Encouraging Realities for Those Who Have the Spirit

Good morning everyone. It's good to be back with you after being away. Over the last 3 Sundays, I'm thankful to Carlos Cuellar and Carlos Slimtiaco for, filling in while, while we were away. had a great time as a family going to various places around Southern California, just being together as a family, and then for about 4 days, my wife and I, went to New York and did a little bit of ministry, there.

but also, received much refreshment and blessing from our time in the Adirondack Mountains with a congregation and a ministry there. They were having a dedication for a ministry center, 250 acres in the Adirondack Mountains, and they had completed all the renovations for that as an outreach to hurting people. and, they had asked me to do the, to speak at the dedication ceremony for, this property. So we were able to minister but also be blessed and enriched by our time there.

but it's good to be back and it's also very good to be back, in Romans chapter 8. So let me have you turn to Romans chapter 8. this morning, Romans 8, we're studying Romans 567 and 8, journey to the heart of the gospel. And as we continue in our study of this book, we come to, or this section of Romans, we come to Romans 8 verse 9.

And my goal is to look at verses 9 through 11. And if you want to give a title to the message, it would be encouraging realities for those who have the Spirit, encouraging realities for those who have the Spirit. How many of you have the Spirit? OK, we're going to see this morning if you've believed in Christ, you've repented of your sin, then you do have the Spirit, and there's some encouraging realities that you're going to be able to relish, this morning.

But it's been a while since we've been in Romans because I've been away. so let's back up just a little bit and bring ourselves up to speed. And let me start with a rather odd, place to start. About several months ago, I was at the public library in Moreno Valley and I checked out a book called The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking.

And at the beginning of either chapter 3 or 4 of that book, he made reference to an incident that had occurred several years prior. He didn't give a lot of details, but when I read it, I was like, no way, this absolutely could not have happened. So I researched it. I went online and looked at reputable news agencies, and I actually was able to track down what he was making reference to, and it turns out it indeed actually happened.

And what it is that he made reference to is that in July of 2004, in the city of Monza, Italy, The city council of that city passed an ordinance prohibiting the inhabitants of that city from putting goldfish into goldfish bowls like round circular aquariums, bowl shaped aquariums. You can, you can put goldfish in a square aquarium in a rectangular aquarium, but you could no longer put goldfish in a bowl, a round shaped aquarium. And they gave reasons for this ordinance and why it should be passed.

One of the sponsors of this particular bill gave this reason for why this ordinance should be passed.

He said a fish kept in a bowl has a distorted view of reality and suffers because of this. So apparently they did some research and found out that when a goldfish is looking out at you as you're looking in, objects, because of the distortion appear larger, closer, and more frightening than they actually are, which explains why goldfish always look freaked out to me. But anyway, I, as I read that, I, there were two thoughts that came to my mind, or at least 2 that I'm willing to share with you guys this morning.

Number 1, the goldfish of Monza, Italy are lucky to have a city council this concerned about their perception of reality.

The second thought I had was that I actually found myself agreeing with what this council member is saying in the quote I just read to you. That whether it is a goldfish or an animal or a human being or for our purposes this morning, a born again child of God, when we have a distorted view of reality. We suffer. As a result of that distorted view.

And what I want to do with that this morning is I want us to just contemplate the fact and remind ourselves of the fact that we have an amazing reality in Christ, do we not?, when we came to faith in Christ, we were under God's wrath and under his judgment bound for eternal judgment and the lake of fire. And justly so, but we brought our sinful selves to Christ. We repented of our sins, we repented of our righteousness. And we put our trust in Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior.

And in that instant, God saved us. He forgave us of all of our sins, past, present, and future. He declared us righteous in his sight and promised that he will forever think of. Us and relate to us in that way.

We were accepted in the beloved and that could never be changed. We were delivered not only from sin's guilt, but also from the power of sin. And also we're bound for eternal glory in heaven with an inheritance awaiting us that no one can ever take away from us. And on and on the list can go in Christ, we have an amazing reality.

And yet I don't need to tell you that is it not often true, folks, that we needlessly suffer spiritual injury, and spiritual defeat, not because there's something defective in our reality, but because we have a distorted or an insufficient perception of our reality in Christ. One of the things that I think we all do well to do is to just acknowledge, no matter how long we've known the Lord, we still have a lot of distortions left in our perception of our reality in, in Christ.

There are things we just don't know that are actually true about us that we could rejoice in, but we don't know it because we're, we're not yet, we've not come into a knowledge of those things that are true of us in In the gospel. And then there are things that maybe we know, but we have a fuzzy grasp of those things or distorted understanding of them.

