The Indwelling Spirit

What's the difference between those who practice external religion with ceremonies and rituals versus those who have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

That's the question before us today on Truth for Life weekend for the answer. Alistair Begg takes us to Paul's letter to the Romans. This is part of a series called life in the spirit we continue our studies in Romans chapter 8 and there is quite a shift, insofar as Paul now moves from addressing his readers in the third Carson so in verse eight, those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God to addressing his readers in the second person you however are different and he is making this move. He's addressing those who read directly and emphatically and the distinction is not simply grammatical but it is theological. It is absolutely foundational and he is moving from the statement that he is made in verse eight, those controlled by the flasher by the sinful nature cannot please God and in verse seven he is pointed out that the underlying feature here is that the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. This does not mean that every attempt by people to do nice and good things is wrong or incapacitated, but it means that in the very core of humanity. There is an anti-God bias and that anti-God bias is as a result of sin and in fact says at the level of our understanding and the level of our intellect when we think in terms of the impact of sin. If we even are prepared to have a category for it, and some others may want to debate that I we tend to think that in terms of actions. What we're doing or what were failing to do but it is a far more endemic situation than that and what the Bible actually says is that no area of our lives is left intact by sin it affects our emotions, our affections, our minds and our wills, and that by our very nature because this is true, our human thought. Our processes are and are presuppositions.

Our assumptions and our development of human logic is all ultimately hostile to God and so are you may find yourself saying to yourself I wonder why I am the way, I am. I wonder why I haven't just I got up yesterday morning I got the newspaper I read it. Why didn't I just go and stick all the Bible is out of my study I just throw them in the bin of phone up somebody from the elder board and Sam done. I finished apparently there is no God. I don't know what I'm doing and there's no reason for me to come back to parks and it's all about the Bible. After all, there is no there is no God in the universe would see well why didn't I do that because I don't believe that. Why don't I believe that why don't you believe that the answer is miraculous.

The reason you don't believe it.

If you don't believe it is because of what Paul goes on to say in verse nine. Because you are a believer in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and you didn't come to that. As a result of intellectual deduction. You and I came to that by grace through faith and in Christ we understand why Augustine said that Christianity is faith seeking understanding the Christian and the believer is not somebody who is the answer to every question, but is somebody who, at the very base level of our human existence has had a completely mind altering encounter with the living God, and it is shifted. It is changed.

It is recalibrated the way in which we view absolutely everything and it is to these individuals that Paul writes in verse nine you, however, he says you are not like those that I've just described for in verses seven and eight you are not like those who are in the flesh who cannot please God, because you are in the spirit and he uses language here that is interwoven in the spirit, the spirit in you the spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, don't be unsettled by the variations in his language don't allow it to become the basis for debate or the origin of confusion simply recognize that what he's pointing out there is the interplay of the work of the Father and the son and the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. The father and the son and the Holy Spirit are inseparable in that activity in the life of a Christian they are eternally distinct in terms of their mode of being that they are united in the work of redemption and what he is now describing is the reality of the Spirit's presence in the life of a believer you however verse nine ESV are not in the flash but in the spirit what God the father has planned from all of eternity.

God the son has accomplished in the cross in time and what God the son is accomplished in the cross in time God the Spirit has applied to the lives of those who believe that is why we are Trinitarian God the father, God the son God the Holy Spirit, they are not separate in their actions insofar as the eternal counsel and purpose of God is achieved in and through each member of the Trinity note, it is important for us to grasp this if were not to go wrong. Despite all that I've said about the mind genuine Christianity is not simply a new set of beliefs, nor is genuine Christianity, a new pattern of behavior. Although a genuine Christian has a new set of beliefs and engages in a new pattern of behavior, but we recognize that it would be possible for us simply to view Christianity in terms of virtually a mathematical or theological paradigm that we adopt as cerebral without it having any impact at all. Viscerally, in a very core of our being in the same way. It is possible for people to adopt a form of Christianity, a form of godliness and external outward way of life that is absent any internal power or conviction and Paul actually speaks of those elsewhere who are like that no genuine Christianity. If I am a true believer in a phrase I belong to Christ see that at the end of verse verse nine belonging to Christ is stated negatively. There will turn it on its head. God looks upon is in the says center.

