Flesh/Death vs. Spirit/Life

I was thinking this week, and I'm working on these verses, and I read The Hungry Heart from February 6th, which sort of brings us up to what we're going to talk about today. So I thought that's where I'd start. When the writer says, you yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead.

Deliverance from the reign of sin, singular, and liberty and the life of Christ are set forth in a doctoral unit in Romans 6, 7 and 8. Thus, this area of truth has but one key, and that key is the cross. This is the great master key to spiritual life and liberty. When we begin to comprehend Romans 6, we know that our death in Christ unto sin was completed at Calvary. When we have been in Romans 7 for a time, we come to realize that we have been struggling to produce that which God has already accomplished in Christ. And when we thereby come to Romans 8, we know at last that the Holy Spirit will produce in our experience what God completed for us on the cross and in Christ our life. In Romans 6, we see the foundation of our deliverance, the fact that we died with Christ.

That's a fact. and also the condition of our deliverance that we reckon ourselves dead unto sin and yield to God as those that are alive from the dead, Romans 6.11. Now Romans 8 tells us the means and the method of our deliverance that it is through the blessed Holy Spirit alone that we are actually delivered in everyday life. From sin's reign, the moment we cease from all our own efforts and let him do all the work, we will begin delivering, he will begin delivering us from the power of sin. How long it takes some of us to come to the end of our own efforts can be seen in Romans 7. This is a quote from William Newell, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us. who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. So I read that on the 6th of February and I thought, well, I've got to put that in my sermon because it brings us up to what we're talking about today. Oh, I've got to go back. I'm learning about how things fade in. Watch this. You can tell why I have so much fun by myself in my office. I keep calling Roger up and say, how do you do this? He tries to tell me and I, you know.

So it's important though as we learn these principles and doctrine, I don't want to get beyond the comprehension. of the youngest person spiritually here. I don't mean young in terms of age. But I'd like to know whether you really do believe the first good news that you've gotten. Did Christ die and rise again? Did he? Answer yes. Do you believe he cleared everything away between us and him? that he had not only removed all of our guilt when he bore our sins on the cross, in that he died, he died unto sin once, once. And in that he lives, he lives unto God. That is, he is the atonement for sins. So we get that straight.

And then last week we learned that the thing sin in the flesh, the thing sin, not your sins, the thing sin, was condemned. God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, what did he do? He condemned sin in the flesh. Maybe say it this way. God forgave us our sins, the acts of our behavior and where we sin against him. But did he forgive the thing sin itself, which we refer to as the sin nature? The answer to that is no, he didn't. What he did was is he condemned it to death. Our old man with its sin nature was condemned and it has entirely lost its control over us in judgment.

The word of God tells us that, and our experience may line up with that, and then again it may not. Most of us are aware how slow the heart is to receive this kind of a truth. But until we do receive it, we're not gonna progress. We must take possession of the facts.

We are free from the man by which we were enslaved to. I am free. That man is positionally gone in the death of Jesus who bore the judgment. And we're free in Christ's life who cleared me. So the scripture is reckoning yourself to be dead indeed unto sin, the thing sin. I am dead to it. And at the same time, on the other side, I'm alive unto God in Christ Jesus. What's interesting is that puts us on new ground Our crucifixion brought us to the end of our slavery to sin, the sin nature.

And our liberty is now in his life. We are out of death and we're in life. We come out in a new life literally outside of everything that we once were. Everything that we once were. We might ask, what is the actual state or condition of the one who has accepted the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus?

He's not only justified from all guilt, you're not guilty anymore, but you actually have been freed from the old man. He that is dead is justified or freed from sin. It's clearance, it's over. The man who enjoys the results of Christ's work of salvation knows that he is clear of everything and that he has the life of Christ who cleared him. In that life, there is no condemnation. There couldn't be, because there's nothing to condemn. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law or the principle of sin and death. Newell says he's now like a bird out of a cage. He enters on new ground altogether. He's in an entirely new region. The old set aside and the new is introduced. He's in the life of Christ. We're free. We're free.

But if you study the Old Testament, you find out that the saints in the Old Testament had a lot of interesting experiences. We find that they were under law and almost constant striving and groaning to acquire a righteous state. Seen but not experienced. because the law consisted of outer enactments to be fulfilled by man. The problem was the law didn't furnish any power. Just because I'm told to do something or not do something, I've got to have the power to either do it or not do it.

Romans 8.4, we saw three things there. First, that the righteous state and its result. Second, the fact that it was not fulfilled by us, We have no power in ourselves than had the Old Testament saints. We can't do any better than them.

And we talk about, oh, what a great man Abraham was. Have you ever read the story of Abraham? He was a loser. I mean, how many of you guys that are married would sell your wife to the mayor of Denver just so they wouldn't pick on you? So it's the same thing with Moses. He's telling all these Jews to believe, and he's the one that doesn't believe.

