God Condemned the Sin Nature

OK, this morning we're going to continue on in Romans chapter 8. And I decided to, for context purposes, I decided to go back. And if you look carefully at verse 3, you'll see that actually verse 3 feeds into verse 4. So let's read. Can I have someone read verses 3 through 7? You can read it from the overhead or from your Bible. And you realize you get extra goodies if you read. OK, thank you.

Well, what the law could not do, weakens the Christ in the flesh. God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering to sin, to condemn sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh or according to the spirit. For those who are according to the flesh, that their lives are in the things of the flesh. But those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit, For the mindset on the flesh is death, but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. Because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.

OK. Great. Thank you. Well, if you look carefully here, you'll see that there's really kind of maybe two divisions of these seven verses. Three and four kind of go together. and then five through seven. And actually, five through seven actually continue on for verses later on. So I want to go back and cover the last part, the B part of verse three, because it's crucial to understand the B part of three to understand four.

So if you look here, it says, starting at the B part, what God did. The first part we kind of covered last week, the weakness of the law. It was impotent. It could not accomplish. freedom from sin or from the sin nature but God did something about the sin nature and that's described in the last in the B part God did and so on and then it's that so that I think I may have mentioned this before whenever you see a that or so that that's a purpose clause a purpose that so that's a purpose for what God did in the B part there he he provided a freedom from the sin nature by sending his own son so that the requirements of the law might be fulfilled, and so on.

And we'll go through each of those kind of carefully. And then 5 through 7, we're going to talk about the flesh and the spirit, and how to contrast those. And we're going to see some interesting things about the flesh and the spirit. And there's kind of an interesting question about how you look at those verses. And we'll get into that shortly. So OK.

So starting the B part here, it says, God did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. And in the original, actually many times the Greek language is not, you know, we sort of have subject, verb, and direct object. We have a sentence, we try to write our sentence, you know, John hit the ball, or whatever. So actually, in the Greek, it would read, actually, last part first. He condemned sin.

And I've added the sin nature because it's sin singular. And we'll talk about that in a second. And then there's this prepositional phrase in the flesh that modifies condemned. And the word condemned I've defined down here from Vines. And actually, condemned here is aorist tense. So it's a past point fact.

God condemned, this is a wonder, He condemned sin in the flesh, the sin nature. And the word condemned is to give judgment against, to pass sentence upon. And I wanted to ask before we get a little bit deeper into that, what else, kind of off the top of your head, what else has God condemned in scripture? If you were to read through scripture, what else would you find that God has condemned?

Okay. Well, in a way, he's kind of condemning, I mean, in a way, he's kind of condemning Adam right here. And this is of the three, well, I'm not going to give you the answer here. There are three, three opponents of the Christian, right? Okay. Okay. So let's look at that.

God, God did a complete job. He didn't leave us, you know, you know, in a Lurch, so to speak. Here, this verb describes him condemning the sin nature. He's also condemned Satan. And let's look at that. Can I get someone to read John 16? John 16 and verses 8 through 11. And this is talking about the Holy Spirit. Right, so in verse 11 there, concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged, Past has been. He's already judged. So Satan stands judged. Our sin nature stands judged from what we see right here. And let's look at Acts 17. Acts 17. And verses 30 and 31. Yes, thank you. All right.

So actually, in this case, he says he will judge the world in righteousness. I think there's also a verse where it says the world's already judged. So basically, this is a pivotal verse where it shows that God has condemned the sin nature. And I wanted to show you, just once again, to remind you about, we're talking here, and it's important when you go through scripture to look at sins plural, the sins that the sin nature produces, versus sin singular. And the fruit here in this little pictorial, the fruit is pictured as the personal sins that are the output of the sin nature.

And Christ died in 1 Corinthians 15.3, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and so on. But these verses here are talking about the root of the problem.

And actually, Romans 6.10 says he died under the sin nature. Actually, this verse really kind of gives us, I think, a further elaboration of more details upon that. We're going to see that. He died under the sin nature, with respect to the sin nature, and he condemned the sin nature. The sin nature is still around, but it's condemned. It's been judged. Just as Satan's still around, but he's judged and condemned.

So hopefully that helps. OK, so now we're going to get into the details of this judgment. My little blocks here, I don't know, hopefully this is helpful. This is kind of putting it in subject-verb order with modifiers and that kind of stuff. So this little sending his own son is a participle. And in this case, basically, it's this word sending. And this is another Aorist tense, Aorist active. So it's a past point fact, sending his own son. And what I found is that, in looking at that, there are several words for send. This is pempo. And there's also the word for apostle, apostello. And this word here seems to be a more general term.

