Romans Series: Chapter 8, Part 1
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Peace to Live By Romans Series: Chapter 8, Part 1 (2023 Re-Record & Update) - Daniel Litton
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[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word, and contains extra material that was cut from the broadcast due to time constraints]
Coming to Romans chapter 8 today, we arrive at the most loved chapter, by Christians, in the whole entire Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament considered. Unquestionably, Romans chapter 8 is a thoroughly insightful chapter for us. It’s message is an encouraging one, and it makes us feel good. In this chapter, the Apostle Paul discusses the things that we like to think about, as Christians. He really doesn’t touch on any of the uncomfortable areas. Not only are these things encouraging but also they are about several key doctrines of the faith. And perhaps our favorite one, is the one that begins this chapter.
Last fall, we went over the first seven chapters of this book, and spent quite a lot of time discussing the key elements of those chapters. We’ve learned and been reminded of quite a lot in our studies. Whatever way you look at those first seven chapters, one thing was consistent, and that was that Paul kept Jesus Christ as front and center. Indeed, that’s the whole purpose of this book. It is to uphold Jesus Christ, to show him as the true Messiah to any unbelieving Jews, and to tell both Jewish individuals and Gentile individuals how they can know Jesus, and how they can live in a way that is pleasing to him, whether that be internally or externally. To expound upon that, how we can please Christ by how we think internally, and how we live externally.
Let’s not spend time recapping the first seven chapters in detail; rather, we are eager today for Romans chapter 8. Since we’ve got a lot to talk about, Romans chapter 8 will be broken down into four messages. That will allow us to really consider these points that the Apostle Paul, writing through the Spirit of God, has for us. So, this being said, let’s go ahead and turn to Romans chapter 8 in our Bibles, or tap there on our mobile devices, and go to verse one. And one thing to note before we get started, and that is that many of you are going to have the second half of verse 1 missing in your Bibles. The speaker’s belief about this has been stated in the past, but the main reason is because the modern translators have gotten fancy on us and removed it since it only appears in some of the manuscripts. Nevertheless, let’s keep it present as it has been there for 1,900 years or so, and nows not the time to be editing our Bibles right before Jesus returns. (People sometimes want to criticize modern translations for being too readable and yet those same folks don’t want to criticize the deleting of verses in the more literal translations. Ok, whatever).
Romans chapter 8, starting in verse 1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh (but according to the Spirit).”
To get started, we have a “therefore” that needs addressed. Paul is piggybacking on what he has said in the last chapter, chapter 7. Recall? He was talking about the current state of Christians, how we still sin even when we don’t want to, even when we know we shouldn’t. That’s because we still retain our sin-natures, even now. And that appears to be true for this verse in Romans chapter 8 to make any sense. It’s not that we now have no condemnation because we are sin-free. No, we all are aware that’s not the case—not the case at all. But, Paul is saying that in spite of that fact, we now have no condemnation simply because we have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. For the forgiveness of our sins. Our slates have been wiped clean, and not only up until this point, but past, present, and future. We will always be right in God’s sight, no matter what.
Now, what does “no condemnation” mean exactly? No condemnation from what? From ourselves, from God, from other people? What is Paul referring to? Well, in theory all of these areas. The most important, though, is that God doesn’t condemn us anymore. Truly, oftentimes this has been a hard thing for us to get through our heads. Definitely so. The more legalistic or perfectionistic a person is, the harder it seems to be for him or her to accept the fact that God doesn’t condemn them for sin anymore. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t tell us to make correction, or discipline us when we don’t make correction, but it means God doesn’t condemn us when we sin. He doesn’t stay upset with us for a long period of time. He doesn’t bring up past sins to us, and say, “Remember what you did back here? I’m still punishing you for that.” No, God doesn’t condemn us any longer.
So, if God doesn’t continually condemn us, and yet we feel condemnation in us, where does that condemnation come from? Well, if it’s not coming from God or our inner-guilt, then it must be coming from the other side, from Satan. Yes, for sure. Satan will try to get us to focus on our sin, to continually mull on it over and over. He will use demonic spirits to remind us of our sin. He wants us to think about what we’ve done wrong. Elsewhere in Scripture, Satan is called the accuser of us as believers. One of his hobbies is to accuse us, to try to get us to forget that Christ has paid for all of our offenses, and that all we need to do is count on him. At the moment Satan and his forces present these lies to us, we have one of two choices to make. We can either accept what Satan says, and feel horrible, or we can say back to him that God has forgiven our sin and wants us to forget about it. We can repeat back to him, “There is no condemnation for me because I am in Christ Jesus.”
Now, this is not to say that we may initially feel condemned at the moment we realize we have committed a sin. The Apostle John tells us, “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (1 John 3:20, 21, ESV). John was not contradicting what Paul is saying here in Romans 8. For Paul has stated in other places that we are to examine ourselves before God. That initial condemnation, or conviction, as we more regularly call it, from the Spirit of God, leads us to repent of a sin, leads us to confess it. The problem comes for us when we continually mull over that sin, ruminating on it constantly, and replaying it in our minds. It’s then that we come under the condemnation Paul is referring to in Romans 8 that we are not part of anymore.
