Good morning, my beloved brothers and sisters.
It is a joy, and a blessing beyond description, to be here among you—God’s dear people, and my dear brothers and sisters.
I do not know how I can follow up on what we have just heard. All I can say is, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Lord hath said.”
I would like for us to turn to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8. I want to serve notice to my other brothers: many years ago, when there was a gold rush in our country, thousands of people rushed to the West Coast and staked their claim for gold. Well, I am staking my claim on Romans 8. Dana, I forgive you. Ed, no forgiveness.
I really had it in my heart to read the entire thirty-nine verses of Romans 8, but for the sake of time, we will not. I wanted very much to, because I believe, my brothers and sisters, there is much here that the Lord would speak to us about this matter of being sons and living in the reality of sonship.
For our purpose this morning, we will read the first seventeen verses. Then, the Lord willing, tomorrow we will finish the chapter. Please turn to Romans 8, beginning in verse 1.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh;
that the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
For they that are after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
For the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace:
because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be:
and they that are in the flesh cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you.
So then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh:
for if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live.
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
Let us pray.
Lord, You have been so faithful. Even as we just heard, You speak again to us this morning about what it means to be sons and to know the reality of spiritual sonship.
We bless You that You have spoken so clearly, and we thank You that Your Holy Spirit was here to open up the truth of Your Word to our hearts. Now, Lord, we want to cast ourselves upon You again. How desperately we need Your blessed Holy Spirit to come and make Your Word living to each one of us.
Lord, it is evident that there is so much we need to fellowship about in regard to being sons of God and living in the reality of spiritual sonship. Would You somehow bring a little more clarity to our understanding as we continue to fellowship about being sons of God? We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Yesterday afternoon, we arrived here on Long Beach Island a little early. I was with three other brothers, and we decided to go down to the lighthouse. Two of us climbed to the top—217 steps.
There is a place around the top where you can walk around, look, and turn toward the ocean. Brothers and sisters, it seems almost like you can see forever. It is so wonderful. It was not a clear day, but you could still see a long distance.
It seems to me that when we come to Romans 8, we are having something of that kind of experience. We are looking out into something that God has predestined us for—something so wonderful that it is beyond our human minds to fully imagine what God has planned for those who love Him. He has called us according to His purpose, and it is a glorious purpose.
We heard what our brother Dana shared last night about the letter to the Romans. What has become real in my own heart is that when we get to Romans 8, in a sense, we are standing with our back to something and facing a spiritual reality so glorious, so endless, and so magnificent in its scope that it really defies human language to explain it.
Notice how Paul begins this section: “Therefore.” You know what you are supposed to do when you see a “therefore” in the Bible. You are supposed to ask, “What is it there for?”
What is he talking about? He did not just continue a sentence. He says, “Therefore.” In other words, he has come to a conclusion about something. He has shown us something very, very clearly, and now he wants us to stand on that and face forward into a glorious future.
Too many of God’s people, in my opinion, never reach this place of looking out to this glorious future. Somehow—and I guess I understand, and probably I have done it more than I am willing to admit—rather than standing and looking out toward the ocean, we turn around and look in the other direction.
Then we never discover something about this matter of the sonship that is ours in our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of God’s dear people are focused on forgiveness.
Now, I can understand. When something so glorious floods your heart, and it seems beyond imagination, it is only human to say, “How can it get any better?” Can I say to us, brothers and sisters, it gets much better. As glorious as forgiveness is, that is not the end.
We need to take this step of standing here in Romans 8 and looking out, with the Holy Spirit opening our eyes, to see in a glorious way what God has predestined us to.
Paul says, “Therefore, now.” It seems to me that in this “therefore” and this “now,” Paul refers to what he has said in the previous seven chapters, but specifically to what he has just addressed in Romans 7.
Many of God’s dear people are still living in Romans 7. This is not to be your address. Romans 7 is not to be your spiritual address. That is, the struggle of wanting to do good and always failing; not wanting to do things wrong, but always doing something wrong.
