Some Life and Death Truths for Christians

I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8 for our time of study in God's word. this morning, we're doing a verse by verse study through Romans 567, and 8. And as we continue in our study of this section of the book of Romans, we come this morning to Romans.

Chapter 8, verse 12, and my goal today is to try to cover verses 12 through 14. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be some Life and Death Truths for Christians. Some life and death truths for Christians. I On Friday of this week, just two days ago.

I left my, my house around 4 o'clock in the afternoon to make my way to Rancho Cucamonga for a a wedding rehearsal for Jason and Robin Eaton who got married yesterday. And about an hour after, 1 hour and a half maybe after I had left our house, I got a text message from my daughter Brianna informing me that a house across the street from us was on fire. And, I ended up getting home around 11 o'clock that night and couldn't even get into, they wouldn't let me come down the block and get into my house, so I went to the neighbor's house behind me and asked for permission to climb the fence to get to my house and And she allowed me to do that, but Anyway, when I got home, Brianna was telling me that when the fire started, it's, it's an elderly woman and her daughter who was in her 40s.

And they live in one house and then next door is a sibling that lives in that house and then two houses down is another sibling and her husband, so 3 different family members live in 3 different houses across the street from from us, but it's an elderly woman and one of her daughters that lived in this house that that was on fire.

And Brianna was telling me that when the fire started, the family members were all, out front. They, they were upset about it, but that there was a surprising calm about Their, their disposition, their whole demeanor towards what was happening. there was one member of the family that was missing and Brianna asked them, Where's your sister, the, the lady who lived in that house that was on fire, and they said, well, we don't know, but they didn't seem concerned overly that she might have been in that house.

but eventually they got the fire out and, Brianna was away from them at this point, but she was still looking on.

And she saw a police officer along with a well dressed man gather the family around. And began speaking to them, and she could not hear what it was that they were saying to the family members, but what they were telling the family members was that their family member had died. In the fire. But not hearing that, Brianna just sees the police officer and this other person talking to the family members, and then all of a sudden they all began to weep, and one of the family members just dropped to her knees, just collapsed on the sidewalk, and began to wail.

And the relatively calm perspective that they all had. Gave way to heartrending grief over the loss of this precious family member, the loss of a home. The loss of some possessions that were in that home paled in comparison to the loss of this family member. when, when it's life.

And death. And by the way, if you could pray for the family, it's the Lopez family. I know they would appreciate that. But when it's a life and death matter, it takes our perspective to a whole different level.

And I don't know if it's just the mood that I'm in this morning, given what happened a couple of days ago, but I would like for us to bring something of that sensibility into Our study of God's word this morning, because just that sense of heightened feeling, heightened emotion, heightened alertness and sensitivity to the text, because as you're going to see, it is indeed a matter of life and death. Paul uses this language of life and death. It's almost as if he gathers us together and speaks very earnestly to.

Us and speaks to us as believers of these matters of life and death.

Let me begin reading in verse 6, and if you don't have a Bible with you, you can look on the screen, but notice, notice the the focus on life and death in these verses. He says in verse 6, for the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the spirit is life and peace, because the mindset on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 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 dying bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. And now our passage today. So then, brethren, We are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh, for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die.

But if by the Spirit, you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live for all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. The way we're going to break down our passage this morning is we're going to look at 5 truths. Paul gives to us 5 life and death truths that spirit and dwelt Christians ought to take to heart. those of us that have put our trust in Christ, and we have the Spirit of God inside of us, and our spirits are alive, and we're awaiting our glorification on the day of resurrection.

these truths are for us. If you're here today and you're not, a child of God, a believer in Jesus, these truths would be very important for you to ponder seriously and give heed to. But Paul is speaking to Christians. We saw last week in verses 9 to 11 that he 4 times states that the Spirit of God dwells within believers, and then he reasons from that fact and says, Let me tell you what that fact means for you.

It means you're no longer under the governance of the flesh. It means that you're now under the governance of the spirit. It means that you now belong to God as a child would belong to. His Father.

And it also means that your spirit is now at the present time alive. And it also means that one day God will give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that indwells you. So the Spirit's in you, you're a child of God. Let me show you what that means.