You know belong to me. You know belong to me there all kinds of matter verse in the Bible of a relationship between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ the believer as part of the body of Christ with Christ as the husband in the bridegroom and the church as the bride and in the same way as when you were married. You arrived at the front of the church as a single person and you went away belonging to someone else and forever your life has been altered.

You no longer belong to yourself. You belong to someone else. That is the life of the Christian the Christian now has been put in an entirely different relationship to God and the Spirit of God has come to live with in this person's life. Paul puts it in two Corinthians, very clearly says, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you. You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body with your body and is going to want to come back to this again and to remind his readers of the responsibilities that flow from this reality. I did the best of our hymnody reinforces these truths a couple of the songs this morning have helped us in this area of reminding ourselves and is good on the first day of the week at the calm and to have our minds constrained by these truths about what it means to belong to Christ because you finish a week where just about everything else has buffeted your thinking all of the angles that have come to you from outside of called in question your convictions of challenge you, and so on. And if you neglect the means of grace of the gathering of God's people in the study of his word of the celebration of communion of the reading of your Bible of the exercise of prayer of sharing your faith that you will find it very quickly. Much of the light that is in you will be snuffed out. It will be down to a peak of light. But if you receive the means of grace that are provided by dint of this and the other elements that are on offer to you at Parkside then your light will shine brightly so this is the distinguishing feature if he was able was I with you. Why are you the way you are well. I belong to Christ. What not I go to Parkside not. I read my Bible new course you do.

But you belong to Christ as wiry as weird as you are just tell people the spirit of God is come to live in me is truly amazing. There's no one more surprised than I you are the sinner's friend. So I your friendship claim.

A sinner saved by grace when your sweet message came mine mine mine. I know thou art mine Savior dear Savior I know thou art mine. This is the life of the believer. If this is not your life, the chances are you're not a Christian. Chances are you're trying to stick things on from the outside, the chances are you're trying to amend your way of thinking by thinking religious thoughts are God's thoughts rather than bad thought you could do that. Get a self-help book and try it or you're trying simply to change our use of a down this place. Now I go to this place.

You can do that as well by yourself. You don't need grace to do that, but you cannot make yourself a child of God by yourself, you cannot be indwelt by the Spirit of God.

You cannot belonging to God except that he comes and invades you changes and Paul says that you he says you however are not like those whose mind is hostile to God who can submit to God's law who are controlled by the flesh and cannot please God, no, you are radically different. In other words, he's describing the reality of the presence of God within the life of the child of God I think is an old book, the life of God in the soul of man. The life of God in the soul of man and what Paul says here in Romans eight is of course what he just says elsewhere in Ephesians 5, he reminds his readers, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light, you know you're no longer playing on the team used to play actual policy.

That's how radical it is being a Christian. That's what the Bible talks about when he speaks in terms of Christianity.

It's speaking about that kind of radical distinction that is brought about by God himself when he says you are in the spirit if the spirit of God lives in you. You have a new identity. You have a new mentality you Avenue destiny, and he puts it negatively in the second half of the verse.

Anyone who does not have the spirit of Christ does not belong to him. This is not a distinction between two different kinds of believers. Some of talk.

This is a distinction between those who are regenerate made alive by the Spirit of God and those who are unregenerate not made alive by the Spirit of God. Those who are dead in their trespasses and sins on regenerate and those who are regenerated by the work of God in their life changing their desires, changing their direction changing their destiny changing their thinking and changing their very identity. I wondered as I describe you this morning. The believer birthright as provided in the reality of the Spirit's presence.

Now having done that, he then, in verses 10 and 11 gives to us some indication of the results of the Spirit's presence in the life. If Christianity involves the reality of the Spirit's presence.

What then will the work of the Spirit within the life of a real Christian look like in verses 10 and 11 address that. If Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but 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 to your mortal bodies.

In other words, this body that is ours, which is the dwelling place of our soul of the real you and me matters and our mortal bodies, our physical bodies are increasingly dilapidated.

That's what he saying in verse 10, your body is dead because of sin.

Remember in the garden of Eden. God says to Adam and Eve, you can enjoy the whole place I've made it for you but I don't want you to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good or evil, because if you eat that then in the day that you eat that you will surely die. While it indicted they were still hanging around their children.