You remember Paul’s conclusion concerning that experience:
O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?
What was he talking about? He was talking about a man who, from the very beginning of his experience with the Lord Jesus Christ, fully committed himself to the Lord. He wanted, with all his being, to know God and do God’s will.
This was who he was. When he committed himself to something, he committed himself to it. He did not back off. And, brothers and sisters, if you do that, you will go through Romans 7. It will become your experience because you believe that you now have to do everything by your own strength to please God.
If you have no desire to please God, if you have not given yourself completely to Him or offered yourself as a freewill offering to Him, there is a good chance you will remain in the previous chapters of Romans. But if it is in your heart to go all the way, then you have to go through Romans 7.
The good which I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I practice.
That means he wants to do good, and he does not want to do things displeasing to God. Yet the things he does not want to do are the things he ends up doing. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall set me free?”
Then he answers his own question:
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Here in Romans 8:1, Paul begins to help us see that, yes, we need to come through this experience, but we do not have to live there. We do not have to always be looking back.
Certainly, when we worship, praise, and exalt our God, we cannot ignore what He has done for us. But merely looking backward is not going to enable us to enter experientially into this matter of being sons of God.
I think I need to say a word to the sisters, because probably most of you sisters have difficulty identifying yourselves as sons. Yes? Well, let us look at Galatians 3 for just one quick moment.
But now that faith is come, we are no longer under a tutor.
For ye are all sons of God, through faith, in Christ Jesus.
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.
There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no male and female; for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus.
Sisters, if you underline your Bible, that is a good place to underline: “Ye are all sons of God through faith.”
There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female. You are all one in Christ Jesus. So, sisters, you are to become sons. In the body of Christ, in God’s family, there are male sons and female sons. They are absolutely equal. Sisters, do not let this trip you out, okay?
Here in Romans 8:1, Paul says there is therefore now not one bit of condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, this needs to ring loud and clear in our ears and in our hearts.
I do not know what you understand Paul to be saying when he says there is no condemnation. It certainly includes the fact that God has done something about the guilt we experience because of our rebellion and sin.
God is not going to judge us anymore regarding that guilt. We sang about it this morning: the penalty has been paid once for all. It does not need to be repaid, and it is yours by faith. You can do nothing to earn it. It is an absolute gift.
For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
It is with this eternal life, we discovered this morning, that God begins the work of producing sonship in our lives—making all of us, male and female, sons.
But this word condemnation carries with it another very significant dimension. Suppose building inspectors came here and inspected this building. Suppose they found cracks in the foundation and determined that it was a dangerous place to be. What would they put on the outside of the building? “Condemned.”
You cannot go in there. There is no hope for this building. It needs to be torn down. You cannot even repair it; you have to tear it down and build a whole new one.
Here is where I think Paul, in Romans 8:1, is saying, “Now.” Because of the finished work of our Lord Jesus and because of the coming of the Holy Spirit, there is now no condemnation—not even one condemnation.
That is, God cannot say to us, “There is no hope for you. You are condemned. Your life can never change. You cannot become a different person.” God does not say that to us. There is not any condemnation. God cannot pronounce condemnation on us anymore.
How many of you here this morning, after you knew the reality of the forgiveness of your sins, stopped sinning that very moment and never sinned again? How many? No hands.
To me, that sounds like condemnation if you think God is satisfied merely to go on forgiving us of our sins without making a provision for us to stop sinning. My brothers and sisters, to me, that is not a great salvation.
The writer of Hebrews tells us it is so great a salvation. It includes everything necessary for God to take us as enemies of God—hopeless, helpless, antagonistic, hostile toward God, whatever our condition is—and bring us to a place where He can look at us and see no evidence of sin even having been there.
Oh, brothers and sisters, this is why we need to stand on this plateau with Paul. We need to look into the Roman letter and see that Paul is helping us understand that we can move into a dimension of God’s grace that is part of His salvation.