This is the point where the second part of verse 1 comes into great importance. Paul discussed how we are not to walk after the flesh. In walking after ungodly impulses (we learned about this in the fall), when we walk after the flesh we are depending on our own ability to be right before God. We are depending on our own flesh in order to not sin and try to be perfect before God. The problem with this is, God doesn’t approve of this methodology. It displeases him when we try to make ourselves good in his sight by our own performance (i.e. going a long time without sinning). This is what Christians do who are not Spirit-filled, the ones who are stern and lifeless. On the contrary, we depend on God for our righteousness before him, and for our ability to walk in that righteousness (to do what is right in his sight). This is walking according to the Spirit. It is trusting on God’s grace so that we no longer feel condemnation when we don’t measure up. God has already taken the responsibility upon himself to do the work for us. It is our responsibility now to place our faith in God’s ability to do that work on our behalf.
Yet if other people continue to think of any sin we’ve committed and of which they are aware of when they think about us or see us, that shouldn’t be our concern. Frequently persons who are quick to bring to mind the sin of others are those who are either prideful in themselves, in their ability to perform, and hold themselves in a high view, or they are of those of which the opposite is true, they hate themselves and are trying to bring everyone down to what they feel is their level. It is important that we accept ourselves, giving up pride. When we accept ourselves it is so much easier to give grace to others. It is not our job to be constantly seeking for others to like us, to be happy with us in life. During our lives, no matter who we are, we are not always going to be approved by everyone all the time. That’s just not going to happen. It’s not wrong to desire to be liked by people, but to always be liked is just a burden no one needs to try to bear. We have to give up control of this area of our lives.
A problem for us with condemnation from Satan or from others is that if we let it get to us, if we saturate our minds in it, it can prevent us from actually moving forward in a successful way in life. Individuals can get stuck in their sin. It has been seen so many times with people known, them wallowing in condemnation for sins done in the past. What if the Apostle Peter, for example, had wallowed in his sin of denying Jesus multiple times, and not going to death with him, like he said he would? Peter could have shut down his life since he had done that, as he had let Jesus down in these ways. But did he do that? No, he didn’t. He received Jesus’ forgiveness and went to start the first church, and to be one of the pillars of the church in Jerusalem. What if he would have caved to Satan’s condemnation? There wouldn’t have been a leader for the first church. All the times he witnessed Jesus’ name would have been lost. All his rewards stored up in Heaven for his ministering would have been forfeited. It wasn’t even God’s will that Peter go to the cross with Jesus. He never had to swear he’d die with him. Now, that’s not pointed out to excuse Peter’s sin, but simply to make the point that God wasn’t asking Peter to do what he thought he was. Peter often gets a bad wrap. But, let us take Peter’s correct mindset, from his correct response, and move on from our own sins and not wallow in the mud.
Moving on. Verse 2: “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.” (Romans 8:2-4, ESV)
People who lived under the Old Testament Law had no ability to live free from sin. Under the Old Testament system, the Law could not accomplish that. It just showed persons where their sin was, and what they weren’t supposed to do. The problem is that without being a new creation, without the old-self passing away, one could only live by trying to keep the rules. And there were certain sins, that if a person committed them, there was no way to really get away from the guilt and condemnation that came from these sins. An example of this is David’s sin with Bathsheba. There was no way for David to get truly free from the guilt brought about by everything that went down because he was living in the time before Christ. God hadn’t made the ‘no condemnation’ package available back then. We are so fortunate and blessed by God today by what Christ has accomplished for us. Through their flesh then back, and individuals today through their flesh, cannot fulfill the righteous requirement of the Jewish Law.
In today’s time, for those who are in right relationship with God through Jesus, no matter what a person has done, he or she can be free from any and every sin. It’s truly a revolutionary and transformative thing. When we teachers say that anyone can come to Jesus and have the burden lifted from their shoulders, it’s not a joke. That’s what Christ does for people. He wipes their slates clean. Even for people who have already accepted him, as John said in the verse we read a little bit ago, God can wipe away the Christian’s sin. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should sin at will due to the fact we can escape mental and emotional consequences of it, but it means that we can live truly free from condemnation. If you stop and consider, being truly free from condemnation means that regret can go out the window. We don’t have to feel regret for past sins since the Christian life is not about our performance, but rather our trusting in Christ’s performance for us (for more on this, see The Study of James, 2019-2020).
We are to walk according to the Spirit versus according to the flesh in our lives. What does this reap for us? Paul says we can fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. So, God’s moral law, which doesn’t change, can be fulfilled in us through living by the Holy Spirit. We can effectively and successfully say no to sin in our flesh. We can say no to lust, to lying, to stealing, to unforgiveness, whatever it is, whatever sin we consider, we have the free choice now to not practice that sin. Before, back at the time we were unbelievers, we were slaves of sin. We couldn’t stop sinning even if we wanted to. At the end of the day, we would justify whatever wrong we were doing. We would look a woman in a lustful way, and say, “Ah, I’m just a man and that’s the way it is. That’s the way nature works.” Or, we would steal something from the place we worked, and say, “Ah, I work hard for them and they owe it me. It’s alright to take it.” Or, we would lie, and then say, “Come on, everyone lies. Just be wise about it and don’t get caught, and everything will be fine.” That’s how we were.