So anyway, we find out that the fact is not fulfilled by us. We have no more power in ourselves than the Old Testament had it to be fulfilled in us. It is in the passive voice. We're the receiver of the action. The fulfillment is done in us. And third, it's fulfilled in us as we consent to reject the flesh and choose by belief to walk according to the Spirit. In the Spirit lies all the power. All the power. Within us, the responsibility is simple. We get to choose.

We get to choose who's gonna control us, the sin nature or the spirit of God. And we study God's word, we find out we were crucified with Christ, buried and resurrected, that the Holy Spirit is in us. We get the information and what do we do? We consent to it, we believe it, we reckon ourselves dead unto sin but alive unto God. Tricky, here we go.

So we have in five and six today, 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. Verse five, it's a great verse, because, The first thing it tells us is that it concludes everybody who's not born of God. It also includes all believers who are walking in the flesh.

If we take a look at Ephesians 2.3, it tells us, among them, we too. All formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, the desires of our flesh. When our flesh had a desire, we were right there, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind. And second, those according to the Spirit, these are God's true children. The Holy Spirit, of whom they were born again, is indwelling them.

So we have two distinctions here. Two classes of men. And it's really, the gulf between these two is as far as it is from here to the East Coast. In the Old Testament, we read about there's gonna be a dividing between the sheep and the goat nations at Christ's coming. You're either one of mine or you're not. There's nobody in the middle. Between those who are written in the book of life and those not written in the book of life at the last judgment. If your name's not there, you can't get it in later.

The fact that after these centuries upon centuries of divine dealing with man, and especially since the gospel has been preached, as Paul declares, in all creation under heaven, there are yet those, like Cain, Esau, Balaam, Saul, Judas, that are according to the flesh. And we're gonna explore that more today.

For those who are according to the flesh, they set their minds on the things of the flesh and those that are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. So if you take all the fleshly people, I was gonna go, but I won't do that. If you take all the fleshly people, here's a really great description. All those according to the flesh, they cherish They desire, are occupied with, and absorbed in, and talk of, and think of, and follow after only the things of the flesh.

That includes television, the world system, politics, all of that. But then there are those who are according to the Spirit. That's where they come from. What do they do? Likewise, they cherish, they desire, they're occupied with, they discern, they value, they love, are absorbed in the things of the Spirit.

So a couple weeks ago, we went to a conference in Georgia, and we got to spend a couple, three days with Brian and Julia White, and Miles and Alyssa. And it was like, when we got together, everybody in the six of us spent three days cherishing, desire, occupied with, discerned, valued, loved, and absorbed in the things of the Spirit. It was really cool. I mean really cool. We never turned the television on one time. Not one time.

So when you are hanging around with believers who are according to the Spirit, there's something special about that, really special, because, as we'll see in a minute, there's some benefits to doing that. A guy named Ter Stegen, which was one of Miles' favorite poets, and I think he probably wrote 150 years ago, listen to what he says.

Man earthly, of the earth, a hungered feeds on earth's dark poison tree, wild gourds and deadly roots and bitter weeds. And as his food is he, and hungry souls there are that find and eat God's manna day by day, and glad they are, their life is fresh and sweet, for as their food Are they?

Depends on what you eat. Depends on what you focus on. A non-believer can't focus on the things of the Spirit. He can read all about it, but he won't understand it. He'll read it with his natural mind that's focusing on the flesh, and he'll put a little holy water on it to make it sound spiritual, but he does not understand what fellowship with the Spirit is all about.

So those according to the flesh, they mind the things of the flesh. It's physical desires. Under physical heading is things like gluttony, uncleanness, slothfulness. There are soulish desires like mental delights, pleasures of the imagination, artistic indulgences. or taste, whether it's art, music, sculpture, politics, sports, or whatnot. And spiritual desires of pride, envy, malice, avarice, in a word, every unclean thing.

And I like this next one because Newell said it. Every good thing used by unclean persons. That is, persons not cleansed by the blood of Christ, not new creatures in him. Then two, there is the religion of the flesh, which includes all not of or in the Holy Spirit. What did Verne Peterman tell us? How many denominations were there in the world? Over 5,000? How many of them are teaching the truth? The Greek has it this way, for those who are habitually dominated by the flesh, they put their mind on the things of the flesh. That's what they do.

Dominated is a word, kata, means down. A present participle is used, it means a continuous state of being. This is an unsaved person, habitually dominated, or held down by the indwelling sin nature, like this, and move you around like a chess piece. The word for mind is not here as reference to the intellect or understanding, but the attention or occupation of the being caused by its natural disposition.

