Take your Bibles now, please, and let's turn to Romans chapter 8. We will read verses 1 through 4. Now hear God's word. 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. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Grass withers, flower fades, but God's word abides forever. If we were to to characterize and classify the teaching of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament, especially in the book of Romans, you might say very well that he's a man who is, if not obsessed, at least utterly consumed with the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified. In Romans 1, Paul said that he was unashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. In chapter 3, he explains the very heart of the Gospel saying that now the righteousness from God has been made known apart from the law. In chapters 4 and 5, He devotes Himself to unpacking this great truth that we are justified by faith in Christ and in His righteousness apart from works of the law. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 1 of chapter 5, Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. Verse 9 of chapter 5. In the end of chapter 5, verses 20 and 21 go like this, Now the law came in to increase the trespass. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Over and over and over again. Those are just a few of the places so far just in the book of Romans where Paul has heralded and extolled the greatness of God's grace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's his constant theme. It's what he's consumed with, not only in the book of Romans, but in everything that he writes in all of the New Testament. It's always about the Gospel with Paul. And that truth of the Gospel never gets stale for Paul. He never seems to get tired of preaching and proclaiming the Gospel with passion and with zeal. It never gets old for him. The sad fact is that sometimes, and all too often in fact, it does with Christians. It gets old for us. Christians get tired of hearing the same old teaching about the same old Gospel. For many Christians, it gets wearisome. It gets boring. They want something new. They want something more exciting. They want something challenging and inspirational. They've already heard the Gospel. They've already learned all these truths. Why do we keep talking and teaching about the same thing over and over again? We've got it. Move on. Enough already. I hope that's not you. But I know that to some extent, it's all of us. I know that to some extent, none of us prize the Gospel and cherish the Gospel and feel the lavishness of God's grace the way that we should. that I hope that you don't find the Gospel to be dull and boring and old because you've heard it over and over again. I hope that over this past year that we've been in the book of Romans through these past, I think, 36 sermons, that you haven't started to yawn in your heart and feel like this is getting redundant or blasé because the sad fact is that many Christians do feel that way. Why is that, do you think? Why is it that grace can get boring for us? Why is it that our hearts can become indifferent to the Gospel sometimes? Why is it that probably none of us have the kind of enduring and consuming and abiding zeal and passion for this Gospel that the Apostle Paul did? In Luke 7, In fact, turn there with me this morning. Keep your thumb in Romans 8, but turn over to Luke 7 for a minute this morning. In Luke 7, Luke recounts this story of this woman who came before Jesus as He was eating dinner with one of the Pharisees. And when she came, she anointed His feet with tears. Luke 7 v. 37 One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with them. And Jesus went into the Pharisee's house and took His place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city who was a sinner When she learned that Jesus was reclining at the table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind Him at His feet weeping, she began to wet His feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed His feet and anointed them with the ointment." Are you able to picture that scene in your mind? Jesus comes into this house and He's reclining for dinner, not probably sitting like we do in a chair at an elevated table, but stretched out on His side before a table on the floor, reclining for the meal, which was the custom at that time and in that place. And as he's lying there, this woman comes up behind him and she's weeping. She's not just crying a little bit. She's not just sort of sniffling and sobbing some. The Greek word is kleio. And the emphasis on that word is not the tears that come out of the eyes, but the noise that comes out of the mouth. Literally, this word means wailing. like someone would do if they had experienced a great loss suddenly, like the loss maybe of a child. The clio isn't just some sort of stoic remorse where the eyes get a little bit misty and maybe a tear or two escape and trickle down the cheek. Clio is literally wailing in grief and sorrow and misery, so overcome with emotion that the tears are flooding down. And the anguish is pouring out of the heart and the physical manifestation of that anguish is this uncontrollable wailing and crying out in agony. That's what this woman comes in doing. Can you picture that? I mean, in that day, this would have been very, very scandalous. Men and women didn't eat together at the table in those days. And so here are these two men sitting together, one a Pharisee, one a rabbi, sitting together for a meal, and this woman comes into the room. It was never done. But here she comes, and really we don't even know where she came from. She's most certainly not a member of the household, and probably not a servant in the household, because Luke says that she was a woman of the city, not a woman of the house. and that she was a sinner, which probably means that she was a prostitute. Which means that she would never have been