We saw that last week, but as we come to verse 12, we observe that Paul is not done. He says in verse 12, so then, brethren, In other words, in light of the fact that the Spirit of God dwells within you and in light of the five things that I appointed your attention to that are true of you by virtue of the fact that God's spirit dwells in you, I want to point out some more things to you that you want to seriously consider given the fact That you are a child of God, given the fact that the Spirit of God is within you.

Here are some more truths about you, some more truths that you need to give serious thought to. And let's get right into this truth #1 that we observe in verse 12, is that we are indebted to the Spirit to live our lives according to the Spirit.

Given the fact that God's spirit is in us, and that God has saved us. Paul tells us in verse 12 that we are in debt as a result of having been saved in this way by God through Christ and through the Holy Spirit. He says in chapter 8, verse 12, he says, so then, brethren, we are under obligation, and let's just stop right there. This is actually initially a positive statement.

It turns negative with what he says next, but initially, this is a positive statement. so he's saying God's spirit is in you, His Spirit is in you, his spirit is in you, his spirit is in you. And therefore, all of these things are true of you. And now verse 12.

So then, as a result of these realities in your lives, as believers, I want you to know this, that we, as believers and recipients of this grand salvation are under obligation. Now we don't normally talk this way here at Cornerstone. We, we talk much of the grace. of God and what God has done for us and, and rightly so, and that any debts that we had, God paid all those debts, and we are now debt-free in Christ.

But there are times in the New Testament where this language is used, and we need to fully embrace the ethic that Paul is conveying here to us. And what he's saying is, in light of this salvation that's been given to you, that you're the recipient of, you're in debt. You are under obligation as a result of this. Now if you look at the text carefully, you'll notice that Paul doesn't really finish his thought.

He says, We are under obligation, and you're expecting some positive statement, but then he says, not to the flesh. And then you go, OK, well let me see what he says about the flesh, and when he's done with that, he'll come around and tell us the positive thing that we are actually under obligation to. But he never comes back around to explicitly stating that. But the context makes it very clear what the positive side of this obligation is.

and just about every commentator would affirm this, that given what he has just said in the preceding verses, what Paul is saying is that we are positively under obligation to the Spirit and to live our lives according to the Spirit as a result of the salvation that God has accomplished in our lives. And so let's think that way. We're, we're in debt. We are under obligation.

That's the literal language. We are indebted to the Spirit. We owe something to the Spirit of God. We owe something to God, as a result of our salvation, and that is to live our lives according to the Spirit of God.

And again, what have we learned about the Spirit of God up to this point? Well, we learned back in Romans 5 that the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And we also learned in Romans 8:2 that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law. of sin and death.

We have learned in previous weeks of the role of the Holy Spirit in accomplishing the historical elements of our salvation. It was the Holy Spirit that came upon Mary and caused her to conceive in her womb Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit that descended upon and then into Jesus at his baptism, drove him into the wilderness and empowered all of the deeds. that he did and the righteousness that Christ manifested in his life.

We learned in the book of Hebrews that it was through the Holy Spirit that Christ offered himself up as a sacrifice on the cross. So that was done through the power of the Holy Spirit. And we also learned in Romans 8 that God raised Jesus from the dead on the 3rd day through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been intricately involved in every single aspect of our salvation.

And now we are the recipients of it, and we have this very Holy Spirit inside of us, and our sins have been forgiven, and we're justified, and we're saved, and we're bound for glory. And Paul says, you owe the Holy Spirit something, and that is you owe it to the Spirit to walk every day to live your life according to the Spirit. What he's saying by that is you owe it to the Spirit of God to walk in the love and in the liberty, or the freedom that God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit have paid such a high price in order to obtain and be able to give to you.

You think of the sacrifice.

And the cost of this salvation so that we could walk in love and in the freedom that God has accomplished for us. And then, and then how did we live our lives this past week? How much did we value the freedom that that God accomplished for us at such a great price to Himself? Paul says you, you owe it to God, to walk, to walk in this love, to walk in this freedom.

that he has accomplished for you in your salvation. If you want to think of it as a debt, Paul would say think of it as a debt. You owe it to God to walk in this liberty that He has given to you. There's a second truth that Paul points our attention to, a life or death truth, and that is that we are no longer now that we're saved indebted to the flesh to live our lives according to the flesh.