What does it mean then to walk according to the Spirit? For sure, walking according to the Spirit means that we obey what God has outlined in his Word. We don’t practice the behaviors that God says are sin. Due to our faith in Jesus and the fact that we are new creations indwelled by the Spirit of God we truly lose our desire to want to sin. We still have temptations to sin, but our overall drive is to want to please God. We depend on God to pick up where we lack, and we do what we feel he wants us to do. Now, walking by the Spirit isn’t just not doing certain sins, and it’s not simply randomly obeying different commandments from the New Testament in a dry and strict fashion. Rather, it is following what we feel God wants us to be doing with our lives in an alive way, where we feel he is leading us, doing what he has gifted us to do. Remember those spiritual gifts passages? We are going to look at this later in Romans. God gifts each of us differently to accomplish certain objectives in life, and that’s what he desires for us to be doing, to be focusing time on.
We need to be able to differentiate between what the Spirit of God wants from us and what Satan and his demons or our minds are trying to convey to us. This is something we have to do; it is a choice that we have to make. When we trust in God, he will lead us where we are supposed to go. However, sometimes he doesn’t let us in what that’s going to be until we need to know. Sometimes God doesn’t work ahead like we have often wanted to do. Nevertheless, he tells us what we are to do when the time is right. And not only that, God even allows us to put input into things at time. We can lie down at night and sleep sound when we live like this, as we know that God will lead us in the right directions. Usually, God just wants us to focus on our current day. If we try to work ahead, we don’t have the grace we need to do that. God doesn’t give us extra grace in advance, but he gives us what we need right now only. This is walking according to the Spirit. We walk according to the flesh at the moment we try to act without God’s input, or in an untimely manner, in trying to work ahead.
Moving along. Verse 5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:5-8, ESV)
Paul is moving into one of the speaker’s favorite subjects, which is the mind. There is great love in learning about the mind. There is gladness in the spirit that he put this section here. Understanding the mind can help us greatly. Why, if we can master our minds, then we can master everything, right? If we care to be successful in life, it seems reasonable to say that it comes back to our minds, to what we think about. As many of you know, there is also a great love in studying American history. Recently, a book was being read about George Washington’s life from 1783 right after the Revolution to 1789 right before he become President, and what he was doing during this period. You really don’t hear a lot about it, and it’s interesting stuff. Nevertheless, this is brought up because a quote presented itself of which Washington had written to his mother in 1787. Washington was writing his mother who had been complaining about this and that, and he commented to her, “happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons mind than on the externals in the world” (as cited in Larson, pg. 96, 2014). Wow is that true. Washington understood the importance of the mind, and how we think.
First, let us consider what setting our minds on the things of the flesh entails. Now, many might say, “I don’t believe that really needs explanation.” But actually, it seems to due to the fact that setting our minds of the flesh is just not doing the obvious wrongs. It’s not just thinking lustful thoughts, or being angry at people, or focusing on worldly, trivial things. There’s much more to setting our minds on the flesh than those kinds of things. The core fundamental to this is simply that if any thought we are thinking in our minds is causing us distress than we shouldn’t be continuing to ponder those thoughts. Those thoughts are producing death in us. Various kinds of lines of thought can cause this for us, mindsets such as worrying, stressing out, being full of fear, dreading different kinds of events, and thoughts like these. Believe it or not, this type of thinking is not what we are supposed to be doing. Jesus wouldn’t have done it, and so we shouldn’t be thinking like this, setting our minds on the flesh. Not only will it not make us happy, as Washington stated, but really it comes down to incorrect thinking on our parts. We could say certain sinful thinking-patterns are present in Christian communities that are just accepted as okay in being practiced, such as gossiping and other mental sins that fall right in line with this.
Second, how do we combat these types of thinking patterns in our minds? How do we get the life and peace Paul references here? In other words, what is the best combat for all types of incorrect thinking? Well, let us grab a verse by Paul from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. There, he stated, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on… for a helmet the hope of salvation” (verse 8). A helmet obviously protects the head. We might say it protects the mind. And what does the helmet represent? It represents hope. It is hope for salvation, that is, salvation from the enemy. So, the helmet that Paul points out is hope that we will be preserved from our enemies, Satan and his demonic forces. However, Paul says one key thing. Let’s not miss it. He says we have to “put on” the helmet. In other words, it’s a choice we make. He have to decide to be hopeful, and being hopeful will help us think correctly.
Being full of hope in our minds, then, we find we are full of faith. Jesus emphasized during his earthly ministry that his disciples should use, and live by, faith. Thus, a mind full of faith is one that sees everything in life, everything from day to day, with hope-filled eyeglasses on. In considering our current circumstances, whatever they are, we are hopeful that events are going to turn out in our favor, that everything is going to work out for our good. We don’t hold in mind all the possibilities of things that could go wrong. Still yet, if they come to our minds, we quickly let them pass right by us. We don’t speak to others mostly negatively. We don’t speak of what could go wrong. We have an outlook of faith that God is on our side and that things will work out for the good. If we are waiting on an important package, we don’t think things such as, “I bet they’ll deliver it to the wrong address. I probably be gone when it comes and miss it. Even if I do get, what if the items damaged.” We don’t have mindsets like this. It’s not sinful to expect the best and think about the best outcome. Whoever said that is flat out wrong. It’s actually sinful to expect the worst and to think about the bad. That’s an insult to God’s character.