And actually, the one for apostello occurs in other places. Actually, one of those places, I'll read this time, John 17. In fact, we read this last week for remembrance there. And it seems like that in John 17, in verse 23. So this will be the Apostello sending. Let me find it. I've got too many different places here. Verse 23, I and them, and you and me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me, the apostello word, and love them even as you have loved me.

You know, I spent a little bit of time, and I really couldn't distinguish a real marked difference between the two Greek words. So it's of interest, sometimes it's the pimple word for sent, sometimes it's apostello. It didn't seem to really stood out. According to Vines, it's more general. Anyway, okay, so let's go on. He sent his own son, and here's the things that happened.

In the likeness and symbol of flesh and for sin, or as an offering for sin. A likeness is a word that has the idea of resemblance, made like something. And there are several passages that, one with something we've seen in the past. Can I get someone to read Romans 6.5? If we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. Right. Okay, so here the same word is used in terms of the fact that we've been united with Christ in the likeness of His death, and certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. But actually, 1 Timothy is probably the better one here.

1 Timothy 3.16. And I'll go ahead and read that one. And this is a wonderful fact, too.

Some people will come and say, well, you know, I kind of think that if Christ is my Savior, He's going to have to have experienced everything I experienced. And what they do is they kind of have Christ sliding into committing sin, even though they kind of know He's holy. He sort of has to do that. Do you really understand? He has to kind of have those sins that I did. And they walked down a slippery slope. I think this verse really tries to put that to rest. It says, no, it's in the likeness of sinful flesh. He was without sin. And this verse kind of just talks about the fact that Christ was shown in the flesh.

In 1 Timothy 3.16 it says, By common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up to glory. So Christ looked like a man for all appearances. But he was God, and he was without sin. So it's in the likeness. So this verse makes it clear.

It's the likeness of sinful flesh. And then the second part, for sin or concerning sin, It kind of points to the fact that it points to the sin nature. It's zeroing on the sin nature that was for the sin nature, concerning the sin nature. So the verse Romans 8, 3b says, he condemned sin in the flesh, the sinful nature in the flesh, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for an offering for sin. And then the B part is the third thing that happened. And so I just put the phrase back here again. He condemns sin, the sin nature in the flesh.

And then here's the purpose clause. So that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. So it's interesting. We just came out of Romans 7, and Paul struggled with that. He was trying to fulfill the requirements of the law. He said he loved the law. The law is holy and righteous and good. He gave it his best try in himself. But as we read before, he could not achieve the righteous attributes of the law, the requirements of the law, Only by God condemning the sin nature, the source of sins, could that be accomplished.

So I have a couple of questions here. First of all, what are the requirements of the law? And those requirements were ordinances, precepts, demands, Actually, sometimes that's rendered righteous requirements. Some versions you'll see righteous requirements of the law. So what comes to your mind when you think about the requirements of the law? What are the requirements of the law? Is it easy, hard? Is it a little bit hard? Is it, I mean, on a scale of, you know, where does it fall on a scale? Is it something that we easily achieved? Not so easy. I'm being a little bit facetious here. Actually, that's good. That's good.

Well, remember earlier, let's look back in Romans 7, what was the law described as? What word described the law? If you said, in Romans 7, what word did we come across earlier in Romans 7 that described the law? Actually, there are several words. Let's look at...

Go ahead. What's that? It's a schoolmaster, maybe. That wasn't in that passage. Let's look at Romans 7 verse 12. It says, So then the law is holy, the commandment is holy and righteous and good. So I think you're right. Impossible. The requirements of the law are absolute perfection. Because the law comes from God, right? It's a holy, righteous standard.

So it took the condemnation of our sin nature to fulfill the righteous requirements of the law. And there's a really interesting verse. Let's look in Galatians. It kind of addresses this. Now that we're in Christ, how do we fulfill these righteous requirements. How is that accomplished? Galatians 5. Can I get someone to read 13 through 14 in Galatians 5? Yeah, Bonnie, could you read that? For you are called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity to reflect, but through love serve one another.

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. So the fulfillment of the law really is something that only can come about through the love that Christ shows through us. That's fulfilled, and it actually states one of the commandments. He says, the whole law is fulfilled in one word.

If you look at the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, so that as the Holy Spirit lives through us, we can fulfill the law. Okay, so now we're going to go on. There's a little bit more left of this verse. We kind of picked it apart. Go ahead, sorry. Well, okay. Yeah, well, actually, if you look at the whole picture of salvation, I think you're right. I think you're right. Well, I've kind of been focusing on What does this address?