He says, So then, brethren, we are under obligation not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. Paul would say, you have no debt to pay to your flesh. You can look at the sinful flesh and say, I don't owe you anything. I owe you nothing.

I owe you absolutely nothing. When you feel the risings of your flesh within you that maybe beckon you to to old favorite sins that you used to stumble into maybe years ago or even weeks ago or days ago, you can respond to those risings of lust or jealousy or anger or discontentment by saying, I owe you nothing, and I do not have to do your bidding. Anymore I have been released from any obligation to do anything that my flesh wants me to do. This should be very encouraging for us because Paul's language here.

indicates that the flesh is still with us, right? You're not under obligation to the flesh. He doesn't tell us that the flesh is gone. It's still there and it still rises within us.

It still shows itself. It still tries to exert influence over our lives to get us to live the old way, but he's saying you are not under any obligation to that entity called your flesh, that rebel part of you that is always wanting the opposite of what God wants from you. So the flesh is there. You're going to experience the reality of your indwelling flesh.

You will feel the risings of sin within, but when those moments occur, you need to know that you have no obligation. To do what your flesh is dictating that you do. One of the tendencies that I've noticed not only in me but also in other brothers and sisters is that Our tendency sometimes is that when we feel the risings of the flesh within us to just, we're so discouraged sometimes by the fact that, that old sin is rising up within us, whatever it might be, maybe jealousy or discontentment or anger or lust or a desire for some other sins, and maybe there's been a period of time where that just seemed to go into remission and we thought it was dead and And gone and and then lo and behold we feel the rising of of that sin again and it's coming from within us, from deep within us, and sometimes we become so crestfallen and discouraged when those temptations or those risings of the flesh occur that we just think, what, I've never changed.

I'm still the same old person that I've always been, as evidenced by the fact that this Flesh is rising within me again.

Paul would say that's wrong to just assume you've never changed. The fact that sin rises within you or not, that has nothing to do with whether you've changed or not. It's how you respond to the risings of sin within. That will tell you the difference about whether you have changed or grown or not.

So don't buy into that lie. And then also we sometimes feel that when sin does rise within us, especially with some degree of force and potency, we just think that we're obligated somehow to just do what it tells us to do and we just follow it and do the bidding of our flesh. Feeling obligated in, in some way. But Paul says, as a child of God, here's the way I want you to think.

You are indebted to God's spirit. To walk in the freedom and in the love of God that He has given to you through Jesus Christ, mediated to you through the agency of the Holy Spirit within your heart. You owe it to God to walk inside of that and to live in the good of that. And also, here's another way that you need to think, I am no longer indebted.

I am no longer under any obligation to do anything that my flesh wants me to do. I don't care how wicked or how potent my flesh. May seem to be or how strong or frequent the risings of sin are within, I owe my flesh nothing. I remember a dear sister in the Lord whose became aware that her husband had been unfaithful to her.

And it wasn't the first time that it had happened, but this sister fought the battle of her life against the sin of anger and She memorized scripture. And when she would feel herself boiling over with anger, she would quote scripture and she would pray to God and just give the whole matter to the Lord. And be free of the anger for 5 minutes. And then the anger would return and she would quote scripture and pray and surrender it to the Lord once again and be free of the anger for five minutes.

And she did that again and again every few minutes for days and even weeks, and then it became longer. The time period in between which she needed to do that and take that step, but what I respect is I'm sure there was failure along the way, but The fact that this sister in the Lord, the risings of the flesh were so potent within her, but her desire was, I will not give in to you, and I do not owe you anything. We are indebted to the spirit. We owe it to God to walk in freedom, and we are not any longer indebted to the flesh to live according to the desires of the flesh.

And now, I'm going to encourage you guys to take this statement that Paul makes and whatever your theology is, find somewhere to stick it, OK? This belongs in your theology. and let's try to take him for what he's saying at face value. Here's a third truth that Paul, as he huddles together with us, wants to communicate to us as spirit and dwelt believers in Jesus.