We must combat lies that come to us from the enemy by countering with faith-filled words from Scripture. If the enemy is telling us we’re not going to get our package, we need to say something along these lines, “The Scripture says that God is on my side. I believe he will help me to get it. That’s a lie. Everything is going to be fine.” Then we need to stand firm on our faith. This is how, as Paul discusses in Romans 8, we experience life and peace. We cannot experience life and peace if we are always thinking about and considering bad things, thinking about what could go wrong for us and those around us. That’s not life, and that’s not peace. We have to discipline our minds and control what we think about on a day to day, moment by moment basis. By doing this, we will end up being happy in our lives. If we are presented with a problem, we need to immediately be hopeful that our problem is going to resolved soon, and that what we want to happen is what is going to happen. We should not brush this of as a sinful theory on the power of positive thinking. The only sin comes in brushing it off in unbelief. If you want to brush it off, go for it, and have a miserable life. The rest of us can have good, faith-filled, positive lives. If you stop and consider it, you know how a faithless way of living doesn’t work. Things never get better that way; they're always the same: boring, mundane, and powerless. So, it’s best to leave the dark-side and come to the faith-filled side, so that life experience will change. It’s not just for Charismatics, but it’s for Anabaptists and Evangelicals also.
Paul said, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This is because, as we’ve been saying, one who is alive without being regenerated, one who has not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, is not in personal relationship with God. Since he or she has not been transformed, he or she is not indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Since this is the case, it is impossible for the person to live by the things of God—to practice truth, to follow the Spirit, etc. This being the case, ultimately the person cannot please God. Even if the person appears to be doing good externally, they don’t know the spiritual practices by which they can please God. They can’t as they haven’t been born-again; spiritual things can only be discerned by a spiritual person, and the person doesn’t know God. Any good actions in the physical realm, then, are besides the point and not even counted in God’s eyes toward their credit. In the same way, Christians also can live in the flesh versus the Spirit, as mentioned, and this also is equally displeasing to God. It’s already been gone over in Romans chapter 7. Only lifeless and heartless believers do this, and they even don’t realize it. We will come back to this on down the road here in the book of Romans. Indeed, a bit more can be discussed on this subject.
Verse 9: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:9-11, ESV)
Again, we as Christians are not the same as Old Testament believers in God. The Spirit of God now permanently lives inside of us. This happened at the moment of our conversation, the moment we believed in God, accepted Jesus. We are not either like unbelievers who are not in right relationship with God. We have advantages over both groups of individuals, to understate it dramatically. Mainly, the two points are that we are new creations and indwelled by the Spirit of God. But Paul says that anyone of which the Holy Spirit does not abide in their bodies does not actually know God. That’s one way a person understands if he or she is truly born again. As Paul is going to tell us next week, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16, ESV). The Apostle John would put it this way: “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 3:24, ESV). If you’re not sure if you’re really a Christian today, this is a good baseline test for you. We as believers may feel God’s presence, and we certainly sense his encouragement and help. We feel conviction for sin every now and then, though most people do. Nonetheless, there should be a sense we are a believer inside ourselves. If you’re a seeker today listening, understand that other religions don’t offer this; they don’t offer their followers being in indwelled by God himself. This is definitely unique to Christianity.
Paul also brings up the fact that even though the Spirit makes his home with us, our bodies still remain dead because of sin. Dead? What does that mean? This confirms what we learned in the last chapter, in Romans 7, regarding the fact that we still, even as Christians, retain the sin-nature in our bodies. That’s what dead means. We don’t lose the sin-nature at the moment we become believers. We still have the ability to sin surely, as any one of us can testify, and we still do and will sin unfortunately. Realistically, there are still sinful behaviors we need to overcome in our lives after our conversation—sinful thought patterns, for instance, that we may not yet recognize we have. We should appear to be growing in Christ. There should be a notable difference in us as we live out our lives, which is another baseline test for those of you who are wondering about whether or not you’re saved. The Spirit works life in us. He works out his fruit in us, which Paul discussed in Galatians chapter 5. He reinvents our characters. We are no longer hopeless but hopeful. We are no longer negative and complaining, but full of faith. He works brotherly and sisterly love in us. We find that we truly love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. The Spirit gifts us so that we can help our fellow members in our church in various ways. He works out our shining of lights before others, before those who don’t know God yet. All kinds of things exist, ways that produce life, that the Spirit works in us.
The culmination of all of this is that at the time we die—at the moment we leave this earth, or when we take part in the Rapture—we will ultimately be transformed into having a perfect, physical body, a body which is sin-free. For those of you who care about your appearance (which really should be all of us), there will be perfection. Total loss of excess weight and perfect physiques. Anyway, being sin-free is what we ultimately long for and want. That should be our desire that we currently have. To be able to please God fully, one hundred percent of the time. All of this new life in our new body is a process the is brought about by the Holy Spirit. Note the famous passage of Scripture from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:50-53, ESV).
The good news today is that anyone can experience this process by the Spirit. Anyone can have new life in Jesus. You can gain new a life now, becoming born again, a new creature in Christ, and be indwelled by the Spirit. This will lead to new life and physical bodies in the future, when we are ultimately with Jesus. By Jesus’ dying on the cross and rising from the dead, he has made all of this possible for you today. He is physically in Heaven right now, and we can be there with him too someday. Trust in Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf and you will enter real life.
-Daniel Litton
Reference
Larson, Edward J. (2014). The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789. Sydney, AU: HarperCollins.