The flesh here is just the evil sin nature. So think about that. Habitually dominated by the evil sin nature for the things that have to do with the world. makes it kind of interesting because we are involved in the things of the world a lot, because it's all around us. I mean, you can't, you get in your car and you drive from here to your house, most of the influence, stimulus that will come into your mind are the things of the world.

It's where we live. So, the mind. to direct the mind to something or to seek or to strive for. The word speaks of a deliberate setting of one's mind on a certain thing. If you desire to be, I don't know, an engineer, a lot of engineers in the room, what do you do? You put your mind to it. You're focused on it. This is your goal.

The unsaved person is dominated by the evil nature habitually, and habitually puts his mind on those things that are sinful, that the sinful nature has always welling up within itself the things of sin. Always there. So you wonder, why did I have that thought? It's because it's always there. The mind is possessed by and thus controlled or dominated by the evil nature. a description of an unsaved person.

By the way, your sin nature didn't get any better when you got saved. It still functions this way. That person is dead in trespass and sin. He's dead in the sense that he's separated from God and God's life. Death is separation and is on his way to a final and everlasting state of death. He's in trouble.

There are those who are according to the Spirit who mind the things of the Spirit. That's all believers. Now what do they do or not is another story. They pay attention to things like salvation. They pay attention to things like the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. The fellowship of the saints. They like hanging around with each other. The word of God is really important to us. We pray, we praise, we even prophesy. The blessed hope of Christ's coming is important to us.

We want to walk as he walked before men. Those values are something that are really important to us, but only the believer thinks that way. Now true, many of us fall woefully short, and I'm the leader of that band, as we all know, but they mind the things of the spirit. I sin like everybody and just like you do, but I pay attention to the things of the Spirit, the things of God to some degree while others will have nothing to do with them. I have several contemporaries that I went to college with and I'm always praying for them and hoping that they'll come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and I go to lunch with them and this is so evident.

Day one, nothing, they don't want, I'm just mentioning the name of Jesus. They don't want to hear that name. They don't want anything to do with Him. And early on I used to think, wow, I could, but now with these verses I really do understand it. Because their focus is not mine. Their life is really death. My life is really life. And the two of them don't come together.

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. So I thought it'd be interesting to talk about what are the things? I know Hal Malloy, when he was doing his teaching on faith, he spent a whole and probably more than one class talking about, well, what are those things?

Colossians 3.3 says, therefore if you have been raised with Christ, keep seeking the things above. And my question is, what are those things? Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, set your mind on things above and not on things of the earth, and here's the reason for you died, and your life is hid with Christ and God. Hebrews 11, one, and this is the verse that Hal spent a lot of time in, now faces the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.

What are those things? Aren't you interested? What are those things? He said, and I agree with him, they are the things of God. If you have a growing intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ, it's all about him as a person. Notice, set your mind on all the things above. What are the things?

It's Christ himself. and not on things of the earth, because I have a hidden life that's in Christ. If I'm going to understand the very essence of what faith is, it assures me that the things of God, the things I hope for, are real. And it's the conviction that those things, even though they're not seen, they're real. The Lord Jesus Christ is real.

1 Corinthians 2.12, now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God. that we may know the things freely given us by God. Well, what's the thing he gave us? It isn't a thing, it's a hymn. It's the Lord Jesus Christ and all that he is.

We've been given the spirit of God so that we might know him, we might love him, and more important, that we would recognize and enter into the fact that he loves us. and that he's the one that did all the work so that we could be with him. He did it. I didn't do it. My mind is set on sin. That's all I was doing. It's him.

And so when I start to find out through the study of God's word that the things of the spirit of God are really the Lord Jesus Christ, it makes a lot of sense to me. Now verse six says, for the mind set on the flesh is death. Pretty succinct. But the mindset on the Spirit is life and peace.

Why is, what is the reason for that? Those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. What's the result? Death. What's the word death mean? It means separation. You set your mind on things of the flesh and you are separated from understanding anything about God as a believer. So, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. Set your mind on that. Maybe put it this way. Let the Holy Spirit set your mind. Let Him do it. Because He will do it. The mind here is a noun form of the verb that was in verse 5.

So we're talking about the thing itself, what it is of the flesh is death. The flesh and death are synonymous. The mind of the spirit is life and peace. The mind of the flesh is just one thing, it's death, it's separation from God entirely. The mind of the spirit is life and peace. So it's constructive, I think, to contemplate a mind disposition in person, to set on death with its end that can be said to be death.

It can be said to be death. Now, the King James, and I was looking at the King James when Jim was reading, says, for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and they are after the spirit things of the spirit, for they are carnally minded. or to be carnally minded is death, to be spiritually minded is life and peace. The word of God does not say to be carnally minded is death, but it says the mind of the flesh in which they are is death. See the difference? To be carnally minded, it takes away the idea that the flesh has a mind and you have a mind and you're focused on it, that's death.