God does not merely want you to be forgiven. I know this is very popular among evangelicals: “I am just a sinner saved by grace.” I want you to find that for me in the Bible—chapter and verse, please.
God never refers to His children as sinners after we believe in His Son. He calls us sons and daughters, never sinners. Sometimes I think it is because we want to make excuses for our sin.
When our God has finished this great work of restoring His universe, do you think there will be any sin in it? Will there be any evidence that sin was ever here? Absolutely not.
That means, dear brother and sister, when God examines you and me, He will find no sin, and He will find no evidence of sin. Hallelujah! This is our hope. This is what it means to become sons: God can look at us and see all the beauty of His Son in us.
This is salvation as well—a great salvation.
Today I want to focus on the blessing of being in Christ. Notice Romans 8:15:
For ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
You have received. This is something that has been given to you—a blessedness. Brother Stephen read this morning from Ephesians 1:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
Brothers and sisters, all the fullness of Deity has been placed in Him. Everything that God wants us to have, everything that God is pleased with, He placed in His Son.
Then what has He done? By His doing—1 Corinthians 1:30—where are you? You are in Christ Jesus. Let us look at it, because otherwise you will not believe me.
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:
that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
By God’s doing, you are in Christ Jesus. He put all the fullness in His Son, and then He put you and me in Him so that we could enjoy all that fullness.
Are you doing it? Are you living as heirs and joint-heirs? I know that has a dimension for the future, but what about right now?
There was a song we used to sing back in the seventies and eighties: “He’s all I need; Jesus is all I need.” Anybody remember that? Is that merely a song, or is it a reality? These are reality problems.
That is why Paul says there is now no condemnation. There is no reason for you to be fearful because you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons.
When God put us in Christ and put Christ in us, this began a process. It is not the end. As marvelous as it is to become a child of God, to be born again, to be born from above, and to be born by the Spirit, this is only the beginning.
How sad it is when people do not grow physically, mentally, or in maturity—when they are old but are still acting like children.
You remember Luke 15, what we call the parable of the prodigal son. Actually, it ought to be called the parable of a rejoicing father. We always put the focus on man and not on God.
Our Lord told us about a man who had two sons. The younger one selfishly came to his father and said, “I want my inheritance, and I would like to have it right now, please.”
He took his inheritance, went away, and threw it all away. He ended up with no one to help him—not even the people he had thought would help him.
He hired himself out to a farmer. What kind of farmer? A pig farmer. For Jewish people, that could be nothing worse. Scripture says he could not even eat the pods he was feeding to the pigs, because he had nothing to eat.
Then he came to his senses. He said, “I will go to my father, and I will tell him, ‘I am prepared to be your hired servant.’”
But when he returned home, what did the father do? He called the servants, put the best robe on him, put a ring on his hand, put shoes on his feet, and restored him fully. The son wanted to be a slave, but the father said, “I want him to be my son.”
The natural thing for the father to do was to celebrate. Apparently there had not been music and dancing in that house for a long time.
The older son was out in the field. He came in, heard the music, called one of the servants, and asked, “What is going on in there? I hear something. I am not so sure I like it.”
Remember how he stood and refused to go in? The father came out and began to plead with him.
Here is the thing we need to see, brothers and sisters. In the language of the New Testament, the father said to the older son, “Child, all that I have is yours.”
Then he said, “This thy brother was dead, and is alive again.” The older brother refused even to acknowledge him as a brother. He said, “This son of yours.”
What was happening? This older son was acting like a child. He refused to live in the inheritance that was already his.
Brothers and sisters, may God deliver every one of us from that. What would happen in the presence of God and in the heart of God if every one of us decided before God that we wanted to be real sons and enter into the experience of sonship?
What would happen in the heavenly realm? Remember what our Lord said: there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents. What about if some of His children repented of being satisfied with so little and said, “Father, because You have provided all of it, I want all of it. I want to possess it for myself.”
This is the problem we had with the children of Israel when they were brought out of Egypt and brought to Kadesh-barnea. The land of Canaan was a promised land, promised to them more than four hundred years earlier through a covenant with Abraham.
