Positional and Practical Freedom

I'm on, right? Good. Well, I have to tell you, it's been an interesting week for me and my studies because, you know, a lot of times, as Roger knows, you get going on sermon preparation, and then in the middle of the week, you hear something or read something, and you go, oh, well, I better include that, too. Well, that happened to me this week, so.

Interesting, these verses in Romans 8, 1 through 8, but they all go back, I think, they go back to Romans 7, 21 through 24, when Paul is crying out, really, I find then that the principle of evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully concur that the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law or a different principle in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law or the principle of sin which is in my members. And then he cries out, oh wretched man that I am, and he asks a question. Who will set me free from the body of this death?

So when we begin in Romans eight, Now there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus. That's where we started in eight. And we're gonna end the paragraph today in verse eight that says, those who are in the flesh can't please God. And in between is where we're gonna talk about today.

My positional freedom, the freedom from the old wretched man that I am who will set me free, from the body of this death. And so the first question I have, is there such a thing as practical freedom from the principle of sin and death, or is it just conversation?

Because when you read these verses, you think, well, I'm cruising along in seven, I identify with chapter seven, and I sort of, I'm not really crying out like Paul did, but I know that my sin nature's a problem. And then I jump into aid, and I go through the first verses of aid, and I think, well, that solved that problem, now I can move on. Problem is, is that you don't get to move on. Oops, what am I doing? And by the way, Roger's been teaching me about slides. So how did Paul get three? for the law or the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has already set him free from the principle or the law of sin and death. That's a positional truth.

Why couldn't obedience to the law accomplish freedom from death? The answer is for what the law could not do and that it was weak through the flesh. The reason that the law is unable to bring about this holy life of freedom from the power of sin lies in the flesh, in the fleshly mind of which verse seven tells us is enmity against God, not subject to God's law or God's will. Enmity means you're a reconcilable enemy. You cannot be reconciled. So although William Newell says, and so although the law was holy, it's just and good in itself, but it only irritated by its commandments a sinful flesh that was not subject to it.

So. Repeating a passage that we've considered under the subject of new birth, back in John chapter three, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. And that which is born of the spirit is spirit. There are nouns there that identify what flesh and spirit are. If you're born of those things, that's what you are.

We find that the conveyance of the new nature, when we got saved, does not obliterate the old Adamic nature. It's still there. We know by our new nature, the old man is crucified. We know that. but there is the presence of the flesh which is incapable of alteration. And that's what we're going to spend a little more time on this morning because someone has rightly said that there are many separated from the world, but Christians are not separated from themselves. One of the greatest mistakes made by saints is the effort to sanctify the flesh. Isn't gonna happen. Flesh won't change.

So Paul goes into the second chapter of Colossians and he says, just to kind of identify how this flesh is really working out for him, if or since you be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, that's a truth, Why, as though living in the world, are you subject to ordinances? After the commandments and doctrines of men, which things have indeed a show of wisdom, and will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body, not in a certain honor, to the satisfaction of the flesh? This is a really striking illustration of the results of all the efforts to improve the flesh. Keeping ordinances, obeying laws, touch not, taste not, handle not, don't get involved with them.

So you can't make the flesh moral. You can try, but it isn't gonna happen. We can even make it religious. Let me back up. You can make the flesh moral. You can make it religious externally. You can look really pious. I hate to always pick on the Catholics, but I came out of Catholicism, so I get to pick on them. All you have to do is look at their clergy. Are they moral? Well, some of them are. Are they religious? Oh boy, are they ever.

But you can't make it please God. That's a huge problem that all Christians have. What am I doing? Does it please God? Therefore, the seeker after holiness in the flesh, he may starve or he may mortify his body and merely please the flesh, puff himself up with pride. They that are Christ have crucified the flesh with the affections and its lusts. So God had a plan, and what was his plan to free Paul and all believers from the principle of sin and death?

The answer is verse three. The law couldn't do it because it was weak through the flesh. God did it by sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned it. So your sin nature and my sin nature aren't forgiven, they're condemned. God's plan is apart from law. It's under grace. Without law's help or rule, it's the very opposite. So to send his own son who had a body prepared for him, So although sinless, our Lord Jesus Christ was born in the likeness of sinful flesh. He had a body that could die in the likeness of the bodies of the children of Adam.

So it's the most important, I think, for believers to recognize the two great facts which Paul develops concerning Christ's work. You find that most expositors of God's work only deals with the first one. His bloodshed for us is a compensation. for our guilt, the righteous claims of God's throne against us because we sinned, and of their being satisfied, fully met by Christ's shed blood, and our being brought near to God, salvation, justification. Every believer knows that, and that's what you mostly hear, but here's the part you don't hear very often, our death with Christ.

He was made sin for us because our condition of sinfulness has connected with the first Adam. And being in the flesh, we died with Christ so that Christ would become our Adam. Does that make sense? Christ becomes our Adam. I gotta catch up with my notes.

Therefore God commanded to reckon ourselves dead to sin, Romans 6.11. Why? Because we did die federally. Positionally we did. Our history in Adam was ended before God so that he plainly says to us, you were not in the flesh where you once were. Positional truth.

