If you'll please stand in honor of the reading of the word this morning. For those of you who are visitors here with us, we don't stand because it's somehow more righteous. We did see in the book of Nehemiah, chapter 8, that in the corporate reading of the Word, they stood as a posture of readiness to receive and of quickness to obey. And what we want is we want internal postures that reflect external postures. That is, we want to be ready spiritually to receive God's Word. So, this is not a legalistic thing. We don't think it's better. We don't think it's more righteous. We just want souls ready to receive God's Word. This is God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving Word as it is recorded for us by the Apostle Paul from Romans chapter 8. We're going to be reading verses 1 through 4 this morning. 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. That ends our text for this morning. Let us look to him in prayer. Holy Spirit, meet with us. Shine the light of your truth. Shower the water of grace through the word upon our hearts and souls as we receive it by faith. Dispel the darkness within our hearts. Transform us by the light of Christ. And may we be transformed for your glory and not for our own selfish ambitions. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. Well, we have left Romans chapter 7, and we have gone into Romans chapter 8. And when we left Romans chapter 7, we began to realize that we're called to a battle. a holy ward. Last week we looked at the concept of the Christian understanding of jihad, of the internal heart battle that goes on between the renewed, regenerate heart and our flesh. And we still wrestle with the remaining sin that's within us. And so Paul, back in verse 15 of chapter 7, said, for I do not do what I want. And there's this tension within him. But at the same time, when the Holy Spirit converted us, he gave us a revulsion to sin. He gave us a dissatisfaction for sin. And believe it or not, it's a good gift. It is a good gift that God has put within us. Because he therefore actually goes on and says, but I do the very things that I hate. So he's doing things that he is not satisfied with. William Cooper, a powerful hymnist, who struggled with constant depression, melancholy. Probably if he were a modern hymn writer, they might have locked him up in a psychological ward. He might be heavily diagnosed with Prozac, but was constantly in a state of melancholy, said this. Very, very realistic words. I sometimes think myself inclined to love thee if I could, but I often find in another mind a verse to all that's good. You see that one in your own lives? The pull back and forth. And it's humbling. And in a humbling way, this inner spirit, flesh, war, it really is a gift. We're so prone to condemn or excuse our sin. We're so prone to say, well, Christians don't do that over there. Christians don't get depressed. Well, I'm depressed, so does that mean I'm not a Christian? Does my depression overrule the cross? No. No, it doesn't. There's nothing that can separate us from the blood of Christ. Or we excuse, right? Either we condemn everything that we do and we end up in this kind of whirlwind of despair or we excuse everything. Well, you know, after all, I'm a real Christian and so I do that too. I do that too. All right, well, we also don't want to go around denying the fact that we're regenerate, that there's something fundamental and essential that has happened to us. In some sense, this war keeps our souls on edge so that we might always be considering our ways, so that we might always be considering the motives of our heart and why we're doing what we're doing. In order to give conscious glory to Christ, when we do that which is good, and mourn our sin for the glory of Christ, when we do that which is evil. In fact, the gift of the indwelling Spirit allows us to do neither. It doesn't allow us to go off into the legalism that we're so prone to, and it doesn't allow us to go off into the laziness of spiritual piety that we're also so prone to. This is precisely what the Roman Church and the Mobile Church need to hear over and over again. Our pride, our arrogance, our self-sufficiency, our melancholy is part of a spiritual war in which Christ is winning. But God has given you this spirit to propel you to fight. Paul puts it slightly differently in the book of Philippians. For it is God who works in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Philippians 2.13. So our topic this morning is going to be freedom from sin. It wasn't too long ago, I think it was right after, I think it was the day, either the day after or the day before we bought our new minivan. I have not told my wife this yet, so we'll see how this goes. So we bought a new minivan, and I was going for a test drive. I was just enjoying the minivan, and I just felt like something was wrong. As I'm moving forward, it just feels like the car doesn't want to move forward, and you just can't get it to go fast enough. And then when you finally take your foot off the gas, it just stops really quickly. Well, what I didn't realize, because I have a stick and I don't really drive an automatic, but I had the emergency brake on for about a mile. And it just felt like it was this start and stop. And I was just, what is wrong with this van? Did we buy a defective van? I didn't break anything, I promise. Until I realized that there's this little button, this little icon just flashing, telling me how much of an idiot I'm