Christ Life In Us Romans 8:6

Anyway, what I thought about, I thought about these verses. We spend a lot of time in Romans sort of thinking about what we shouldn't be doing. In Romans it's that way, you know? I don't want to be in the flesh, it's not pleasing to God and that kind of thing. But we haven't spent much time on the idea of what does it mean to be focused on spiritual things.

So maybe to set it up, Romans 8.6 says, the mindset on the flesh is death. It's almost a given, we know that. But the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. So my question to myself was, well, what is a mindset on the spirit? What is that all about? How does that work?

Paul speaks of three men. He talks about a natural man, which is just the everyday walking around son of Adam, and all the characteristics of him. And then he talks about a carnal man, and then he talks about a spiritual man. Spiritual man is this brand new, entirely new, man who is termed spiritual. And he has characteristics about him that no other man has. The carnal man is the man who is positionally spiritual, but has a tendency to act more natural than he does spiritual. So that got me thinking, well, I need to find out more about what it means to be a spiritual man.

So I looked at some of the epistles. Romans is God's message to the natural man, to the lost man, for salvation. And he teaches man about Christ and his crucifixion and the fact that he rose again for the benefit of taking away your sin and that we, all of us as believers were crucified, risen with and in him. Romans teaches us that. But you have to go to 1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Galatians. This is the message to the carnal man.

This is the man who is already a believer, but he's not quite sure how the spiritual life has lived through it and through him and that there's lots and lots of language about These are the things of the flesh, and that kind of thing exposes it. And it also talks about, these epistles talk about the organization of the church, the local church, how it comes together. But you have to go out to Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians to find out, what is a spiritual man? What is he?

And how is the body of Christ organized in a spiritual manner? And it has to do with, yes, Christ crucified, but also risen and in the heavenlies. Spiritual men have been recreated by God to be heavenly. So we were crucified, risen, and we are in the heavenlies with him.

So I don't think At least from my mind, I thought, well, what does it mean to be spiritually minded? Can I just say, well, I'm going to go study the spiritual things? So when I looked at these verses, those who are habitually dominated by the sinful nature, what do they do? They put their minds on the things of the sinful nature.

They pay attention to the things of the world. They pay attention to themselves. They pay attention to the environment they're in. They're wrapped up in it. But those who are habitually dominated by the spirit, they put their minds on things of the spirit. And I thought, wow, how cool would that be? That my thought process and my desire and everything about me was focused on the spirit. And I thought, I could probably talk about that. if I find out about it, have something to talk about.

What was interesting is this term puts their minds, remember in the 60s when people would say, you got to get down with it? That's what this word means. It means get down with it. You got to get down with the things of the spirit, or you're down with the things of the flesh.

So I thought, gee, even the Lord is kind of contemporary. For to have the mind dominated by the sinful nature is total separation from God. There's no improvement. You're just in the wrong realm. But to have a mind dominated by the Spirit, there's two great benefits from that. One is life, and the other is peace. Two great benefits. Where else do you get life, and where else do you get peace?

Only from the Spirit of God. If you are according to the Spirit, having been born of God, there's an indwelling of you of the Mighty One, the Comforter, whose whole mind and His whole disposition and manner of being and ruling within you is life and peace. That's what He's all about. The life is the risen life of Christ, which the spirit as the spirit of grace supplies.

So as you begin to open up your understanding, and I'm not saying, well, you got to stop doing this and start doing this. What I'm saying is, is that the spirit of God will cause you, because of who you are in Christ, to become interested in what he's all about and what he's doing. and what he does in your heart and changes your value system where the things of the spirit and the spirit of grace and all that God is become increasingly important and you want to find out more and more and more. When you look at this word mind, it doesn't mean reference to your intellect or your understanding.

What this refers to is your attention or your occupation. What do you pay attention to? What's your occupation with? I mean, if you're a man, you have a career, you pay attention to that. If you're a dad, you pay attention to that. If you're a mom, you pay attention to that. Anything that's going on in the world, you pay a lot of attention to that. The encouragement from the Holy Spirit is, pay attention to me, and I will reveal Christ to you, those whose mindset is according to the Spirit, according to His Spirit, your Spirit, His Spirit.

So let's consider some of the infinite differences and contrasts between these two men, Adam the first and Adam the last. The thing about the Lord Jesus, the last Adam, is that he, as we talked about this at Christmastime, when he showed up on the planet, he was not from the earth.

He was not from flesh. A body was made for him. He did not come from Adam. So he does not have a sin nature and he is not part of the Garden of Eden. He came directly from God. He's a spiritual man. He's the only spiritual man that had ever been on the earth. He was really different. He looked the same, but he was totally different. He was one of the characteristics of the last Adam, the Lord Jesus.