Coming to Romans chapter 8 today, we arrive at the most loved chapter, by Christians, in the whole entire Bible, both Old Testament and New Testament considered. Unquestionably, Romans chapter 8 is a thoroughly insightful chapter for us. It’s message is an encouraging one, and it makes us feel good. In this chapter, the Apostle Paul discusses the things that we like to think about, as Christians. He really doesn’t touch on any of the uncomfortable areas. Not only are these things encouraging but also they are about several key doctrines of the faith. And perhaps our favorite one, is the one that begins this chapter.
Last fall, we went over the first seven chapters of this book, and spent quite a lot of time discussing the key elements of those chapters. We’ve learned and been reminded of quite a lot in our studies. Whatever way you look at those first seven chapters, one thing was consistent, and that was that Paul kept Jesus Christ as front and center. Indeed, that’s the whole purpose of this book. It is to uphold Jesus Christ, to show him as the true Messiah to any unbelieving Jews, and to tell both Jewish individuals and Gentile individuals how they can know Jesus, and how they can live in a way that is pleasing to him, whether that be internally or externally. To expound upon that, how we can please Christ by how we think internally, and how we live externally.
Let’s not spend time recapping the first seven chapters in detail; rather, we are eager today for Romans chapter 8. Since we’ve got a lot to talk about, Romans chapter 8 will be broken down into four messages. That will allow us to really consider these points that the Apostle Paul, writing through the Spirit of God, has for us. So, this being said, let’s go ahead and turn to Romans chapter 8 in our Bibles, or tap there on our mobile devices, and go to verse one. And one thing to note before we get started, and that is that many of you are going to have the second half of verse 1 missing in your Bibles. The speaker’s belief about this has been stated in the past, but the main reason is because the modern translators have gotten fancy on us and removed it since it only appears in some of the manuscripts. Nevertheless, let’s keep it present as it has been there for 1,900 years or so, and nows not the time to be editing our Bibles right before Jesus returns. (People sometimes want to criticize modern translations for being too readable and yet those same folks don’t want to criticize the deleting of verses in the more literal translations. Ok, whatever).
Romans chapter 8, starting in verse 1: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh (but according to the Spirit).”
To get started, we have a “therefore” that needs addressed. Paul is piggybacking on what he has said in the last chapter, chapter 7. Recall? He was talking about the current state of Christians, how we still sin even when we don’t want to, even when we know we shouldn’t. That’s because we still retain our sin-natures, even now. And that appears to be true for this verse in Romans chapter 8 to make any sense. It’s not that we now have no condemnation because we are sin-free. No, we all are aware that’s not the case—not the case at all. But, Paul is saying that in spite of that fact, we now have no condemnation simply because we have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins. For the forgiveness of our sins. Our slates have been wiped clean, and not only up until this point, but past, present, and future. We will always be right in God’s sight, no matter what.
Now, what does “no condemnation” mean exactly? No condemnation from what? From ourselves, from God, from other people? What is Paul referring to? Well, in theory all of these areas. The most important, though, is that God doesn’t condemn us anymore. Truly, oftentimes this has been a hard thing for us to get through our heads. Definitely so. The more legalistic or perfectionistic a person is, the harder it seems to be for him or her to accept the fact that God doesn’t condemn them for sin anymore. This doesn’t mean God doesn’t tell us to make correction, or discipline us when we don’t make correction, but it means God doesn’t condemn us when we sin. He doesn’t stay upset with us for a long period of time. He doesn’t bring up past sins to us, and say, “Remember what you did back here? I’m still punishing you for that.” No, God doesn’t condemn us any longer.
So, if God doesn’t continually condemn us, and yet we feel condemnation in us, where does that condemnation come from? Well, if it’s not coming from God or our inner-guilt, then it must be coming from the other side, from Satan. Yes, for sure. Satan will try to get us to focus on our sin, to continually mull on it over and over. He will use demonic spirits to remind us of our sin. He wants us to think about what we’ve done wrong. Elsewhere in Scripture, Satan is called the accuser of us as believers. One of his hobbies is to accuse us, to try to get us to forget that Christ has paid for all of our offenses, and that all we need to do is count on him. At the moment Satan and his forces present these lies to us, we have one of two choices to make. We can either accept what Satan says, and feel horrible, or we can say back to him that God has forgiven our sin and wants us to forget about it. We can repeat back to him, “There is no condemnation for me because I am in Christ Jesus.”
Now, this is not to say that we may initially feel condemned at the moment we realize we have committed a sin. The Apostle John tells us, “for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God” (1 John 3:20, 21, ESV). John was not contradicting what Paul is saying here in Romans 8. For Paul has stated in other places that we are to examine ourselves before God. That initial condemnation, or conviction, as we more regularly call it, from the Spirit of God, leads us to repent of a sin, leads us to confess it. The problem comes for us when we continually mull over that sin, ruminating on it constantly, and replaying it in our minds. It’s then that we come under the condemnation Paul is referring to in Romans 8 that we are not part of anymore.