The condemnation of the sin nature? And what that accomplished? The fulfillment of the law had to be condemned? Because basically, if the sin nature is the only nature in control of our life, right? Then there's nothing that will come out of that that can be pleasing to God.

So I was kind of going down that path. Obviously, we had to die. There are many verses that talk about our death. Our death with Christ, we've been died, buried, But this is kind of addressing the fact that I think the sin nature was condemned so that we'd be freed, so that basically we allow us to follow Christ, to abide in Him, in a new nature.

We're only seeing a piece of the pie here. I don't know, that's probably not answering your question. So I'm kind of focusing on sin nature is condemned, and the purpose for that is so that the law could be fulfilled in us. And actually, we're going to see that it's going to depend upon where we are with the Lord. The requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us, and we're going to see the last half of the verse will explain it's kind of conditioned on something.

He condemned us in nature. It's been condemned. Now, in our walk, we're to walk according, not to walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. I don't know if I'm helping or hurting. So let's go on and see them kind of define what us is. So there's two parts. Actually, let's also look at the word fulfilled.

Is this word to be made full? The requirements of the law might be fulfilled or brought to completion. The law never could please God. It never could allow us to have a life that's pleasing to Him. might be fulfilled in us, are brought to completion.

The whole last part of that defines what us is. Who do not walk according to the flesh, but walk according to the Spirit. So this is going to say, this is a condition. We can walk in who we are, what we have in Christ, or we can walk according to our flesh. There are two options.

I think that's described pretty well in Galatians 5.16. So let's look at that for a second.

Galatians 5.16 says, But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. And this one sort of has the flip side of that. Who do not walk according to the flesh, but walk according to the Spirit.

In our condition, how will we conduct our lives? Will we walk according to the Spirit, or will we walk according to the flesh? A walk in scripture signifies a whole round of activities of an individual's life. It's how we conduct our life. Do we conduct it according to the Spirit? Other words are used in scripture like abide. Abide in me and I in you. Do we abide in Him, in our new nature? Or do we abide in our fleshly nature? What we see in scripture, abide in me and I in you.

As in Galatians 5.16, walk in the spirit. I say walk by the spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. For these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do what you please. So we see this contention here between the flesh and the spirit.

And we're going to see that carried on in the next verses here. So that's really verses 3 and 4. And we can just go back here just for a second. He condemned the sin nature in the flesh so that the righteous requirements of the law might be filled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but walk according to the spirit. Now, okay, let's see. Let's just go on here. Okay, verse 5. Actually, let's just go back here. Let's just go back to the very beginning here for a second before we get into verse 5. Okay, so let's just look here for a second, because in 5 through 7, we're going to see some interesting things here.

We're going to see It says, for those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. And then it says, for the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the spirit is life and peace. Because the mindset of the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so. So the first question that needs to be asked is, This is a conflict between the flesh and the spirit. So, is this a conflict between the flesh and the spirit? of a believer or is this contrasting unbeliever with a believer?

What do you think? And just to give you some insight, I started out studying this and I started one direction and I just changed my mind. So that's either good or bad, depending upon your perspective here. But I think clearly, the verse will show us who it's talking about. But what do you think?

Is this a conflict of a believer abiding in his fleshly nature? We just came out of these verses that describe how the sin nature was condemned, and the sin nature that resides in the flesh was condemned. So we do not walk according to the flesh, but walk according to the spirit. Now, is this describing a conflict of the believer between the flesh and the spirit, or is this describing an unbeliever, contrasting an unbeliever with a believer.

So what do you think? I think it's a believer. Terminally minded believer. Actually, I thought the same thing. For a while. Anybody else? Is there anything in here that might... give us clues one way, what do you base it on? I don't want to pin you down too much, I don't want to embarrass you or whatever. Well, I think that Paul in 7 has described that struggle. So I don't think he's taking us back to unbelief. He's just saying that the believer has the struggle, or can have it, doesn't have to have it, but can.

Okay. All right. Anybody else? Okay. Okay. And actually, I should have actually put another verse on here that will help us out a little bit. Let's, let's read. Okay. Someone read Romans 8, 8. Because there's kind of like a climax to this little section that's not going to occur in these verses. Romans chapter 8 and verse 8. Actually verse 8 and 9, I'm sorry. Someone could read verses 8 and 9.

So them days that are in the flesh cannot please God, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit. If so, be that the Spirit of God well in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Well, do you think reading those verses changes your mind or gives you any other thoughts?