allowed to live or to serve in the house of a Pharisee. So that probably means that she had been following Jesus around the city, maybe tailing Him. And when she saw Him go into the house of the Pharisee, she heard that He'd gone in there. She must have snuck in after Him. That's how desperate she was to be near to Him. And here she comes and she's wailing and she's weeping. She's out of control. And she's crying and she's making this terrible scene and causing all kinds of commotion. And she's weeping so much that the tears are literally streaming from her face so much that they're splashing all over Jesus' feet. And so she kneels down there on the ground. and begins to wipe up the tears with her hair. And she begins then to kiss His feet. And that's nothing sensual. That's nothing amorous. That's a sign of deepest respect and reverence. And then she proceeds to anoint His feet with muron. It's a very expensive aromatically perfumed ointment. Again, something in that culture that one would do for a king. Highest honor. Deepest respect and reverence. Now, how do you suppose the Pharisee responded as he's watching this scene unfold in his house? This woman, this known sinner, this outcast, this woman with a reputation as a filthy, unclean sinner comes bursting into his house, starts carrying on this way with his guest. I mean, why didn't the Pharisee jump to his feet and grab the woman by the hair and drag her to the door and bodily throw her out into the street? That's what a New Testament man would be most likely to do. That's what we'd expect a man of the house to do in that culture with a woman who had intruded this way. So why didn't he act that way? Why didn't he at least yell for a servant to haul her out of the house? Well, I believe that he did not. I believe that this Pharisee let this happen and go on in order to test Jesus, in order to see how Jesus would respond. Verse 39 seems to say that. Now, when the Pharisee saw all of this, he said to himself, if this man were really a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him. For she is a sinner. You see the difference between the Pharisee and Jesus? She's filthy. She's unclean. She doesn't belong here. If Jesus were really a prophet, He'd know that and He'd throw her out. He wouldn't have anything to do with her. whereas Jesus was full of compassion, full of love, full of patience, full of grace. As horribly offensive as this sanctimonious Pharisee would have found this woman to be, he lets her carry on over Jesus' feet because it seemed to confirm to him that this Jesus, whom he inwardly despised, wasn't really the prophet that he made himself out to be after all. Because if he was a prophet, then he'd realize how wretched and unclean this woman was and he'd never let her anywhere near himself, let alone allow her to touch him and defile him. He never considers there's another option. That Jesus absolutely knows who she is and realizes that she's come in penitence, pleading for grace. Now what's interesting is this reaction that the Pharisee has in v. 39 is not something that he says out loud. V. 39 says that he says it to himself. He thought it. He sat back and watched Jesus with a suspicious kind of contemptuous glare, judging what He would do. But Jesus, in v. 40, knew what the Pharisee was thinking. Almost as if he'd literally heard his thoughts out loud, and Jesus answered him it says. Simon, I have something to say to you. The Pharisee answers, well then say it, teacher. And Jesus tells a parable. A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed 500 denarii, the other 50. A single denarius was an average day's wage for a full day's labor. So in other words, one debtor owed over two months' wages, and the other debtor owed over two years' wages. That's a massive debt. And when they could not pay, the moneylender canceled the debt of both. And Jesus asks, now which one will love the moneylender more? And Simon responds, I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debts. And Jesus said, you have judged rightly. And then turning to the woman, he said, Simon, do you see this woman? I entered into your house, Simon, and you didn't even have water to wash my feet with. as would have been the common courtesy. But this woman has wet my feet with her own tears. Wiped them with her own hair. And you, when I came, you gave me no kiss even on my cheek in greeting and love. But from the time I have come in, she has not ceased to kiss my feet. And you didn't anoint my head with oil. but she has anointed my feet with ointment. And therefore, I tell you, Simon, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she has loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little." Now, Jesus didn't mean that her love and her tears and her service earned her His forgiveness. He meant that His forgiveness brought on her tears and her worship and adoration of Him. She saw Him for who He was. She saw Him and understood Him to be the Son of God who came to save sinners like her. And as a sinner, she saw and she knew that salvation came only from this Man, and so she threw herself on Him. in humble gratitude, in overwhelming submission, in joyful worship and adoration. Because she was forgiven much, she loved Him much. Isn't that how it works? Isn't it true that if we really grasp and understand and experience the great weight of our sin, if we really and truly see ourselves for what we are and feel about ourselves the way Paul felt about himself at the end of Romans 7. Wretched man that I am, if we truly experience that overwhelming burden of the reality of our sinfulness, the reality of how desperately wicked our hearts really are, the reality of how far short of God's infinite glory we have actually fallen, the reality of sinful rebellion and idolatry in all of our not only actions, but thoughts and motives and attitudes and desires. Every inclination of our hearts. If we really get it, then