Or maybe there's something we know today, really confidently, and we see it rightly, but tomorrow something's going to happen that distorts our perception of some aspect of our reality in Christ. And we're going to suffer. defeat and perhaps injury as a result of that distortion. Paul in Romans 5:6, 7 and 8, his ambition is to just lay out what our reality is in the gospel and to help us to have a clear, undistorted view of all of these aspects of our reality in Christ.

In Romans 5, he told us we're justified. by faith in Jesus Christ and being justified, that means we're declared righteous by God. And he says in Romans 5:1, we have peace with God at all times. We're under God's gracious favor at all times, all day, every day, good days and bad days, waking and sleeping solely based on the work of Jesus, and it has nothing to do with our performance.

In Romans chapter 6, Paul presents to us for us to look at the fact that we are dead to sin and thus we're free from sin's power. We no longer have to sin. We're not a slave to sin anymore, but we're slaves to God, and we're slaves to righteousness. In Romans 7, Paul begins the chapter by telling us that we at one time were married to the law, married to sin, but God quite literally divorced us from the law, divorced us from sin by having us die with Christ, so that on the other end of that divorce, God could marry us to Jesus.

So that as a product of that union with Christ, we might bear fruit unto God. The second half of Romans 7, Paul is very candid and acknowledging. and encourages us to acknowledge the fact that though these things are true of us, we still fall short of the good we want to do. We sometimes don't do the evil we hate.

Often we find ourselves doing those things. And as believers in the Christian community, it's good. It's OK to acknowledge that and be open about that. And then coming into Romans 8, he begins by telling us there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, not a single condemnation.

God has declared us not guilty of every sin, of every crime we've ever committed, past, present, and future. And working his way through the early chapters of Romans 8, Paul begins unfolding even more glorious gospel realities that are true of us in Christ. And this morning as we come to verse 9, and looking at 9 through 11, Paul wants to put the spotlight on one particular facet of our reality in Christ, and to help us to see that reality clearly. And what that reality is, is the indwelling of the Spirit of God.

the indwelling of the Spirit of God, when we put our trust in Christ, repenting of our sins and of our righteousness, one of the things God does, amongst many others, is he gives us the Holy Spirit, and pours out His Spirit inside of us. And the Holy Spirit of God makes us his dwelling place. He inhabits us from the moment of our conversion onward. This is the spine of verses 9 through 11.

In fact, I'll read it in just a moment, but just look at the screen for a second. And you'll see how this is the theme verse 9. Paul says, The Spirit of God dwells in you. Verse 10, Christ is in you.

Verse 11A, the Spirit of God dwells in you. Verse 11B, His Spirit dwells in you. And so just a quick reading of these verses, you can see that this is something that Paul is really wanting to drive home and emphasize to us. that the Spirit of God dwells in us.

This is an amazing, reality. He says the Spirit dwells in you. That means that God actually has moved into the closest imaginable relationship with us. And we need to cherish that fact.

He doesn't tell us that the Spirit comes upon us. That would be great, or that the Spirit is over us. That would be great. Or that the Spirit comes near to.

us or that the Spirit is close to us, although that would be great, or that the Spirit is with us or around us or beside us every moment of every day. If he would have said that, that would be phenomenal. But he goes beyond all of those things and says that the Spirit actually enters into you, and makes you his habitation. God has moved into the closest imaginable relationship with us by taking up residence inside of us.

I am one of the residences of God. If you want to define where God dwells, as it were, and you open up the phone book to find the address where He dwells, you can find many addresses, and one of them would be me. That's an amazing thing to consider that God says I will live inside. Of Milton, I will make him one of my addresses.

I will inhabit him and all of us who have come to Jesus by faith, the Holy Spirit of God comes into us and makes us His home and lives inside of us day by day. Paul 4 times is asserting this. Reality in verse 9, 10, and 2 times in verse 11. And yet, it may surprise you to know that this is actually not his primary purpose in these verses.

Paul's purpose is not to say, hey, God's spirit dwells in you, and I want to, I want you to know that fact. He actually writes as if he knows that the Roman Christians already know that. But what Paul's purpose in these verses is, is to not just tell us that the Spirit indwells us, but to tell us several other things that we can know are true about us, by virtue of the fact that the Spirit dwells in us. In a sense, what Paul does in these verses is with one hand, He points to the fact of the indwelling spirit inside of us who believed in Jesus.