This is the point where the second part of verse 1 comes into great importance. Paul discussed how we are not to walk after the flesh. In walking after ungodly impulses (we learned about this in the fall), when we walk after the flesh we are depending on our own ability to be right before God. We are depending on our own flesh in order to not sin and try to be perfect before God. The problem with this is, God doesn’t approve of this methodology. It displeases him when we try to make ourselves good in his sight by our own performance (i.e. going a long time without sinning). This is what Christians do who are not Spirit-filled, the ones who are stern and lifeless. On the contrary, we depend on God for our righteousness before him, and for our ability to walk in that righteousness (to do what is right in his sight). This is walking according to the Spirit. It is trusting on God’s grace so that we no longer feel condemnation when we don’t measure up. God has already taken the responsibility upon himself to do the work for us. It is our responsibility now to place our faith in God’s ability to do that work on our behalf.
Yet if other people continue to think of any sin we’ve committed and of which they are aware of when they think about us or see us, that shouldn’t be our concern. Frequently persons who are quick to bring to mind the sin of others are those who are either prideful in themselves, in their ability to perform, and hold themselves in a high view, or they are of those of which the opposite is true, they hate themselves and are trying to bring everyone down to what they feel is their level. It is important that we accept ourselves, giving up pride. When we accept ourselves it is so much easier to give grace to others. It is not our job to be constantly seeking for others to like us, to be happy with us in life. During our lives, no matter who we are, we are not always going to be approved by everyone all the time. That’s just not going to happen. It’s not wrong to desire to be liked by people, but to always be liked is just a burden no one needs to try to bear. We have to give up control of this area of our lives.
A problem for us with condemnation from Satan or from others is that if we let it get to us, if we saturate our minds in it, it can prevent us from actually moving forward in a successful way in life. Individuals can get stuck in their sin. It has been seen so many times with people known, them wallowing in condemnation for sins done in the past. What if the Apostle Peter, for example, had wallowed in his sin of denying Jesus multiple times, and not going to death with him, like he said he would? Peter could have shut down his life since he had done that, as he had let Jesus down in these ways. But did he do that? No, he didn’t. He received Jesus’ forgiveness and went to start the first church, and to be one of the pillars of the church in Jerusalem. What if he would have caved to Satan’s condemnation? There wouldn’t have been a leader for the first church. All the times he witnessed Jesus’ name would have been lost. All his rewards stored up in Heaven for his ministering would have been forfeited. It wasn’t even God’s will that Peter go to the cross with Jesus. He never had to swear he’d die with him. Now, that’s not pointed out to excuse Peter’s sin, but simply to make the point that God wasn’t asking Peter to do what he thought he was. Peter often gets a bad wrap. But, let us take Peter’s correct mindset, from his correct response, and move on from our own sins and not wallow in the mud.
Moving on. Verse 2: “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.” (Romans 8:2-4, ESV)
People who lived under the Old Testament Law had no ability to live free from sin. Under the Old Testament system, the Law could not accomplish that. It just showed persons where their sin was, and what they weren’t supposed to do. The problem is that without being a new creation, without the old-self passing away, one could only live by trying to keep the rules. And there were certain sins, that if a person committed them, there was no way to really get away from the guilt and condemnation that came from these sins. An example of this is David’s sin with Bathsheba. There was no way for David to get truly free from the guilt brought about by everything that went down because he was living in the time before Christ. God hadn’t made the ‘no condemnation’ package available back then. We are so fortunate and blessed by God today by what Christ has accomplished for us. Through their flesh then back, and individuals today through their flesh, cannot fulfill the righteous requirement of the Jewish Law.
In today’s time, for those who are in right relationship with God through Jesus, no matter what a person has done, he or she can be free from any and every sin. It’s truly a revolutionary and transformative thing. When we teachers say that anyone can come to Jesus and have the burden lifted from their shoulders, it’s not a joke. That’s what Christ does for people. He wipes their slates clean. Even for people who have already accepted him, as John said in the verse we read a little bit ago, God can wipe away the Christian’s sin. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should sin at will due to the fact we can escape mental and emotional consequences of it, but it means that we can live truly free from condemnation. If you stop and consider, being truly free from condemnation means that regret can go out the window. We don’t have to feel regret for past sins since the Christian life is not about our performance, but rather our trusting in Christ’s performance for us (for more on this, see The Study of James, 2019-2020).
We are to walk according to the Spirit versus according to the flesh in our lives. What does this reap for us? Paul says we can fulfill the righteous requirement of the law. So, God’s moral law, which doesn’t change, can be fulfilled in us through living by the Holy Spirit. We can effectively and successfully say no to sin in our flesh. We can say no to lust, to lying, to stealing, to unforgiveness, whatever it is, whatever sin we consider, we have the free choice now to not practice that sin. Before, back at the time we were unbelievers, we were slaves of sin. We couldn’t stop sinning even if we wanted to. At the end of the day, we would justify whatever wrong we were doing. We would look a woman in a lustful way, and say, “Ah, I’m just a man and that’s the way it is. That’s the way nature works.” Or, we would steal something from the place we worked, and say, “Ah, I work hard for them and they owe it me. It’s alright to take it.” Or, we would lie, and then say, “Come on, everyone lies. Just be wise about it and don’t get caught, and everything will be fine.” That’s how we were.