being. And it's telling me that the emergency brake is still on. But it just felt like you're in this stuck start and stop. You can't get any momentum forward. You can't really do much of anything. Nothing's working the way it's supposed to. And sometimes when you're in this spiritual war, that's exactly how the Christian life feels. It's like you're in mud or quicksand. But the reality is, all I had to do was pop the emergency brake and we were able to move right on. In some sense, what the indwelling of the spirit allows for us to do is that the brakes of our soul, we'll call it sin, the brakes of our soul are popped off. It isn't that we don't struggle with sin anymore. Obviously, that's not the case. But rather, they don't have quite the influence that they used to have, and by the Spirit, we are able to move forward, we're able to fight. Christian life can be fluid. So our main point this morning is that in Christ there is freedom. In Christ there is freedom. Freedom from the power of sin and freedom from the guilt of sin. Freedom from the power of sin, freedom from the guilt of sin. And we're going to look at this in two points. Firstly, we're going to look at no condemnation. And then secondly, and this is going to be eye-opening, no bondage. no condemnation, no bondage. And it begs the question, how are we doing? How are we doing in our holiness? How are we doing in our sanctification? How are we doing in our pursuit of godliness? And either you have a smirk on your face or you're sitting there thinking, oh no, don't ask that question, because I barely made it here, right? We don't do well in our own power, in our own self-sufficiency. We don't do well in holiness as we approach it from a very fleshly point of view. We're often discouraged or maybe we're actually encouraged and we're patting ourselves on the back. Why? How do we handle the tendency to do either one of those? We can say, well, I've been doing well lately, or I've been incredibly lazy lately. We tend to fall off. What is that? We tend to fall off in one of two directions. in either legalism on the one hand or laziness on the other. When I go to the park or when I take my kids somewhere, they like to walk along the cement walls on places. I don't want to get there because I might break the wall. But the kids like to jump up on there and they like to walk across, playing a little game, put one foot in front of the other. They're just treated like a balance beam. And they can fall off either to one side or the other. One side that we tend to fall off on is laziness. The other side that we tend to fall off on is legalism. That's true typically of our Christian lives, either as we pat ourselves on the back or as we slip into despair. Now, because, and it's so strange, look at verse three. The law, and right here, the law here means commandment, the Ten Commandments, the commands that we find in the scriptures. The law is weakened by the flesh. That is, it doesn't do, it can't do what we want for it to do because we weren't made, our flesh wasn't made to be perfected through legalism or through laziness. On the one hand, we use them for some form of self-salvation, right? Just gotta try harder. If I just go to church in the morning, you know, I'll be made right with God. If I just read my Bible two or three times a week in the mornings, if I have nice, excellent times of devotion, then I'll maintain my standing before God. We turn everything. into a list of pros and cons or a checklist of things to do in order to receive God's favor even more. Or we excuse sin. But here's the problem with that. The law doesn't allow us to excuse sin. The Holy Spirit uses the law to penetrate the depths of our hearts, not only to show us what we do in our actions, but actually what we do in our motives. That's what we were looking at two or three weeks ago. That it isn't just our actions that are sinful, but our disposition even. So we can't escape. Either we use it wrongly or it condemns us. Both are completely of the flesh. Both are trying to in some way be God. Both are considered idolatry. So that God isn't being glorified by His own law. Right? But look at verse 3. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. If there's any question about who does salvation, who works the salvation, this text closes the book on it. God alone saves sinners. You do not save yourself. You cannot be good enough. Now some people are going to say that it's my works that get me to heaven. No. Not according to this text. Not according to the gospel of what God has done on your behalf. Some are going to say, well, it's my works and a little bit of God's works. So I'll punt a little bit. I'll punt to, I'll give God some honor here. No, that's still to say the opposite of what this text says. God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. So it doesn't say only did partially. It doesn't say that at all. Christian, we do not contribute. to the salvation of our own souls. Actually, that's not true. That's not true. You do contribute to the salvation of your own souls. You want to know what your contribution is? Sin. Right? You contribute to the situation in which saving needs to occur, but you do not contribute the salvation or to the salvation that God alone works. We need to hear this. And look, this isn't just important for when we initially come to Christ. It's not important merely for when we're converted. It's important for daily holiness. Because we fall off the track. Because we'll admit that God saved us by his power and then turn around and function in our daily lives as though we're the ones who actually do it. Or we'll turn around and we'll function as though he didn't actually save us and there's no fundamental change in our lives. And that thinking will only cause greater turmoil within our hearts and minds. And he doesn't want us to live there. So then how did God do this? How did He fulfill? How did He fulfill a law where we couldn't? Look again at verse 3. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He, the Father, condemned sin in the flesh. Do you want to know, do you want to find in history what the Father will do to sin? Look at the cross. I know that we tend to use the cross as some kind of a personal superstitious icon to encourage us. But here at the cross, here as Jesus died, is a bloody, gory representation of what God does to sin. Right? He judges sin. Do you wanna see how God feels about sin in our hearts and in our lives? Look at what he did to his son. He forsook him. He made him go through torturous trials. He's saying not just here's the path of salvation, but here's how holy I am. Here's how much I hate the sin, the rebellion within us that he would crush his only son. But that's where the good news also starts. Because in point number one, there is therefore, if he poured all condemnation out on Christ, therefore there is no more condemnation for any of us who are united to Christ. That's his main point. You can see this in verses, we've already looked at verse 3, we're now looking at verse 1. There's therefore now no condemnation. No condemnation is a legal term. Free of any debt, free of any financial or economic, in terms of the law of God, free of any burden to fulfill or to achieve or to earn salvation through the law, through your works, through being good enough. Jesus paid your debt. There is therefore no penalties, no condemnation. No one can lay any charges of condemnation against you. That's true of God. How comforting is that? That God Himself can find no charge to bring against you. That's true of the law. There's nothing that it can say, no, no, He's still guilty here. She's still guilty here. There's nothing that the world can say. There's nothing that your flesh can say. There's nothing that Satan has. There's no ace up the sleeve that Satan has as a trump card to send you to hell. Nothing. He has been wholly, wholly disabled from being able to play it. God finds nothing to punish. And honestly, it's a little bit like a parent telling a specific four-and-a-half-year-old boy, blonde hair, sitting in the second row, to clean up his room. And then coming back two minutes later and saying, Daddy, I cleaned up my room. And you're just thinking, there is no way that just happened. There is no way that's possible. And so what do you do? You go to the room, and you sit there and say, well, what about this, and what about this, and what about this? Clean this up, clean this up, clean this up. Why is there underwear underneath your bed? Any kind. There's so many things that you could go in and say. Except imagine that you actually went into the room, and there was nothing. Everything is in pristine order. There's nothing that you can point to, to tell your child, pick this up, you've lied to me. You're guilty of lying to me. Nothing. Pristine. Every little Lego in its rightful place, every single Ninja Turtle in the right box, everything, the right boxes that should be under the bed are under the bed, and even all of his clothes are folded in the drawer. It never happens. But imagine, but that's what happens. That's what he's saying here. There's nothing that God can look at in our lives and say, no, no, no, actually, here's a sin. Here's a sin in the bottom of your heart. Here's a sin that you call upon oftentimes in your weakest moments. And I'm going to get you for that one. Nothing. Your darkest secrets. Don't condemn you because Christ took it to himself. Many think that, well God's really just talking about the past and the present. But there's still a season, there's still a reason for fear, for guilt, for the feeling of unworthiness, for the coming pain. except Jesus at the end of John chapter 3. You hear it kind of more in this language of Jesus died for me but I don't really know if I'm going to heaven. Have you ever met somebody like that? Have you ever met someone who believes that they are saved but they don't know if they're actually going to go in the end? There is a disconnect. There's a disconnect between what we understand God requires and what we understand God has done for us and how we actually live. He isn't waiting for us in the shadows, getting ready to just club us. That's not him. Jesus has taken that to himself. You know, we can see this in our relationships. Imagine a son feels like he has to prove himself to his father. Imagine someone in the congregation feels like they have to prove themselves to their pastor in order to be saved. We're free from all of that. John chapter 3 verse 36 says, whoever believes in the Son has, present tense, eternal life. Not will have, not has had but lost it, has, present tense, eternal life. There's no condemnation. There's no grounds for separation, no grounds for alienation in the past or the present or in the future. Some others think that, well, we've kind of, through being religious people, we've moved out from under the condemnation for a little bit. You know what that does? That destroys all joy in