With the other hand, he points us to a number of realities, encouraging realities that are true about us as a ramification of the fact that the Spirit indwells us. And the way we're going to break this passage down this morning is this we're going to observe five encouraging facts that are true about us because, or as a consequence of the fact that God's spirit dwells in us. He's going to do some gospel thinking, reasoning from the indwelling spirit to some other realities that he wants us to understand.

Let me read the passage to you, verse 9.

However, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the Spirit is alive because of righteousness. 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.

Paul's going to model for us wonderful gospel thinking. He's, he wants us to walk out of this room this morning, not only cherishing the fact that God's Spirit dwells in us, but also cherishing five encouraging realities that are now true of us because of the fact that God's Spirit dwells inside of us. Encouraging fact number 1, that's very clear from the text. If you're a believer in Jesus, you've repented of your sin and righteousness, and believed in Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior, God's Spirit dwells in you.

And the mere fact that God's Spirit dwells in you, means that these things are true of you, the first of which is this, that we are no longer under the governance of the flesh. the Spirit of God is in me. What does that mean, Lord? God would say, I'll tell you one of the things it means.

It means you're no longer in the flesh. You're no longer under the governance or under the control of the flesh. He says in Romans 8:9. However, you are not in the flesh.

If indeed, as is in fact the case, he's saying, the Spirit of God dwells in you who believed in Jesus, the Spirit of God dwells in you, what does that mean? It means you're not in the flesh. And just about every commentator will tell you that the expression in the flesh means to be under the control of the flesh. Paul is saying you're not under the control of the flesh.

You're not under the mastery of the flesh. You're not under the governings or the governance of the flesh. You're not in the flesh any longer, being under its control. In fact, in a way, we use this expression in the flesh in a similar way.

Like if we get carnal and we're like acting out in some sinful way, we'll say, I was in the flesh. And maybe we're apologizing to someone like I'm sorry for what happened yesterday. I was in the flesh. And what do we mean by that?

What we mean by that is that in that given moment I allowed myself to be under the control of the flesh, under the governings of my flesh. I allowed my flesh to take over and dictate my Words and my actions. Paul is saying, if you're a believer in Christ, the Spirit of God dwells in you, and the first thing that that ought to mean for you is that you're not in the flesh anymore. You're not under the governance of the flesh.

Today, you might be acting like you are under the governings of the flesh, but in fact, you are not. The flesh is not your master any longer. Now, we've learned a lot of things about the flesh in recent months as we've been working our way through this part of Romans, you'll recall that our flesh is not our physical bodies, but it is affiliated with and attached to our physicality. But we would be wrong to just say that it is.

Our bodies. Our flesh is that part of our as yet unredeemed humanity that always wants to rebel against God and do the opposite of whatever God wants or believe the opposite of whatever God says. our flesh looks at the commands of the law of God, and rebels against them. I don't want to do that.

Here's what I want to do instead. And we make our own laws if we're governed by the flesh. Our flesh also hears the verdict of God's law, which is you're guilty and says, No, no, I'm not guilty. I'm innocent.

And our flesh rises up and says, no, I don't accept that verdict of guilty. Hey, God, look at me, watch me behave, watch the way I live my life. And you'll see that I'm really not guilty. I'm innocent, or at least I'm innocent enough to get into heaven, and for you to favor me in some way.

The Bible decrees that we are helpless to save ourselves or commend ourselves to God in any way based on our own performance and our flesh rebels against that decree of our helplessness and says, Oh, no, no, I'm not helpless. See, watch me, God, I can obey. I can do what you want me to do and commend myself to you. God's word tells us that we need a savior, and God has provided a savior for us in Jesus.

And God says, you need the Savior. Our flesh rises up and rebels against that and says, Oh, no, no, I'm not helpless, and I don't need a savior. See, watch me live my life and have a good marriage and do this and that and the other and give to charity. I can live a really righteous and good.

Life and don't need a savior at all. All of that is being governed by the flesh. And so you get a guy over here who's rebelling against the commands of God and plunging into abject sin and immorality. That person's being governed by the flesh.

But this righteous person over here, who is rebelling against the guilty verdict upon him, rebelling against the notion of his helplessness and his need for a savior, and he's trying to be good enough to where he doesn't need Jesus, that righteous person from a human perspective is being just as fleshly as this person plunging into sin. And Paul is saying we're no longer under the governance of the flesh. If you've got the spirit inside of you, you don't have to live this way anymore.

People who live according to the flesh, it's an exhausting thing to even think about.

Look at this verse 7. In the verses leading up to our passage this morning, he says the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. It does not subject itself to the law of God. It doesn't subject itself to the law's commandments or to the law's guilty verdict that it levels against us, and it's not even able to do so, quite literally, it doesn't even have the power to do so.