Further, it doesn't say to be spiritually minded is life and peace, as if it were a state into which a believer comes into. I'm walking around spiritually minded. But it does say the mind of the spirit is life and peace. And neither case does God speak of people, but of the flesh and of the spirit.

I hope that's clear, because all of what we've been studying about who the Holy Spirit is and what the spirit is, as opposed to what the flesh is. So, Kenneth Weiss puts it this way. That person present, The words spiritually minded are to, are, I'm not gonna attempt to pronounce those, literally the mind possessed by the spirit, thus a mind controlled or dominated by the Holy Spirit.

And what's interesting about this whole discussion right here is that how long does it take a believer to realize that his sin nature totally controls him? I won't be brave enough to ask you to raise your hands, but the mind of the flesh controls us. We might be religious, but it's the mind of the flesh. And we come to the understanding, wait a minute, I am controlled by this. I'm a believer, but it controls my thought process, everything I do.

And then I read that I was crucified with Christ, buried, resurrected, I have a new life. But that new life is implemented by the Holy Spirit. And that person, you and me, we possess the life that God is. And what's the result of that life? We have this thing called peace. The Greek word for peace in its verb form meaning to bind together, that which has separated. What God did on that cross is he bound believers together with himself.

Not only are we at peace with him, but we have his peace. We think a lot about the fact that, oh, I have the peace of God, or I have peace with God. He's not mad at me anymore. We're pals. But how often do we think about the fact that God's viewpoint is, you're reconciled to me. You have peace with me because of what I did. Therefore, the sinner who believes is bound together with God and his life after having been separated by sin. This peace, I had a woman ask me, oh, probably two months ago, we were at some function. She came up to me, and I know she's a believer.

She said, I don't have any peace. And so I thought, well, I'm not gonna give her this sermon. She won't, she'll go to sleep before I, I said, why don't you call me and we'll talk about it? But she hasn't called me. And you know what's interesting about that? It depends on where her mind is. Does she really wanna know the answer or not? Does she recognize that peace is only in the life of the Lord Jesus, it's not in anything in the world? I don't know, I'm still waiting. Maybe I ought to call her. Let's see. Sometimes I get going on the tube and I forget where I am here. Sorry about that.

God the Holy Spirit is the comforter whose whole mind and disposition and manner of being and ruling within you is life and peace. If we saw the benefits, those two benefits, life and peace, life and peace, that's what the Holy Spirit is trying to implement in our life, it would make him more important to us in what he's up to.

Life here is the life of the risen Christ, which the spirit is, the spirit of grace applies, Hebrews 10.29 and Galatians 5.3. The Holy Spirit's job is to make you and I aware of who the Lord Jesus is and that we do have his life and his life functions under the heading of grace and gives us peace and just life itself. The peace here is that of Christ, as spoken of in Isaiah, of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. Do you realize that when we go to be with the Lord or he comes and takes us, whichever is first, there will be peace and it'll never end? Every second of every day for eternity, there will be life and peace that we will live in.

So we find that the definite article, the, in the Greek before the word spirit, where the Holy Spirit's person or personal action is emphasized. In other words, if we see the definite article, the person, and the personal action is emphasized, but where his power and nature as a sphere of being and not his person is before us, the article generally disappears. I know this is kind of geeky information, but when you're spending time alone reading God's Word, If the word the is in front of the spirit, understand that we're talking about the person and the personal action is emphasized. If you don't see the word the, it just says spirit, we're generally talking about what he's doing rather than his person.

As an example, the Holy Spirit is introduced in verse two as the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. In verse four it is, who walk not according to the flesh but according to spirit. The thou isn't there, shows his work. Verse five says, they that are according to spirit, the things of the spirit. In the verse according to the spirit is a matter of characterizing what he is, what he's doing, okay? So I'm gonna close with this quote from J.B. Stoney.

A Christian is formed by the place in which God has set him. The grace of God has set him in the love of God, which is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Spirit. He is formed by the place he is in. When Christ was in human form among men, here was the outcome of the place in which He was with the Father.

You get that? When Christ was here, everything He did was shaped, or was the outcome of who He was being the Son of the Father. When we spend time with the Lord Jesus, who is revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, we begin to be shaped by the one we pay attention to. And so what happens? Because we are formed by the Spirit of God into the conformity to Christ, we begin to function that way. So it's pretty easy. So let's close.

Father, how thankful we are. You have done everything to make us and to teach us and to show us and to conform us to the image of your Son. How thankful we are that you're the one who does the work. You're the one who teaches us and woos us and brings us along so that we may find the Lord Jesus so valuable that we just can't do without Him. We thank you. We pray in His precious name. Amen.