspective, I'm speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives.
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And then he uses an analogy.
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And the analogy is the analogy of a married woman.
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He says, a married woman is bound by law to her husband only as long as her husband lives.
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And the idea is this.
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If a man and a woman are married, and the man and the woman separate, well, she's not automatically free to be remarried.
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But if he dies, she is free to be remarried.
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A widow has no binding to her husband because her husband has died.
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She is now free from that relationship.
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Death has severed the contract.
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In fact, don't we even say that in the marriage vows? You know, love, honor, and cherish until when? Until death do us part, right? The death of one of the individuals means the other person is free to remarry, and that remarriage would not constitute sin.
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That's an important concept.
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Now, it doesn't mean that everybody has to be remarried.
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A lot of women stay widows until they pass, and men stay widowers until they pass.
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But there's no sin if a man's wife dies and he marries another woman, or if a woman's husband dies and she marries another man.
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No sin.
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And you say, well, how does this fit in everything? Well, Paul is making an analogy about the law.
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He's talking about how the law is only enacted until we die.
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Now, you say, well, that doesn't make any sense because that means it's enacted our whole life.
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Yes, but look at verse 5.
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I'm sorry, verse 4.
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He says, likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ.
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And what he's saying is there came a point where we actually did die in Christ.
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What is your baptism supposed to represent? Death to what? Sin, according to Romans 6, right? Go ahead.
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Okay.
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Then they separated, right? She's still alive.
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They say she can't remarry.
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Where do you divorce? I don't want to get into all that right now because that will take me down a whole other...
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That's a whole other conversation I don't want to get into because we'd have to go into Matthew 19 and other passages.
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I understand the importance of the question.
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If you don't mind, I can maybe answer it after the lesson.
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But if I get into that right now, it's going to take us out of this.
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The question of divorce and remarriage is a bigger question and a much longer answer.
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Alright, thanks.
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Okay.
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Not that I don't want to answer your question.
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It's just not what we're talking about right now.
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Because the picture here is death.
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He's saying death puts the law away.
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If a man dies, his wife is no longer bound to that law.
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And now he's saying, but we've died in Christ.
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When you were buried in baptism, you were raised to new life in Christ, right? So the question becomes, well, where's the law? Does that mean that the law has no more value to us? Well, let's for a moment just look at what he's saying.
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He says, you have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that you may bear fruit for God.
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Understand this.
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When you become a Christian, you are now under Christ.
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You are not under Moses.
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You understand? And again, this would address primarily the Jews.
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Paul's talking in this sense to the Jews.
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He says, when you were under the law, you were under Moses.
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But when you came to Christ, you died.
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Just like the woman whose husband died, you're no longer bound to that.
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You are now bound to Christ, right? Now, does this mean the law of Moses is no longer have any value? No, no, no, no.
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That's not the point.
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The point is the law did one thing.
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The law condemned you.
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Christ saved you.
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And you've heard me say this before, but I'm going to say it again.
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The law cannot save you.
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If you are under law, you are only under condemnation.
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Let me ask you this.
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Can any of you be saved by keeping the law? No.
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We can't be saved by keeping the law.
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Because the law is not intended to save.
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The law is intended to condemn.
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And as long as you are under the law, you will remain condemned.
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Yes? I have one question.
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Say that just hypothetically speaking, not really, but if we were able to keep the law and live perfect like Jesus, would that save us? I will give you this answer.
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From a purely hypothetical perspective, if a person were sinless, they still wouldn't necessarily be righteous.
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And righteousness is what gets us into the kingdom, not just sinlessness.
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But we have to also take back to Romans 5, where Romans 5 says that even those who did not have the law died because of what Adam did.
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We all inherit the sin of Adam.
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So even if we didn't sin on our own, we would still bear the burden of Adam's guilt.
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And so we would still not be able to be saved by what we do.
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Because we bear the guilt of our representative.
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I talked about that in Romans 5.