Verse 8, and those who are in the flesh cannot, or quite literally don't have the power to please God. A life being governed by the flesh is a life of hostility against God, rebellion against God's law. It's a life of powerlessness to obey. God in a way that pleases him, powerlessness to actually please God.

And Paul says, the fact that you have the spirit inside of you means you're free. You don't have to live this way anymore. When you feel the risings of sin within, beckoning you to those old sins that you used to capitulate to all the time. You can respond by saying, you're not my governor anymore.

I don't have to do what you're dictating that I do. When you get up some morning and you feel the risings of your flesh in the sense that, your flesh is telling you, hey, what, you've been doing really bad lately, and God doesn't really favor you anymore. He's angry, he's wrathful against you, and you need to work your way back into his good graces. when you feel the risings of the flesh in terms of self effort and trying to commend yourself and earn God's favor, you can respond to your flesh by saying, I don't have to live this way anymore.

I already have the favor of God. I already have been justified. I'm already under God's gracious favor at all times because of what Jesus has done. And I don't have to live this hostile, rebellious life of powerlessness before God any longer.

Paul is inferring all this from the fact that the Spirit of God is in you. Look at yourself in the mirror, realize God's spirit dwells in you if you're a believer in Jesus, and then ask yourself, what does that mean? And then realize one of the things that means is the flesh is not your master anymore. You're no longer under the governance of the flesh and so live accordingly.

Says the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God. It does not subject itself to the law of God, not able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. However, you are not in the flesh, if indeed, the Spirit of God dwells in you.

There's a second Encouraging fact that Paul points us to that is true of us as a result of the fact that the Spirit dwells within us, and that is that we're now under the governance of the love and the freedom of the Spirit. We're now under the control of or the governance of the love and the freedom of the Spirit. He says, however, you are not in the flesh, but you are in the spirit if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. And you say, OK, so now I'm under the control of the Spirit.

I know what that means. I've got the Spirit's going to give me commands and I've got to do whatever the Spirit tells me to do. The Spirit's going to tell me to stop doing this and I've got to stop doing it. The Spirit's going to make me do things that I don't really want to do, but if I'm under the control of the Spirit, I've got to do what the Spirit is telling me to do.

Indeed, the Spirit does lead us and direct us. But up to this point of the book of Romans, anything Paul has said about the Spirit, he said nothing about the Spirit delivering us commands, although he does that. The only thing that the readers of Romans up to this point understand about the Spirit, and hence the way that they would understand what's being said here is that to be under the governance of the Spirit means to be under the control of the love and the freedom that the Spirit mediates to us through Christ.

The only other things he said about the Spirit is Romans 5:5.

The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit. He was given to us. In other words, the Holy Spirit is himself the expression of God's love. The fact that God's Spirit is inside of you is proof of the love of God for you.

And in Romans 8:2, the law of the spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death. It's love and liberation to live under the control of the Spirit is to walk in love, enjoying the love of God, believing and embracing and cherishing God's love for you, and walking in the liberty that the Spirit of God wants you to walk in. To A walk in the Spirit, or to be under the governings of the Spirit means to allow God's love to lay hold of you and to be under the control of God's love.

I believe it's in 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul says the love of Christ controls us.

What I love about that passage is that in the context, as you read it, you see that he's responding to the fact that he's been accused of being crazy. Being beside himself, being crazy. And Paul, in a sense, I love this, is he's basically saying, if you define a crazy person as someone who's not in control of his faculties, then I'm guilty. I'm crazy, because I don't control myself.

The love of Christ has laid hold of me. And someone who's truly under the control of the Holy Spirit is someone who is seized by the love of God for him, mediated to him. In his heart, through the Holy Spirit. And then the Spirit each day is wanting us to walk in this love and embrace this love, and allow this love to embrace and lay hold of us.

And the Spirit also is wanting us to walk in freedom from the fleshly self effort or fleshly plunging into sin. He wants us to walk in liberty and in this love from God for us. And Paul says, I want to encourage you. The Spirit of God dwells in you.

And you ask me, what does that mean? I'm telling you what it means is that you're no longer under the governance of the flesh. You don't have to live that way anymore. And number 2, it means that you're now under the control, under the mastery of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who wants you to walk in the love of God and in the freedom.

that God has accomplished for you in Christ. There's a 3rd encouraging fact that Paul points us to in this text that is true of us as a ramification of the fact that God's spirit is in us, and that is that we now belong to Christ. Having God's spirit inside of you means that you belong to Jesus. Now, this is not directly stated, but I think all of you will be comfortable with us inferring this from what Paul does actually say.

