Christ Life In Us Romans 8:9-11 The Spirit of Life Within

Well, good morning. Right in the middle of those verses there, maybe you noticed it, it talks about belonging to him. I think Tim was reading the, he always asks, what verses are you doing this week? If I'm the one teaching while he's doing music, and then he'll read and he'll go looking for songs. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the Lord just orchestrated that, but belonging to the Lord, it's an awesome theme, a beautiful truth. And we will be talking about that a little bit this morning. And that song was introduced to us by some of our best friends back in Canada.

What's interesting is that a month before we moved down here, they were called to go up to northern Alberta to pastor a little church up there. We were both attending the same church, tiny little church, smaller than this, much, yeah. And both of our families were called in opposite directions at the same time. Of course, you know that we had been called here by the elders like two and a half years ago, right? But of course, the Lord's timing is not our timing in these things. As I was sitting, I was thinking, do I share this or do I not share this?

Because it's hard to communicate with those who we came to serve and to fellowship with and to love. But hopefully you understand that it's very difficult to uproot you know, yourself and your family and move to a foreign country, right? And it has nothing to do with the fact that we don't love you and didn't want to come and be with you, but there's a lot of difficulty in that. It's hard, right? Leaving behind family and friends and so forth. And so that song was shared with us by Alyssa's friend, our friends who were moving the other direction. And so we listened to that song on repeat for a little while.

I belong to Him, which is not a bad thing, right? Because we can trust Him, and He's good. And it's a wonderful thing to belong to Him and realize that I'm not my own. I'm His, and He's gonna do in me and with me what He pleases, and it's gonna be good having trust in Him.

So anyway, a meaningful song for us, and I think hopefully for you guys as well. Let's begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, it's such a privilege to approach your word together this morning. Lord, we're really so blessed, so privileged to have your word. Lord, we know its value, at least in a small way. And so we pray that you would teach us this morning as we examine the text, as we see what you have for us here, what you want us to understand. We know that it's important. And so we pray that we would come to the word in a humble, dependent attitude, just to be taught of you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

So this morning, we're gonna be talking about the spirit of life within. Two weeks ago, I covered for Mike two weeks ago while he was in the hospital, and we covered verses seven through eight, and that message was titled The Enemy Within. And then Mike last week gave us a real talk about the spiritual man as opposed to the natural man. Now we're going to pick up in verse 9, and we're going to do 9 through 11, and I've titled this, The Spirit of Life Within. So we have a real contrast. We have the enemy within, which is in the text here referred to as the flesh, which is indwelled by the sin nature. And then that's strongly contrasted with what here in verses 9 through 11 is called the spirit of life within.

And so we need to understand, and this is really, really important, that as believers, we have two indwelling natures. There are a lot of Christians who wouldn't agree with us on that point, though many would. But it's very, very important, or you're going to be awfully confused about the Christian life, how it works, what it's all about, what God's doing in you, and why this struggle, why this difficulty that we experience.

And so we have the sin nature, which dwells in me. You see that in Romans 7, verse 17. See, he says, sin dwells in me. Hey, that is in my flesh, right? And then in contrast, we have the spirit of life. And we know that Jesus is our life. Jesus indwells us by his spirit. And that's what we see in chapter 8, verse 9, the spirit of God dwells in you. And so that's what we're talking about, the spirit of life within.

As Christians, We've got to understand that we need to be delivered from the indwelling enemy, the enemy within. We need deliverance from that. And by the end of chapter 7 here in Romans, Paul cries out, right, wretched man that I am, who will set me free or who will deliver me from the body of this death, right? And he's saying that as a Christian.

So as a Christian, born again, justified, righteous in God's sight, he recognized that he needed deliverance, he needed to be set free. And then in chapter 8 verse 2, Paul says, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Now, that's the NASB in 724. and 8 too, they translated it the same so we'd connect it because they said who will set me free and then has set you free. If you have a different translation it might not line up so nicely because in the Greek they are different words but the NASB translators wanted you to see that this is synonymous and so they used the same words to translate it. They're different words but they are synonyms. And they're in different tenses. So in 724, the set me free is a future tense verb. So who will set me free, future tense. But in 8.2, we have the has set you free in the aorist tense, which simply in English we can kind of say future tense. Or sorry, past tense.