It was theirs. It was a gift. They did not need to spend one penny. All they had to do was cross over the Jordan and possess their possession by putting their foot down on what was already theirs.
You know the story. They sent out the spies. Ten came back and said, “No, there are too many problems. There are giants in the land. The walled cities are too big. We cannot go in.”
Ten of the twelve said they should not go in. What do we learn from this, brothers and sisters? The majority is not always right. Democracy does not work in the things of God.
They wandered around in the wilderness for forty years, and the land was over there waiting for them.
I do not expect you to agree with me doctrinally about this matter, but I am afraid, my dear brothers and sisters, we are making it very difficult for the Lord. Through the coming of the blessed Holy Spirit, He has provided an experience that will enable us to go in and possess our possessions.
Some of us, for whatever reason, are suspicious. Some of us are afraid. Some of us have received bad vibes from other people. We have seen what other people have said: “This is what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.” We backed off and said, “I want nothing like that.”
I want to encourage you this morning to reconsider that.
Some of you know that I have a three-year-old son in Brazil. Suppose I bought him a couple of gifts: a little remote-control car and a motorcycle. When I get home, I teach him how to use the remote-control car.
He gets so excited that he jumps up and down, rolls on the floor, and makes all this noise. Did the remote-control car make him do that? No. It was his reaction to the gift.
Sometimes people’s reaction to an experience with God is something we would not identify with. We would not do it, and we would not want to do it. But sometimes we come to false conclusions about this matter of being filled with the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, I believe Paul is talking in Romans 8 about a fuller dimension of entering into what God has provided for us: to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Some of God’s dear people had this experience initially, but the picture I have in my mind is that after they got across the Jordan, they sat down on the bank of the Jordan and started fishing for tadpoles. You know what tadpoles are: little bitty frogs before they become frogs.
Rather than entering in, some of us are just sitting there with a fishing pole in our hands, trying to catch little fish. Brothers and sisters, there is an unlimited experience ahead of us, and it involves becoming sons and entering into our inheritance.
I know there is an inheritance aspect that we can talk about tomorrow. Romans 8:23 speaks of “eagerly waiting for our adoption as sons.” We have already received it, yet we still have to wait for it. Why does Paul not make up his mind?
If we have already got it, how can we wait for it? Because there are two dimensions.
When John the Baptist began to preach and our Lord Jesus began to preach, it was a new era, a new beginning, in the work of God’s recovery. The message of John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus was, “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Yet our Lord taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” How can it come if it is already here? How can we eagerly wait for our sonship if we are already sons and have already received it?
Because it has a beginning, it has a process, and it has a culmination. We are to experience both dimensions. We need to receive the Spirit of sonship into our hearts. I believe Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit.
When you begin to read Romans 8, it is not always easy to determine whether Paul is talking about the Holy Spirit or the human spirit. He says, “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit.” In the original text, there were no capital and lowercase letters to make that distinction.
But it seems to me that the coming of the Holy Spirit was God’s way of allowing us to enter into that great salvation. That great salvation includes becoming sons and entering into the experience of sonship.
Let us consider together some of the benefits of receiving the Spirit of sonship.
In Romans 8:2, Paul says:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
Some translations say, “set you free,” while some manuscripts say, “set me free.” I think it is “me” because of the previous verses in what we call Romans 7. Chapter divisions were not there when Paul wrote; he wrote the whole document.
I think he continues in Romans 8 talking about being set free: “Who will set me free from this body?” The law of the Spirit sets him free from the law of sin and death.
What the Lord would do for Paul, guess what, brothers and sisters? He will do for you, too. He wants to set you free in experience—not merely in theory and not merely in doctrine.
It is good for us to know doctrine, but sometimes you can have the experience before you know the doctrine. Is that not what happened on the day of Pentecost? Did Peter stand up and say, “Now this is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit”? No. The Holy Spirit came down upon them, and then he explained what had happened.