Look what he says at the end of verse 9. He says, but if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not belong. To him, by the way, what this indicates is that If someone doesn't have the Spirit, they're not a Christian. They don't belong to God at all.

There's not, two classes of Christians those that have believed in Jesus but they've not yet received the baptism of the Spirit or they've not yet received the Spirit, but maybe they will later when they reach that second level of, spiritual maturity. There's not Christians who've received the Spirit and then other Christians who have not. Paul says if Don't have the spirit of Christ within you. You don't belong to God.

You're not even saved, which means that anyone who does have the Spirit of God inside of them is a believer. This is something God gives to every person the moment that they repent and put their trust in Christ. Now look at this again, Romans 8:9. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.

Literally, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. In other words, Christ would look at that person and say, you're not mine. He doesn't belong to Christ. If that is a true statement, we would all, I believe, agree with flipping that around and making this a positive statement that if anyone does have the spirit of Christ, one of the things that that means is that person who has the Spirit does belong to Christ.

He does belong to Christ. Which means the mere fact that God's spirit is inside of you, inhabiting you, means that you don't belong to sin. Anymore. You don't belong to Satan anymore.

You don't belong to the world anymore. You don't belong to your flesh anymore. You've been released from slavery to those things, and you are now owned by Jesus. And your own.

By Jesus and belong to him, because God's Spirit dwells inside of you. That is a mark of Christ's ownership of you. It is your seal, as Paul talks about in Ephesians chapter one, that is the imprint upon you and your inner person. That is proof positive that you are owned by Jesus.

You may not see the Holy Spirit. But trust me, when the devil looks at you, the devil knows by the fact that the Spirit dwells inside of you, that you belong to Jesus now. And he knows he can't undo that. But he can at times, get you in a place where you believe you don't belong to Jesus.

The devil will try to get you to be to where your perception of your reality in Christ is so distorted, that you think you still belong to your sin, and you still belong to your flesh, and that those things still have control over you. But Paul says, no, go back to the basics. You believed in Christ. And God's spirit is inside of you, and what that means is that you belong to Jesus now.

That means a bunch of things. It means that we're owned by Christ. And if we're owned by Christ, it means that Christ has full rights of ownership over our lives. It means that he has every right to rearrange our lives in any way that he sees fit for our good and for his glory.

whatever you may be planning to do tomorrow, Christ has total freedom to intervene and allow in His gracious providence anything into your day. He has full rights to you. You don't even belong to yourself anymore. You belong to Him.

One aspect of this also that blesses me is that if we belong to him, he's telling us that in His word, which means he's not ashamed to call us his. Christ, as it were, if he's talking to the angels, he would point to a believer in this congregation and say, he's mine. He's mine. He's mine.

Christ would speak to Satan and say, this person is mine. He's mine, and he's not ashamed to call us his, even though we've given him many reasons. All the times we've blown it and failed and have grieved the Holy Spirit of God. We've given God many reasons to be ashamed, but he's not.

He's not ashamed to say this person is mine. This stumbling Christian is mine. It also implies that if we're owned by Christ, it means that he assumes full responsibility to care for us. You think Christ would take possession of you and not take care of what he now possesses?

Christ has made you a habitation of His Holy Spirit. He, God has sent His Holy Spirit into your life to dwell in you as his home. Do you think he would send His Holy Spirit to live inside of you and then not care very much about every detail of your life and not assume full responsibility to care for you with every detail of your life? Another aspect of this that Paul's going to develop in the coming verses is the fact that part of what in the context we're going to see that when Paul says, implies here that if we have the spirit, we belong to him, what that means is that we belong to him, not so much as a slave belongs to his master, but we belong to him as a child belongs to his heavenly Father.

There's an idea of sonship and daughtership here. We belong to Him. We are His children, and the indwelling Spirit is a key identifying mark of our sonship or our daughtership. Of God we belong to Him the way a child belongs to a parent.

In fact, we're going to see this in the coming verses. Let me show you real quick. Look at verse 14. When we see the Spirit of God mentioned in Romans 8, it's not uncommon to immediately find in that context the idea of us being sons of God.

Verse 14, all who are being led by the Spirit of God. These are sons of God. Verse 15, you have not received a spirit of slavery, leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father. Verse 16, the Spirit himself.

testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. Verse 23, and not only this, but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. God has received us as sons, and we know he's received us as sons. Because he has placed His Holy Spirit inside of us.