Accomplished fact, you have been delivered, okay? So deliverance from the power of indwelling sin is not something that we have to hope for. It's something that has already been accomplished. That's what he's saying in 8.2. So we have this situation where, as a believer, we go through this kind of experience like Paul describes in chapter 7, where I feel the need for this deliverance. And then Paul comes around in 8 too, and he says, and you have been delivered.

And how do we connect that? How does the fact that we've been delivered connect with this realization of our need for deliverance? That's really the critical point to understand in the Christian life. And what we need to understand, is that there is a legal or judicial reality in play here. We are freed from sin's legal right to control us.

And Paul taught that principle back at the beginning of chapter seven, if you recall, in verses one through four, Paul gives us this analogy. Does anyone remember what it was? It's the analogy of marriage. And he says that a marriage covenant, as intended, can only be broken by death. That's the way the Lord intended it. That marriage would only be broken by death. But I tell you, when one partner dies, that marriage is over. That's what breaks the marriage covenant. So the principle there that he lays down is that death breaks a legally binding relationship. That's the principle. He's not teaching on marriage. Don't let it confuse you there. He's giving a principle about death, breaking, a legally binding relationship.

And then he applies that principle and he says that we were slaves to sin. That was the legal relationship. Sin was our master. We're not terribly familiar with the whole idea of slavery and sin being our master and so forth. It's not the way it was so much maybe in early American history, and we know all of that, but this is the Roman culture, and slavery was prominent there, for better or for worse, but there was a legally binding relationship between slave and master.

What Paul is saying is that when we died with Christ, that broke that legal relationship, that broke sin's rights over us, sin's authority over us. In Romans 6, 7, Paul says, for he who has died is freed from sin. That's the principle that he's illustrating in Romans 7.

But it's also really important that we don't miss the other side of this, right? Because not only have we been freed from slavery to sin, not only has that relationship been broken, but we've been joined to another. Romans 7 verse 4 says, therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ. Why? So that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God. So we have been joined to Jesus Christ.

By the way, if you're new here, if you haven't caught on yet, where we have those words highlighted, that's your blank on your handout. If it seems random that the word is highlighted, if that helps you track, great. If not, just ignore it. But of course, the sentences make a lot more sense with the words filled in.

So anyway, we have been joined to Jesus Christ. So not only has our legal relationship to the sin nature been broken, it's right and it's authority over us, but we've been joined to a new master. And that's huge. And it ties into that song that we sang, right? I am not my own. I belong to the Lord.

Many Christians go their whole life without really realizing this. I mean, they may sing that song just fine, I belong to the Lord, but do they really know that they are dead to sin and to sin's power and authority? And that now, in contrast, they are alive to the Lord Jesus. And so a lot of Christians, and I've been there, more than I'd like to admit, trying to live the Christian life, trying to overcome sin, but they don't know the judicial facts. They don't know that they are dead to sin, crucified with Christ. They don't know that they've been joined to Jesus Christ as their life. It's a lot more than just belonging to him in terms of slave master kind of relationship. He tells me what to do, and I do it. He says, jump, and I say, how high? No, he is our life. We've been joined to him as our life.

And we've got to know those facts so that we can trust them to be true. That's the only way that these legal or judicial facts that we're talking about become real, become practical in our day-to-day walk. We've got to know them so that we can trust these things to be true. Everything about our freedom from sin and our new life is wrapped up with the fact that we have a new identity.

We are in Christ. And I want to illustrate that. I got thinking about this. What does it mean to have a new identity? And many of you know, I am a Canadian citizen. My family are all Canadian citizens, which would mean that technically we're under the authority of the King of England. Is that a strange thought to any Americans here? Yeah. Technically, I am under the authority of the King of England. Now, that may be very far removed, and we can get into all the politics, but we won't. We'll keep this simple. Technically, I am under the authority of the King of England.

I live and work here in America by permission from your government. And as residents here, we have certain obligations, which we're in the middle of right now, you know, tax season and all. But my relationship to Canada remains unbroken. We are here on a temporary visa situation. But let's say that we are eventually able to get a different visa that would allow us to apply for US citizenship and Lord willing, I am granted US citizenship and I revoke my Canadian citizenship.

Now, would I be under the authority of the King of England anymore? No. Why not? I wasn't here 250 years ago. I wasn't here when America fought the war and won her freedom from England. Why don't I have to go back and fight my own war of independence? This is kind of a valid question, right? Why doesn't every American have to go and fight for their freedom from the king? It's because America, not just the individuals who fought the war, America is free.

