[0:00] Romans chapter 8 verse 1 to 17 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
[0:26] For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.
[0:38] And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
[0:49] Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
[1:03] The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
[1:15] Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit. If the Spirit of God lives in you, and if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.
[1:33] But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.
[1:51] Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the sinful nature to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die.
[2:02] But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, and by him we cry, Abba, Father.
[2:22] The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings, in order that we may also share in his glory.
[2:45] Thanks very much, Joe. Sorry, there's notes. If anybody would like to take notes, there's pens and a sheet there, just put up your hands, and they will be passed to you.
[3:01] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So we're looking at supernatural people, how the gospel works in us.
[3:51] Well, there's a real fascination with the supernatural. For years, people have explored, and they've tried to understand the strange happenings that science and natural laws of physics can't explain.
[4:06] Everything from books to documentaries have tried to portray what they understand to be the supernatural. So what is the supernatural? Well, for many, it's something dark and sinister and associated more with the occult, such as the cult series on TV called Supernatural, which is all about two brothers fighting demons and the devil himself.
[4:33] Now, why we don't deny the reality of demons and the devil, for our purposes this morning, the supernatural is this, and I've got it up on the overhead, the screen.
[4:48] A supernatural act is a God intervention which is not explicable by natural or scientific laws. And that simply means that everyone who is a Christian is a supernatural person.
[5:09] Go back to chapter 7, verse 6. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.
[5:34] Chapter 8, verse 9. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit.
[5:47] You see, if we are Christians, if we're followers of the Lord Jesus, God has intervened into our lives by His Holy Spirit, enabling us to live a new kind of life that we naturally can't do ourselves.
[6:02] It is nothing less than a miracle. And having spent chapters 6 and 7 explaining our ongoing battle with sin and our failure to keep all the laws and all the rules to make us better people, chapter 8 is this intervention to introduce us to the supernatural life that enables us to live God's way.
[6:29] Now, this life, this supernatural life, is only possible by the Holy Spirit. Now, before we get into this chapter in more detail, we must understand who and what the Holy Spirit does because there's a lot of talk about the Holy Spirit and there's a lot of confusion.
[6:49] And while Romans 8 doesn't give us all the answers, it does give us some very important foundations. So, three things about the Spirit before we get stuck into the passage.
[7:00] First, the Spirit is not a thing or an it. The Holy Spirit is a person, the person of Christ. Look at verse 9.
[7:11] You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.
[7:21] And if anyone doesn't have the Spirit of Christ, he doesn't belong to Christ. So, the Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ.
[7:33] He is not some unidentified mystery or force. He is the person of Christ in Spirit. Second, the Spirit is not a roaming power that we have to somehow try and capture in a jar and bring it home with us.
[7:53] The Holy Spirit is present. Look at verse 10. If Christ is in you, and verse 11.
[8:08] And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, the Spirit is in you. In fact, it's stronger than that.
[8:20] He lives in you. And when we believe Christ, when we trust Christ, he takes up residence in our life. Our life becomes home to the Holy Spirit.
[8:31] So, he is personal. He is present. And then third, the Spirit is not just an emotional feeling to help us along every day. The Holy Spirit is a power.
[8:42] Verse 11. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.
[8:58] So, the Spirit which raised Christ from the dead is in you. Christ who was dead and who came to life again did so by the Holy Spirit.
[9:11] And that Spirit is within us giving us new and eternal life. So, if we are believers, we are supernatural people.
[9:24] The Spirit of Christ living in us giving us life. Remember the big idea of Romans, the whole big picture of what it's all about.
[9:39] The purpose of Romans is to unite his people together to be partners in God's global mission. Now, none of us are going to get anywhere near that without the Holy Spirit at work.
[9:56] And that's what the Spirit does. He is God's giving life, his power to his people to enable us to live the kind of life that he has called us to so that we can be united to be partners in God's global mission.
[10:12] Well, with that background, let's get a bit further into the text and see what this supernatural life looks like in reality.