That's what identifies us as sons and daughters of God. One of the things that's really blessed me in pondering this this week is the fact that God is omniscient. The doctrine of God's omniscience is a precious doctrine. God was omniscient and knew absolutely everything about you and I.

All, all of our past failures, all the stuff about us that even we didn't know, the depths of evil that were within us that we did not even know was there until a later time. God already even knew about our future failures after we became believers in Christ and all the times that we would grieve as Holy Spirit, God had total omniscience and still adopted us. And made us his sons and daughters. that's different than us human parents.

We're not omniscient. And when we give birth to children or adopt children, we're in for a lot of surprises, are we not? My children have surprised me a million times over the last 2 decades, and when we had children, when my wife gave birth to children, we didn't know the ride that we were in for. And I think God protects us from knowing all of that because in our immature state, we would probably think twice about having children.

But our children are able to surprise us. They're able to disappoint us and disillusion us. Here's the deal. We can never disillusion God.

We can never surprise God. There will never be a point where God sees us acting out on a particular day, saying, Oh my goodness, I had no clue this person would ever do this. And I'm really reconsidering. The decision I made to make this person, my son, we're never going to surprise him.

He already knew. It's like Jesus said to his disciples before he was crucified. He said, hey, all of you are going to abandon me tonight. I know that already.

In your future, in the near future, you're all going to run away from me tonight and abandon me. But hey, after I've been raised, we'll meet up again in Galilee, and I'll lead you as a shepherd. That's the literal language that you see in Mark's Gospel. And then Peter's like, Oh, I'm never going to, he didn't even know the depths of evil in him.

I will never abandon you, Jesus. I'll never betray you, though these other guys might. I see what you're saying with them, but I never will. And Jesus says, Yes, you will.

In fact, 3 times, and I'll tell you when you're going to do it by. By the time the rooster crows, you will have denied me 3 times. But hey, afterwards, like I said, I'll be in Galilee and I will lead you as a shepherd. He already knew about these failures.

See, if God made us His sons and daughters, but he wasn't omniscient, We would all be wondering, would he have made me his child if he really knew the truth about me? But we have a God who knew everything, the good, bad, and ugly, and He made us His children. And because he was omniscient when he made that decision, there's nothing that will ever shock him and make him second guess it. There's great comfort in this.

JI Packer in his book Knowing God says this. Listen to what he says. There is tremendous relief in knowing that God's love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me. So that no discovery now can disillusion him about me in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself, and that no discovery can quench his determination to love me.

Isn't that great? we often surprise ourselves, right? We become disillusioned and shocked with ourselves, and we can tend to project that shock and disillusionment and surprise onto God, but he's not surprised. He loves us as much on our worst days.

as he does on our best days. Let's take comfort in this. If you've got the Holy Spirit inside of you, and by the way, you do, if you have repented and believed in Jesus, if you've got God's Spirit inside of you, that fact alone means that God is saying to you, you belong to me, and I claim you as mine. You belong to me the way a son belongs to his Heavenly Father, and that will never change.

There's a 4th thing, a 4th encouraging fact about us that is true of us by virtue of the fact that the Spirit of God dwells inside of us, and that is that our spirits are alive because of Christ's righteousness. Our spirits are alive because of Christ's righteousness. Verse 10. If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, in other words, though the body is mortal, the fact that God's Spirit dwells in us right now, does not mean that our bodies become instantly immortalized or glorified.

And free of death. No, because of sin, because of Adam's sin, death reigns upon our physicality at this point in our existence, and our bodies are mortal. They are dying. Our hair is falling out.

Our hair is turning gray, and, our joints, ache, we become physically weaker and weaker and more and more disassembled the older that we get, because our bodies are mortal as a result, Paul says in Romans 5, of Adam's sin and the sin that we all committed in Adam. Through Adam's sin, death came to the human race. But even though our outer man, as Paul would say, is decaying, Yet the fact that God's spirit indwells us means That our spirit is alive. It means that we are alive, spiritually.

We're alive. What this means is that we're united to God. What death speaks of is always separation, and ultimately spiritual death is separation from God. So to be alive, to be spiritually alive, means to be united to God, to be brought into relationship with God.

To know Him relationally, that's eternal life according to John 17:3. It means to be united to God in relationship, but it also has the idea of being alive to God in the sense of being able to respond to Him and able to do right. We're spiritually alive, which means that when God speaks to us, we can respond to Him. When He gives us commands, we can respond to those commands, and we can obey those commands.

We can be responsive to Him. Before we were dead in our trespasses and sins, we couldn't even lift a finger and by way of proper response to God because of our spiritual deadness. But now we're alive, united to God, alive to Him, and able to respond to Him and able to do what's right. We're spiritually alive.