And the moment that your identity changes, in my case, if my identity were to change from being a Canadian to being an American, if my family's listening to this, they're getting worried. But that moment, I would enjoy the same rights and freedoms as all y'alls, or most of you. All y'all. All y'all. All y'all.

Sorry, I didn't ask. I got it wrong. See, I can't be an American citizen yet. I don't know how to speak. But you see how it is, your identity as an American is what gives you all of those rights and privileges that you didn't fight for. You know? And that's a pretty close parallel to what we're talking about here. Jesus' death to sin on the cross is reckoned as my death to sin. Just like the victory of your forebears 250 years ago. Whose forefathers were even here 250 years ago? Anyone that can trace their parentage back 250 years? A few hands. Yeah. Not everyone, though. A lot of families immigrated in time after that, right?

But their victory is reckoned as your victory, as an individual, right? As an individual, you didn't win that victory, but they did, and you participated in that. And because you are identified with those who did, their victory is reckoned as yours. And you all share in the benefits of that. You can say, we won. You can say, I'm free. And that's true.

In the same way, we are one with the Lord Jesus Christ. We, as individuals, didn't die on the cross. Jesus did. And yet, because we're identified with him, his death is our death. His victory is our victory. We can say we died on the cross with him. We can say that we are free from sin in him. We died with him, we are free in him. We share in his victory and all the blessings that come out of it.

And we need that background in mind here to see clearly what Paul is saying in verses 9 through 11 of chapter 8. Paul's whole point is that through our identification with Christ in his death, sin has no more authority over us. And that all goes back to Romans 7. Through the Romans 7 struggle, we realize that the sin nature is very much alive and active in us.

It seems to have so much power in us. And we wonder, really, how we will ever have deliverance from it. And now Paul's answering that. God wants to produce his righteous life. He wants to produce his fruit through us. But the flesh is totally incapable, totally useless to produce the righteousness of God. If the sin nature is still our master, then we are never going to have that kind of life. But if we're legally dead to the power of sin, then we are free to have a new master ruling in us.

And that's what Paul is turning to in verse 9. In verse 9, Paul begins with a contrast. He's contrasting to what he said in the previous few verses. He uses the word however. Okay, so while those who are in the flesh cannot please God, you, in contrast, are not in the flesh but in the spirit.

That's the answer to the struggle that we feel. We often feel like we're in the flesh, like we're under its control, like it's our master, but we are not in the flesh, we are in the Spirit. We have a new master, a new life. But we need to pay attention to the fact that this is conditional, right?

It says we are in the Spirit if, indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Okay, so We've got this great news, hey, we're free, we're not in the flesh, we're in the spirit, but then we see this, oh, if indeed. If indeed the spirit of God dwells in you, well, how do you know? How do you know if the spirit of God indwells us?

Now, the simple answer to this is that in the Greek, this is assumed true. What looks to us like a very, well, maybe, maybe not, is assumed true, okay? The Greek words if indeed are apeir, which is assumed true, but I think it's important that we deal with this question because the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is obviously not something that we can investigate with our five senses, right? And that's not very satisfying to people.

We want to have some proof of it. I've heard the expression, if the Holy Spirit is there, then there's going to be some proof. And so one of the most common ways to try to find proof is to evaluate a person's work, okay, in ourselves or in others. But why can't we look at our works in order to determine whether we or someone else has a spirit, okay? Think about it. Is it possible to have the Holy Spirit indwelling you and still engage in sin? Yes, it is.

Ephesians 4.30 says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit by whom you are sealed for the day of redemption.

That's written to believers. Believers do sin, and when they do, it grieves the Holy Spirit who's indwelling them. I mean, we could look at so many things in the New Testament written to believers who were in sin. We should know that believers indwelled by the Holy Spirit But this one here points out that you do, as a believer, you have the Holy Spirit, and when you sin, it grieves him. So the presence of sin in someone's life doesn't tell you whether or not they have the Holy Spirit. But what if we flip that around and we look for good works? If we see good works in someone's life, does that prove that they do have the Spirit?

Well, no. Why? Because unbelievers do good things all the time, right? It's not God's righteousness, it's human goodness, it's self-righteousness. But we can't tell the difference, not as people. You and I can't see the heart. Believers and unbelievers can engage in good works that look the same to us, to those around them. So good works don't prove the presence of the Holy Spirit any more than sin proves his absence.