Well, to be carnally minded is death. Death is separation. It's not separation. I mean, a believer can't do that. We can be separated from fellowship. Right, that's true. A believer can be separated. A believer can commit any sins that a non-believer can commit. Scripture tells us that. It lists all these different sins. Believers commit them, non-believers commit them.

I'll show you some things that swayed me. I started out just like you. I said, I think it's a believer. I went down that path. And then I started looking and the more I looked, the more I thought, well, I wonder, could he be doing something different here? OK, I'll tell you my thoughts and you can you can meet me out in the parking lot and tell me your thoughts. OK. OK, so let's look at let's go ahead here. All right. All right. So this starts out, and once again, I tried to do this subject, verb, and prepositional phrase or whatever.

So actually the subject here is this whole, those who are according to the flesh. And actually, I overlooked initially, but boy, those who are according to the flesh. It's a present active right now. It's a participle phrase, those who are according to the flesh. It's interesting, in other places it'll say those who walk according to the flesh. So it kind of changes here. Before it said those who walk according to the flesh. Now it says those who are according to the flesh. I didn't see that at first. I read right past that. I never saw that, those who are. So I thought, well, so this is what started to make me start thinking, well, maybe it's not that.

Set their minds on the things of the flesh. So it starts out those who are according to the flesh. And that's, like I said, that's a present active. And actually, Weiss renders that those who are habitually dominated by the flesh. And you could argue, well, there are some believers who are habitually dominated by the flesh. But also, an unbeliever is habitually dominated by the flesh, 24-7, all the time, never changes.

So that kind of cracked the door a little bit. And then, for Neo, the mindedness set their minds in a certain way. They set their minds on the things of the flesh, or actually the next verse. And this has the same phraseology. This is just the verses divided into a four, and a but. So I just kind of separated it. So this is the but part. But those who are, again, are according, and that's also aorist, I think it's aorist active again, or present active.

So right now in the present tense, set their minds, and this is an implied verb here, on the things of the spirit. So I have a set of verses here that kind of go through and look at what does Scripture say about setting our minds upon? What's the encouragement of Scripture to set our minds? And there's a bunch of verses that talk about setting your minds, set your minds on things above, and so on. But the thing that really got me thinking here are those who are according to the flesh versus those who are according So it's those who are according to the flesh versus those who are according to the spirit.

OK. Is there anything else I want to say about this? OK. There's another thing here I wanted to point out. Let's just go back. Back here to this guy here. It turns out that this verb here, who are, could be translated those being. And it's one of these verbs in the Greek, it's ami, the state of being verb, the state in which something continuously exists. So when I saw that, and I also read some other thing, I thought, wait a minute, a believer can't be in a state, you know, he may be there for a time, but to say that he continuously exists in the flesh, boy, it sure sounds like an unbeliever to me. So that's when I kind of changed, that's when I kind of went the other direction.

That's all my ammunition I have here. Sure. Go ahead. That's the way I used to be. I shouldn't be that way. Maybe I'm not really OK. A lot of places where they have dedication and then re-dedication because they're struggling at home. But he's trying to convince that what we do have in Christ, the rest of that is dead. Right, right. And it seems like as we go through here, he's going to say that those who are according to the flesh, as long as they remain in that state, He's going to list a whole bunch of things. They're hostile to the word God. They cannot please God. It's impossible for them. It says they're impossible for them to please God. So you think, well, is it impossible for a believer to please God? No, it's not. He can please God.

Anyway, so that's part of my little list of things that made me change my mind about this one. And I'm not picking on you. I could be wrong. In fact, I didn't discover this until about 11 o'clock last night. So I had to really scramble. I had all my notes going the other way. So hey, what can I say? It's one of those things. Anyway, hopefully, Lord willing, I believe it's correct from what I can tell. So there's some verses here.

Romans 12.3.

So this is basically the idea of setting their minds. Where do people set their minds? And where should they set their minds? For through the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think more highly of himself, that he ought to think, but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith. So this word is actually to set your mind to think a certain way.

And actually, we're going to find that it's impossible for the unbeliever to think in a way that pleases God. He can't set his mind, because his sinful nature is still active. God condemned it, but he hasn't trusted him by faith, so that he is now able to trust the Lord, or to walk by faith in Him. So we see the word is minded, or attitude, in Romans 12, 16.

Be of the same mind toward one another, not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Now may the God, in verse 15, 5, now may the God who gives us preservation and encouragement grant to you the same mind with one another according to Christ Jesus." Yeah, I found this kind of encouragement to be the same mind as Christ Jesus. And actually, if you look in 1 Corinthians, let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, starting in verse 15.