And you might say, well, that's a no brainer, Milton. we all know this. We all know that if we believed in Jesus, we're spiritually alive. Well, do you really know this?

Do you really know this? anytime that we either say or convey the attitude that, yeah, I know God tells me to do this, but I just can't do it. You are denying an aspect of what's being affirmed here. What you're saying is I'm not alive enough to do what God is telling me to do.

You're denying This doctrine, anytime that you feel like maybe you've failed God to such a degree that God has cut you off from Himself and has separated Himself from you and you buy into that notion in that moment, you're failing to believe this very simple no brainer truth that you might think is a no brainer, and that is that you're spiritually alive. You can get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and just rejoice in the the fact that I'm alive. I am spiritually alive.

My spirit is alive, meaning I'm united to God, I'm in relationship with him, and I'm alive to him and able to respond to him.

God, how do you want me to live my life today? Whatever you tell me to do, I can do this because I'm alive in Christ. Look at what he says at the end of verse 10. Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin.

That's Adam's sin, according to Romans 5. Yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness, and clearly he's talking about not our righteousness that we perform from day to day, but Christ's righteousness that he displayed in his life and In surrendering himself to death on the cross and obedience to his Father, he gave himself over in death and in love for his fellow men. Christ surrendered himself at the cross. And dying for the salvation of all who would believe in Him.

Christ being willing to go to the cross is the epitome of the fulfillment of the law, love for God, and love for one's fellow man. And because of Christ's righteousness, we have the Spirit, and we're alive. And not only is it Christ's righteousness that was displayed 2000 years ago, but according to Romans 5, this righteousness gets imputed to us. We look at this righteousness of Jesus, we read the Gospels, and we're like, amazing, amazing.

This is, this is amazing, the righteousness of Jesus. And then we see him surrendering himself to death on the cross for the salvation of man. And we're amazed by the righteousness of Jesus. And we view it as some distant thing.

But then the Father says, would you like this righteousness? We're like, well, yes. And he says, repent of your righteousness, and of your sin, and believe in Jesus, and I will give you his perfect righteousness, that is flawless, and you will stand before me as flawlessly righteous, and fully alive, having the Spirit. Within you.

Again, you may say, well, this Romans 8:10, there may be a lot of things I don't understand, but this seems obvious to me. But again, we need to be careful. About just assuming we really believe this. And one of the things that makes me careful is that I read things from time to time where there are Christian writers who've known the Lord for years, they may have written even other books, for years, God has used them in a great way.

There's no doubting that they were believers. And yet decades after their conversion, they're, they're saying things like, I'm finally getting this. I'm finally seeing this to be true. I'm alive.

They're like discovering that decades after their conversion, as if they never knew it before. In fact, this week I've been reading a book. called From Fear to Freedom, Living as Sons and Daughters of God by Rose Marie Miller. And, Just to show you the connection, 11 years ago, I first heard the expression to preach the gospel to yourself from Jerry Bridges in his book Discipline of Grace.

In that book, he says he heard that expression from a guy named Jack Miller years prior. Jack Miller is the husband of this woman, and Jack Miller and his wife's journey towards just the simplicity of the gospel and experiencing the power of the gospel and preaching that to themselves every day and making that a fundamental discipline of their lives, that was a a hard fought awareness that they arrived at through the difficulties in their marriage and in their stumblings along the way.

And Rose Marie Miller in this book tells about her journey towards really coming to understand her position in Christ, and she shares in this book that even though I've been saved for decades, I for much of my Christian life, though I was a daughter of God, I thought like an orphan. I had an orphan mentality, and she chronicles how through the Word and through just God graciously working in her life, he brought her to a place of realizing I'm a daughter of God.

I'm a child of God. I'm spiritually alive. I'm righteous with the righteousness of Jesus. In fact, listen to what she says in this book.

This is decades into her journey as a Christian. She says, I entered more deeply into the heartland of grace, when it dawned on me that the righteousness of God through faith was a perfect righteousness. Now again, you may say, well, we all know that, when she would say, yes, yes, in a sense, I knew that, but I really know it now. She's like a fresh discovery of this.

She says God's flawless righteousness was mine. It's flawless, and it's mine. She says, I understood now why God was at peace with me, even though so often I was not at peace with myself or my circumstances. Nothing I could ever do could change God's attitude toward me.

My heart, my heart felt the deep music of this truth. I belonged to him. I was alive. Because of Christ.

