Paul starts this section by stating there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. He then indicates the failure of the law to save, but that sin is condemned. In verse 5 we see that the unregenerate person has their minds set on things of the flesh yet we see that those who live by the Spirit are spiritually-minded. Dr. Sproul walks us through the parallel phrases comparing and contrasting the carnal unbeliever with the spiritual believer.

As we move further into chapter 8 this evening, I will start again at verse 1, since I only covered that briefly last week, and read through verse 11. I will ask the congregation to stand for the reading of the Word of God:

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not 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 who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

The good news of the gospel, of God’s gospel, from God’s Word. Please be seated. Let us pray.

O Lord, as we come to this majestic treatment of the work of Christ through which we are redeemed, we pray that the Holy Spirit will intercede for us because of our weakness, that we may understand these things set forth here for our edification, that this may not simply be an exercise of tickling our minds with knowledge, but rather that these things may awaken our souls to praise and thanksgiving for the glory of the mercy we have received in Christ. For we pray in His Name. Amen.

No Condemnation

Last week, in our conclusion of our study of the end of chapter 7, we saw that the “therefore” in Romans 8:1 not only points to the end of chapter 7 but to all that had preceded the first verse of chapter 8, where Paul declares, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” I remind you that the Apostle’s announcement is that those who are Christians have been placed beyond the reach of the condemnation of God. That condemnation refers to the last judgment, the outpouring of God’s wrath in what the Scriptures describe as damnation.

I realize that we live in a time where people look askance at any idea of wrath in God and believe that there is no room for damnation whatsoever, but when we do that, we are like people who whistle as we walk past graveyards. There is damnation that is certain to come. The Latin text here translates the Greek that the English renders as “condemnation” by the word damnationis. There is the Latin counterpart to our English language, and we could render the text this way: “There is now therefore no damnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” comma.

What follows after the comma may raise a bit of a question to us, at least for a moment. “There is no condemnation,” or damnation, “to those who are in Christ Jesus,” comma, “who do not walk according to the flesh,” comma, “but according to the Spirit.”

We have already mentioned the problematic theology that has found its way widely in the Christian world today that teaches that people can be in Christ and not be filled with the Spirit, such that they are carnal Christians—that is, even though they are in Christ, their lives are still defined by carnality because they have not received Christ as Lord. He has been received as Savior, and all one has to do to be saved is accept Jesus as Savior, according to this view. In this understanding, there is hope that those who embrace Christ as Savior will at some point later on embrace him as Lord. But this theology teaches that it is perfectly possible, and in fact happens with some degree of regularity, that people come to that first stop on the way to final salvation as they confess Jesus, receive Him as Lord, and are justified and saved, but they remain carnal. The self is still on the throne of their lives. They are not filled with the Spirit, and so there is no significant change in the constituent nature of their lives, but their status has changed eternally. They are now redeemed in Christ even though they remain carnal. As have said, that is a deadly theology and creates a false sense of security by giving assurance to people who are not Christians that, in fact, they are Christians and have nothing to fear.

Someone could look at the punctuation of this verse where it says, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” comma, “who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” and argue that the terms could be restrictive, meaning that condemnation has been removed from all Christians who are not carnal Christians. That is one way we could read the punctuation. The idea then would be saying that condemnation has been removed from the Spirit-filled Christian but not from the carnal Christian. The carnal Christian, even though he is in Christ, is still exposed to the threat of damnation or condemnation. But that is really not anywhere close to what the Apostle is teaching in this text.

Paul is saying that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus because those who are in Christ Jesus do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The assumption of the Apostle is that anyone who is truly converted—anyone who is in Christ and in whom Christ dwells—is a person who does not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. The idea of a carnal Christian is as far away from the Apostolic teaching as one can get.

The Law Cannot Save

We read then that Paul says in verse 2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Here again there is this confusing use of the term “law*.*” Sometimes Paul uses the term “law” to refer to a principle, other times he uses the term “law” to refer to the moral standards by which God judges us. In this case, he uses in the next breath the idea of the law as those standards, but in the first instance he is talking about the law as a principle.

Paul says there are two principles at work here. The first principle is the principle of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ. That principle of life in Jesus Christ makes us free from the life or principle that is defined by sin and death. When you are in Christ, you live life. When you are not in Christ, you operate by the principle of sin. It is sin that defines your existence, and the natural consequence of the sin that defines your existence is death.

Paul switches his meaning of the use of the word “law” in verse 3, when he says, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin.” Paul begins here by speaking of the impotency of the moral law, of the failure of the moral law at a certain place and at a certain point. He is saying that the law does not do something because it is incapable of doing it. He says, “For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh”—what the law could not possibly do is what he has been laboring throughout this letter to the Roman Christians, the law cannot save. The law cannot justify. The law cannot redeem.