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Paul tells us that in Adam all die.
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So it's not just our guilt, but we bear the guilt of Adam who brought sin into the world and death spread to every man because of his sin.
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And so that's an important reality too.
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So even in the hypothetical, well, if I could keep myself from sin, which we wouldn't, but even if we could, we would still be in the category of Adam, not in the category of Christ.
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That's the two categories.
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And so there's only one way to be saved, and it's not by keeping the law.
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So again, going back to verse 4, it says, you've died to the law through the body of Christ.
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Now look at verse 5.
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He says, For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.
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But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
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I want to make a point here.
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Romans 6, 7, and 8 are all about the same subject.
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Remember Romans 6 was should we continue to sin so that grace can abound? The answer is no.
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Romans 8 is about living in the Spirit.
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And we're going to get there maybe next week if I'm here, and if not, when I come back, we're going to talk about living in the Spirit.
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Romans 7 is the bridge which takes us from 6 to 7, and it's the bridge of asking the question, well, where does the law fit into this? If we're not supposed to sin, but we're supposed to live and walk by the Spirit, well, what does the law of God do? How does the law of God fit into that? Because some people would say, well, what we have to do is after we become a Christian, we have to live by the law.
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We have to continue to hold to the law of Moses.
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But Paul challenges that in Galatians, and he says, no, we're never made alive by the law.
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The law never gives us life.
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The law only condemns.
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The law does not bring life.
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Yes? Yes.
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Yes, but what do we want to do? Do we want to continue to follow the Mosaic legislation, or do we want to follow Christ? Yes.
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Yes, works are the result, not the cause.
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Yes.
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So, I saw another hand.
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Was that your hand? Yeah, but I'm trying to figure.
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I mean, for me, my answer is pretty simple, but at the same time, I feel like it's wrong, but at the same time, I feel like it's right.
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I don't know exactly how to word it.
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I'm not good at wording stuff.
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For me, from what you put on the board, basically what it is to me, 7 just points out how much we can't fulfill the law.
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That's why Jesus can't fill that law, because we can't do it.
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You know what I'm saying? It just points out.
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Yeah, it shows what the law shows, and the law shows our desperation.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I would say that in a simple way.
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The law is showing us our need.
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The law shows us our lack.
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So, yeah.
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Yeah, I would agree with that for the most part.
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So, we get to verse 7, and he asks the question, What shall we say? Is the law sin? Now, why would he say, Is the law sin? The reason why is because he has not been saying positive things about the law.
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He's been saying negative things.
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He's been saying, The law condemns.
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The law demands.
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The law brings us down.
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The law does not save us.
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So, does that mean the law is sin? And his answer is, No, the law isn't sin.
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But, if I did not know the law, I would not know sin.
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For I would not have known, and this is a very important one, I would not have known what it is to covet if the law didn't say, Thou shall not covet.
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Now, I want to throw this out there.
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We probably, by nature, know that it's wrong to steal, if for no other reason, because we don't want people to steal from us.
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And we probably know by nature that it's wrong to murder, because we don't want other people to murder us.
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But there are aspects of the law that don't seem to come natural, and one of those aspects is coveting.
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Because all of us look at what other people have and say, Oh boy, I think I deserve that.
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Well, it's self-control, but it's also, it's the lust.
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It's the lust, right? We look at another man's wife, and we say, Oh, how hot is she? Or we look at another man's car and say, Oh, how hot is that? Or whatever, and we begin to think, I deserve that.
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I deserve her, or I deserve it, right? And what Paul is saying here, is he's saying, I wouldn't have known how wretched I was if the law didn't come along and say, Look how wretched you are.
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And here's a good example.
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I was talking to my elder, one of my elders at my church, about this on the way here.
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I remember, as a kid, the first time I ever heard the words of Jesus, Matthew, where Jesus said, You have heard it say, Do not commit adultery, but I say to you, whoever looks at a woman, the lust after her has committed adultery in his heart.