We are sometimes so set on getting our doctrine laid down straight that it becomes a substitute for, or an interference with, experience. Sometimes we trust more in our minds and our ability to understand than we do in what God wants us to experience.
The Spirit of life is none other than the blessed Holy Spirit. He has come to live inside of us. Look at Romans 8:9:
But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.
In this experience Paul is talking about in Romans 8, the Spirit of God comes to dwell in us. You remember John 14, when the Lord was preparing His disciples for the fact that He was going to be gone. He said, “I will send you another Comforter.” Where would He be? He would be with you and in you.
Notice that Paul does not make a distinction between the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of Christ. He says, “If indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you,” and then, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ.”
Brothers and sisters, this means that the Christ who came to live in Jesus of Nazareth has now come to live in you and me. He is the Spirit of life.
How did our Lord Jesus live a perfect life? He lived because of the life that was in Him. He was obedient to this life—divine life, uncreated life, resurrection life, eternal life. He lived out of it.
That same life has been given to us. It is inside of us. But some of us are unaware that living inside of us is the same One who lived in Jesus of Nazareth and caused Him to live a life absolutely perfect and totally pleasing to the heavenly Father.
How do you expect to live in a way pleasing to your heavenly Father as a son? Only if you discover for yourself—not merely a doctrine, though doctrine may lead us to the experience—that God has placed within you the Spirit of His Son, the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of God.
Anybody here not know the difference between elephants and eagles? Most of us know there is a big difference, right? You can tell an elephant from an eagle.
What is the difference between elephants and eagles? Not including Dumbo. What can Dumbo do that elephants cannot do? He can fly. He uses his ears and flies. Some of you do not even know who Dumbo is, okay? That is all right. It just means you are a couple of years younger than some of us.
What enables an eagle to fly and an elephant not to fly? What enables an elephant to do its big, heavy work, which an eagle cannot do? It is life.
The life that an eagle has is eagle life. It does not have elephant life. What kind of life does an elephant have? Not eagle life, but elephant life.
If you try to get an elephant to fly, you have a big problem. “O wretched man that I am!” This is what Paul was trying to do. He was trying to fly with his old elephant life—his flesh, his old man, who he was in Adam. What did he discover? Impossible.
This is a glorious day in the life of any one of God’s children: when they discover that elephants cannot fly; that your old man, your flesh, is hostile toward God, is not subject to the will of God, and cannot do the will of God.
I have not heard one amen. I have not heard one amen. You will not believe it until you go out and try, as an elephant, to fly like an eagle.
Yesterday, when we were coming across the bridge, I looked out the window and saw a seagull. He was up there with his wings open. He was not moving; he was just enjoying the wind as it came in.
How could he fly? He simply trusted the life within him. Brothers and sisters, whose life is in you?
I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
My dear brothers and sisters, this is the Christian life. This is the Christian life. This is the Christian life.
The Christian life is not merely going to meetings, though it includes going to meetings. The Christian life is not merely reading your Bible. The Christian life is allowing the Holy Spirit to use all of that so that there will be an increase of the life of Christ within us and we experience more and more of that life.
That life enables us, like the seagull, simply to spread our wings and take advantage of this new law operating in our lives.
There is a law that regulates the seagull and enables it to fly. There is a law regulating everything God has created, including that seagull. There is a law that enables the elephant to do what it does.
There is also a law of sin and death. Where is it located? In our old man, in our flesh. The flesh cannot do the will of God.
God, in His great wisdom and great mercy, has put life inside of us. He wants every one of His dear children to discover this life and live out of it on a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment basis.
God, deliver us from Christian legalism that causes us to try to take our old flesh and make it better.
God has only one solution for the old man. You know what it is? Execution—crucifixion. He carried it out when His Son was crucified.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away.
As I keep saying to my dear brothers and sisters, there is only one kind of sinner that can stop sinning. What kind is it? A dead one. A crucified one.
Some of us try to prove God wrong, as Paul did. He tried to prove that there was a different way than being crucified. Who won the battle? Who won the argument? The Lord did.