What does it mean then to walk according to the Spirit? For sure, walking according to the Spirit means that we obey what God has outlined in his Word. We don’t practice the behaviors that God says are sin. Due to our faith in Jesus and the fact that we are new creations indwelled by the Spirit of God we truly lose our desire to want to sin. We still have temptations to sin, but our overall drive is to want to please God. We depend on God to pick up where we lack, and we do what we feel he wants us to do. Now, walking by the Spirit isn’t just not doing certain sins, and it’s not simply randomly obeying different commandments from the New Testament in a dry and strict fashion. Rather, it is following what we feel God wants us to be doing with our lives in an alive way, where we feel he is leading us, doing what he has gifted us to do. Remember those spiritual gifts passages? We are going to look at this later in Romans. God gifts each of us differently to accomplish certain objectives in life, and that’s what he desires for us to be doing, to be focusing time on.
We need to be able to differentiate between what the Spirit of God wants from us and what Satan and his demons or our minds are trying to convey to us. This is something we have to do; it is a choice that we have to make. When we trust in God, he will lead us where we are supposed to go. However, sometimes he doesn’t let us in what that’s going to be until we need to know. Sometimes God doesn’t work ahead like we have often wanted to do. Nevertheless, he tells us what we are to do when the time is right. And not only that, God even allows us to put input into things at time. We can lie down at night and sleep sound when we live like this, as we know that God will lead us in the right directions. Usually, God just wants us to focus on our current day. If we try to work ahead, we don’t have the grace we need to do that. God doesn’t give us extra grace in advance, but he gives us what we need right now only. This is walking according to the Spirit. We walk according to the flesh at the moment we try to act without God’s input, or in an untimely manner, in trying to work ahead.
Moving along. Verse 5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” (Romans 8:5-8, ESV)
Paul is moving into one of the speaker’s favorite subjects, which is the mind. There is great love in learning about the mind. There is gladness in the spirit that he put this section here. Understanding the mind can help us greatly. Why, if we can master our minds, then we can master everything, right? If we care to be successful in life, it seems reasonable to say that it comes back to our minds, to what we think about. As many of you know, there is also a great love in studying American history. Recently, a book was being read about George Washington’s life from 1783 right after the Revolution to 1789 right before he become President, and what he was doing during this period. You really don’t hear a lot about it, and it’s interesting stuff. Nevertheless, this is brought up because a quote presented itself of which Washington had written to his mother in 1787. Washington was writing his mother who had been complaining about this and that, and he commented to her, “happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons mind than on the externals in the world” (as cited in Larson, pg. 96, 2014). Wow is that true. Washington understood the importance of the mind, and how we think.
First, let us consider what setting our minds on the things of the flesh entails. Now, many might say, “I don’t believe that really needs explanation.” But actually, it seems to due to the fact that setting our minds of the flesh is just not doing the obvious wrongs. It’s not just thinking lustful thoughts, or being angry at people, or focusing on worldly, trivial things. There’s much more to setting our minds on the flesh than those kinds of things. The core fundamental to this is simply that if any thought we are thinking in our minds is causing us distress than we shouldn’t be continuing to ponder those thoughts. Those thoughts are producing death in us. Various kinds of lines of thought can cause this for us, mindsets such as worrying, stressing out, being full of fear, dreading different kinds of events, and thoughts like these. Believe it or not, this type of thinking is not what we are supposed to be doing. Jesus wouldn’t have done it, and so we shouldn’t be thinking like this, setting our minds on the flesh. Not only will it not make us happy, as Washington stated, but really it comes down to incorrect thinking on our parts. We could say certain sinful thinking-patterns are present in Christian communities that are just accepted as okay in being practiced, such as gossiping and other mental sins that fall right in line with this.
Second, how do we combat these types of thinking patterns in our minds? How do we get the life and peace Paul references here? In other words, what is the best combat for all types of incorrect thinking? Well, let us grab a verse by Paul from 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. There, he stated, “But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on… for a helmet the hope of salvation” (verse 8). A helmet obviously protects the head. We might say it protects the mind. And what does the helmet represent? It represents hope. It is hope for salvation, that is, salvation from the enemy. So, the helmet that Paul points out is hope that we will be preserved from our enemies, Satan and his demonic forces. However, Paul says one key thing. Let’s not miss it. He says we have to “put on” the helmet. In other words, it’s a choice we make. He have to decide to be hopeful, and being hopeful will help us think correctly.
Being full of hope in our minds, then, we find we are full of faith. Jesus emphasized during his earthly ministry that his disciples should use, and live by, faith. Thus, a mind full of faith is one that sees everything in life, everything from day to day, with hope-filled eyeglasses on. In considering our current circumstances, whatever they are, we are hopeful that events are going to turn out in our favor, that everything is going to work out for our good. We don’t hold in mind all the possibilities of things that could go wrong. Still yet, if they come to our minds, we quickly let them pass right by us. We don’t speak to others mostly negatively. We don’t speak of what could go wrong. We have an outlook of faith that God is on our side and that things will work out for the good. If we are waiting on an important package, we don’t think things such as, “I bet they’ll deliver it to the wrong address. I probably be gone when it comes and miss it. Even if I do get, what if the items damaged.” We don’t have mindsets like this. It’s not sinful to expect the best and think about the best outcome. Whoever said that is flat out wrong. It’s actually sinful to expect the worst and to think about the bad. That’s an insult to God’s character.