In Romans 7.5 we see While we were in the flesh, while we were in it, positioned in it, the sinful passions or desires which were aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit unto death.

That's one of those verses that If you really think the law is gonna help you, read that one and spend time, go over it two or three times. That says just the opposite. The law can't help you. It incites your sin nature. So how is God going to satisfy his righteous demands in man? He's the one that's gotta be satisfied.

Romans 8.4 tells us that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us. who don't walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit. Notice that it was fulfilled, not fulfilled by us, big difference. We have no more power in ourselves than had the Old Testament saints, but it's fulfilled in us. It is fulfilled experientially in us as we consent to reject the flesh, and choose to walk under the direction of the Holy Spirit. In the Spirit lies all the power. He's the one that has all the power. You don't have it. I don't have it. He has it.

With us, the responsibility is choice. We, by faith, trust Him, and we believe Him, that what He means, what He says, He means. Kenneth Weist is going to say here, and right here is where when I was studying and listening to tapes this week, my mind totally changed about what the subject matter should be today.

And it starts with verses 5 and 6, for those who according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh. That's true of those that aren't saved. It's also true of a believer who walks in the flesh. You're thinking about the flesh all the time. You're focused on it. But those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit, for the mindset, belonging on the flesh is death. Death means what? Separation.

I'm dead to God, even though I'm a believer positionally. but the mindset or belonging to the Spirit is life and peace. So the question came up in my mind, can a believer have his mind set on the flesh? Is that possible? Or do we walk around holy all the time?

Well, I was reading the green letters, or listening to Miles Stanford and reading the green letters, and Evan Hopkins says this, How infinite are the forms in which self appears. He's talking to believers. Some are occupied with good self. They pride themselves on their excellencies. Others are just as much occupied with bad self.

They are forever groaning over their imperfections and struggling with the flesh as if they hoped in time to approve it. And then the question comes to my mind, when shall we be convinced it is so utterly bad that it's beyond all recovery? Our experience upward in the power of God is just in proportion as our experience downward in ceasing from the self.

Does it mean reckon yourself weak in reference to sin? No, it's gotta be lower than that. Does it mean reckon yourself to be dying? No, it's still gotta be lower than that. Reckon yourself to be dead, dead indeed unto sin. Some believers believe that they're really weak when it comes to sin. The problem is, it implies that they have some strength. But when a man is dead, he doesn't have any strength at all. If the word of God says I'm dead to sin, I don't have any strength there. hence the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Hopkins concludes we must act on the fact that we are dead in reference to sin.

We shall not then speak of difficulty as to resisting temptation in reference to ourselves. We'll take the lowest place and say it's impossible. But we shall know that what is impossible with self is possible with God. We shall take our place on the resurrection side of the cross. And in so doing, we leave behind the old self life for the new life in Christ. To live in him who is our life is to be in the power of God.

So would you say then, that Romans 7 experience is healthy for a believer? Do you think that what Paul went through back and forth about trying to be good and can't be good and what he wants to do he doesn't and what he doesn't want to do that's really what he wants to do? Is it healthy for spiritual growth to become aware personally of how the self-life functions? Is that important to us? Answer, would God have the Christian fail so that he may learn to live the Christian, not I, but Christ life. Miles Stanford said, the secret of all true healthy spiritual development is finding out about the sinful self-life. You gotta find out about it. Otherwise you don't know or discover it when it shows up.

At a spiritual conference, C.I. Schofield said, not everyone by any means has had the experience of the Seventh of Romans. That agony of conflict, of desire to do what we cannot do, of longing to do the right we find we cannot do. It is a great blessing when a person gets into the Seventh of Romans. and begins to realize the awful conflict of this struggle and defeat. Because the first step towards getting out of the struggle of the seventh chapter and into the victory of the eighth is to get into the seventh. No believer that I have ever had a serious conversation with doesn't know about the seventh of Romans, that they have struggled to deal with sin, and it wins most of the time, if not every time. Schofield continues, of all the needy classes of people, the neediest of this earth are not those who are having a heartbreaking, agonizing struggle for victory, but the neediest ones are those who are having no struggle at all, and no victory, and who do not know it. and who are satisfied and jogging along in a pitiable absence of almost all the possessions that belong to them in Christ without the understanding of what Romans 7 is all about.

You don't get to possess all that you are in Christ. You don't understand it. J.C. Metcalf says many a young Christian who has been warned of the necessary voids of discovery upon which the Holy Spirit will certainly embark him in Romans 7, has been plunged into almost incurable despair at the sight of the sinfulness which is his by nature.

He has in the first place rejoiced greatly in the forgiveness of his sins. We all have done that. and rejoice in his acceptance by God, but sooner or later, he begins to realize that all is not well and that he has failed and fallen from the high standard which he set himself to reach at the first flush of his conversion.

When I read that, I remember the man that led me to the Lord was so savvy about these kinds of things. And he would put it in language like this. He said, well, and he was really involved in evangelism. He said, you know, young people come to Christ and they're just overjoyed about it. And he said, if you just take a step back and wait, about two years down the line, that scream you hear is them going off the Roman Seventh Cliff. He really understood. He really did understand.