After all his effort and all his energy, Paul came to his own experience and found out that there is a law of sin causing us to do things we do not want to do, and a law of death preventing us from doing things we know we should do.
What does Paul say? Therefore, there is now no condemnation. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free. We can fly like a bird.
It is like Isaiah 40. I thought perhaps Brother Dana was going to steal both Romans 8 and Isaiah 40 from me last night.
But they that wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
they shall walk, and not faint.
What does it mean to wait on the Lord? A number of years ago, I was trying to gain some clarity about Isaiah 40. I said, “Lord, what does it mean to wait on You?”
I was sitting in my office in southwest Florida. I turned and looked out the window for a little meditation. There was a wire running across, and the Holy Spirit said, “There is your answer.”
It was a telephone wire. It was not strong enough to support itself in the wind, so they put a wire cable in the center and wrap the other wire around it, enabling it to depend upon the strength of the central cable.
The Lord said, “That is what it means to wait on the Lord,” because in the original language it means to be united by twisting. United by twisting.
Christ in you, and you in Christ—does that sound like twisting to you? It does to me. Christ gets His life into us and enables us to live in a way that humanly, naturally, Adamically, we cannot live.
There is only one who can live this life. Brothers and sisters, this would be such glorious good news if some of us here this morning would realize that there is only one person in the universe who can live the Christian life. Only one.
It is not you and me by ourselves. It is our Lord Jesus Christ.
God, in His great wisdom, has placed Him in us so that the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus can liberate us, cause us to spread our wings in faith, and begin to fly like eagles and seagulls.
Notice Romans 8:4. The reason God puts this new life in us and encourages us to live according to this law is:
That the ordinance of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
I want us to see what the result is of living according to this new life. The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us.
Remember where God said He was going to write His law? He was going to put it into our minds and write it on our hearts. Something internal, something spiritual, something happening inside—not something outward or imposed upon us, but something working within us.
If we obey that law, what will happen? We will fulfill the requirements of the law—the law that Paul found he could not keep.
How do we keep it? It is no longer us keeping it. The Law-Keeper has come to live inside. Hallelujah!
Oh, this is good news, brothers and sisters. You do not have to try harder and harder and harder to make your old man keep the law. First of all, it is impossible.
Some of you will not believe it. It may take another twenty years of failing, falling flat on your face, trying and trying again. I hope it does not take too much. I hope before too many days go by, you become so frustrated that you fall on your face as Paul did and say, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall set me free from this body?”
Brothers and sisters, we can be free from that old law operating in our Adamic nature, because a new law has been placed within us.
I hope you know my encouragement for us this morning: discover this, people. Some of you young, dear brothers and sisters, listen. You do not have to wait as long as some of us. You do not have to be as hard-headed as some of us.
You can begin today. You can say to your blessed High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ, “I want to learn it. I want to know this. I want to experience what Paul talks about in Romans 8 for myself.”
You do not have to be gray-headed for this to operate in your life. Unfortunately, for many of us, it is after we become gray-headed that we begin to discover some of these realities. But it does not have to be that way.
My young brother and sister, if you have only known the Lord a few weeks or a few months, you can begin to experience this. You will not do everything right. Sometimes you will close your wings when you should not. For whatever reason, you become afraid, or something else happens, and you fall down.
What will the Holy Spirit say? He is the great Encourager: “Get up and try again. Let us go at it again.”
Picture a nest of baby eagles. How do you think they learn to fly? The mother and father begin to tear up the nest. Then the young eagles have to be taken out and dropped, because otherwise they will stay in the nest all the time and never learn how to fly.
They will simply stay there and let Mom and Dad bring all the food. But eventually, the parents take them out, drop them, and let them fall. Then they come down underneath and catch them before they reach the ground.
Our Lord will do that for you. Yes, He will. He wants you to learn how to fly. He wants you to learn how to walk by the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit.
There is a tremendous need among us—not merely individually, but in whole assemblies. We need to learn to hear the voice of the Lord and to be led by Him.