But there's another way that people try to determine if the Holy Spirit isn't dwelling a person, and that's through feelings and experiences, right? And this is the charismatic experience or error. We're not opposed to having wonderful emotional experiences and so forth, but what's the problem with using that as a measure of whether or not you have the Holy Spirit?

Well, feelings fluctuate, right? You may go from the most wonderful experience of the Lord and just this intense personal awareness of his nearness to the very next day feeling completely deflated and discouraged and questioning your relationship with the Lord. Did you lose the Spirit? No. Your feelings changed. So feelings cannot be the measure of the presence of the Spirit.

Here's what it really comes down to. Again in Ephesians 1 verse 13, in him you also, get to this part, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. So the only way to know if you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you is to know if you've put your faith in the gospel. because that is the means by which, that is our response. Our response to the gospel is the moment, when we respond positively to the gospel, is the moment that the Lord sends his Holy Spirit to indwell us. And God wants our assurance to rest in his word about that, not in our works, not in our feelings. We have to trust him about this. We do have his spirit.

If we put our faith in the gospel, if we trust that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and rose again, and we believe that that was for us, then we have eternal life and we have the permanent indwelling of his spirit. And so don't look at that phrase as a, well, I wonder if I do, I wonder if I don't. If you put your faith in the gospel, you know. And if you know, well, whether you know or not, if you have, if you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, then you are not in the flesh, but you are in the Spirit.

And then in the last half of verse 9, Paul flips things around and he states the same thing the other way. Well, what if the Spirit doesn't indwell you, right? So what Paul's doing here, he's clarifying by stating the opposite, which is a really, really good way of clarifying what you're saying. Just say it one way and flip around and say it exactly the other way. He says, but if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong in Him.

Now, flipping things around like that, that's actually a bit of a Hebrew way of communicating as well. You see it in the Psalms and the Proverbs all the time, right? Which is a way of emphasizing something but also really a way of clarifying something because when you flip, you can either say it the same way with synonyms or you can flip it around and say the opposite.

Right? And in both cases, that clarifies what you're saying. And what you really need to do is pay attention to the way the words differ. What synonym did he choose? Because you can, you know, you want to say something to someone and you say it one way and then you, you know, say it again with different words. It clarifies exactly what you mean.

And so that's what Paul's doing. So we want to pay attention to the words that he uses there in the last half of verse nine. Because in the first half, He talks about the Spirit of God dwelling in you, and then in the second half he talks about Christ being in you. And in the first half he says you're not in the flesh but in the Spirit, and in the last half he talks about belonging to him. And so what Paul's doing is he's helping us understand what it means to be in the Spirit.

Being in the Spirit is related to belonging to Him. Belonging in Him tells us about the relationship that we have with Him. So our relationship to the sin nature has been broken, and we now have a relationship to the Lord. Now that doesn't always mean that we're walking according to that reality, but it's no less true, and we're no less free to walk in light of that reality. And so we belong to the Lord, we no longer belong to the flesh.

That's what it means to be in the Spirit. And we really need to understand the importance of the indwelling. In verse nine, as I said, the Spirit of God indwells you, but then in the end of the verse, we have the Spirit of Christ is in you. And then in the beginning of verse 10, we have if Christ is in you. Okay, so all this, he's saying this multiple, multiple times in these few verses. He's talking about God in you, the Spirit is in you, the Spirit of God dwells in you, the Spirit of Christ is in you, and then Christ is in you.

So the purpose of being indwelt by the Spirit is really important, and the purpose of being indwelt by the Spirit is so that Jesus Christ can live in you. in us. And this is something that Jesus explained to his disciples the night that he was arrested in the upper room with his disciples.

He said, I will ask the father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever. That is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you.

But then catch the remainder of this. I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. After a little while, the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live, you will live also. In that day, you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you. And so the indwelling is everything for the believer because the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is being indwelt by God, all of who he is, and Jesus Christ. And notice the phrase in verse 19, because I live, you will also live.

And this is exactly what Paul is talking about here in chapter eight. It's the answer to the whole question that was raised by chapter seven. When we go through what Paul went through in chapter seven, we wonder, well, will I ever have a Christian life?

Is it even possible? And what Paul is explaining here is that yes, It is possible. It's possible because Jesus Christ indwells you by His Spirit and He's done that so that He can live through you. So it's an incredible truth. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit is not just a theological point or something to debate or whatever. It's everything for the Christian life. The indwelling is the means by which Jesus Christ intends to live out his life through you and I. So verse eight, sorry, verse 10. If Christ is in you, Though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.