prayer. That destroys all joy in worship, in fellowship. It destroys assurance. There's one thing that this text is doing, and it is giving his people assurance of salvation, and yet oftentimes we'll take a text like this and actually misinterpret it to actually do the exact opposite of what Christ is trying to, not just trying, working. in our hearts and in our lives. I love the language of the Getty, that the Gettys use, and in Christ alone. Till on the cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on Him was laid. Every sin, past, present, and future. What if I die? There are plenty of people who think, well, what if I die when I'm sinning? You know, I stole a car and I get T-boned and I die. What if I die without having repented? There are plenty of people who think that if you die not having repented that you go to hell. What about the Christian who commits suicide? Is that possible? Do Christians commit suicide? Last week we looked at the very real reality of yes. Is it a faithless act? Yes. Is it a sinful act? Yes. But that sin does not overthrow the atonement for sin. It cannot. That's the reason Jesus died. Sin cannot be a reason. Sin cannot be an excuse if he came to die for it. It cultivates in us sensitivity to criticism. This idea of somehow trying to earn our salvation. There's still some kind of condemnation. Otherwise, we wouldn't go about self-pitying. Otherwise, we wouldn't engage in so much defensiveness. It even cultivates an obedience that's more grounded on fear than appreciation or thanksgiving or love. So is this for the whole world? Is this for everybody? I mean, is this true? You guys are here to hear that, but is this also true of everybody? No. Again, John 3, 36 continues, whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Paul says it is for those who are in Christ Jesus. Honestly, I'm going to be brash. I'm going to be specific. I don't care if you've made a profession of faith. It does not say for all those who have made a profession of faith. It doesn't say that. It doesn't say for all those who go to church on Sundays. What it says is for all of those who are in Christ. Are you in Christ? Do you have union with Christ? As He goes to the cross, are you there with Him and in Him? As He is laid in the tomb, where your sin is taken care of because you are in Him. When He's resurrected from the grave, are you resurrected too? Do you know Him? Is there a personal relationship with Christ? Are you in Christ? Now, some of us, I think, probably rightfully would say, I have no clue what you're talking about. And I would just say this. Come now, come to Christ even now. You can have no condemnation right now as you're praying in your chairs. Come now all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your souls. That's the promise that he makes. Secondly, there is therefore now no bondage for sin. Specifically, now we're going to be looking at the work of the Spirit. We looked at verses 1 and 3, we're now going to look at verses 2 and 4. Look at verse 2. For the law of the Spirit has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. We spoke previously that Paul has a number of different meanings for the term law. In the past, he's meant the Ten Commandments. In the past, he's meant legalism. In the past, he has meant a rule or a standard. But here, law means, in verse 2, a powerful internal influence. So we should read verse 2 this way. 4. The powerful influence of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the powerful influence of sin and death. That is good news. That is great news. The entrance of the spirit into our spirit is a little bit like SEAL Team 6 going on a rescue mission for POW. It frees you from the shackles of the authority of sin. Augustus, top lady. Another one of my favorite theologians wrote in Rock of Ages, be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me of its guilt and power. Cleanse me of the power of sin out from under the authority of it. So as we think about the young child that's going across that brick, that brick edifice, and he's walking on top of it, we actually have a third way. We don't have to fall off to the left. We don't actually have to fall off to the right. We actually can walk with a clean conscience. We can walk knowing the Spirit. We can walk with regenerate hearts. we can now walk with the Lord in power, putting our flesh to death. And now we can walk, I'm gonna use this language too, we've talked about the law before, we've talked about how it functions in our lives. But the law doesn't just condemn us and bring us to Christ, it doesn't just curb sin in the culture, And it isn't merely a measure of now what is expected of us, but actually the law can be the measure. If we're walking by the Spirit, the law now can be the measure of our freedom from sin. The measure of our freedom from idolatry. And we looked at that last week briefly. As Paul is opening up the concept that really what the first commandment is doing is it is protecting unto you orthodox worship. Worshipping God in his glory and actually protecting you from paganism. That's for your good. That's not legalism. That's holiness. That's godliness. So our chains are gone. The habit of watching pornography can be broken for the woman and for the man. The tendency to being or having to do everything exactly your way. I'm not saying that to get my way. But to have, I mean, sometimes it can be crippling in relationships. You have to have things done your way. You can be free