We cannot simply go by our best intuitions, our best ideas, suggestions from other people, or what we read in books. “A purpose-driven church.” “Twenty easy things to do to have a perfect church.” It seems to me you can do those things without the Holy Spirit.
I am sorry if I am being critical, but brothers and sisters, this is a serious problem among us. We as Americans are so creative, so ingenious. We can always create new ways of doing old things.
Then we bring it into the church because it works so well—sometimes, apparently, better than what the Holy Spirit is doing—so we go for it. But look at where it has led us. How did we ever get to the place where we are so hopelessly divided? Is that the work of the Holy Spirit?
I am sorry, brothers and sisters. Somebody’s flesh produced something that is a disgrace to the testimony of the Lord Jesus.
It will not be easy. When you began to learn to walk, did anybody here stand up once, never fall down, and walk perfectly from the first step? Anybody? Why do we think we can do it in the Spirit?
We need to give ourselves freedom to fail. You know what the alternative is? Never to walk. If you are so afraid of falling down, you will never walk.
Some of us are afraid because we have received bad information, bad vibes from other people, or seen horrible things done by people who claimed they were being led by the Spirit. We have become turned off, afraid, and suspicious.
I want to say to us: you do not need to be suspicious of the Holy Spirit. Oh, we need to learn how to discern, but how do you learn to discern? Sometimes by doing it wrong the first time.
How did you discover that some food does not taste good? Why do some of you not like asparagus? Did you know before you ever tasted it? You just looked at it and said, “I do not like this.” Some children do that.
That is not how you discover how wonderful asparagus is. You could spend your whole life not liking asparagus and never taste it.
Some of the people who think they are experts on the Holy Spirit are people who have never had a deep experience. It has been my little bit of experience that only people who do not know by experience the filling of the Holy Spirit are the experts who say, “You do not need to be filled; you get it all when you believe in the Lord Jesus.”
I have no doubt that when we are in Christ, it is all there. But are you telling me that you experienced every bit of it the moment you received the Lord Jesus? You entered into your Canaan land simply by putting your foot down on the other side of the Jordan? I do not think so.
There is much for us to possess. The blessed Holy Spirit has been sent to bring us into it.
Paul also tells us something very wonderful here. Brother Stephen has already mentioned this. It is impossible to fellowship about these things and not overlap one another.
Paul says in Romans 8:16–17:
The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are children of God:
and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ;
if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified with Him.
More than twenty years ago, I was having a conversation with a brother in New York who worked in a mental-health clinic. He was speaking with one of the psychiatrists, someone he thought was pretty level-headed.
They were talking about what common thing causes people mental and emotional problems. This psychiatrist said to my friend, “Everyone is looking for a father.”
We are affected either positively or negatively by this matter. When the psychiatrist said that to my believing friend, he said, “I just smiled, and in my heart I said, ‘Thank God, I found Him.’”
We have a perfect Father. I do not know all that means, but it is something we were created to need.
The Holy Spirit, this blessed Holy Spirit who came as the Spirit of life, now testifies in our spirit. What does He say? “You are sons of God.”
You are His own blood-bought children, begotten of Him. He has put His life inside of you. You have been born again and become a child of God, a member of His family.
Then there is a response from our spirit. What does it say? When I go home to Brazil, my little three-year-old son will say, “Abba. Good to have you home, Papa.”
He is the only one in Brazil who can call me that. Nobody else can call me that. Why? Because I am his father.
My dear brothers and sisters, God has made you His child. If you will listen, if you will let the Holy Spirit testify, if you will become still long enough and concentrate enough to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, He will convince you by the truth that you are a child of God.
There should be a response from your heart: “Father.” It is not merely a title. It is an endearing term that can come only within the relationship between a father and a child.
Included in this matter of being heirs is God’s promise to Abraham that the land would become his inheritance. There are people who believe, including myself, that the land of Canaan represents the Lord Jesus Christ in analogy.
