What I Want To Do

What we've been talking about is in Galatians 5, and it's really kind of interesting. Roger went through and talked about verse 16. I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. And then there's a description of the battle or the war that goes on within a believer.

For the flesh has strong desires, or desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And these are contrary to one another so that you, me, may not do the things that we want to do. So last week, a quick review, we discovered there are two powers that are talked about here. One is my flesh, my old man, and the other one is the Holy Spirit of God. Those are two entities within every believer that are vying for expression. And we could say that they are represented by two men. The one man is the Lord Jesus Christ, and the other is Adam. Adam is the man of the flesh. Then we talked a little bit about who the Holy Spirit was, or is, and that He is God, and that He's a person, and that He has all the attributes of God.

He's omnipresent, He's eternal, He's omniscient, He's omnipotent, He's God. He's not the force. He's not an influence. He's God Himself. And He has attributes that He can do and does. And one of them, or some of them, are He's a regenerator. He recreates us in Christ. He indwells. He seals us for God. And He baptizes us. He takes us and puts us into Christ. He is divine life. It isn't that He has it. He is it. and all of the characteristics of that life which we'll talk about probably next week.

So we're really talking about two men, the man Adam in the flesh and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then we talked a little bit about who we are in terms of our essential identity. And I use kind of a term that's hard to get your arms around, I think. It's called a man as a substantive entity, or he's an essential entity, or he is a person.

And the traits and characteristics of that person are not basically what he is. They're non-essential, but they comprise the nature of a man. So a man as essential identity as a person can have traits and characteristics being manifested through him from the old man or he can have traits and characteristics being manifested through him by the Holy Spirit. But the person is still the same. So the nature of the attributes of a man can be in the flesh, he can be loving and joyful and peaceful and long-suffering and gentle and all of those things that sound like the fruit of the Spirit.

But he's also an adulterer and a fornicator and he's unclean, he's lascivious, he's full of wrath, he's seditious. Both of these come from the same source. And the difference is that the second man, the Lord Jesus Christ, when you start talking about his attributes, you're talking about his love. His joy, His peace, His long-suffering. The characteristics of a believer are the exact characteristics of the Lord Jesus Himself.

And we talked a little bit about personal identity and the fall didn't unmake us as a man. Just like new birth doesn't unmake you as a person, you're still the same person. We're still intrinsically the same person we were. We never lose our identity. And that never changes. And when I pass through my new birth, when that happened, by the way, yesterday was my spiritual birthday. I never forget that day. It happens to be on December 7th, a good day to get born again.

My identity isn't changed. I'll never lose my essential identity as a person as my father conceived me in his mind before eternity, way back before he ever created. He conceived every one of you and me in his mind in Christ. He saw us there. My crucifixion didn't affect my unique identity. I'm still the same person. But it did destroy in Adam, because the Bible says, behold, everything has become new. I am no longer identified from God's perspective as being in Adam, which is, I'm so excited about that. In the Lord Jesus, I'm accepted in the Beloved. You and I are complete in Him. We're entirely sanctified, entirely set apart in Him. And we're perfect in Him. And the perfection is the perfection of the Lord Jesus.

All had to be done, all of this work had to be done before a single Christian existed. You know why? Because Christianity is founded upon the finished work of Christ on the cross. There's nothing that hasn't been already finished. And I think sometimes we operate on the premise that, You know, that the Lord died and He took care of the penalty of my sins and He took care of my sin nature, but the question is, what did He leave for me to do? Do I have to finish up anything? Most denominations will give you some sort of list of, well, okay, God did this, the Lord Jesus did this, but there's some stuff you've got to continue doing to clean up to make it to the end. That's not true. It was all finished at the cross.

We talked a little bit about the fact that my condition can vary. I can function as though everything that is talked about the Lord Jesus is true of me and my behavior. Or I can function as totally out of Adam and sinning and all of that that goes along with being in the old man. So, when I realize that I have been removed really positioning from Adam.

And the believer comes to the understanding that Romans 8, 1 and 2 are really true of him, that there now isn't any condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. And the question has to be, where am I? Well, I'm told over and over again I'm in Christ, so then there can't be any condemnation.