and only then do we really know how much we've been forgiven. If grace seems boring to you, if the Gospel feels stale to you, if hearing about it again and again seems redundant to you, if you can come here and sing hymns of praise to God for His glory and grace, but there's no joy in your heart. If grace means so little to you that the mere words don't melt your heart to tears, then maybe it's because you don't truly consider yourself to be a wretched sinner. desperately in need of a sovereign forgiveness. Now, turn back to Romans 8. My hope and my prayer as we've been going through Romans together, for all of us as we continue to soak and to marinate in these great truths that Paul is revealing and proclaiming here in this book, My hope and my prayer is that we would truly begin to see ourselves for what we really are. that we would truly find ourselves crying out, wretched man that I am, wretched woman that I am, wretched sinner that I am. That we would really and honestly recognize that in Adam and in our sin, we really do deserve nothing short of the full, unmitigated wrath of God that pours down from Heaven against all unrighteousness. But that, in Jesus Christ, united to Him, buried with Him in baptism, raised with Him to newness of life, justified, forgiven, redeemed, reconciled to the Father in Him, there is therefore now no condemnation. None. Only acceptance. Only love. Only grace. Only mercy. Only the great assurance of knowing that because God is for us, nothing can ever possibly stand against us. Because Christ by His blood has forgiven us, no one can ever bring a charge against us. Because God's love has redeemed us, nothing can ever separate us from Him. Hallelujah. And I hope that this grace is as fresh and exciting and new every morning for you. as God's mercies are. And I hope and I pray that we would be so certain of the sinfulness of our sin, and the sufficiency of God's sovereign grace, that there wouldn't be in us an impulse to hide our sin, or to justify our sin, or to pretend that we aren't really sinful because we have these big lists of things that we do that are good and things that we don't do that are bad. or because even when we admit that we're sinners, we have a big list of reasons that explain why we've sinned. Reasons why it should be understandable that we've sinned. Reasons why we shouldn't really have to be accountable to God and shouldn't really be susceptible to His judgment and His condemnation because, well, so-and-so treated me badly and I wasn't feeling good this day. I'm feeling the financial pinch. And circumstances are really hard. And so, all of this conspires against me and that allows me and entitles me to sin a little bit, doesn't it? I'm not accountable for that. That doesn't make me susceptible to God's judgments. We do that so easily and we do it so often. We make so little of our sin and we make so little of His grace And I pray that the living act of Word of God in Romans is curing us of that hard-heartedness by making us to rest in that grace instead of our own denial or instead of our own self-righteousness. There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus. As we looked last week at that first verse of Romans 8, we saw that we can never truly and fully appreciate or even begin to understand what Paul is saying in the Gospel unless we recognize everything that the book of Romans reveals. That we are truly, desperately wicked sinners. And that we have been saved only by the immeasurable grace of God. No condemnation. Now, the term condemnation is a legal term. It's a term in a court of law that would include both the verdict of guilt and the execution of the sentence of judgment. And so in this sense, that's what it means. Condemnation means God proclaims you to be guilty and executes the sentence of divine, eternal, unending wrath upon you. That's what condemnation means. And that's what Paul is saying is impossible for anyone who is in Christ Jesus. For those of us who have never sat in a courtroom as a defendant and never heard a judge proclaim the guilty verdict and never had a sentence executed, it's hard for us to comprehend the reality of condemnation. Especially God's condemnation. Because relative to earthly society, we feel like we're doing pretty good. We're above par. We're basically fine people. But the truth is otherwise, because we don't measure ourselves relative to earthly society. We measure ourselves relative to God's holiness. And in that scale, we are utterly wretched. And in that wretchedness, there is always condemnation. In our sin, there is always God pronouncing the verdict of guilty. There is the sentence of death and the sentence of eternal, conscious, unending judgment in the fires of His wrath. But in Christ, and only in Christ, there is no condemnation whatsoever. None. Leon Morris says that in English, the word no in v. 1 is entirely insufficient and inadequate and weak compared to Paul's real emphasis in Greek. In Greek, the word no in v. 1 isn't just the word no, it's in fact a compound word. It's two negatives stuck together in order to give double emphasis. And that word is then put at the head of the sentence. It's the first word in the sentence. In Greek, the sentence doesn't start like the English sentence does, because in Greek, word order is very important. And so here, Paul very, very deliberately puts this double-emphasized no as the first word in the sentence in order to emphasize and intensify it even more. In order to give a sense of what Paul is actually saying in Romans 8.1, Martin Lloyd-Jones explains it this way. He says, what Paul means is this, that not only is the Christian not in a state of condemnation now, he means that he never can be because it is utterly impossible. That's the strength with which Paul makes this statement. And he can do that. He can speak that strongly. Because the removal of condemnation is only in Christ Jesus. It's