He begins to know something of the experience which Paul so graphically describes, and what I would, that I do not do. But what I hate, that I do. And, in consequence, he feels that the bottom has fallen out of his Christian life. And then perhaps the devil whispers to him that it's just no good and is going on because he will never be able to make the grade. Actually, the devil's right.

Little does he know how healthy this condition is and that this shattering discovery is but the prelude to a magnificent series of further discovery of the things which God has expressly designed for His eternal enrichment. All through life, God has to show us our own utter sinfulness and need before He is able to lead us on into the realms of grace in which we shall glimpse His glory. So I think it's a principle that we all must get straight in our minds. Self revelation precedes divine revelation. That's a principle set forth in spiritual birth and spiritual growth. Those of you who became believers as a young adult on into adulthood, the first thing God did was create a need in you and show you that you needed a savior. So self-revelation comes first before there's spiritual growth.

He is being taken through the experience, maybe years in extent, of self-revelation and into death, the only basis on which to know Christ. And there, the believer who is going through the struggle and failure is the Christian who is being carefully and lovingly handled by his Lord in a very personal way.

Philippians 3.10, that I may know him. the power of his resurrection, the fellowship of his sufferings be made conformable unto his death. When we begin to realize, even though in this struggle, How careful and lovingly God is handling us through this, and he is teaching us there is an end. This conformity to the image of Christ is something that he has to carry out, but the process or the principle starts with the revelation of self. Charles Coates said that many of us have probably known what it was to rejoice in the grace of God without having apprehended very much the true character of the flesh.

We're really good at covering that up. It has often been noticed that where there is the greatest exuberance of joy, In young converts, there is often a levity which fails to take into account that the flesh is unchangeable. In such cases, the grace of God is taken up in a self-confident way. There is very little self-distrust or sense of weakness and dependence.

And the inevitable consequence is a fall or a succession of falls that gradually brings home to the consciousness of the believer that utter weakness and incapacity as in the flesh. You gotta know, if you don't know how weak your flesh is and how weak you are to deal with it, then you won't turn to God and the Spirit of God to be the power to fix it. You won't do that.

So you find out, we get all the way down to Romans 8.8, and you find out that those that are in the flesh cannot please God. When a believer begins to discover something of the awful tyranny of self, and has been endlessly struggling against that tyranny, he becomes intensely concerned about the denial of self.

How do I get free? with the result of freedom to rest and grow in Christ. Man has many ways of seeking to escape the slavery of self. God has but one way. And that's a quote from Samuel Rideout. And the one way is that God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.

When we come to understand through the work of the Spirit, and it may take some time, that in me, that is in my flesh, dwells no good thing. We go through years of, well, there's some good and there's some bad. Oh, this is okay and that's not okay. And I'm getting better all the time. Nope. There's no good in the flesh. And if I'm relying upon it, especially if as a Christian I'm relying on the good part of the flesh, I have to be shown, I have to be taught that in me that is in my flesh doesn't dwell anything that's good, nothing good. So. What I have to learn, and what's so important to every one of us, is that I have to learn the not I, but Christ life. It's Him. It's all Him. It's not me being like Him. It's not me emulating Him. It's not me doing Christian pushups. It's Him. He is our very life, not only positionally, but He wants to be our life practically so that He can manifest who He is through us.

And that process, and really that process from Romans 7 into living and abiding and resting and having life and peace in Romans 8, one of the things that hit me this week was that might take some time. and a lot more time than maybe I was willing to acknowledge early on in my Christian life. I know that I possess the life of the Lord Jesus. I have intermittent peace. I know about his life. but I don't have rest all the time. And he intends for me to have rest all the time.

We had a good discussion this morning in Sunday school. We were talking about offense and offending and that kind of thing and how when somebody does something to you, is your old man the one that's offended? Or is it the new man in Christ? Which one is it? Well, you won't know unless the Holy Spirit works in you. And that you begin to grow and find out. And so when you find out that, oh wow, it might be my old man that's offended. Well, so you start with the flesh, you're in the flesh, and you end in the flesh, and I'm offended. Guess what? You're not pleasing to God. Because those in the flesh can't please Him.

It's a hard reality to come to, I think, but it's a good reality because we find out. that my life is the life of Christ. And like Paul said, the glory is in the cross of Christ, in which I really was not only positionally, but being worked out practically in every one of our lives, the realization and the reality of the fact the Lord Jesus Christ is my life.

Let's close. Father, we thank you. We thank you how careful, as you say, you are to grow us up in the image of your Son, the Lord Jesus. And we recognize, as we've studied through 7 and the first part of 8, how incredibly powerful this sin nature is, and that we don't really possess any of the power within us of ourselves to deal with it. We lose every time. We're thankful that you have indwelt us by the Spirit, which not only manifests the life, but grows us up intelligently, spiritually intelligently, so that we can see and know and understand, and we can rest, rest in the life of the resurrected Christ. And we thank you, and we pray in your Son's name, amen.