And that is this, if we are living our lives according to the flesh, we are heading straight for death. If we are living our lives according to the flesh, we are heading straight for death. Paul, if he were here today, he wouldn't say, Well, I got to find out first of all, who all the believers are, and, and all the believers, you sit over here and the nonbelievers, you sit over here, and then I'll make this statement to the nonbelievers. No, Paul would say, it doesn't matter whether you're saved or unsaved, I'm going to say this to all of you.

The truth is that if we are living our lives according to the flesh, we are heading straight for death, he says in verse 13. For if you are living, and this is present tense, if, if just the characteristic pattern of your life is that you are living according to the flesh, just doing the bidding of the flesh, when your flesh rises up within you, you, you tend to do the bidding. of what those fleshly desires are dictating you to do. And so you're not living according to the spirit in your practical day to day life, but you are living according to the flesh.

He says, If you are living according to the flesh, you literally in the Greek text, you are about to die. Now that's, that's a really challenging statement that ought to awaken. All of us You might say, well, man, even for believers, how does death, do believers ever experience death in any way, shape or form? And I would say absolutely yes.

We experience death on a number of levels. Paul has already told us in verse 7 that the mind set on the flesh is death. It is death. It's not just that it leads to death.

It is, in fact, in that moment of your mind being set on the flesh, you are in that moment experiencing what death is all about. Ultimately, death is separation from God and powerlessness before God. He says the mindset on the flesh is hostility against God. It does not subject itself to the law of God.

It's not even able to do so. And so those who are in the flesh cannot please God. It's a life of hostility against God, insubordination to God, utter powerlessness before God, and just the notion of death, period, has the idea of separation. And so whenever we do set our mind on the flesh and do the bidding of the flesh, we are in that moment tasting of the very essence of death.

Also, we experience death even as believers in the sense of an n-word dying, an n-word separation that occurs between you and what is right. You guys know what that's like. the right thing to do, but in a given moment you decide to do the opposite of what the right thing is, and there's a separation that commences that you experience within your inner person. That's a level of dying.

that we experience that loss of integrity. also separation from enjoyment of fellowship with God. we're, we're saved and we, are under God's gracious favor, but in terms of enjoying that fellowship with God, there's a separation practically speaking that occurs when we follow the dictates of the flesh where we instead of following God. And walking in His love and in the freedom that he has accomplished for us through Christ, we choose to walk over here and follow the flesh, and in that moment, we are separating ourselves from the practical enjoyment of fellowship with God.

And that's a layer of death. That we experience as believers. We all know also that when we give ourselves to following the flesh, there's separation that occurs from other people, right? We become isolated in our sin.

There's hiding that that occurs. We don't want others to know about, about the sin. We hide and commit the act of sin. And we don't confess it to other people, and then people might love us and do things for us and treat us normal, but we're thinking if they only knew what it is that I have done, they would not treat me this way.

There's a dying in that relationship that is occurring and then sometimes the sins that we might commit bring injury to other people and bring injury to the relationship with other people, and there are relationships even in the lives of believers that often will experience a death. Some relationships end up coming to an end. There are churches that end up splitting. There are marriages that, that end tragically and then there's some marriages where they're hanging on by a thread and they're legally married, but there are so many layers of death that have already occurred in that relationship, to where the marriage is all but practically dead and it's the result of sin.

As believers, we often experience layers of dying in our relationships as a result of following the flesh. And then there's also an element of death when it comes to powerlessness. You think of what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5, verse 8, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are those that are pure in heart, because those that are pure in heart will basically be able to or have the power to actually see God.

And the flip side of that is that if we are not pure in heart, we might turn our eyes to try to look at God. We might open the Bible and try to find God, but we will not be able to see Him when He's right in front of us because we've lost the power to see, because we have given way to the flesh. There are people that have been involved in ministry, and there has been a dying that's occurred. They've disqualified themselves from ministry as a result of following.

The flesh. So I hope you guys understand that when Paul says that, when we live according to the flesh, there's, there's levels of dying that we experience in our lives as believers. But look literally at what he says here. He says, if you are living according to the flesh, you, you, not so much relationships or, or whatever else outside of you, you are about to die.