[10:24] The first thing is is that we are freed by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit applies the finished and completed work of Christ to our lives.
[10:37] Let's read from verse 1. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
[10:55] Condemnation is the opposite to justification. If you're under condemnation it means to be under the sentence or judgment of God because of our disobedience.
[11:07] And the natural way that we try to deal with that is to up our performance, to become better people, to add more rules and laws to our life and to try and change ourselves. But as we've seen over the weeks, we haven't got the power to change us.
[11:23] It doesn't matter how many rules you put in place, it just means we've got more rules to break. It doesn't change us. Verse 3. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by our sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering and so he condemned sin in sinful man.
[11:51] It's telling us that Christ came and exchanged places with us. He takes on all of our disobedience disobedience and he suffers our judgment. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who trust in Christ.
[12:07] Well, you're asking, where does the Spirit fit into all of this? Well, look at verse 2. It tells us, through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life sets us free from the law of sin and death.
[12:21] The Spirit, His work is to take the finished and completed work of Christ and to apply it to our lives. He takes the work of Christ on the cross and He makes it a reality in our lives.
[12:34] He opens up our minds so that we can see how Christ has transformed us. But not only that, it's not just an intellectual fact, it is something that is experienced in our life each and every day.
[12:50] It means that every time I fail and fall, which I do, and you do as well, all of our disobedience has been, past tense, been dealt with by Christ.
[13:04] And the Spirit continually applies the work of Christ to our lives so that we are forever free from His condemnation. We will never, ever be condemned because the Spirit continually and has done, applied the work of Christ to our life.
[13:22] But it doesn't stop there. We're free from condemnation for a purpose. Look at verse 4. We're free to obey. All this was done in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.
[13:44] So not only does Christ take my disobedience and deal with it, but He actually gives me His obedience into our lives. So rather than being treated as a condemned sinner, I am now treated as a treasured child.
[14:01] And this new obedience that Christ has given to us isn't just a status or a position. It is that, but it's more than that. It's a daily reality.
[14:12] Look what it says at the end of verse 4. We do not live according to the sinful nature. We don't obey that, but we live according to the Spirit. So it's the Spirit again at work in our lives, freeing us from a life of disobedience and enabling and equipping us to live a life of obedience.
[14:34] And of course, all of this shouldn't have been a surprise to the people who were reading it for the first time because it was all what God had promised to do. Flick back to Ezekiel, chapter 36.
[14:48] If you've got a page number, someone can shout it out. Ezekiel, chapter 36. It's on page 867.
[14:59] Ezekiel 36. On page 867. And here is one of God's wonderful promises.
[15:11] In verse 26 of Ezekiel 36, he says, I will give you a new heart.
[15:25] I will put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And here's the big point.
[15:35] I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and to be careful to keep my laws. He puts His spirit in our life to move us to follow His laws.
[15:55] The Holy Spirit takes the obedience of Christ and He internalizes it into our lives. He changes us on the inside out.
[16:05] So rather than reject God's law, we love God's law. Now none of this is natural. We are not able to free ourselves from condemnation.
[16:18] We are not able to obey however we want. Without the supernatural work of Christ and without the supernatural work of His Spirit who applies this to our lives, we would never be able to live as He calls us to.
[16:34] So the Spirit frees us by applying the work of Christ to our life. Well that's the first step in the supernatural work.
[16:45] The second is that we're told we are controlled by the Spirit. The Holy Spirit applies the good and perfect law of Christ to our lives.
[16:59] Look at verse 5. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires.
[17:10] But those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. So it's essentially telling us there are two ways to live or there are two kinds of people in this world.
[17:24] Lots of different nationalities, lots of different cultures, but essentially two people. There are unbelievers who live according to their sinful nature and there are those who are believers who live according to the Spirit.
[17:41] They're both described and outlined further. Look at verse 7. There are those who fight God's law. Verse 7.