And the second part of that is that I learn from Romans 8, 2 that there's a new principle A lot of the translations use the word law. I like the word principle better. Excuse me, of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. There's a new principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus that has already set me free from the principle of sin and death.

That's my position. Now I may act that way or I may not, but that's who I am, my identity. When we start talking about walking the Spirit and you won't carry out the desires of the flesh, notice that the flesh sets its desires against the Spirit. So every believer, in order to understand this verse, I think that's why I'm spending so much time going back and talking about position, condition, identification, all the things we talk about, because you really don't get a handle on what's going on in this verse unless you understand who I am and who I'm not, where I'm positioned, where I'm conditioned.

So the Spirit and every believer, every believer has this flesh in them, which is the old man, that has strong desires. And guess who those desires are fighting against? the Holy Spirit of God. And He has strong desires against the flesh. And what's the result? For these are in opposition to one another.

So a lot of people want to say, and I've asked this question a lot, in this fight, where are you? Are you the flesh? Well, you have to say, no, I'm not. Are you the Spirit? You have to say, no, I'm not. So the war isn't between you and the spirit, or you and the flesh. It's between these two entities, the Holy Spirit of God, who is a person, and the source of the old man.

The word against here, the root meaning which is, it suppresses, they want to suppress the other. They're in opposition. They don't, they can't function together. There isn't a little bit of spirit, and a little bit of flesh. It doesn't work that way.

It's either one or the other. And the words, the one to the other, is reciprocal. It's what we call reciprocity. Both of them have the same antagonism towards each other. They're both the same. They both are fighting each other with intensity. They are equally antagonistic, but they're not equally powerful. They're not equally powerful.

And I think that that's a good point for us to understand that the flesh doesn't have to win. The flesh doesn't have to win. If you were going to expand that translation, you could say, for the flesh constantly has a strong desire to suppress the Spirit. And the Spirit constantly has a strong desire to suppress the flesh. These are entrenched in every believer. As a matter of fact, if you don't have this going on in you, you better check your spiritual ID. Because a non-believer doesn't have this problem.

Does he? There's no opposing force to the flesh. He just does what the flesh tells him to do. And he thinks that that's what reality is. The best example I've ever used of that was You know, I didn't have to send my son when he was this big to a sinning academy. He knew how to do that. Why? Because he's got this sin nature.

And it's always pressing itself on the person to sin. Well, now that you're a believer, you have the opposing force there, who's the Holy Spirit himself. And the problem is that it leaves me in a position where I may not do the things that I desire. So what's going on here? The flesh pushes hard upon the believer with its evil biddings. It wants to manifest itself, its desires and its energy through you. It has to have you to sin. It just doesn't sin without a person. It has to demonstrate or actuate sin.

And the Holy Spirit is there to oppose the flesh and give the believer victory over it so that the believer would not submit to the flesh and wouldn't sin. This is a much different principle than tell me what to do and I'll do it of law. It's the Holy Spirit in his work. So the Holy Spirit comes to you as a believer and he says look I've got a course of conduct I want you to walk in. I'm pressing upon your heart that I want you to walk in righteousness. And the flesh instantly opposes that with an effort to prevent me from submitting to the Spirit. So the purpose is to prevent the believer from doing, from one or the other, moving or motivating the believer to do what each one of them wants to do. I have to ask at this point, are you familiar with this war? Does this go on? Is this something I'm not talking to somebody who never heard about this before? No, we all know what this is about.

The Spirit keeps on suppressing and applying the cross to the activities of the sin nature and any control which it might attempt to exert over the believer. The Spirit's work is to apply the cross of Christ to that old nature. Romans 6 tells us for what purpose. to put it out of business. People say, well, my old nature died. No, it didn't. You died to it. So it's still alive and well and functioning within you, even though you're not identified with it.

But because of the cross of Christ, the Holy Spirit has an entity or a vehicle or an event, the cross of Christ, and that's what he uses to put it out of business. And the degree to which it's put out is the degree to which the life of the Lord Jesus is manifested through us. Now, I had David read Romans today because I think there's a good contrast there that we should know about. We have the Holy Spirit, and walking in the Spirit, we're not going to fulfill the desires of the flesh. But the problem is that a lot of people look at the Romans 7 issue and they think, well it's really the same thing as what we're talking about here. And I can't do the things that I want to do.