He always, and I mean always, did the will of the Father. Boy, and I thought, if I'm going to study the spiritual man, that means At some point, I'm going to really want to do only the will of my Father?" Answer, yeah, that's part of it. So you have these two men.

In Genesis 1, the first Adam was made after the likeness of God. The last Adam is God. The first Adam was made in the image of God. The last Adam was the image of the invisible God. All creation, could see in the first Adam one who was a representative of God on the earth. Adam was the guy. That was what he was here to do. In John 1, all who opened eyes and prepared hearts could discern the last Adam, a glorious, the only begotten of the Father. Moreover, he declared the Father which the first Adam, though made in the image of God, could never do. The first Adam was created.

The last Adam, the Word, was made flesh. You get the difference there? The last Adam, the Son of God himself, was made flesh. He wasn't created, he was made flesh. So, Both had a beginning in the flesh on the earth. Both of them were born of a woman. Both of them were born or created by God or came on the planet as fleshly. The first had none before he lived here. In other words, Adam didn't exist until God made him and brought him into the planet. But the last By the last, the first was created. Well, who do you think created Adam? It was the Lord Jesus who did that. The first Adam appeared on the scene that was prepared to receive him. You know, that whole first creation before it fell was designed for Adam to be in the middle of it, to be in charge of it, and to represent God to the entire creation. But when the second Adam The last Adam entered the world, they rejected him. They didn't want any part of him. The first was placed in the Garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it, and all acknowledge of the first Adam's sway. He was the guy.

To own the first Adam was to submit to God. To receive a name from him was if It had been pronounced by God himself. God gave him the authority to call a dog a dog, a bird a bird, and the different kinds. And if you got named by him, you thought, gee, that must be God's name for me. A beautiful picture of order and subjection to one set over the works of God's hand. But he was only a type. He was a type of the last Adam who was to come. So consequently, when the last Adam came, he could do no less than give people names. So what did he do?

First thing he did is he changed Simon's name to Cephas, signifying as the head of a new creation, and the use to which he would put him afterwards, the sons of Zebedee, he surnamed I don't know if I'm saying that right, but what that means is he changed their names to Sons of Thunder. And in time, he will give each saint a new name, you and I, a new name, which no man knows but he who receives it. You realize in all eternity that you will have this intimacy with Christ, and He will call you by your unique name, and you'll be the only one who knows it. That's really pretty cool when you think about it.

I remember, I won't tell the story. In Genesis 2, the glory of Adam seen that day and Eden passed away, never to be restored. In John 2, the glory of the last Adam displayed on earth in a brief passing way can never fade or decay. The serpent persuaded Eve that God had withheld something from them that they ought to have and enjoy. That was the temptation.

Did God really say he held something back? He made her doubt the reality of God's love that goes on every single day and every single minute in the world we live in now. The number one thing that we are tempted by and that the natural man lives by is that God hasn't really given you everything. He's held some stuff back, or you haven't earned it, or you don't deserve it, or whatever. And then you read a verse like that God has blessed each one of us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.

When you read that, what do you think? You think this, did God really do that? No one deserves that. Well, no kidding. We were studying this morning about grace. Everything that we have from God, we didn't earn. And if we think we earned it, the grace goes away. Grace is totally unearned, totally. And to live under grace, you have to understand that and be receptive of the grace that you have.

The last Adam, when teaching Nicodemus, tells out the exceeding greatness of that love, which didn't stop at the giving up of his only son for a ruined and sinful world. Nicodemus is a very interesting guy because he was a legislator, put him that way. He was a famous man and an authoritative man. was one of those men that studied the law, worked at what he did, but he saw in the Lord Jesus the miracles and the things that he did, that there was something different about him. So he went to see him in the middle of the night because he was afraid that his buddies would see him and criticize him.

And the Lord doesn't even let him get to talk very much. He just says to him, unless a man is born from above, He will never see the kingdom of God. And then, and of course you know how bright Nicodemus was, his answer was, well does that mean I have to go back into my mother's womb again? I think he missed the point. And the Lord Jesus says to him, unless a man is born from above, he will never ever enter the kingdom of God. Now he's saying this to a man who thinks he's earned his way there. So what's he saying to him? Unless you leave the flesh and become spiritual, you're not going in, because it's a different environment than you know.

Then you get to Genesis 3, and it tells us of a voluntary act on the part of the first Adam, an act of necessity on the part of God. In other words, Adam sins, and God responds. And you know, I was thinking this morning as J.D. was teaching the class, When God told Adam and Eve that because of this, and he laid out the curse, the curse was gracious. You know why?