[17:53] The sinful mind is hostile to God. It doesn't submit to God's law and nor can it do so. Our natural response or attitude to God's law is one of hostility.
[18:09] We don't like God telling us what to do and how we should live in this world. In fact, if we were to live by any kind of rules, we prefer to make up our own rules.
[18:22] Basically, that we have no rules at all and we can live however we want. our sinful nature reacts against God's law. We fight it rather than submit to it.
[18:35] Try and think of it this way. Take two magnets. I'm sure you've always played with magnets. If you have two magnets facing each other and the two poles are facing each other, they're going to react.
[18:51] the natural laws of physics means that one pushes against the other. If you hold one magnet up and put the other one against it, it will push off against it. Well, think of Christ, who is the dominant law.
[19:06] And as soon as we come close to Christ, it's like we push against it. Verse 8, those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
[19:19] It doesn't mean to say that we can't do anything good. It simply means that we have no natural desire to please God. Our life is lived primarily to please self.
[19:31] We just naturally push away from God. So naturally, without the Spirit, we have no love for God's law.
[19:42] But when the Spirit comes into our life, all of that changes. We turn from people who fight the law into people who love the law. Because of the Spirit, Christians have a supernatural power at work so that we do love the law.
[19:59] Look at verse 9. You, however, if you're Christians, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit.
[20:11] Again, let's think of those magnets again. If we leave the one magnet here, the big one, the dominant one, and you take the other magnet and then turn it around, immediately there is a different reaction.
[20:27] Rather than a force that pushes against it, there is a force that pulls it together. And that's what happens to us when we stop being the control center of our lives.
[20:38] If we turn around in our lives, repent, and put Christ at the control center of our lives, then our whole life is reorientated towards Christ.
[20:52] Look back at the end of verse five. Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.
[21:05] So you see, once we turn around to Christ, rather than reject his law, rather than fight it and be hostile towards it, we will love his law. We will want to do what God says.
[21:17] There is a desire and a hunger within us that we want to obey. Not to try and earn God's favor, but as an expression of our love towards him.
[21:30] Now think about that, because none of that is natural. We do not love God's law by ourselves. What we need is a supernatural work of Christ and his Spirit applying, working that law out in our lives.
[21:47] Without the Spirit, we would never be able to live the life that God has called us to. So not only are we freed by the Spirit, not only are we controlled by the Spirit, but we are also people who are led by the Spirit.
[22:07] Because what the Spirit does is he applies the right and the beautiful way of Christ to our lives. Look at verse 12. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation.
[22:23] In other words, we have a response to the way in which God works. But it's not to the sinful nature to live according to that. It's telling us that the Spirit leads us in a completely new way.
[22:37] Things that were once unnatural for us now become natural part of our daily living. And here are two things that should and ought to be natural for us in our lives.
[22:53] The first is killing off sin. Look at verse 13. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.
[23:07] You see, before our faith in Christ, before we turned our lives around to him and reorientated ourselves around Christ, when we were at the control center of our lives, we were hostile to God's law.
[23:22] And as a consequence, we loved our sin. We loved doing our own things. We had no intention of fighting sin or killing it. We loved it. But now the Spirit gives us a new way.
[23:36] By the Spirit, we now want to kill off the sin in our lives. Verse 14. Because those who are led by the Spirit are children of God.
[23:50] You see, if we are children of God, we will be people who are led by the Spirit. And being led by the Spirit doesn't mean a particular direction about what kind of job I'm going to take or about which person I'm going to marry, no, being led by the Spirit in verse 14 is connected to the putting to death the misdeeds of our lives in verse 13.
[24:18] He says, put to death the misdeeds of your body, the wrong actions, because that's what being led by the Spirit is. The Spirit enables us and equips us to kill off the sin, to fight it, to put up a battle against it.
[24:35] And on our own, we will naturally want sin. But with the Spirit, we now have a supernatural desire and a determination to say no to sin.