Some commentators suggest paraphrasing this, you are, you are on the road to death. You are hastening toward death. You are about to die. And This might be challenging theologically, but Let me just make it very simple in saying, That true believers in Jesus.

Read a warning like this and say, what, I'm not going to live my life according to the flesh, because I don't want to experience this death. And if there are some who profess the name of Christ and they claim to be believers and may even be a member of the church, and yet they decide to live according to the flesh and they experience true, genuine, full death and ultimate separation from God and cast into the lake of fire forever and ever, such individuals thereby indicate by their choices that they were never saved in the first place.

As John says in First John, they went out from us, but they were never of us. If they had been of us, they would have no doubt remained with us, but they went out from us so that it might be made manifest that they were never of us in the first place.

True believers. Give heed to language such as we find in a verse like this. We all would say, no, I want life. I want life.

I want life in Christ. I don't want, I don't want death. And we would just do well to just stop and ask, well, why, why do we choose death on a number of occasions. If you, in hearing this, find yourself on a road to this death about which Paul is warning us, then repent.

There's great news for you, repent, repent, and if you're a child of God, realize that you owe it to God to walk in the freedom and in the forgiveness and in the love and in the grace that God has purchased for you at such a great price to Himself. There's a 4th truth that Paul gives to us, a 4th life and death truth that we need to ponder this morning, and that is that, let's state it this way, if we are killing personal sin through the Spirit, we will truly live. This is the flip side of what we just learned.

And again, Paul is huddling together with us as believers and, and He's saying, guys, listen, if we, if all of us together and individually, if we are about the business of perpetually on the journey of killing sin, In our lives and accomplishing this killing through the Spirit, we will truly live.

Now the way we've defined death sets us up to understand the essence of life that he's talking about, that is union with God and the enjoyment of that union to the absolute fullest degree. It is peace with God rather than hostility against God, and it is power before God. A dead person has no power. You can give commands to a dead person, and a dead person doesn't even have the power to process the command, much less respond to the command.

Death is utter powerlessness. But if we are, instead of following the flesh and letting that cause us to experience layers of dying, if instead of that, we are doing the killing, and what we're killing is personal sin, and we're doing that through the Holy Spirit, then we will experience the opposite. We will experience life, the full enjoyment of union with God and peace with God and power before God. He says in verse 13, for if you are living according to the flesh, you are about to die.

But if by the Spirit, do not try to do this on your own, if by the Spirit, you are habitually, continuously putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. Paul is essentially challenging us as believers to be about the business of killing. And what we're killing is sin. We're killing sin within us, putting to death the deeds of the body.

A good paraphrase would be putting to death or killing the misdeeds of the body. In other words, those sins that are about to emanate from our physical members, the, the sins that we're about to commit with their mind, the sins that we're about to commit with the members of our body. Maybe our tongues and lashing out at somebody or with our, our minds to brood over something and become anxious over it or our minds to entertain a lustful thought or, or the members of our body to carry out some sinful deed.

Paul is saying, I want you to be about the business of killing sin in your life.

In Colossians 3:5, he uses similar language and identifies the sins of immorality, impurity, passion, evil, desire, and greed that we need to be about the business of, of killing. And so let me just break open a few things for you. First of all, the putting to death he speaks about is present tense, which means you need to always be doing this. It's not like you can get up tomorrow morning and do this one amazing act, one sword thrust, and kill sin.

And then the rest of your life you live in the good of that deed of killing that you accomplished on August 20th, 2011. That'd be so nice if the Christian life were that way, but no, it's present tense. We need to be continuously about the business of putting to death the misdeeds that emanate from the members of our bodies and our faculties. what does it mean to kill sin?

Let's just ponder a few things. it would mean in part, don't even let sin be born. James one tells us that, sin comes about when lust has conceived and it gives birth to sin. And so our lust is involved in this.

In fact, let me have you turn to James, chapter 1, where James describes this. He says in James chapter 1 verse 14, he says, but each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and then sin when it comes to full term, brings forth death. And so what happens is that our lust or our flesh will seduce us away from the Lord.