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And I remember being a teenager, going, there's no way I can be saved.
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Because I knew what my eyes and what my mind had done in regard to lust, and I thought, if that's the standard, I am lost.
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If that's the standard, I don't have any hope.
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Because Jesus just made an impossible standard for me.
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Because He said, Don't commit adultery.
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I can do that.
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I've been married 23 years.
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Never committed adultery.
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Not once.
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Not with my body.
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But Jesus didn't limit it to my body, did He? He said, If I look at a woman to lust after her, I've committed adultery in my heart.
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And I say, And all the pride that I thought I had in my self-righteousness is deflated like a balloon.
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And I realize just how desperate I am.
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See, that's what the law does.
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The law shows us how sinful we are.
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So is the law sin? No! But I would not have known how sinful I was.
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If not for the law.
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That's Paul's argument.
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He's saying, Yes, I don't know how depth of depravity I have or how much the depth of my depravity is until I look at the law of God.
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This is where James says the Word of God is like a mirror.
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And who is a man who can look at a mirror and walk away and forget what he sees, right? He says, It's like that.
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When I look at the Word of God and it's a mirror and it shows me how dirty I am.
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You get up in the morning and you look in the mirror and you know your teeth need to be brushed, your hair needs to be combed, your face needs to be washed.
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Imagine you just walk away with an old nasty face and bad breath.
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You wouldn't do that.
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But that's what we do with the Word of God.
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It tells us how dirty we are.
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And yet we walk away and we say, I don't need Jesus.
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I'm good on my own.
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No, you're not.
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Because what you have is a law that condemns you.
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And only one way to be relieved and that's through Christ.
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There's only one way to be saved and that's through Jesus.
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The law condemns and Christ saves and there's no other way.
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So, verse 8, he says, Sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, producing me all kinds of covetousness.
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Now that seems weird.
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But what he's saying is, once I learned that coveting was a sin, once I realized that I was coveting, I realized I was coveting everything.
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I realized everywhere I looked I saw things I wanted that I shouldn't have or things that weren't for me or things that belonged to other people.
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And because I recognized the sin, I began to realize how much I was under the sin.
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And this is how law produces sin.
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Not that it makes me sin, but it shows me my sin.
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The more I recognize the law, the more I recognize how desperate I am.
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So, he says, For apart from the law, sin lies dead.
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And I once was alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.
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Now that's a hard one to interpret.
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This takes a little bit of thought.
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Because normally, when Paul says alive and dead, he's referring to spiritual condition like in Ephesians 2.
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You were dead in your trespasses and sins when you once walked according to the prince of the power of the air.
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And then he says, but you were made alive together with Christ.
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Normally we talk about that in regard to spiritually dead and spiritually alive.
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But in this context, I don't believe that's what he means because what he's referring to is he's talking about his understanding of self.
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There was a time when Paul was a Pharisee and Paul felt very good about himself.
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Right? He felt very, you know, he grew up.
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He talks about in another epistle that he was a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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Right? That he was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
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That according to the law, he felt blameless.
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Right? That he felt good about himself.
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Felt alive.
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But when this commandment pierced his soul, he realized he was dead.
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He realized he was lost.
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Now when did that happen? We don't know.
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It could have been on the day of his conversion when he saw Jesus.
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Think about that.
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Think about the day of Paul's conversion.
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He's headed on the road to Damascus to imprison Christians.
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He has a letter of authority from the leaders giving him the power to bring about their imprisonment and possibly even their death because of their fidelity to Jesus.
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And Paul has already held the coats of the men who stole Stephen.
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Paul hates Christians.
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He hates Jesus.
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He hates the whole movement.
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And out of nowhere, a light blinds him, throws him down, and he's prostrate before a voice and the voice is Jesus.
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And Paul is converted in that moment.
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And do you think for a moment that he recognized his sin? I would say yes.
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I would say first sin he recognized was his sin against Christ.