If that was correct, if the verses we're talking about in 16 and 17, if you really take a hard look at them, They sort of contradict each other. And I use the metaphor that you could say that one's blowing hot air on one verse and cold air on the other. Verse 16 says, But I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. Wonderful.

But the very next verse says you can't do the things that you want to do. Well, which is it? Is it true or is it not true? I got warm air saying I'm not going to fulfill them and now I have cold air that says, well, you're not going to be able to do it anyway. And so what happens is that they kind of refute each other.

And this is really the doctrine of Romans 7 and that's why I want to spend a little time talking about Romans 7 today because In Romans 7, the first six verses don't talk about this, but the Holy Spirit gives us the experience of a person under the law from 7 on. And in 7, we don't have the Spirit of God introduced at all, and that's the difference. In Romans 7, the Holy Spirit isn't mentioned, but in Galatians he is. So it's a remarkable fact which accounts for the difference in the scriptures that we have here. In Romans 7, it's a renewed man. When you think about the man who's struggling in Romans 7, what does he know and understand? To make it simple, he understands Romans 3, 4, 5, 6, which is identification.

He understands all of that, yet here he is in a position where he hates sin, And he wants to do good, but he can't. And he doesn't want to do the things that he finds himself doing, but he's just frustrated. What's the problem? He has found out that he's powerless to deal with the flesh, so far.

So far. And what's interesting here, if you look at that one bullet point that says, but one who, while he hates sin, is a non-believing man as no non-believing man does. It's a really critical point. No non-believer that you've ever met hates sin. He doesn't know the difference. He's only got one source of nature. He's got the old man. And you know what?

I don't know about you, but I've never committed a sin that I didn't want to or didn't like it. I mean, if I was forced to sin, have you ever been forced to sin? Somebody put a gun to your head and said, if you don't sin right now, oh, no problem, I'll do it.

You're not forced. You go along with it. You want to sin until the Holy Spirit shows up in you, and now we've got a problem. We've got to push back. We've got a source that says, oh, you don't have to sin anymore. So, yet in spite of all the evil that he would not do, he does. And the good that he desires to do never gets done.

That's another question I would ask you. Have any of you not experienced this issue? I have. We all have. We've all fought against this. So what have we learned? We've learned that the evil of sin sees the good of righteousness, but he can't do anything about it.

So that doesn't mean he doesn't try to cover it up, sprinkle a little holy water on it, get quiet, Make sure people aren't watching, whatever. But this really goes on. Lots of believers get to this point and because of their ignorance they don't go any farther. They really don't go any farther. So what's the cause? The cause is that this man in Romans 7 only has the law before him. The only thing he understands is that I can't do this and I've got to do this. He's a saved man. He's struggling under the law. The effect is that it just demoralizes a person. Being in my position, I get calls all the time about this very subject.

And a lot of times people are embarrassed to say, well, my sin issue is X. So they talk all around it. They don't want to say, well, my sin is I beat my wife all the time. Well, what guy wants to admit that? A woman says, well, my sin is I don't pay attention to my husband. Or he won't talk to me. And on it goes. Or my sin is somebody in my office. Or my sin is one of my friends rejected me.

They don't want to talk about that, but they want to talk about sin in general. Well, this gets pretty specific. And so instead of what Romans 7, instead of giving him courage and drawing out what is in Christ, it's detecting him here and there and poking him and probing him so that he's bewildered and he finds himself in such an amount of evil that he has never thought could be in the heart of a saved person.

I got saved at 35. Trust me, at 36 I thought I was a much bigger sinner than I was at 34. Why? Because I'm walking with the Lord and now the standard is different. The standard is the life of Christ. So I'm thinking, oh my goodness, how am I going to deal with this? I thought when I got saved all was going to go away. Everything was going to be wonderful.

No. We have not been believers very long, as I say, in Christ. We have not known some of the bitter struggles that we have. So what does the guy in Romans 7 do? He comes up with this incredible frustration statement, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I would have thought he would have said, well gee, I got delivered a long time ago, this is not a problem. I shouldn't be I shouldn't have any trouble resting. I'm a Christian. This should not be part of my experience, but it is.