It is a land flowing with milk and honey. It is a land in which you do not need anything else—not now, not tomorrow, not ever. All you will ever need is in our Lord Jesus.
Is this not wonderful? God has given us everything, and it is all located in one place: in our Lord Jesus. He is our Canaan land. He is our promised land. All we need to enter into rest and fullness is in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “You are children of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.”
“If indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may be glorified with Him.” Brother Stephen has already mentioned this matter this morning. My understanding is that it has two dimensions. One has to do with character, and the other has to do with position or responsibility.
Time will not permit us to go into it, but I will direct you to Revelation 20 for you to read on your own. You cannot experience the second dimension of glory until you experience the first.
The only way that you and I are qualified to sit on the throne of the universe and reign with Christ is not merely to receive a glorified body; we also need a glorified soul—a soul formed into the character of our Lord Jesus.
Think about the responsibility, my brothers and sisters, of sharing the throne of the universe with the Son of God. “They shall reign for ever and ever.” Do you think He will allow anybody to sit on that throne regardless of their character?
Suppose that on my way back to Brazil, I get to Kennedy Airport, board the airplane, and the captain makes an announcement: “I want to be truthful with you, passengers. When they taught us how to fly the airplane, I did not feel like going to class that day. I can get it in the air, but I cannot get it down.”
How many are going to stay on the plane?
Brothers and sisters, do you see? Is our Lord going to put us into a position of this kind of responsibility if we do not have the character, training, and ability to fulfill it? Absolutely not.
We need to be glorified. We need to have our character transformed. This is what the Holy Spirit is committed to. This is what He wants to do.
He wants to produce genuine sons—male and female sons—who have the character and qualifications, those whom God can trust.
He does not want another Adam. Adam failed, and you and I were born in Adam. We have a failing nature. We cannot help ourselves. God cannot trust us as to who we are in Adam.
So His way is to put us in Christ and put Christ in us so that we have the character of His Son within us.
We will fellowship more about how we become glorified if we suffer with Him. None of us want to volunteer for suffering. We think it is all free, and it is. But character is not free.
We find in Hebrews 12 that those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines. He trains them. He equips them. He builds character so that they may share His holiness.
Dear brothers and sisters, this matter of being called by God is a calling that includes such a destiny that sometimes I think about it and say, “Ernie, you must be crazy.” All of this is available.
But then I get sober again and realize: yes, this is what the Word of God teaches. He took me out of the gutter, and this is my destiny—not because of anything I did. This is all His grace, this amazing, amazing, amazing grace.
He takes us from being sinners, rebels, and enemies, and our destiny is to sit with our Lord Jesus Christ on the throne.
This kind of hope enables us to endure difficult circumstances and sufferings. The Holy Spirit either permits them or specifically designs them. Have you ever heard of designer suffering? The Holy Spirit designs it just for you.
There is a condition. It is not automatic; it is conditioned. We need to be willing to say, “Lord, whatever. Let me see what You are doing.”
The blessed Holy Spirit has been sent to do all of this work. I want to encourage you to stand with me and look out on the expanse of all that is to come: becoming sons, with the character of our blessed Lord formed in us.
Remember what Paul said to the Galatians:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
Not merely dwelling in you, not merely a doctrine, but Christ formed in you. This is what God has planned.
Father, we want to say to You this morning that we see, in a poor way, how You really are the Father of mercies.
Where we were, where we were headed, and our hopelessness did not discourage You. You did something beyond our ability to understand. You did something that made it possible for us to be forgiven of all those stupid things, all those hurtful things, and all those dishonoring things.
You have begun a work in us to transform us into the character of Your Son.
This morning, Lord, we just want to say that we are so glad You want us to be sons. We are glad that we are Your children and that You want us to become sons. You want to place us in that position as sons.
Please, blessed Holy Spirit of the living God, come and help us. You are our Help. You are our Encourager. Come and encourage us, even right now, to say to our beloved Father, “Complete Your work in us.”
We ask it in Jesus’ name.