Now, depending on your translation, in verse 10 you might have lowercase s, spirit, which would indicate that this is referring to the human spirit, or you might have uppercase S, spirit, which would indicate that this is talking about God, the Holy Spirit.

Why would translations differ? Well, simply enough, the Greek manuscripts, they didn't use capitalization, okay? So the same word, spirit, is the same word, spirit, right? Same as we use it. And the only difference, even in your English Bible, is the capital S or lowercase s quite often. And so that makes it difficult sometimes to translate.

And you've got to determine from context, which spirit are we talking about? The other thing that's kind of difficult in this sentence is that there's no verb. Okay, the verbs that you see in English have been supplied in the English translation. If we were to read really directly from the Greek, this is probably as closely as we can directly translate it. Okay, so listen carefully, it's a little bit weird. It says, and if Christ in you, On the one hand, the body dead through sin, on the other, the spirit life through righteousness. There's not even an is verb in there, okay? So, that makes it a little bit hard to understand. We have a, you know, sentence should have a verb to understand. Greek, you can do different things, right?

So what is clear from this verse, and what exactly is he talking about? Well, the thing that's really clear is that there's a contrast. Paul is pointing out a really distinct contrast, and he uses the men-day construction, which, as you heard in what I read there, the on the one hand, on the other. Now, that's not exactly in the Greek, but that's the closest parallel we have in the English to their men-day. So they say men, and you know, tell you what's on this hand, and then day. you know, and on the other hand. So it's a strong contrast. That's the point of this verse is that we're contrasting two things. And we could get really technical and, you know, debate the interpretation, but that's, I think we've... gone far enough on that. We want to see the possibilities and we want to see that the point is that there's a strong contrast.

Paul's saying that on the one hand, your body is dead because of sin. On the other hand, your spirit is alive because of righteousness. I think it fits best in context to say this is talking about our spirit, because of that strong contrast, okay? It's not wrong to say that the Holy Spirit gives life to you, that you're alive because of the Holy Spirit, and that's why we're not gonna sit and argue about the translation all day. But I think that it fits best to say that, you know, on the one hand, your body is dead, on the other hand, your spirit is alive. because of righteousness. And I also think that this fits best with Paul's conclusion that he comes to in verse 11.

It's the difference between the flesh and the spirit of a believer that leads to the Roman 7 experience. Right? I mean, we have a righteous nature in our regenerated spirit and we have a sinful nature in our unregenerated body. Well, that's going to lead to conflict and some difficulty. Romans 7, Paul says, I find then the principle that evil is present in me. Oh, the same me that is indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Yes.

We can get into the mechanics of that, and Paul talks about that, you know, the sin nature indwells your flesh, and the spirit indwells your spirit, and so forth. But, nonetheless, you're one person. and the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. Four, I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. Okay, so this is why there's such conflict, because we have these two natures that are totally contrary, as we saw in the previous verses. The flesh is totally hostile to the Lord.

But the question, really, out of all of this is, is there any hope, right? Do I, you know, is it just, you know, hang in there until we, you know, reach glory? Or do we just throw up our hands and say, forget it. You know, until I get my resurrection body, I'm doomed to failure. But Paul, this is Paul's whole point here. He wants to tell us that no, you don't have to just throw up your hands and continue in this existence of continual struggle and failure.

He's telling us that there is deliverance and that's the answer that's found in verse 11, right? So in verse 9, just kind of tracking through these verses here, Paul told us that as Christians we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. In verse 10, he tells us that Christ is in us, okay, which means that our spirit is alive to God even while our body is dead. But in verse 11, That's where Paul really gives us the good news. In verse 11, Paul tells us that we can have a godly righteous life.

So let's read it. But if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. That is good news for discouraged Christians. Have you ever been a discouraged Christian? Yeah. I think we all have. It's not fun, but there's hope. We don't have to stay there. So let's take this verse apart a little bit, okay? He says, but if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, and we already established back in verse 9, right?

This is true for you as a Christian, okay? you do have the Holy Spirit indwelling you, and it's plural there. Every believer has the Holy Spirit indwelling them. Then, as the result of that, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. And this is clearly a reference to God the Father, he who raised Christ through his Spirit. And look at what he will do. This is the good news. This is good news for believers who are stuck in these sin-sick bodies.