This is a pastor's wife, decade into her walk with the Lord, stumbling towards this awareness. And after knowing the Lord for however many decades, this pastor's wife is saying, I'm alive. I'm alive, as if she's just discovering this. I belong to God.

This is a great right here, just what you see on the screen is a wonderful exposition of what we're talking about this morning. In our passage this morning, we have Christ's righteousness, our justification. We belong to God and we're alive. And here's a sister in the Lord exclaiming this.

Upon a fresh discovery of this awareness. This liveliness of spirit is fueled by an awareness that we are righteous in God's sight. And it's a flawless righteousness, and it's mine. And therefore, there's nothing we can do.

There was nothing we could do to get it. And there's nothing we can do to lose that or cause God to change his attitude towards us. May this be Our anthem as well. We belong to God and we are alive because of Christ and His righteousness.

Paul says, you could arrive at that. If you just honestly look at the fact that God's spirit dwells inside of you and do some gospel thinking, you could arrive at that in pretty short order. You're justified. You belong to God.

You're alive. There's a 5th and final thing, and we don't have a lot of time with this, but there's a 5th. encouraging fact that is true about us by virtue of the fact that God's spirit dwells within us, and that is that God will one day give immortal life to our physical bodies. the fact that God's spirit inhabits us is really good news for our spirits.

We're spiritually alive. But the fact that God's spirit resides in you as a believer, listen, that's really good news for your physical body. And we all need good news for our bodies, right? In fact, when I said that in the first service, I don't know why, but I was looking at a particular person when I said that we all need good news for our bodies.

And this lady came up to me and said, Why were you looking at me when you said that? So I'm not looking at anybody. But, but we all need good news for our bodies. And, and the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you.

That's wonderful news for your body. Look what, look at this news, Romans 8:11, he'll develop this further. He says, but if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus, From the dead dwells in you right now. Here's what you can know to be true, and you can take this to the bank.

He who raised Christ Jesus bodily from the dead, will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who indwells you. The fact that God's spirit is right now inside of you is guaranteed. It guarantees the fact that one day God is going to give immortal life to your physical body. And we're going to be blown away by what we see.

When that occurs. John says in First John 3:2, beloved, now we're children of God, but it's not yet appeared what we shall be. You, you look at great saints and go, wow, that person's amazing. John's like, you haven't seen anything yet.

We will live forever in a physical, spiritual, and physical existence, clothed with glory and immortality that would stagger the imagination, were we to try to comprehend it now. You take the least of saints in this church, the least of the saints, the least Christian in this room right now, whoever that might be. And that least of the brothers or sisters here will one day God will give life to their mortal body, and they will be glorified and undergo a spiritual and physical transformation, and they will be such an incredible glorious spectacle that if we could see that person now.

For what they're going to be, we would be sorely tempted to bow down and worship them.

That's how glorious. They're going to be. We will be spectacular spiritual and physical specimens in glory as a result of the salvation God has accomplished for us. And we can know this to be true because God's spirit dwells inside of us.

Let's bow our heads. If you're here today and you have never Maybe maybe you come into this room and you're just, you're in the flesh. you're just living in sin. Or maybe you're not living in sin, but you're just trying so hard to be good enough before God.

Listen, that's an exhausting, powerless way to live. Give up that powerlessness. Just come to Jesus. God says you've sinned, God says you're guilty, God says you can't save yourself, and God says you need a savior.

Are you going to agree with him or disagree with him? Are you going to follow your flesh that rebels against those notions, or will you follow the Spirit? And yield to God's love and the freedom that comes. For those who believe in Christ, just believe in Him today.

If you have questions, come up, talk to me afterwards. I would love to answer whatever questions you have. It would be an honor to pray with you. And just help you along in your journey toward Christ.

For those of us as believers, there's Paul's just looking at one sliver of the gospel, the fact that we have an indwelling spirit of God inside of us, and he's just saying, let me just take a, just three verses here and reason from this reality and show you what this means. Let me unpack this for you. And it's amazing, amazing. Father, we, we just ask that you would, as Paul prays and In Ephesians chapter one, Lord, that you would enlighten the eyes of our heart that we would see.

And know these things to be true. We would see them in an undistorted way. And walk in the love and in the liberty that is ours in Christ. Lord, a deep treasuring of our justification.

and of our sonship before you. And of our belongingness to you, a deep treasuring of these realities serves as the wellspring from which holiness springs. May we tend to this core and believing these realities. that we might nurture within us the passion.

To give our lives to you and live for you. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you this morning. We ask that you would accept these offerings and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. At the same time, we give ourselves to you in Christ's name, and all God's people said,