They didn't die that day or cease to exist. And he promised them a redeemer. And even the trials of the way were gracious. So everything God does, you know, God is a blesser. That's the first and most important thing about him is he loves to bless. And so sometimes he has to go through, put us through a process where he can get us ready for the blessing he has for us. In John three, we get more than mercy. We get grace. We get grace. That's a new thing.

The first Adam in Genesis 3 stands forth as the author of the ruin of the race. The last Adam, the son of man, appeared in John 3 as the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him. All of them. Adam couldn't give you that. It took the second Adam, the spiritual man, to do it.

Genesis 4, worship and death are the prominent subjects of sin being in the world. Its fruits are quickly made apparent, not only in entailing death on Adam and his children, but in inciting Cain to stain the earth with the blood of his brother Abel. That's Genesis 4. In John 4, you get worship, and life are brought before us. And here, you get more than the acceptance of an offering.

It is the Father seeking worshipers. The hour has come and now is when true worshipers shall worship the Father, how? In spirit and truth. For the Father seeks such to worship Him. That even intrigued me more. The Father seeks those who in spirit and truth would worship them in spirit and truth. Wow, that's really different.

Death by the one, by the first Adam, and death over everyone. The mastery of death, everyone. dies, the soul that sins, it will surely die. But in the last Adam, it shall be swallowed up in victory and finally be destroyed. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as Adam all dies, so in Christ shall all be made alive. And the very last enemy to be destroyed will be death itself, for he has put all things under his feet.

So when you start to compare these two men, the natural man and the spiritual man, there are things about the spiritual man that require, let me say it this way. The verse says that those that are after the spirit mind pay attention to the things of the spirit. Well, those are the things of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That's how you start to find out. The first Adam, what have we received from him? What have we got to show off? If you want to stand up and brag about the first Adam, I'll give you five minutes. So here's what we get. We get a life of nature wholly corrupt, flesh not subject to the law of God, neither indeed it can't be, for an inheritance, a life of sorrow, vexation of spirit and for prospect death.

Thank you, Adam. What is it, Adam, that first gives the creation? By him the living creatures indeed were named, but by him the whole creation was made subject to vanity, and because of him the ground was cursed. Thank you again, Adam. But another Adam has been found, the second Adam, the last one, who was obedient unto death.

From him we receive, but how unlike that which the first parent entailed on us. We don't receive death from him, we receive life. A nature which can't sin. You see that? You have a nature that cannot sin. You have an inheritance that cannot fade away. You have a prospect of life which the grave cannot cheat us of, the great enemy cannot deprive us of. And this is unchangeable to those who possess it. What you have today can't be changed, no matter what you think about it.

I remember early on as a Christian, we were having a discussion, and I was pretty ignorant about things, but this one guy was arguing with another guy, and he said, you know, I know that when I sin, I make God angry. And the other guy said, well, that's kind of a prideful statement. He said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, how do you, can you sin enough that you could change God's attitude about you? And he said, yeah, I think so. He said, well, then you don't understand what you have in Christ. Christ has guaranteed all of these blessings that you can't sin your way out of them. You can't do that. You can't unbelief your way out of them. You know why you can't lose your salvation? Because it wasn't you that did the saving.

It was Him. And the universe too shall rejoice in the last Adam. The curse shall be removed and the groaning creation be brought into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. Who are they? You are. You see how God has tied the release of the vanity of the creation to the manifestation of the glory of the sons of God, to you, you. So I have some questions.

Will the one led by the Spirit understand what the will of the Lord is? Understand the question. If I'm led or you're led by the Spirit, am I going to understand what the will of the Lord is? To me, that would be a really important question if I'm going to mind the things of the Spirit. Would I understand what is the Lord's will? The one led by the Spirit, spiritual intelligence and divine things will be prominent. He will discern and understand what the will of the Lord is.

You'll know. You will know, and he wants us to know. In the spirit, we are not at the mercy of vague impressions, which we are blindly to follow. We're awake, we're aware, we know things. Our patience and faith may be tested by the lack of guidance, but we will not be left to uncertainty or to unintelligent impressions. The man, the woman who puts their mind on the things of the spirit will understand spiritual things. Paul's vision of the man in Macedonia, you remember that? Formed the basis of a clear discernment of what the mind of the spirit was.

Clear. Next question, how does one become intelligent in the things of God? How do you get there? Dallas Seminary is not the answer. The intelligence in the things of God means to have a knowledge of his mind as given in his word. That's where it is. That's where the information is.

