Romans – The Play Part 6

There is both stated and implied that the work of the Holy Spirit is to make up the difference between what is real in God’s view and how you’ve got to live in this present world. Now, you are justified, correct? Say amen, please. Say amen. You are dead to sin. Sin is dead to you. You’re dead to the law. The law is dead to you. You are righteous. Completely righteous. And this is not something you reckon. I mean, you can reckon if you want to consider, but this is reality, and yet, tomorrow morning, I will have a fight with my wife after having preached this glorious message tonight. You, in turn, are going to do something really bad. And yet, you know that it is not you, but sin that dwells in you. But all the verses in the Bible are not going to help you one bit. You’re going to know you did it. And you’re not going to feel like “the devil made me do it.” And you’re not going to be able to say, “It was no longer I but sin that dwells in my flesh.”

You’re going to know that the Holy Spirit has awakened and raised from the dead your spirit, and it’s perfect. Your soul has been saved and redeemed. The flesh has been locked out, and it is sin, and sin has been dealt with. And in the sight of God, sin is dead in relationship to you, and you are dead in relationship to sin. But you’re going to do something, and you’re going to read that verse, and it’s not going to mean a thing in this world to you. It’s not going to mean anything to you. And you’re going to say, “Boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. That stuff Gene brought sure did taste good while I was listening to it.”

Well, praise the Lord. There is, in another realm, all that is real. And in this realm, a lot that’s not real. Nonetheless, you’ve got to live with what’s not real. And I see in this passage the ministry of the Holy Spirit making up the difference. And what you’re not able to remember, what you’re not able to reckon, and what sometimes you just plain, simple, flat do not deal with.

You’re not married, Ollie. You don’t know how fast you can get angry with your wife. Does anybody else have this problem? You’re just as happily married as you can be until some little thing happens. Just like that, you find yourself yelling at your wife. You don’t do that, do you? But you, what? Okay, fine. Same thing, or whatever it is. Mine just look bigger. I paint mine in reds and yellows. Your wife does the same thing. She’s just the sweetest little gal you’ve met in your life, and she’s living in the Spirit. She loves the Lord. And then, boy, that’s alright. It’s what comes after that hurts so bad. It’s the backlash of living with yourself.

And in Christ, there is no condemnation. The Lord does not condemn you. I mean, no matter what happens, Jesus Christ is not going to condemn you. And I wish you could really believe that. But you’re standing there, and sometimes you’re having a really difficult time handling your own view of yourself. Well, thank you, Robert. Amen. It’s really true. I have this problem; maybe you do not. If you do not, you’re probably not married. And I realize that most of the singles do, but I can tell you it gets a lot worse. It’s a lot worse. It’s just a lot worse. And this passage deals with telling us what the Holy Spirit has done concerning our flesh.

Now, what did we learn last night, or the other night, that the Spirit had done in dealing with the deeds of our flesh? Can you help us all just a little bit? A little louder, please. You’re in the Spirit, you’re not in the flesh, because the Spirit dwells in you. And because Christ is in you, your body has died, and the Spirit has given you His righteousness. Alright. The Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead has now done something else. What has He done? What? Alright. Let me just put it this way.

Up until right now, Paul has relegated everything to the body and even pushed it out of the body into the flesh. The whole matter of concern is way over there. And he finally says to you all of these glorious, wonderful promises, all of these things that you are now, everything that is going on in your life, that you will mortify the deeds of your body; because the Holy Spirit is in you, you’re going to do this. And then he says, and don’t forget: if the Father can raise Jesus Christ from the dead and give Him a spiritual body, then that same God and that same Spirit can also do the same with your body.

Now, let me just tell you something here, saints. I have never been a pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die Christian. You know the old saying: pie in the sky when you die by and by? Or pie in the sky by and by when you die? I have never been a Christian who has said, “Oh, it’s rough down here. I can’t wait till we get to heaven. Oh, I sinned today, but oh, one day we’re going to get to heaven.” It sounds so… icky. It’s a cop-out. That’s right. It’s a cop-out. But I want to tell you something: there’s truth in it. There’s truth in it. There is a sense when nothing else will comfort you, when you’re sitting there having yelled at somebody, you have lost your temper, you have done something that has just really laid you out flat, to remember that all of this has been relegated to one small area, and even that has been dealt with in the eyes of God, that is as dealt with as the resurrection. As the resurrection.

But when nothing else will help you, remember that you have a spirit raised from the dead that is perfect. You have a soul that is redeemed and is being made into the image of Jesus Christ. If God raised Him from the dead—Him whose body became sin, His flesh became sin, and your flesh was in it—and God condemned His flesh, which had become sin, and your flesh in it, because your flesh, having sin in it, was in Him and it was condemned, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled—that the righteousness of the law is fulfilled.

If that God who took this terrible body of Jesus Christ—may I put it that way? Because His mortal body had become sin. All sin of all time, of all space, of all space-time, and all dimension, in all creation – and yet raised Him up a spiritual creature who was both visible, yet who could eat fish on the shores of Galilee, who could walk through a wall and come into a room and yet hold His hand out and say to Thomas, “There it is. Put your hand in it – the wound.” A totally spiritual body. If He can do that to Jesus Christ, the same God will have no problem whatsoever in one day swapping off the only problem you’ve got left. Now say, “Praise the Lord” to that. And you and I need to have this attitude. We are exhorted to have this attitude—that this is a better attitude than going around thinking about how terrible you are, because a Christian ought not to do that. Tom? Yeah. Good. Oliver, a Christian, ought not to do that. You are not going to be growing in the Lord a whole lot with that kind of sight of yourself, because it’s not God’s sight.

I’m going to stop there by saying: The Lord has given you His Spirit. The same Spirit that raised Jesus Christ from the dead will put an end to the last problem you are aware of in space and time, on this earth. Would you try to develop that sense just a little bit? I don’t want us to be cop-out Christians. But it is good to know where the last vestige of our problem lies.