But he who is spiritual praises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no man. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he should instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. Positionally, we have the mind of Christ, then the encouragement is, in our condition, is to walk with Him and have the same mind as Christ has. We have the mind of Christ, but we're encouraged to walk with Him and be like-minded.

And then in Philippians 2.5, another kind of similar thing, having this attitude in yourself, which is also in Christ Jesus.

And then Colossians 3.2, set your mind on things above, not on things that are on the earth.

Okay, so let's go on to the next two. Now verse 6 has, in this phraseology here, in this one here, it's in two parts in verse 6, the for and the but part, the mindset or the mind belonging to the flesh rather than the mindset on the flesh, it could be rendered, the mind belonging to the flesh is death, is separation. In this construction here, death identifies the mindset on the flesh, the mindset belonging to the flesh. So that mindset is death or separation. So that's a pretty powerful statement. The mindset is death or separation.

Not that the believer couldn't be there, Then it says on the flip side of that, actually one correction here, you might want to make that, why don't you make that 19 through 21, Galatians 19 through 21, and actually you might even want to cross it out entirely, because that was one of the ones that I had back when I had the flesh, I had the believer. So I had a verse to back it up, and I said, well I have the word between the flesh and the spirit, but that's a believer. You hang on to that one, okay? All right, that's good. You hang on to that one. I'm going to cross that one out for mine.

Okay, so then the flip side of that is the mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. So the mindset belonging to the Spirit is life and peace. Life and peace identifies the mindset of the Spirit. And there's a really neat verse in here, 2 Corinthians. I'll go ahead and read that one.

2 Corinthians 3.16. So what you guys can do, you can get all set for Jim when he comes back and you'll say, OK, Jim, where do you fall? We'll see. And he'll say, Roger, you set me up. I walked in there and I, OK, 316. I'm sorry,

36. Let's see here. Let's go back to 2 Corinthians 3, 5, and 6.

Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. So the idea of the spirit being life and peace is, you know, I tried to, there's a bunch of other verses that you could also put in there, but the mindset on the spirit, or the mindset belonging to the spirit is life and peace. So this is a possession, this is almost a statement of possession that the believer has. The believer has a mindset belonging to the spirit which is life and peace, whereas the opposite of that is the unbeliever has a mindset which is death, which is separation. Okay. And here's kind of the last one that seems to kind of tie it off here, at least for the segment.

This is a because statement. Because the mindset belonging to the flesh is hostile toward God. And then there's two further statements about that. That mindset does not subject itself to the law of God and is not even able to do so. And several interesting words here. I didn't really do a whole lot with this, but the word for hostile Is this word for enemy? In fact, some translations have enmity. The mindset of the flesh is enmity toward God or God's enemy.

And that makes perfect sense. The fleshly nature is Adam's nature. It's a fallen nature. The mindset of the flesh is hostile toward God. And then the it is just replacing the mindset again. It, the mindset, does not subject itself, and that's a military term for kind of falling in rank under. You have a general, a captain, and so on. So it does not subject itself to God.

It doesn't realize God as being holy and righteous and good, and we fall under that. And then the last it here, it is not even able to do so. And this is a word, it's a negative of You know the word for dunamis, dynamite power? This is the negative of that. It doesn't have the power. It's not even able to do so.

Okay. All right, so we just have, that's basically, let's just go back to the very first one here. I'll have to flip through all these here. We'll just look at the last. I didn't really build a summary chart for this, but So we kind of looked at the first part of verses 3 and 4, talking about the fact that God condemned the sin nature, and it stands condemned.

And this was accomplished by sending His Son in the likeness of the sin of the flesh, and for an offering for sin. And the reason He did that was so that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us. We do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And then 5 through 7, shows this contention, the flesh and the spirit, and talking about the flesh of the unbeliever versus the spirit of the believer, it seems like, and that there are total opposites.

One is not possible to please God, there's no way it can please God, it doesn't have the power to please God. All right, so that's it for today. Actually, we'll continue on. Actually, we're going to have to revisit this again, because the rest of the verses play into this, and they're going to use the same phraseology. It seems like it comes down to verse 9 as a culmination, Romans 8, 9. And Jim's going to be covering that. So any additional questions? Well, let's just close in prayer then.

Dear Father, we thank you, Lord. We thank you for this day, Father. We thank you for your word, Father. We thank you that you've given it to us, Lord. And we're thankful that you've given us your spirit. And we just pray that we would see the truth, Lord, and the truth would set us free. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.