I was talking to JD about that this week, because we're talking about the website a little bit. And how are we going to, you know, what information are we going to present on there about the gospel? But we also want to present information about the Christian life. And we currently have some stuff on there, but we're talking about how do we present this in a clear kind of way. And we talked about, well, what if we have a tab on there that says the good news, and then more good news, because that's really what we have as believers, right?

We know what the gospel means. Gospel means good news, right? And there's good news for the whole world, that Jesus Christ died for your sins so that you, through faith in his work on the cross, could have eternal life. That's good news. But there's more good news, and that's exactly what we've been dealing with for the last several months in chapters six through eight, that not only did Christ die for your sins, but you died with Christ, and that's good news, because that's the thing that separates you from everything of the old man, the sin nature and all that came with it, and frees you to this new life in Christ Jesus, and that's what he says, that's the good news. He will also give life to your mortal bodies. We can have his righteous life lived out in us right now, even in these mortal bodies, these perishing earthly bodies, these tents, right? This tent that's decaying and wearing out.

And so, we see that, and you might be thinking, wait a minute. Couldn't Paul simply be referring to the day in the future that we receive our resurrection bodies? You know, it could sound like that, and in fact, that's a common interpretation. I checked a few commentaries, and they all said, yeah, this is referring to the resurrection.

But how does that fit the context? How does that knowledge, and that's true, one day we're going to leave these earthly bodies and we're going to have a brand new body and it will no longer have sin infesting it. But how does that knowledge help us in our day-to-day walk to know that, well, someday it'll all be over? You know, that's great, but what about right now, right? What Paul was going through in Romans 7, okay? When he was going through that, I don't think he'd forgotten about the resurrection. I don't think that was his problem. He knew that the resurrection would ultimately deliver him, right?

But the question is, what about between now and then? So don't let the future tense there, we were kind of dealing with this in Sunday school, will give you life. necessarily lead to the fact that, well, this has to be talking about some distant day in the future.

Future tense can be something in the near future, continuous, in the next moment, in the next, and on and on. So we'll give life to your mortal bodies. We could take that to refer to the moment in the future when these bodies are replaced, but we could also take that to mean, and I think this is more fitting with the context, that as we depend on him to do the living, he will give life to our mortal bodies.

So that each moment, he is able and willing to produce his life through our earthly bodies. each moment until the day that we see him face to face. And even then, it doesn't end, does it? Because he is our life forever. And I think that's Paul's point here.

You know, we came out of Romans 7 struggling and crying out, who will deliver me from the body of this death? And as believers, we're seeking deliverance from the power of this in nature in our daily walk. And then the answer came back in 8.2, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit has everything to do with our walk. He has set us free. Our bodies don't have to be puppets for the sin nature anymore, okay?

And then in verse 9 and 10, Paul's saying that as believers, you do have the indwelling Holy Spirit. That's a fact. And so, verse 9, even though you are still dwelling in this fallen body with its sin nature and with all of its ungodly desires, verse 10, God's indwelling Spirit has given life to your spirit. And not only that, That's how I take this going into verse 11.

Not only that, he will also give life, his life, to these fallen mortal bodies. In other words, he'll use your body as a vessel for his life. And that's the deliverance that Paul was longing for. It's the deliverance that every growing believer really longs for. And this shouldn't surprise us. It's really what the New Testament teaches over and over. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20 says, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?

Same theme. You're in dwell. Whom you have from God and that you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. And just before this, actually in verse 15, Paul said, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? So notice that. The key that I want to point out there is that glorify God in your body, not your someday resurrection body, but glorify God in this body, this one that's corrupt and fallen and infested with sin, right?

That God is actually able to use this thing to glorify himself. Okay, so our bodies, these present bodies are the physical vehicles through which God intends to put his life on display. And he can do that, he really can. Second Corinthians 4, 11 says, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in, what? Our mortal flesh. This is not just someday in the future, this is right now. That the life of Jesus would be manifested or made visible, made known through our mortal flesh.

And, you know, where Paul's gonna go here is he takes kind of a three-chapter interlude to deal with the nation of Israel. You know, and we're not doing that this time because we've already done all the way through Romans. We're gonna be ending here right at the end of chapter 8. But if we did this last time through, when you get to chapter 12, verse 1, Paul is picking up there, kind of on the basis of everything that he's taught about the Christian life, 12.1, therefore, therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies A living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. You can't present the resurrection body, you don't have it, but you can present this body.

