Romans – The Play Part 3

Therefore, in the light of all that mess, I am having no condemnation. I got no condemnation. I don’t want to pray. I don’t want to read the Bible. I don’t want to go to church. I don’t want to tithe. I’d rather keep that money for myself. I got all these things I want to do. And the next thing I look up and I read, Therefore, there is now no condemnation. Praise God. Karen, there is no condemnation.

Isn’t that wonderful? Praise the Lord, sister. Do you understand there is no condemnation? For all those feelings, there is no condemnation. None. No condemnation. Yes. I hope this gets in some way preserved. I don’t know what to do with it. Okay. It’s done.

All right, now I’ll go ahead and read this. Therefore, in the light of all this mess and all of this truth that I’m finally willing to admit, there is no condemnation. Why? Because I am inside of Jesus Christ. You just try to reach me. Oh, fundamentalists try to reach me.  You legalists out there, try to reach me. Put me under a pile. Go ahead and tell me all the things I ought to do that I cannot do. You will not find me. I have died to all law.

I am inside of Jesus Christ. Can’t find me, Penny. And it can’t find you. And since this is where the Christian life begins, it begins in this freedom. This is where you start. Actually, we don’t start there. We start getting saved. Then we get under some kind of bondage from ourselves and our need to try to please God—that is so much a part of everyone. And then we come, and we must discover this moment that we are in Christ. There’s no condemnation, and there are no expectations.

Listen, you don’t get saved by grace and preserved by works. You get saved by grace, and you walk by grace. There is nothing that God expected that you could do to get saved. There is nothing God is expecting out of you to perform the Christian life in its essence. That is His business.

I want to refer you back to a message I hope most of you have heard. There is only one Christian. And it is not the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the Father. And the Son said, I can do nothing of myself. What I do, I do by means of my Father’s life. And I am in the same situation. There’s nothing I can do as a Jew or a Christian to come to these high and holy things. It is His life alone that can live the Christian life. Therefore, there is no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the principle—the law of the Spirit of His life, His life, a higher form of life, the highest form of life, there is the divine life—God, this has freed me from the law of Moses and has freed me from the law of sin and death. It is His life which is spirit in me. For what the Christian life was powerless to do, in that it was weak by my nature, God did. Say it!  God did. God has done it. God did it by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so, He condemned sin in me in order that the righteous requirements of the Christian life might be fully met in me. Praise the Lord! In order that the righteous requirements of the Christian life might be met in me.

Now praise the Lord, by His Spirit, I don’t live by my sinful nature. Explain that, Gene. I cannot explain that. I can tell you this: In nineteen hundred and sixty-three, I came to peace with the fact that I, Gene Edwards, could not live the Christian life. And that has run as a thread through my life. You don’t know what that did to me until this very hour—what it did to me—but I found a new relationship to everything. And I’m not telling you I am any better off than I was that day in Texas when that happened to me, but I am telling you I am free from the law, and I am free from the Christian standard and all that is expected of me by other Christians and what I have put upon myself. And I know that I live according to the Spirit. There is a life in me, and I have made peace with that life. I expect the Lord Jesus Christ to live the Christian life. And I have come to peace with the fact that I cannot.

Brothers and sisters, this is the book of Romans. It is Romans 7. You’re going to have a head-on collision with Romans 7 if you have not. At some time in your life, you’re going to discover a wretched man that you are. You’re going to discover the utter sinfulness of sin. You’re going to discover your utter inability to be a Christian.

And when you do, I hope you discover Jesus Christ and nothing else. I don’t even know what to say to you after that. I wouldn’t even say, put your hope in that. I am just saying that you will discover Him. It’s free from the law, oh happy condition; I wish it said free from the Christian life, oh happy condition.

What you do, you do under the impetus of His life. You do under the relaxed state of His doing it. I hate to say this. I’m going to get quoted, I’m sure—if it’s comfortable, do it. I’m talking about being a Christian. If you can’t handle it, then grow a little bit more in His life, and you may be able to handle it. I don’t know what year I’m going to die, but I expect to meet Romans 7 in the last year I ever live. And I am going to find myself saying, Oh, wretched man that I am, but intend to find Romans 8 right after it. Therefore, now, there is no condemnation to those who are inside of Jesus Christ. And that’s where I will begin my Christian life, right there. And there is no other place.

I beg of you to lay down your battle trying to live the Christian life because you’re gonna lose. Lay it down, saint. It’ll be the best day you have ever lived.