from your proneness to sex outside of marriage. You can be freed from your tendency to gossip, freed from the judgmentalism that produces and cultivates death within our circles, as we are so incredibly critical of the people who are around us. I am not anti-discernment. We should exercise discernment. But oftentimes our criticisms go way beyond discernment and they become judgmental of everyone who doesn't believe the same way we do. That's sin and we can be freed from it because now we can walk in the Spirit who allows us to put our sin to death and our flesh to death. These things don't have to rule over us. I love the language that God uses in Genesis chapter 4. He uses it to someone. He uses it to Cain. But sin is constantly crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. And now in the power of the Spirit, that's possible. That's possible. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that has overcome the world. Namely, a faith that is empowered by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That's what the Roman Church needed. They have to know that they don't have to succumb to the racism, to the privilege of being Jewish Christians over and against the Gentile Christians. They don't have to succumb to pride and arrogance. They don't have to succumb and sit in seats of authority. They can actually defer and they can love their brethren, their Gentile brethren. Seems true of the Gentile brothers. Now oftentimes when you're the one that gets picked on, you develop the little brother syndrome, right? Anthony might be developing that a little bit. But you don't have to prove yourself to anyone if there's no condemnation in Christ for you. And now you can actually put that death or that sin to death because you have everything that you need every equipment that you need to run away from it, to flee from it. The only reason why we aren't free from our sin is because we actually choose sin over Jesus' purpose of holiness for our lives. We choose sin over the glory of his kingdom. That's why we sin. Now wait, did you catch actually what Paul said from verses 1 to 2? Take a look at verses 1 to 2. Notice the relationship of justification, that is no condemnation, to sanctification, that is free from the spirit. Therefore, now, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Jesus Christ from the law of sin and death. Now, is he saying that we have no condemnation because we have been set free? Now, wait a second. We don't believe that our sanctification is brought into and is the grounds of our justification. Another denomination believes that. I won't get into it right now. We don't believe that. Otherwise, our works are imported into our relationship, the grounds of our salvation. Otherwise, Paul is saying exactly the opposite of what he's been telling us, and that is he's advocating for legalism again. Is that what he's doing? Our holiness is not the grounds of our freedom from condemnation. I think Keller puts it really, really well. This is Tim Keller. We know we are out of condemnation. We're outside of condemnation because we see the evidence of the Spirit in our lives, freeing us from sin. Sanctification works as evidence, as proof of justification, not as the grounds of it. It's a little bit like in the movie Forrest Gump. Yeah, Alabama reference. In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest was born with a crooked spine. He was forced to wear these leg braces. Except one day he's getting picked on by bullies, and it's the famous, run Forrest, run! You know that whole part. And so, except he's in leg braces, he cannot run. He has a crooked spine. He cannot run. And as he's being bullied, he actually does start to run. And in running, his braces fall off, and suddenly it appears that he no longer has a crooked back or crooked spine, and he runs all the way home. And that's the beginning of the motif of Forrest Gump running. It would be foolish, though, to sit there and say that running or the falling off of his braces is what straightened his back. It is literally not possible. Rather, his spine has to be straight in order for him to be able to run. His spine has to be healed in order for him to run. Holiness cannot be the grounds of justification. Holiness is the evidence of it. Running is the evidence of a healed spine. Running isn't what healed the spine. That's crazy. So then the question becomes, do you see evidence of the freedom from sin in your life? Can you look back over the last 10, over the last five, over the last two years and see where your life has changed to God's glory? Do you see where you've been convicted of sin? Do you see where he's been working in your heart? That's what he has in store for you. Justification, if I can say it this way, is a means to an end. It isn't the end. Worship is the end. Obedience is the end. But justification just gets us there. Regeneration just gets us there. But now we're actually called to live lives with Christ, live lives obedient to Him, because we have everything that we have and need. No bondage, no guilt, no condemnation. We have the indwelling of the Spirit and we have our Christ. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you even as we come to the table. We have the same message in our table that as you came into this world, as you meet us here, Lord, we are humbled. You have over and over again proclaimed a whole salvation from sin and death. We pray this in Christ's name and we ask that we would glory in it. Amen.