We become wed to that lust in a given moment, and as a product of that union of ourselves with that lust, there is something born, and it's called sin. And then James says, when our sin comes to full term, it brings forth death. That's the 3rd generation. Ultimately, death is the product of sin.

And so we would learn from language like that, don't even let sin be born, kill it at its first thought. You might say, Man, that is hard, Pastor Milton. It is so hard to kill sin at the very first rising or the first thought. And to that I would say, I know, I experienced that, that is hard.

But I'll tell you something harder. And that is to kill sin at its second thought. Or 3rd or 4th, or sometimes what we do at its 50th thought, as we have allowed it to grow and fester and then it begins to take over us and we feel out of control and then we're like, oh, I got to kill this, I got to kill this. So yes, it is challenging, it is hard to strike a blow and kill sin at the very first thought, but it is the easiest time.

To kill sin. Another way to kill sin is that if you have in fact given birth to that sin through your deeds, then mortify it or kill it through confession and repentance. And so if you, if you have failed in some way, go to the Lord, confess that to him and, and repent and take that to the cross and if need be, confess that to another person that there might be healing and, and deliverance. Also, when tempted with sin, don't think compromise, toleration or coddling, think murder.

OK? Paul is using the strongest imaginable language here. If you're going to be a Christian, You're going to have to be a fighter and you're going to have to do some killing. That's just the way he speaks here.

We've got to get mean and nasty when it comes to sin, and yet so often we compromise, we make deals with sin, we tolerate sin, we coddle sin. Thinking that it might be innocent enough and yeah, it'd be nice to be done with this, but I like making provision for the flesh so that in a given moment when I want to fail, I know that I can always go back to that no compromises, no toleration, no coddling. Our attitude needs to be an attitude of I want to kill this sin out of my life.

John Piper says this, I love this.

He says, there is a mean streak in the Christian life. There is a violence. There is a militancy, but it is exactly the opposite of selfish violence against people. It is a violence against the flesh or against the deeds of the body, our flesh.

The Christian is not mean to others. He is mean to his own sinfulness, his own flesh. our world today is freaked out and frightened by fundamentalist Christians, radical Christians. imagine a Christianity that makes us Radically humble.

Radically broken. radically Introspective about our own sins, radically repentant of our sins, radically finding the logs in our own eye before we go speaking about the specks in the eyes of other people, whether they're saved or unsaved. Imagine if the world saw this militancy, where we realize that what is wrong with our society is me. It's, it's inside of me.

And we engage in a militant battle against the sin that is within us. This is the way we need to live. Paul says you've got to kill sin or it will kill you. So when tempted with sin, don't think compromise, toleration, or coddling.

Think murder, the murder of the sin. Please understand me. I hope no one misunderstands the language there. But also, another way to kill sin is to cut sin at the root as much as possible.

Cutsin at the root as much as possible. Remove from your life those things that tend to stumble you. Jesus says, if your right eye offends you, gouge it out. And a lot of times people stop there, but Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it from you.

OK? If your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you. some people, if their eye causes them to stumble, they'll put a patch. I'm speaking metaphorically over their eye, but knowing that I could always lift that patch in a weak moment, or some may go to the lengths of gouging it out.

But they'll then gouge it out and put it in their pockets so they can have access to it, but to gouge it out and throw it from you and to make it as unreachable as possible. Christ is not saying to actually gouge out your eye or cut off your hand because Our eye and our hand is not what causes us to stumble. But he's being very graphic to let us know something that we need to be ruthless in our endeavor to kill sin. If there are sins in your life, don't just try to repent of that sin, but try to give thought to what are the things that, that tend to lead me into that sin and do surgery there and get those things removed from your life.

Also, I would just encourage you guys in speaking about the notion of killing sin, please don't think that killing sin means to kill the desire for it to where the desire totally goes away. That's not what it means to kill sin, and I say that to encourage you because there are times where you might think you've killed a sin, but then the desire comes back and it's like, oh, I guess it's not dead, and I guess I never killed it in the first place. That's not what Paul means. He's not saying kill the desire for sin.

Otherwise what he's saying is kill the flesh to where it's dead and gone and never rises again. That's something on this side of glory that we're just not fully able to do now. You might find your desire for sin lessening, but your goal and mortifying sin is not so much to kill the desire for it as much as to not give in to the desire. For that sin, to say no to that sin is mortifying the sin.