Then notice one other thing. When you go down through the book of Romans 7, from 7 on, there are all these things that Paul says, well, I tried this, I tried that, I tried this principle, I thought about this, and I'm going to do that. And he never did ask the right question until he got to this verse. And this verse changed the question. You know what the question changed was? Who?

Deliverance is by a deliverer, not a program, not a system, and not a law. It's a person that delivers you. It took him all of that pain and agony to figure out, I need a deliverer. Not only do I need a Savior, but I need a deliverer. It's a who. It has to be a who.

So, he may discover that he's not resting with his eye on the deliverer, he's saved, he knows that, but he doesn't know liberty. He's a man of faith in the Savior, no problem, but he doesn't understand the application of his own death and resurrection with Christ.

He doesn't understand that. He doesn't know that he is no longer viewed as in the flesh, but in the Spirit. He does not know that he's entitled to be done with his old man and his old nature altogether. But he's about to see himself in Christ only. And when that happens, things change. The moment he discovers who he is, that's a mistake to apply the law to the soul.

He gives thanks. Once he sees that, instead of saying, oh, I think I got it now. You know, the old saying, I got this. He realizes that he doesn't got this. He has a Deliverer, and he thanks God for the Deliverer. Before this, he cries, O wretched man that I am. And at just then, he comes to this new thought, Who shall deliver me?

And the answer is there. He gets it now. He sees that he's not in his own struggle with the law to overcome evil. He sees there's another. There's a Deliverer. Therefore, he can turn with thankfulness to God, the very next moment he says, I thank God through Jesus Christ. After this, he's perfectly happy, in spite of the consciousness that there is an old nature still within him.

He's learning what Galatians 5.17 and 18 are talking about. He's learning that. And he's learning that, oh wow, God didn't leave me in this struggle forever. What made him happy? He sees two distinct things that he never saw before. He sees that there are two natures now in him. He's got an old nature and he has a new nature of the resurrected Christ.

And just a sidebar here for a second, those that teach one nature, you'll never get free in that doctrine. Never. Because it disallows for the work of the Holy Spirit to set us free. And there's been volumes written on that. But be careful of that one nature doctrine, that the sin nature is dead. Then you have to discuss, well, if he's dead, how come I'm sinning? Sin has to have a source.

We have two natures as believers. One of them is the flesh, and the other is the resurrected Christ, the life of the resurrected Christ. In Romans 8, 1 and 2, as we talked about, there's no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. And then he intelligently, spiritually intelligently understands that there's a brand new principle of life, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And that life has already made me free from the principle of sin and death. I am free. Doesn't mean I won't submit to it again. I might, but I'm free. And this isn't the general truth.

This is a specific truth that Romans 7, 6 applies to the believer, and it's a matter of believing and understanding what my position is. I'm no longer in bondage, and I see Christ as my Savior, and oh, He's off the cross, and He's risen, and I'm in Him. So what marks a Christian? What makes a Christian a Christian?

It's not that he doesn't have sin within. He's got a sin nature. But he has a new nature. That's what marks him. A new nature which no person has except those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. Non-believers don't have this, obviously.

In virtue of Christ, he is regarded by God as one who is entirely done with sin as a matter of divine judgment on himself. And you may walk around under a rain cloud all the time judging yourself, but God doesn't judge you, because He judged Christ for your sin on the cross.

It's already been paid for. So, in virtue of Christ, the believer, you and I, can be regarded by God as entirely done with sin. I'm done with it. It doesn't make you lazy. It doesn't make you apathetic about your sin. God has put in a provision for us to deal with our sinfulness. When we sin, what's the consequence? We lose fellowship.

In 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, God is able and just to forgive us our sins. and restore us to righteousness from a fellowship conditional standpoint.

But it does not affect your position. It does not affect your position. And it's tough for us sometimes to just rest by faith in the fact that God never changes His attitude about me. He loves me. He gave His Son for me. He's put me in Christ. I'm resurrected and seated with Him in the heavenlies and I've been suited out by Him to enjoy that for all eternity. That's never going to change. Now, I may mess up my life by sinning and lose the fellowship, but he put in a provision to restore it.