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But then all of his other sins.
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Yeah.
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Have you had a moment like that? Where you recognized your sins? I would say this, but I would say this, if we haven't had that moment, there's a good chance we haven't been converted.
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If we've not recognized our sins, then there's no reason why we should search for a Savior.
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See, the good thing about the law is it points us to Christ.
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Paul says that in Galatians.
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The law is the schoolmaster which leads us to Christ.
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The law points us to our need for a Savior.
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The law doesn't say come to me and be saved.
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The law says go to Christ and only he can save.
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The law says I condemn.
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Christ says I save.
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So, verse 12.
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So the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
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So the point is he's saying I'm not saying the law is bad.
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The law is good, but it can't save.
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It wasn't intended to save.
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It was intended to condemn.
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But that's good because once we recognize our sin, we'll finally know who to turn to as a Savior.
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Verse 13, Did that which is good bring death to me? By no means.
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It was sin producing death in me through what is good in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.
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For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am flesh, soul, and understand.
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Now verse 14 is when the argument begins.
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And as I said earlier, if we come to a different conclusion at the end of this lesson, that's fine.
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You can have your conclusion.
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I'll have mine and we'll still be friends.
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But verse 14, continuing down to verse 25, Paul begins to talk about the juxtaposition between wanting to do right and being able to do right.
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And he says, I am of the flesh, soul under sin.
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Now, here's where the debate comes in.
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Some people say, this is Paul describing himself as a Christian.
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Some people say, this is Paul describing himself prior to being a Christian as a Pharisee.
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Now, I'm not going to give you my answer yet.
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I'm going to tell you the argument for both sides.
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And then I'll tell you why I hold to one and not to the other.
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And I will tell you this, I sometimes vacillate on this because I'm not 100%.
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That's why I said, if you have a different opinion, I may too at some point.
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I'm willing to say, I don't have all the answers.
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I hope nobody here who ever teaches says he's got all the answers.
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But on this particular issue, I think that there's arguments on both sides that tend to be convincing.
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Here's the arguments for the side that Paul is speaking from the perspective of a Christian.
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He says from verses 14 down to verse 25, he says I want to do that which is good.
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I want to please God.
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I want to do these things that are right.
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And I would say that sounds like a Christian speaking because a Christian wants to do right.
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He wants to please God in his inner man, right? And he does make a distinction between the flesh and the spirit.
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And we know that as Christians, we have the spirit within us and the flesh that we live in and we battle.
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There is a battle between those two.
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So there is a sense in which verses 14 to 25 can be describing the Christian experience, which is the battle between the flesh and the spirit, right? However, the other side would say Paul describes himself in this passage in a way that would contradict what he has already said about himself in chapter 6.
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Because in chapter 6 he says he's not sold under sin.
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But now he says I am sold under sin.
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So either he's contradicting himself or he's looking at what he was prior to Christ.
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And so the second one is where I tend towards because in that sense, Paul is describing what we would call the historic present.
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The historic present is when someone speaks about their life from the past but speaks of it in the present tense.
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Paul does this when he talks about being a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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He says I am a Hebrew of Hebrews.
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I am a Pharisee of Pharisees.
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Well, he's talking about what he was but he's speaking in the present tense.
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There is a sense in which linguistically that can't happen.
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So if verses 14-25 are describing Paul prior to his conversion, it does make sense because Paul was a Pharisee.
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Paul did want to keep the law from an external perspective.
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He wanted to do the law because he was brought up as a Jew who wanted to keep the law.
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But he couldn't keep the law.
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Why? Because the flesh.
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Because it was always there.
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Because there was this constant battle.
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So you get to chapter 8.
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This is where I said the bridge comes in.
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In chapter 8, he actually addresses how the Christian is to live.
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And the Christian is to live by the Spirit and not satisfy the deeds of the flesh.
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So I think it does tend toward Paul speaking of himself prior to conversion.