[24:50] Well, you say, okay, I get that, I still have this Spirit within me wanting to say no to sin, but I still do sin. Well, yes, that's true, it's an ongoing battle, and that's the tense in these verses here.
[25:05] It is something that is continuously done until we get to heaven. But there's something else that reminds us of this Spirit at work, this supernatural work in our lives.
[25:16] The Spirit not only helps us to kill off sin, but in our battle with sin, he leads us back to our Father. Look at verse 15. He says, For you didn't receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear.
[25:32] but you receive the spirit of sonship, or of adoption. You see, once we did live in fear of God, we were under his condemnation.
[25:46] But now, because of Christ, we've been set free from his judgment forever. That means, even with my sin, I can run to God, and I can call out to him as Father, without fear, because he has already paid the penalty of sin.
[26:07] And here's the big point in this. When we sin, our natural tendency is to hide from God, to run away, and to believe that we are still under condemnation.
[26:21] Isn't that how we are? Whenever we sin, we want to run and not tell God and pretend it didn't happen. But the Spirit moves us in the midst of our struggles to still cry out Father, because he is our Father.
[26:38] Verse 16, the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children, despite all of our sin and all of our failure and all of our mess.
[26:51] The Spirit makes us aware that we belong to him, and we can keep running back to him as our Father, and there is nothing to fear. Again, this is not natural.
[27:05] Naturally, we run to sin, and we run away from God. But by the supernatural work of Christ and his Spirit being applied into our lives, we now have a completely new way.
[27:19] We run away from sin, and we run towards our Father. God. So we are people who are freed by the Spirit, controlled by the Spirit, and we're led by the Spirit.
[27:34] We are supernatural people. And the big question is this, how can this be my experience each and every day? How can I live as a supernatural person?
[27:48] Well, as we've seen as we've gone through this passage, the work of Christ and the Spirit of, sorry, the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit are not separate from each other, but they are dependent on each other.
[28:04] The Spirit of Christ applies the work of Christ to make us more like Christ. Christ. So that means if we are to experience the supernatural in our lives, there are two things that I think we can do in response to this.
[28:23] First, we've got to remind ourselves that Christ, what Christ has done for us. We must remember the gospel, remember the work of Christ. There's no longer any condemnation.
[28:36] There is no longer any fear for those who are in Christ. We must teach ourselves and remind ourselves every day of the gospel of our new position and our new status.
[28:49] And second, we must pray that God by His Spirit will apply that work to our lives, enabling us to live as someone who is not condemned, equipping us to live as someone who is without fear.
[29:06] And so we must ask God continually for the power of His Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives, to live supernaturally, to live somebody who doesn't feel the weight of condemnation, but somebody who's been set free to serve God and to live for Him.
[29:26] Somebody who's free to fight sin and be able to run to our Father without any fear at all. We are supernatural people because the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, is living within us.
[29:46] We have a resource within us to live the kind of life that God has called us to. We can't do it by our own. It's impossible. We are powerless.
[29:56] But with the Spirit of Christ, we are given His power. The Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, that power that raised Him from the grave, is the same power at work in us to live His life.
[30:16] Let's pray together. Father, our Father God, we recognize before You again our complete inadequacy, our hopelessness, our powerlessness to be able to change our lives in any way at all.
[30:50] Thank You that You have given us the gift of Your Holy Spirit to be able to live supernatural lives, to be able to fight the battle of sin so that we can become more like Christ.
[31:11] Thank You that it is You working in us. It's not about what we can do, but what about Christ has done for us.
[31:22] We pray that You would fill us afresh with Your Spirit. That we would respond to His promptings and to His work.
[31:34] That we would be people who go into this week enabled and equipped, ready to live for You in this world, to live supernatural lives, to be able to do all that You have called us to.
[31:52] So we praise You and we thank You for all that You have done for us and all that You have given to us. In Jesus' name, Amen. Amen.
[32:02] Amen. Amen. Amen. God bless. Amen. Amen.
[32:13] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
[32:24] Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.