What was God speaking about is speaking about the fact of spiritual death and the reality of physical death. They did not die instantaneously, but they died, and the fact of humanity is partly the fight of our mortality and what Paul is pointing out here is what he's going to reference when he writes to the Corinthians that outwardly. As believers we are wasting away were no different from unbelievers and we we. If you doubt the dilapidation of your body, get a mirror or get a wife or get just get somebody to tell you, tell you the truth. Okay and is not like I'm a Christian I'm not dilapidated. Yes you are dilapidated Christian your friend is a dilapidated non-Christian, but you share in the mortality of our physical frame as a person doesn't stand up and say no no no, we don't believe that the Christian says we understand not only do we understand that to be a reality, but we know why it is a reality because sin is entered in the world. As a result of one man in suit through sin has come day and our bodies are dead because of sin, but our spirits are alive because of righteousness. What is that mean it means that the redemption that God has accomplished for us by Christ and in Christ is applied by the spirit of Christ to us and as a result, our view of mortality are not to be one of morbidity but are not to be one of reality. I reminder and with this we need to begin to wrap it up in a reminder that as Christians we don't believe simply in the immortality of the soul, but we believe in the resurrection of the body. The same bodies which we possess will be made alive at the resurrection. There's going to be a qualitative difference.

God's promises that were going to be better than we were when we were at our best. Whatever your best was and will be better than his arrow.

How do you know because God has promised.

Doesn't seem highly unlikely. While I would guess when I look at things as they crumble before me apart from God. I spoke with someone to that this week and the lady told me that she had lost two children little boy and a little girl to Zellweger syndrome boy lifts hundred and 80 days little girl lived 199 days there was no possibility of them living beyond a year. No one ever has with the syndrome.

The Christian lady Christian husband all the pain and the devastation that is wrapped up in that no one is going to deny the fact of mortality are the so what are we to do embrace the anti-God bias of atheism and nihilism or bow down before God, who in his grace and mercy has made himself known in the wonders of the universe in the truths of his work in the person of his son and asked him to do for us what we can do for ourselves.

One day, one day everything that life has stolen from us. Everything that life is stolen from us. God will restore there's there's not one bit of you. There's going to end up in the trash bin of the universe, except your sin, which she don't want in any case, this describe you mean would you go out from here and say some existing swords about. I noticed you guys are even out the parking lot apart. Say what you doing over there why do over there so I belong to Christ. They say what They say. How does that happen is involuntary.

What I never thought it could have. There's a miracle believe in miracles.

Are you and if not why not. That's a poignant question from Alastair big Truth for Life weekend will, as we been thinking about what it means to be dead to sin and alive to Christ.

Today is the first opportunity I have to tell you about a great book on a similar subject. It's a book titled impossible commands for me think about this God has called us to be holy as he is holy, he calls us to love him with our whole heart or soul or mind her strength. He calls us to take up our cross to lay down our lives to follow him up the these commands are simply difficult space that there impossible book impossible commands takes a unique look at this dilemma. It gives us great insight to how we should respond. We can live in obedience to God and the book impossible commands gives us a framework for how we do it.

This book outlines four foundational steps. The first of which is to simply acknowledge our weakness. Would love to send you a copy of the book impossible commands you can learn how to requested when you go to our website Truth for Life.org if you have ever found yourself in a pattern of falling short.

Re-committing your life to God and then falling short again.

You can find great comfort and a whole new pattern for victory in this book. Again, go to truthfully.org look for the book, impossible commands while you're on our website. You can also browse through the archive of past teaching from Alastair or you can catch up on previous messages in this current study. All of it is completely free Truth for Life.org or you can download the newly updated truthful. I mobile app that when you have more convenient access. Now here's Alastair to close with prayer father, thank you for the Bible.

Thank you for the death of your love for us that although we by our very nature, have minds that are turned away from you turned in upon ourselves we think about ourselves in ways that are not true that we going to live forever, that we have the capacity to handle everything and anything that are minds can solve the puzzles and the problems forgive us for that grant that we might come as children to you acknowledging how willing you are to bless our life's and to keep us in your will, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God our father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be the abiding portion of all who believe. Today and forever more about Lapine hoping you'll join us next weekend to continue our study of the book of Romans will be learning what it means to have the spirit of friendship and how that changes our identity. This program, the Bible teaching of Alastair big is furnished by truth for like learning is prolific