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However, I'm not, again, I'm not 100% convinced.
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Well, like I said, I hate to be wishy-washy, but I'll tell you men when I'm not certain.
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I'm never going to try to be dishonest with you.
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I feel like I tend towards the pre-conversion understanding.
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But if I find out when I get to glory that it was Paul talking about it, it makes sense.
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Because I do know that as a believer, I struggle with the flesh.
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And so there are things, especially verses 15-20, that do describe the experience that I have.
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And if you look at Galatians 5, it does say that there's a battle in the believer.
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In that one, there's no question whether it's the believer or the unbeliever.
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It's a believer.
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He says there's a battle going on in the life of the believer between the flesh and the Spirit.
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In fact, let's look at that real quick just to make a comparison passage.
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Go to Galatians 5 and look at verse 16.
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We're going to read down.
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Paul is writing to believers about believers.
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No doubt in Galatians 5.
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And he says, but I say to you, walk by the Spirit.
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He couldn't say that to an unbeliever.
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He says, I say to you, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
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For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh.
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For these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do.
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But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.
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So it's similar to what he's saying in Romans 7.
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Right? Because he's talking about the law.
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But in this context, he's saying this.
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He's saying there's two battles going on in your life.
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The battle of the Spirit within you who is driving you to do good and the flesh that you live in that desires to do evil.
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And he says what? We have to put to death the deeds of the flesh.
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We've got to flee fornication.
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We've got to abandon these things because we want to do what is right and abandon what is evil.
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So certainly there is a sense in which that speaks to the experience of the believer.
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I've never met a believer, no matter how sanctified, who didn't say that they don't struggle with some sin.
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Ever.
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Now, well, let me back that up.
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I do know there are some hypercharismatics who believe in what's called sinless perfection.
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And I've actually got some recordings of some teachers that I consider them to be false teachers that say I no longer sin.
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That's crazy.
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But that's what they say.
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If I named them, you would know who they are.
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I'm not going to get into all that right now.
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But these teachers will say I don't sin anymore.
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And to me, I think that's untrue.
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In fact, I think 1 John says if a man says he has no sin, he's a liar and the truth's not in him.
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Is that what you were going to say? Yeah.
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The Bible says that.
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I could have even overlooked it.
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That's right.
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The Bible says if a man says he has no sin, he's a liar and the truth's not within him.
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So to me, if a man stands up and he says I'm no longer a sinner, and by that he means I no longer sin, because you could say this.
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You could make the argument that when you come to Christ, your category changes.
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You go from sinner to saint.
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There's a category change there.
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You become a believer.
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You become a holy one.
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So you could make that argument of categorical change, but you can't say that I'm no longer battling sin.
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This is what Martin Luther said.
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He said simul justus et peccator.
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Simul justus et peccator is Latin for at the same time, just and sinner.
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At the same time, just and sinner.
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That's just a phrase that he tried to help his people understand.
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Yes, you are saved.
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You are justified.
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You're righteous, but you still fight a battle with sin, so you're still a sinner.
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So at the same time, you're righteous and a sinner.
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And so simul justus et peccator became one of the key phrases in Lutheran theology, and I think it's a true phrase.
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So yes, are we people who battle with sin? Absolutely.
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But that's the difference.
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We battle.
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You see, the unbeliever does not battle sin.
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You know what the unbeliever does? He loves it.
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He loves the sin.
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I remember.
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I remember before coming to Christ.
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I remember being in love with sin.
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Now I'm not saying I was just, you know, just crazy, but there were things that I wanted more than anything, sinful things that I wanted more than anything.
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And I wasn't really ashamed of it.
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And that's the difference.
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When we come to Christ, I'm one of my old professors.
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He said when I came to Jesus, He changed my wanna.
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And I know that sounds kind of childish, but what he was saying is before Christ, there were all these things I want to do.
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But now that I come to Christ, my wanna has changed.
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He changes what I want.