We must combat lies that come to us from the enemy by countering with faith-filled words from Scripture. If the enemy is telling us we’re not going to get our package, we need to say something along these lines, “The Scripture says that God is on my side. I believe he will help me to get it. That’s a lie. Everything is going to be fine.” Then we need to stand firm on our faith. This is how, as Paul discusses in Romans 8, we experience life and peace. We cannot experience life and peace if we are always thinking about and considering bad things, thinking about what could go wrong for us and those around us. That’s not life, and that’s not peace. We have to discipline our minds and control what we think about on a day to day, moment by moment basis. By doing this, we will end up being happy in our lives. If we are presented with a problem, we need to immediately be hopeful that our problem is going to resolved soon, and that what we want to happen is what is going to happen. We should not brush this of as a sinful theory on the power of positive thinking. The only sin comes in brushing it off in unbelief. If you want to brush it off, go for it, and have a miserable life. The rest of us can have good, faith-filled, positive lives. If you stop and consider it, you know how a faithless way of living doesn’t work. Things never get better that way; they're always the same: boring, mundane, and powerless. So, it’s best to leave the dark-side and come to the faith-filled side, so that life experience will change. It’s not just for Charismatics, but it’s for Anabaptists and Evangelicals also.
Paul said, “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” This is because, as we’ve been saying, one who is alive without being regenerated, one who has not accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, is not in personal relationship with God. Since he or she has not been transformed, he or she is not indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Since this is the case, it is impossible for the person to live by the things of God—to practice truth, to follow the Spirit, etc. This being the case, ultimately the person cannot please God. Even if the person appears to be doing good externally, they don’t know the spiritual practices by which they can please God. They can’t as they haven’t been born-again; spiritual things can only be discerned by a spiritual person, and the person doesn’t know God. Any good actions in the physical realm, then, are besides the point and not even counted in God’s eyes toward their credit. In the same way, Christians also can live in the flesh versus the Spirit, as mentioned, and this also is equally displeasing to God. It’s already been gone over in Romans chapter 7. Only lifeless and heartless believers do this, and they even don’t realize it. We will come back to this on down the road here in the book of Romans. Indeed, a bit more can be discussed on this subject.
Verse 9: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:9-11, ESV)
Again, we as Christians are not the same as Old Testament believers in God. The Spirit of God now permanently lives inside of us. This happened at the moment of our conversation, the moment we believed in God, accepted Jesus. We are not either like unbelievers who are not in right relationship with God. We have advantages over both groups of individuals, to understate it dramatically. Mainly, the two points are that we are new creations and indwelled by the Spirit of God. But Paul says that anyone of which the Holy Spirit does not abide in their bodies does not actually know God. That’s one way a person understands if he or she is truly born again. As Paul is going to tell us next week, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16, ESV). The Apostle John would put it this way: “And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us” (1 John 3:24, ESV). If you’re not sure if you’re really a Christian today, this is a good baseline test for you. We as believers may feel God’s presence, and we certainly sense his encouragement and help. We feel conviction for sin every now and then, though most people do. Nonetheless, there should be a sense we are a believer inside ourselves. If you’re a seeker today listening, understand that other religions don’t offer this; they don’t offer their followers being in indwelled by God himself. This is definitely unique to Christianity.
Paul also brings up the fact that even though the Spirit makes his home with us, our bodies still remain dead because of sin. Dead? What does that mean? This confirms what we learned in the last chapter, in Romans 7, regarding the fact that we still, even as Christians, retain the sin-nature in our bodies. That’s what dead means. We don’t lose the sin-nature at the moment we become believers. We still have the ability to sin surely, as any one of us can testify, and we still do and will sin unfortunately. Realistically, there are still sinful behaviors we need to overcome in our lives after our conversation—sinful thought patterns, for instance, that we may not yet recognize we have. We should appear to be growing in Christ. There should be a notable difference in us as we live out our lives, which is another baseline test for those of you who are wondering about whether or not you’re saved. The Spirit works life in us. He works out his fruit in us, which Paul discussed in Galatians chapter 5. He reinvents our characters. We are no longer hopeless but hopeful. We are no longer negative and complaining, but full of faith. He works brotherly and sisterly love in us. We find that we truly love our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. The Spirit gifts us so that we can help our fellow members in our church in various ways. He works out our shining of lights before others, before those who don’t know God yet. All kinds of things exist, ways that produce life, that the Spirit works in us.
The culmination of all of this is that at the time we die—at the moment we leave this earth, or when we take part in the Rapture—we will ultimately be transformed into having a perfect, physical body, a body which is sin-free. For those of you who care about your appearance (which really should be all of us), there will be perfection. Total loss of excess weight and perfect physiques. Anyway, being sin-free is what we ultimately long for and want. That should be our desire that we currently have. To be able to please God fully, one hundred percent of the time. All of this new life in our new body is a process the is brought about by the Holy Spirit. Note the famous passage of Scripture from the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15: “I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:50-53, ESV).
The good news today is that anyone can experience this process by the Spirit. Anyone can have new life in Jesus. You can gain new a life now, becoming born again, a new creature in Christ, and be indwelled by the Spirit. This will lead to new life and physical bodies in the future, when we are ultimately with Jesus. By Jesus’ dying on the cross and rising from the dead, he has made all of this possible for you today. He is physically in Heaven right now, and we can be there with him too someday. Trust in Christ’s sacrifice on your behalf and you will enter real life.
-Daniel Litton
Reference
Larson, Edward J. (2014). The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783-1789. Sydney, AU: HarperCollins.