Romans – The Play Part 9, Ep 2

This is the law of sin. Here’s the law of sin working with the weakness of the flesh. And poor little Joni is wanting to do good. This is you. Are you with me? Do you understand? Okay, one more time. Now, Joni, go to the good. I’m taking you to the new villain: death. And here’s Joni, wanting to do good. There’s a Baptist preacher over here yelling, “You can do it, you can do it!” Well, y’all sitting here, you’re not trying hard enough. This is why the gospel is so ineffective in our Christian lives.

Those of you on the tape don’t know what’s going on here, do you? I’m looking at the video camera. Joni was trying to move over here toward the law of good, but three, one person about her size first, and it was a pretty even struggle, but then, the law of sin and death drew Joni away from her desire to do good. Now, Joni, you’ve had that experience. Say amen. And, you know, it’s not just good and bad. It’s other things. You just want to stop worrying and getting despondent and moody and all those things. And I’m not sure that that’s the law of sin and death. That is probably nothing in the world but the enormous damage that Joni experienced in the fall. I want to explain this to you.

When God created us, He created us with a spirit, a soul, and a body. When the spirit died, the soul ascended. The spirit went from first place to third place because it had died. Now the soul was in first place, but the body is indwelt with sin. Now, I’m not going into all the verses on this, but please make sure you understand that I’m speaking of the body and the body alone. Sin which indwells your members. Sin, a living thing. It has been called the embodiment of satanic life. Sin: a form of life, if you please, angelic life form, expressed in the expression of sin.

This foreign element has come into your body. Your spirit refused to live in the same triplex with it. And rather than live there, this holy thing simply died. The soul, that which is you, ascended but became very different. Enlarged. One of the reasons was that it had to fill up the hole where the spirit had once functioned. It enlarges into the things of the spirit. But there’s no spirit there. You get a lot of false signals. There’s damage to you. The soul is not functioning properly; it is damaged. And the spirit’s down here dead and inoperative. The flesh, the body, is indwelt by sin and ceases to be your body any longer but becomes a mutation. It becomes your flesh. It moves from body to flesh.

Saints, there are dozens of scriptures that make this evident and clear in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Sin dwells there and enlarges its conquest of the body. Love becomes lust. Imagination becomes vain imagination. The love of serenity becomes, for some, a love to be a monk, and for others, the desire to just feast themselves on a constant, you know, sunsets and all that. Someone else’s love of music, and yet an insatiable desire for more and more music, ends up with acid rock. I mean, it just goes on and on. The natural desire or need for food turns into gluttony; obesity, and gluttony. And what happens is the flesh ascends to the highest place. It is now in control. And this is what we saw in Joni a minute ago. The flesh pulls Joni away from the law of good. And you have an inversion. It was once like this: spirit, soul, and body. Now it is flesh, soul, and the spirit’s on the bottom. That which was to be in the ascendancy is now in the lowest place. And that which was to have the least place now has the greatest strength; now has the greatest strength.

What shall we do, oh wretched man that we are? What shall we ever do? Precious little. Would you all please come back up here again? We have a sister in big trouble. Let’s see if we can get her out of this. Would you all come back up here, please, again? Okay. I tell you what, this is very weak flesh. If she fails anymore, we’re going to put sin and death over there. Okay, and Joni’s a very strong-willed person, by the way, and I’m not kidding you. Now, Joni, you’re looking over here to the law of good and God’s law, and your inner man is after this. This is—the soul is—the inner man. The soul wishes to do good and can’t. Every time Joni looks over here at these things, she goes and does the opposite thing.

Now then, thank God, there comes the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ. And puts to death the law of sin. And with death, puts death to death. You two are gone. Alright. Now, praise the Lord. Amen. Rejoice. Praise the Lord. Look what God in Christ has done for you. Amen.

Now then, we have a problem here, saints. And even though this too has been put to death in a way that I cannot understand and has been confined to her body, and it is no longer Joni but sin that dwells in her. And Christ has dealt with this; in His viewpoint, He has totally made Joni righteous. Nonetheless, the deeds of the flesh are there. Joni has to put those deeds away. But now there—Joni. Just Joni. There’s Joni, who in herself has many, many needs. Now Joni is saved, but Joni cannot still live the Christian life. She does not have the engine within her to be divine. The Christian life is a divine activity.

Now what is going to happen? And I’m going to tell you that there is going to be a battle in Joni’s mind. Now two things are going to happen to Joni. One of them is that the flesh is going to be put away. Nonetheless, there’s something that’s still here. Joni, reckon it dead. Reckon it’s dead. That’s fine, sister, go ahead. Reckon it dead, Joni. Okay, that’s fine. Vicki, come here. There is still something hanging around. And sometimes, Joni, you really want to go this way. Not really, you want to go this way. It’s a very confusing thing, and I’m not going to try to mix it up with terms, because I have to tell you frankly, I don’t fully understand this. I can only understand that in the eyes of God, this has been dealt with. But I am told that if Joni will set her mind on the things of the flesh, she will obey the things of the flesh. But if she sets her mind on the things of the Spirit, she will follow the things of the Spirit.

Sometimes Joni doesn’t do either one. She doesn’t set her mind on the flesh or on the Spirit. She just sets her mind on getting dishes done. Now, what kind of situation is she in at that moment? When she’s doing the dishes? Huh? Vulnerable? Ha ha ha. No, dear saint. Oh, I mean, vulnerable, perhaps, but let me tell you something. Joni’s got to understand that she’s as righteous as Jesus Christ at that moment. That there is nothing in the world wrong with doing the dishes. And this is wonderful. But Gene, her mind is not set on Spirit. And you’re too religious. And, you know, I’m going to say this, remind you again. Joni, if we can succeed in getting you to truly be, according to your own standard, in Spirit – your standard, not God’s – and your standard in Spirit, fifteen minutes a day, we’re headed for a revolution. A real revolution. That’s fourteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds more than most believers. Fifteen minutes a day would be great. Just great.

But, Joni, even when you don’t sense that you’re in the Lord’s Spirit, you are in Him. You are in Him, and you are righteous. And there’s a lot of ground that has to be taken in you, Joni, to really appreciate these simple things. Just an awful lot. Nonetheless, something wonderful has happened. Something wonderful has been added to Joni’s life, and that is a higher form of life. A higher form of life than the flesh with its sin and death. Because this was a higher form of life than Joni, and therefore, Joni didn’t stand a prayer, because Joni is human. But when Christ came into Joni’s life, unfortunately, nobody told Joni this; now you’re being told. And you’re being told that in that moment, the Spirit of God came and lived in you. And what happened when the Spirit of God came and dwelt in you? What happened? You don’t remember. In the moment that the Spirit of Christ came, the Spirit of the Lord came and dwelt in you. What happened? Our spirits became alive. Your spirit became alive, and you were made one with Him, and then you were put in the Spirit. You are in the Spirit, if the Spirit is in you.