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That doesn't mean I don't still struggle with sin, but I want righteousness.
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I want to be a good father.
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I want to be a good husband.
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I want to be a good Christian.
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I want those things, which I didn't care before I became a Christian.
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I didn't care.
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So, getting back to Romans 7, as I said, verses 14-25, you either are going to take this as being the normal life of a believer or what Paul's saying about before he became a believer.
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I tend towards that.
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I'm not saying it's the perfect answer, but I do want to read it from that perspective.
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We're getting close to the end.
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We've got about five minutes left.
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We'll read this, and I'll make a few comments as we go.
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So, getting back to 14, he says, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.
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Again, it's hard for me to believe he'd be talking about himself as a Christian saying I'm sold under sin, because that's the very thing that we're saved from, right? Christ redeems us from the slave market of sin, right? He buys us.
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He redeems us.
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So, being sold under sin is not typically the way we describe a believer.
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And then he goes on to say, I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.
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Now, if I do what I want, what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good, so now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
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For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
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Again, that sounds like a believer, because he's making the distinction between my flesh and what's the real me, and the real me wants to do right, and the flesh...
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So, again, this is where I kind of...
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Like I said, I can see this speaking to the experience of a believer, but I still think he's likely talking about himself prior to belief.
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And he goes on to say, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
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Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
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So, I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand, for I delight in the law of God.
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Most Pharisees would have said that very thing.
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But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
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Wretched man...
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And this is the key, verse 24.
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Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Verse 25.
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Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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See, that's who delivers.
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It's Christ who delivers.
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So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with the flesh I serve the law of sin.
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Again, that's a hard one.
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But then again, forget the numbers.
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Forget the chapter breaks.
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Just go right into chapter 8, verse 1.
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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
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See, the law condemned you and you were living under that condemnation, but now you are in Christ and you're not condemned anymore.
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For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do.
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This again, harks to the idea that he's talking about before he was saved.
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Because he says, the flesh was weakened, but now we're in Christ.
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And now we have something new.
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What does the believer have? The Holy Spirit.
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The Bible says every believer has the Holy Spirit.
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Go down with me to chapter 8, verse 9.
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You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.
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Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.
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Understand this.
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I know that some of you maybe have come out of churches where you were taught that you can be a believer and then later receive the Holy Spirit.
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That's not true.
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The Bible says if you are a believer, the Spirit lives within you.
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And if He doesn't live within you, guess what? You're not a believer.
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It says it right there.
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If the Spirit of Christ is not within you, you do not belong to Him.
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It's very clear.
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So what do we have? We have the Spirit of God who comes to live within us to do what? To give power to be able to live the Christian life.
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You understand that if you are a believer, you have the Spirit of God within you to empower you to live for Christ.
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You say, but I still struggle with sin.
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Yes, but you've got somebody on your side to help in the battle.
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You've got the very God of the universe living within you to empower you for the struggle.
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I told the story about the dead fish, right? I said if you think about a stream, the dead fish are all floating down the stream and then one of them comes alive by some miracle.
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What happens? Now he's going to swim upstream.
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But as he swims upstream, he's going to run into other fish that are dead.
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He's going to run into other things that are floating down the stream.
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He's going to be fighting the current.
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But guess what? He's been made alive and therefore, he can swim.
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If you are in Christ, you've been made alive and therefore, just keep swimming.
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We are given the power of the Spirit to live for Christ.
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No longer condemned by the law, but empowered to live for Christ.
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As I said, it's a difficult passage.
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I hope maybe I shed some light on it for you.
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Hopefully, I helped you understand it a little bit better.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for Your truth.
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I pray now, Lord, that as we draw to a close, that this has been somehow encouraging for these men.
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And Lord, I pray that if they are still struggling with who they are in Christ, that they would turn from their sin and turn to Him.
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Lord, that they would not try to be justified by the law, but they would be justified only in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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For only in Him can we know salvation.
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We pray it in His name.
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Amen.