To discern, we must have those principles of truth only found in scripture And the spiritual man is ever a lover of the Word of God. Now, I know at this point I can make it really legal, get busy, study the Word of God. But the Spirit of God, if you mind the things of the Spirit, if that's really what you're after, then you will have a desire, you will be a lover of God's Word, and you will be looking for the things of the Spirit. The things of the Spirit.

With that word dwelling in him, not in a coldly intellectual way, but as a controlling his thoughts, enlightening his conscience and guiding his affections, he has placed at the disposal of the Holy Spirit. How cool is that? The instrument by which we will be made of quick understanding. Every one of us is at the disposal of the Holy Spirit. But I think he wants us to say, I'm in, I cooperate.

I want to know these things because you say I'm a spiritual man and I want to spend more time, my time, finding out about what this is really about so I can become spiritually intelligent in the things of God. Not because I just want to be smarter than the guy next to me, because I want to be able to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus, just him and me. and whatever he would want me to do, to know the mind of the spirit and thus be guided by him and him alone. So at this point, last night I was in bed and I was reading Lewis Barry Chafer's book on He That Is Spiritual. And one of the things I came across, I'm gonna read a little bit to you because I thought it was kind of neat.

What the flesh can and will and must do has been stated in the preceding verses of the passage. Now, and he goes through all the works of the flesh, and then he comes down and he says, there are then two principles of life which are open to the child of God.

One is the carnal walk with which the energy of the flesh, and as man, And the other one is the spiritual walk, which is by the energy of the spirit of Christ. This passage in Galatians, jump to the next paragraph. When walking by the spirit, the results are celestial. You shall not fulfill the desires of the flesh so that you cannot walk by the spirit to do the things you otherwise would.

Such results are priceless. The world looks on to the end of a long process of self-training, self-repression for the realization of the human virtues, the sum of which are called character. The Christian may realize at once the heavenly virtue of Christ, not by trying, but by a right adjustment to the indwelling spirit. This is a revelation quite foreign indeed to man's habits of thinking and acting.

It is the many hard things, this tremendous possibility as revealed from God will not seem reasonable to one who is not yet done with doubt as to the possibility of the supernatural being experienced in every moment of his life. What struck me about that was it's almost like the Lord says to us, it's gotta be okay with you too. I want you to understand and I want you to agree I want you assent to the fact that I want to teach you about your being a spiritual man and about the Lord Jesus Christ, but I want you to okay it. You've got to be in.

Is all ministry by the Spirit of God? Answer, all ministry is by the Spirit of God, all of it. The Spirit calls, selects, sends forth whom He chooses. He also abundantly sustains and guides them. There are those who are according to the Spirit, who discern, they value, they love, are absorbed in the things of the Spirit. The mind of the, who mind the Spirit's things, salvation, the person of Christ, the fellowship of the saints, the word of God, prayer, praise, prophecy, the blessed hope of Christ coming, walking as he walked before men. Those are spiritual things.

The last thing is a chart that Hal did, Hal Malloy did, and I hope I can explain this. I so miss picking them up and say, I really like your chart, but you have to explain it to me. So the pillars, you see, represent the amount of time a believer spends walking in the Spirit. The gaps between the pillars are the amount of time, the frequency by which walking in the flesh of the sin nature. Now you'll notice the pillars are skinnier on the left hand and whiter on the right hand. And the line that runs through them is your spiritual growth. And he would say that you are either walking 100% spiritual at any given time or 100% in the flesh. There's no admixture. So the idea is to progressively spiritually grow so that you spend more and more of your time walking in the spirit.

And the great thing about doing that is 2 Corinthians 3.18. Beholding as an emir the glory of the Lord.

You know that that's not only possible, but he would have us do that. When you pick up that word to study the things of the Spirit, what are you looking for? A bunch of knowledge so that you can write it down and pass the test? No. You're looking for the glory of the Son of God in those words, and that glory will transform you. His glory will transform you into what? To be like Him, and He's the spiritual man. He's the spiritual man. And positionally, we all are, but conditionally, this is what God is up to, because He seeks worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, spirit and in truth.

So I think it's, One of my thoughts about this talk was the fact that hopefully I've convinced you it's okay to pursue spiritual things. It's okay to do that. It's better to do that than to spend all your time trying not to do the bad things or to do the good things. It's okay to spend your time pursuing the things of the Spirit of God.

Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. We thank you that, boy, your intention, your focus on who we are in your Son, the Lord Jesus. I pray that we can see it. We can see him. We can see him working. and that the Lord Jesus becomes the pearl of inestimable value to each one of us, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his very image. And I pray in your son's name, amen.