We say no to sin, or we kill sin when we say no to it, a sin that rises up within me, that's about to come out of me through some angry words I'm about to speak. If I through the Spirit, kill that and say no, and then that never comes out of my mouth. I just killed the sin that almost was committed. Now the desire may be there still to lash out, but that's not what killing sin is.

It's not killing a desire. It's keeping the sin from being given life in our thoughts and in our words and in our deeds. There have been times where, for example, somebody who is a believer who struggles with homosexual lust. It's not a struggle that they ever chose to battle with, and they might come to a brother or sister in Christ and say, hey, I'm just struggling with this.

I want to be free. And, and sometimes Christians are like, all right, well, what, we're, we're going to try to, if you just do this and this and this, it'll take the desire away. And I don't think that's helpful. In fact, I don't know why that sin is really the only sin that we treat in that way.

That we got to get rid of the desire. It'd be great if our desire for sin goes away. But we all know we all have many desires for sin. But we mortify sin by saying no and preventing them from being given life through our actions, our words.

And in our thoughts. In fact, my heroes are people who still have strong desires for sin. My heroes, among my heroes are Christians who, who might have within them a battle with homosexual lust, and it's never gone away. But they say no to it and say this, I owe this nothing.

I am not indebted to this. This is not who I am in Christ. I will say yes to the 100 other desires that are in me. I have a desire to please Jesus.

I have a desire to walk with Him. I have a desire to walk in the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have a desire to walk in freedom. I will.

Yes to all of these desires, and I will say no to this desire. And if this desire for sin never goes away, by God's grace, and through the Spirit, I will say no to it every day of my life, and say yes to these 100 other spiritual godly desires that actually define me in Christ. And finally, I would suggest that a way to kill sin is to set your mind on the things of the Spirit and feast on Christ. Listen, you don't kill sin by staring at it, and being absorbed in it, and getting up in the morning and you're like, I can't do this.

I can't do this. And, and that's like where your mind is, is focused. You can't, that's not how you kill sin. In fact, sometimes we give life to sin by being so intent in our focus upon it in order to say no to it.

One of the ways we mortify sin is by turning away from it. And feasting on Christ, feasting on the love of God that the Spirit mediates to us, feasting on the freedom, feasting on our riches that belong to us in Christ. And as we set our minds there and become fully absorbed in the things of God and the gospel and God's grace and God's love, that has a mortifying effect. Upon sin.

In fact, Paul says in Galatians 5, walk in the Spirit. Walk in the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. Here's the secret, just keep walking according to the Spirit. Make that your preoccupation, your orientation.

Walk in the Spirit, and I promise you, while you're walking in the Spirit, you will never carry out the desire of the flesh at the same time. You can't do both. And so turn from sin, flee from sin, and put your focus on Christ and feast. On the glories of God, the riches of Christ that belong to you in the gospel.

We're out of time, but let me just give you the fifth and final truth that Paul gives to us, and that is that If we are allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit, we show thereby that we are sons of God. it doesn't matter what our profession is. Paul says in Romans 8:14, all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. This is what sons of God do.

They allow themselves to be led by the Spirit, rather than by the flesh. We'll try to unpack some of these things in the coming weeks, but let's, let's go to the Lord. In prayer and ask him to help us to To be passionate and serious about these life and death matters. We're going to take up an offering in just a moment.

We would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give. Father, the stakes are high. And lives hang in the balance. We ask Lord that you would give us a certain clarity that comes from your word.

Give that clarity to us deep within us, Lord, that we would be haters of sin. Namely because of what we see that sin did to Christ at the cross. We would despise and. Make no compromises with sin.

and settle for nothing but the death. Of sin And help us to, to walk with our heads held high, and when the flesh comes calling, That we respond by saying I owe you nothing. I owe you nothing. And we instead fulfill our calling to walk according to the spirit.

Lord, we have so much to learn. I have so much to learn. Take us deeper into an understanding and the practice of these things. We thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you this morning.

Take these offerings, Lord, and do much with them for the glory of Jesus. And we ask these things in his name.