not in your ability. It's not in my ability. It's not in our collective ability. It's in Christ Jesus. In other words, if you aren't in Christ Jesus, if you're still in your sins, if you're still in Adam, if your eternal destiny is up to you as a sinner, and what you do, then there is most certainly and absolutely condemnation for you. unavoidably, inevitably, but if and only if you are in Christ Jesus, and if and only if your eternal destiny is entirely up to Him, If it depends not on what you are capable of doing, but entirely on what God has done, then there is therefore now no condemnation. Most certainly and most absolutely, and there never can be. If the solution to your sin is the work of God and Jesus Christ applied to you by the power of the Holy Spirit, then there can never possibly be any condemnation. Now, some of you this morning are using the King James Version of the Bible, or the New King James, and that's okay. Generally, those are good and fine translations, but in Romans 8 and verse 1, in this all-important verse, the King James and the New King James are frankly lousy. I'm sorry. But they're lousy because as you've certainly already noticed if you're using those translations this morning, the King James and the New King James include ten extra words at the end of v. 1, don't they? Most every English translation of Romans 8-1 reads this way, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, period. On to v. 2. But the King James and the New King James add the words who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And if you look down at v. 4, you'll notice that those exact same words are at the beginning of v. 4. They belong in v. 4, but they don't belong in v. 1. This is what we call a textual manuscript problem. It means that someone at some time when they were transcribing and copying Greek manuscripts of the New Testament made a mistake and accidentally inserted the beginning of v. 4 at the end of v. 1. Now, the reason the mistake has been carried into the King James translation is because in the 1600s, when that translation was originally made, there were only a very few Greek manuscripts of the New Testament available to work from, and the best one contained this error. But since then, there have been hundreds of manuscripts found, many of them older and much more reliable than the ones that King James used. And they all agree and corroborate to show that those ten words do not belong at the end of v. 1. Paul didn't put them there. Now here's why that's important, other than the obvious question as to what words belong in your English translation of the Bible and which ones don't. The inclusion of those ten words at the end of v. 1 has been the cause for many people to teach that there's a condition here. A condition on Paul's statement that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Some people have actually taught that it's actually possible for the status of no condemnation to be revoked or to be lost if you don't walk according to the Spirit, but instead start walking according to the flesh. You see, if you walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh, then there is therefore now no condemnation. What you do is the cause of no condemnation if those words are at the end of v. 1, as opposed to what you do being the result of no condemnation if the text is read rightly and those words are found in v. 4 only. In fact, the Schofield Reference Bible, which uses the King James Version, says exactly that in a footnote. It clarifies and corrects itself. It says the last 10 words of verse 1 were evidently copied accidentally from verse 4, where they properly expressed the result of no condemnation, not its cause. If those words are added to v. 1, and express that the way that we walk is the cause of our escape from God's wrath and condemnation, then our escape from God's wrath and condemnation will only last as long as our next faltering step into sin. As soon as we take a step in the flesh, we're back under condemnation all over again. But praise be to God that salvation doesn't work that way. Amen? Salvation is from God. Salvation is by God. Salvation comes by His work apart from our work. Walking by the Spirit and not by the flesh isn't the basis of our salvation. It's the result. It's the product of our salvation. The basis, the reason for, is all the work of God in Christ applied by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul is teaching so very, very clearly in these first four verses of Romans 8. He's teaching that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who have been united to Jesus Christ by the will and the power of God through the instrumentality and work of the Holy Spirit. In other words, these four verses teach that the reason that there is no condemnation, and the reason that there can never ever be condemnation for anyone who is in Christ Jesus, is that all of the work of salvation is determined and accomplished and applied and secured by all three members of the Holy Trinity working together. Salvation is the divine, permanent, everlasting, imperishable, indestructible work of the sovereign triune God. As all of His majesty and all of His omniscience and all of His omnipotence and all of His justice and faithfulness and holiness and grace and mercy and love are active and effective to save you from your sins. What can stand against that? What can undo that? Nothing. This is Paul's point. No condemnation. No possibility of condemnation. Look at the work that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have done for us in this passage. Start in verse 2. Verse 1 has said that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And verse 2 says, 4, because there is no condemnation because the law of the Spirit of life, that's the Holy Spirit, the Person of God in the Holy Spirit, the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. Now, what is the law of sin and