Once we see our deliverance from the old, we can begin to walk in the freedom of the new. It's really important. Once we see. What are the things that I want to do? And this is the part I was telling the class this morning. I was working on my sermon. I think, oh, I'm getting to be a good Baptist. I got right to the end of my sermon and I thought, oh, I've got to give them a list of stuff to do. The first thing I would say is I know that the wages of sin being death. I know that. Death is separation.

But I also know that being in Christ, a believer, me and you, has no need for the law. We don't have a need for it anymore as a governing principle. We can now live by the new nature which is effortless and it's natural. It's spiritually natural and it's effortless because it's His life. When we see our deliverance from the old, we can begin to walk in the freedom of the new. when we see it. Even when there is failure, the abiding believer learns from it and learns that he's gaining by it.

Another one of the most difficult things I run into with people is the fact that they have some sort of trial in their life and they think we've got to all get together and we've got to pray really hard that God takes the trial off. Did it ever dawn on you that because you're a son and because He wants to bless you, that He allows and brings trials into our life all the time for what purpose? To show us that He uses it for our good. He uses it for our good, no matter what it is. It may be something that somebody did to you that was just totally unreasonable, but it came from the Lord. It had to pass through Him to get to you. And He works all things together for what?

To conform us to the image of Christ. from my condition." A believer's reliance is neither upon the law or on the flesh. He doesn't rely there, but only and solely on the Holy Spirit. Instead of struggle to keep from sinning and self-effort to progress spiritually, we rest in Christ, the foundation of our growth. Walk in the Spirit. Abide in the Spirit.

The Word of God is our daily sustenance. The Word of God is spiritual food. It's the reason we read it. We go in there to feed upon the author, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, so that we can say, I know Him. I know Him. He is, the Spirit of Truth has revealed the person of Christ to me and I walk with Him. And I don't need a set of rules. If I know the Lord Jesus personally, I know what He likes and what He doesn't like. I know what's of Him and what isn't of Him. I've got the Spirit in me to tell me that, to show me that.

Like I said, it's just a matter of effortlessness and naturally spiritual. You don't need a rule book. Prayer is the cherished fellowship with the Father. We depend upon the Spirit for the most vital aspects of our life all the time. Talking to Him all the time. Prayer is talk. You ever think about that? It's just talk. Talking to the Lord. But if you're led by the Spirit, verse 18, you're not under the law. The exhortation is therefore to be led by the Spirit.

The assurance is given that those who do so they'll not be living their lives on the principle of legalism or flesh. The Spirit and the law are here contrasted and are shown to be methods of living the Christian life that are opposed to each other. The law is not only no safeguard against the flesh, but it provokes sin. Therefore, the believer who renounces the flesh must renounce the law also. Have to. Because they go together. The flesh and the law are closely allied, whereas the flesh and the spirit are diametrically opposed to one another.

The law finds nothing to condemn in the life of the person who is led by the Spirit. There's nothing there to condemn. This is the blessed moral freedom of a person who is led by the Spirit. Every one of us in this room is led by the Spirit, to some degree or another.

Nobody else is, just believers. He is in such a condition, the believer, you and I, of moral and spiritual life that the law has no power to either censure or condemn or punish. Not at all. This is the true moral freedom from the law that Paul refers to in Romans 8, 1 through 4. So, walk in the Spirit. And you can't fulfill the desires of the flesh.

So just abide where you already are. I had a guy say to me one time years ago, when I was struggling about something. I had lunch with him and as we left, he just turned around and said to me, stay where you are. I said, what do you mean? He said, you're in Christ. Just stay there. Just rest there. And I thought to myself, easy for you to say. But God is working.

The Spirit of God is working to get us to walk, walk about every step by dependence on the Spirit, and the Spirit will do, because He is God, what He has been sent to do. So let's close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you for your grace, and we thank you for your Spirit, and we thank you for the fact that you have made every provision to provide us the opportunity to rest in your Son and to walk in the Spirit. And we thank you, Father. And we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.