Now, on the basis of everything that he's explained to us in the chapters that we're in now. So, what do we want to remember as we go from here? First of all, you are indwelt by God himself. And don't go looking for some proof of that outside of the Word of God. The Word says that everyone who has put their faith in Jesus is sealed with the Holy Spirit. No one's going to break that. You are not going to break that seal.

But the more important thing to remember is what that means for you as a Christian. We need to know that, we need to be assured of that, but we need to, more importantly, know what does that mean? It is a very, very practical application. I love, I really love how concrete God is.

Sometimes we can tend to think of the spiritual life as if it's totally out there and disconnected from our day-to-day reality, but God's not like that. Okay? He created us. He created all of everything, this whole world. He created us for a physical existence in a physical world.

And even though our current bodies are decaying and falling, God intends to use them to accomplish his work in this world. And what is that work? Don't just start thinking philanthropy or something. What is God's work? What does he intend to do through you in this world? was to glorify Jesus, to glorify His Son. That's God the Father's purpose. And how does He do that?

By putting the life of Christ on display through you and I. And that is a moment-by-moment thing. Every interaction, every moment of our day is it to be, and it is, an opportunity for the Lord Jesus Christ to be glorified, right, as he lives through us. We have the privilege of being the vehicles through which Christ's life is lived out in this world. And I don't know about you, but I wanna be a part of that.

And remember that our human body, we're using just the term that Paul uses here, our mortal flesh, our body. Okay, remember that the human body refers to all of your human faculties. So this is your hands, right, what you do. This is your feet, where you go. This is your eyes, what you look at. This is your ears, what you listen to. This is your tongue, what you say.

This is your mind as well, what you think about. and we could go on and on, but God intends to use all of that to glorify his son. These things are not to be used for our own goals and aims and purposes, right? This whole body, all of you, all of your faculties are to be used for the purpose of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ.

But that doesn't just happen, right? Because if it did, you know, we wouldn't have the Roman 7 experience. We wouldn't have that struggle, right? And Paul wouldn't have had to write all this to us. We'd just have this, you know, we'd put our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior and the rest would just be all, you know, smooth sailing. God is ready and able to use all of your faculties to glorify his son, but he doesn't just commandeer the ship. He owns it.

He legally possesses you. That's what Paul's saying here. You belong to him. You are his. But what Paul is teaching us here goes back to the basic things that were laid out in chapter six, where it says, therefore, on the basis of the fact that you've been co-crucified and raised, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

So we have this presenting or yielding our bodies to Him. Not so that they become his, but because they are his. Everything that we are belongs to him. And we have this responsibility to yield ourselves to God for his use. And that yielding depends on actually knowing what he's accomplished. You can't yield yourself to him for his use if you don't know that you've been crucified with Christ. You can't yield yourself to him for his use if you don't know that you've been raised with him.

Just like the War of Independence, right? You didn't fight the war. Okay? But you participate in all that is accomplished. And because you know that, because you know that truth, that judicial reality, you don't submit yourself to the King of England, do you? That would be ridiculous. Because you know. You know about your freedom. You know it is a fact.

And in the same way, we are identified with Christ in His death to sin and His resurrection life. We don't have to yield ourselves to sin anymore. We're free. We're free to yield ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead. And as we do that, right, which is faith in what he's accomplished, right, just like you have faith in what your founding fathers did 250 years ago, we have faith in what our founding Lord did 2,000 years ago. And based on that fact, we know, we know that we're free, and we're free to yield ourselves to Him for His use so that the life of His Son would be produced in us every day, every moment, all so that He would be glorified, which is something awesome to be a part of. Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for the facts that we are free to rest in.

Lord, it's, sometimes these things are just so, mind-blowing. It really is. To know that you've done this work, you carried this out, you finished it, you accomplished it at the cross. That everyone who put their faith through all of history here, in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, would become a participant in His death and His resurrection, so that we're separated from everything of the old creation, all of the sin and death that we were a part of, and we're now free to be His body, that our that our existence would be as the body of Christ, so that through us, he would produce his righteous life.

We thank you for that, Father. And we pray that we would learn to trust that reality moment by moment. day by day, and that as we forget these things, and we do all the time, that you would remind us, that you'd bring us back to these facts that are revealed in your word. They may not feel real to us all the time, but that doesn't change the reality. We thank you for telling us about it in your word, and thank you that you do Live your life in us moment by moment as we trust you for it, reckoning on all that you've accomplished. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.