death that the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from? We'll look back up into chapter 7, a few verses up, where Paul uses that same phrase. In verse 22, he said, For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, 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. The law of sin that dwells in your members, in the members of our bodies, in our flesh, is an influence and an impulse and a power that is at work within us, raging war through our desires and our passions to draw us toward doing evil. That's what Paul means by the law of sin. He means the power of sin in us that is raging against the new life that the Holy Spirit has created in us. And what Paul is saying here in v. 2 of chapter 8 is that in that war, God has given us victory over the power of sin within us by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. By the power, in other words, of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. The Spirit of life that we have because we have been united to the risen Person of Christ. You see? You understand the work of the Holy Spirit in guaranteeing and applying and securing your salvation? Sin remains in you. That law of sin, that power of sin still wages war and is trying to destroy you. It's trying to bring you to death by dominating your life with sin. But it cannot and will not ultimately win that war. That's good news, right? It cannot and it will not win that war, not because you're going to grit your teeth and try real hard and defeat it by striving to be super good. The law of sin cannot and will not win the war because there is another law, another power that is at work in you when you are united to the Person of the risen Christ. And that power is the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit of life who has set us free. from the power of sin and death. True independence. True freedom. Because, in other words, because we are justified by God's great grace, the Holy Spirit of God is poured out in our lives and begins this work of giving us freedom from the power and the presence of the dominion of sin in our lives. Sin will not have dominion over you. Because you have died to the law and you're not under it anymore, you are now under grace. And the work that the Holy Spirit has begun in us, He will most certainly bring to completion. And there is therefore now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. In Christ Jesus, there's no possibility that the law, the power, the influence of sin is going to win, is going to dominate, is going to destroy, is going to kill you. is going to make you vulnerable anymore to God's condemnation. Because all three Persons of the Triune God are at work for your salvation, there is no possibility of condemnation. Jesus, the Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, said that it was only by the will of the Father that He came into the world in order to save sinners. The Father sent the Son into the world in the likeness of sinful man, Paul says here, to be a sin offering. And by sending Jesus into the world, v. 3 of Romans 8 says, God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, God the Father condemned sin in the flesh. is a remarkable statement. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, God the Father condemned sin in the flesh. What does that mean? What does it mean that He condemned sin? What does it mean that sin has been, past tense, condemned by God in a way that the law was powerless to do for all who are in Christ Jesus? What does that mean? Here's what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that God looked upon sin and identified it as bad and criticized it and called it condemnable. Sort of like the President might do in condemning an act of terrorism. A condemnable act. When Paul says that God condemned sin, he doesn't mean that. Because that is something that the law not only can do, but has done already, hasn't it? The law has already identified sin as a bad thing and called it condemnable, hasn't it? The law says you shall not steal. The law says you shall not commit adultery. You shall not murder. You shall not covet. All of those activities are condemned by the law in the sense that they are identified as condemnable activities. But God has condemned sin in Christ in a way that the law could never ever do. What it means is this, that where the law could only call sin condemnable, God condemned sin in the flesh. What it means is that God, in Christ Jesus, in Jesus' flesh, in His incarnation, in His suffering, in His bleeding, in His dying body on the cross, God judicially executed the final sentence of condemnation against your sin against the sin of everyone who is in Christ Jesus. You see, in Christ, because of the high priestly work of Christ on the cross, because of His substitutionary sacrifice, because of His atoning blood, God found sin to be guilty and sentenced sin to be finally and fully and ultimately punished once and for all. And God carried out the sentence, the penalty against sin, only He didn't carry it out against me. He didn't carry it out against you. He didn't carry it out against the sinner. He carried it out against His own Son. Against Christ on the cross, God executed the full sentence and penalty against all of the sin of everyone who is in Christ. In Christ, in His death on the cross, sin was not only shown to be condemnable, it was in fact condemned. It received its full and just sentence and penalty as Jesus Christ bled and died. And what that means is that God's justice and faithfulness and goodness and righteousness have been so fully and completely satisfied that God cannot punish you if you are in Christ Jesus. God cannot condemn you if you are in Christ Jesus. because He already condemned your sin by pouring out His judgment on His Son. And you say, wait a minute, you can't use the word cannot with God. You can't say that God cannot do something. You can't say that God cannot punish or condemn someone who is in Christ because God can do anything He wants, right? You can do anything you want, for sure. He will never want to condemn you if you are in Christ Jesus. Can God do anything at all? Can God sin? Can God lie? Can God tempt or be tempted? And why not? Because even though there is nothing outside of God that can limit or hinder or bind Him, as God, He is bound and limited by His own nature. That means that His righteousness prohibits Him from sinning. It means that His faithfulness prohibits Him from lying. It means that His holiness prohibits Him from tempting or from being tempted. And His justice prohibits Him from condemning something that has already been condemned. In Christ and by His work on the cross, God the Father has condemned sin and there is therefore and can therefore never ever possibly be any condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because in Christ, God has condemned sin in the flesh. And why? Why did He do that? Verse 4, He didn't do it just to spare you from His wrath. He did it for that reason because He loves you and He is merciful and kind. He didn't just do it to free you from the penalty of sin. He also did it to free you from the power and the very presence of sin in your life. Verse 4, in Christ God condemned sin. Why? In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirits. You see, walking according to the spirits a growing life of sanctification and maturity and humble, joyful submission and obedience to Christ. That isn't the reason or the basis of our salvation. It's the inevitable results. The Father sent the Son who died, and in Him our sin has been condemned, and in Him we are filled with the Person and the power of the Holy Spirit who wages war against the law of sin and the power of our flesh. And frees us from that power. And frees us from its penalty. And is freeing us from its presence. So that we do walk according to the Spirit. So that we do bear fruit for God. So that we do grow in grace and submission and obedience to God. So that we find happening in us what the law could never ever do, God is doing. What you could never ever do by trying to keep the law in your self-righteous flesh, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have done and are doing. And they're not going to drop the ball. They're not going to mess it up. They're not going to fail. They're not going to come up short of the goal. They're not going to underestimate how much sin is in your life and how much work has to be done to get rid of it. And you are not, in all of your sinfulness, going to be able to mount an opposition to God that is going to succeed. You can't beat Him. When you see your sin in other words, and when you hate it, don't conclude that it's possible that because of all of this dreadful, wretched sin in your heart, that you might be able to overcome the power of God's triune grace in your life. Conclude that God's triune grace is what has made you able to see your sin and hate it. because He is changing your heart, changing your desires, rooting sin out from you, causing the fruit of the Spirit to be born in you, sanctifying you and growing you and maturing you. What the law could not do, what you could never ever do, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have done. And since it is God who is for us, who can ever be against us? Amen? Is that truth boring to you? Are you tired of hearing about it? Does it get stale as you do your devotions and read your Bible and go through your day? Are there things in your life that are more exciting to you? That fire up your heart? That get you more passionate than this Gospel? Is your heart cold and indifferent somehow towards this Gospel? that the triune God has pulled out all the stops and levied every sovereign, omnipotent resource in order to condemn your sin in His Son and deliver you from the power of sin and death so that there can never, ever possibly be any condemnation or any wrath or any judgment from God. I hope not. I hope it's not boring. I hope it's not something that you can go a day without. I hope that this great gospel grace melts your heart. And I hope that it drives you to the feet of Jesus Christ, like that weeping woman, in great love and in great gratitude and in great adoration and in great worship, because you have been forgiven much, Christian. Amen. Father, we praise You this morning for having forgiven us much in Christ Jesus. And we praise You for the indomitable power of Your grace as You and Your Son and Your Holy Spirit work together as the triune God to conquer and defeat and destroy our sin and conform us to the righteousness of Christ. And so, Father, we know and we trust that You do this work through the means of Your Word and prayer and fellowship and accountability, through the means of Your Supper which we draw near unto today, where You feed us and where You nourish us and where You strengthen us and where You give us all and everything that we need in order to grow. in order to see sin defeated, in order to hate our sin and love Your law. And so, Father, we pray this morning, feed us and draw us nearer and nearer to Yourself and cause us, Father, to bow before the throne of grace every day and find the grace and the mercy that we so desperately need in absolute abundance. Father, help us not to forsake it. Help us not to think that we can do without it. Help us to recognize that as soon as we unplug from your power, we're running on our own steam which is nothing and goes nowhere. And so, Father, fill us with Your Spirit and fill us with the power of Your Word. And cause us, Father, daily, as we go from this place even, to draw near to Your throne of grace with confidence that the promise of Your drawing near to us is true in Christ Jesus. Thank You for Your Gospel and thank You for Your grace. Give us strength, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.