It is as if the Holy Spirit knows how weak we are in our grasp of the gospel and how, like dogs returning to their vomit, we keep falling back to the idea that somehow we can justify ourselves by our behavior, by our good deeds, by our morality. Paul has repeatedly come at this from every different angle to get rid of that idea and brush off the spot where that idea once stood. He says that the law cannot do it; it is impotent to save.

Not only does the law not save, beloved, but the reason it does not save, Paul argues, is because it cannot. It does not have the power. Paul is not being critical of the law. This weakness is not the law’s fault. The reason the law cannot redeem you is because the law cannot redeem those people who are in the flesh. People who are in the flesh are incapable of obeying the law. When people who are in the flesh look to the law as a means of their salvation, they are exercising futility and reaching for an impossible dream. It cannot happen.

The Son Saves

Look at the contrast here: What the law was unable to do, what the law was incapable of doing, God did. There is the gospel in a nutshell: What the law cannot do, God can do. What your morality can never achieve, God can achieve. What your behavior and your performance is incapable of attaining, God can attain for you. That is the gospel. I cannot; He can. It is that simple.

“For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did.” How did He do it? “By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin.” What the law could not do, God could do, and He did it by sending His own Son. For a moment I will ask you to latch onto that idea, because later on in this chapter Paul will talk about a different kind of sonship, the sonship that comes by adoption. Here, however, he introduces the concept of sonship, but he is talking about God’s only begotten Son, the monogenēs, the Son from all eternity, even Jesus Christ. What the law could not do, God could do, because the law could not give you Christ, but God gives you Christ. God did it “by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh.”

Let us be careful here. Notice what Paul did not say. He didn’t say: “God did it by sending his Son in the sarx, in the condition of corruption. God did it by sending his Son as a sinner to replace us.” No, notice how careful Paul is when he says that He “sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,” not in the identity of sinful flesh. It is homoi, not homo, for those who are students of the Council of Nicaea. He is like us, the author of Hebrews tells us, in all respects except one: He is without sin.

When God seeks to redeem His people, He sends His own Son in a human dimension, by way of incarnation. But in the incarnation, all that is proper to humanity is given to the human nature of our Redeemer except the transfer of sin. Jesus is born without original sin. Jesus is born as Adam was before the fall. Jesus is not in prison and bondage to a corrupt nature at the moment of His arrival into this world.

Jesus came in the likeness of sinful flesh and because of sin, and He condemned sin in the flesh. Christ came in the flesh, in human personage. As a human being, and He condemned the sin that binds us by taking it upon Himself.

Christ’s Righteousness Imputed

Paul says, “He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Here, in language slightly different from what Paul has been using elsewhere in the epistle, he is describing the cross. He is describing the work of Christ in expiation. When Christ goes to the cross in our place, sin is condemned. The cup that He wrestled with at Gethsemane was filled with the wrath of God, the wrath that was directed against sin. Jesus drank it. He accepted the imputation of my sin and your sin to Himself.

When Jesus went to the cross, the last thing He was worried about was punitive treatment at the hands of the Romans. He went to the cross to receive the punishment for sin by the Father, that our sins may be removed from us. That is the gospel. In justification, when God pronounces us just in Jesus Christ, with that pronouncement of being just, He removes our sin. There is expiation. He takes our sin way and puts it in the sea of forgetfulness. As far as the east is from the west, He removes our transgressions from us. That is what Christ does.

God did this. The law cannot do it. The law exposes your sin. The law defines your sin. The law imposes the burden of the curse upon your sin. But what the law could never accomplish for you is to get rid of sin, to remove it from you. Only God has the power to remove sin. We cannot do it. We are like Lady Macbeth with blood on our hands, and we try every kind of cleansing agent to remove that stain, but the spot cannot be removed.

There is no earthly power that can make you clean. I cannot make myself clean. I cannot make up for my sin. If I sin over here, I cannot balance the scales of justice by doing a good work over there. The blot, the sin is indelible to all human efforts. Only God can remove your sin. That is what the gospel is. That is why He sent His Son. In His Son, there is no condemnation for His people. There is condemnation for their sin, and it is condemned in Christ and removed from us. God takes it out of the books and transfers to us the righteousness of His Son.

I do not know how far the New Perspective on Paul is going to go in our culture. New fads come up every year, they last five to ten years, and then you do not hear much about them. But I am sorry to say that this New Perspective idea is gaining more momentum, and beneath all of the academic interest in it lurks at the heart of this controversy the idea of being justified by somebody else’s righteousness, being reconciled to God not simply to covenant status but to eternal status with God, whether it is accomplished through an alien righteousness or not. If somebody starts to talk to you about the New Perspective and about how they have a great new idea that no one really understood Paul’s doctrine of justification until these fellows came along, run for your life. That which is absolutely nonnegotiable about the gospel is at the heart of this controversy—the imputation of the righteousness of Christ. That is what Paul is talking about in this text. Sin is condemned in the cross; our sin is accounted to Him and His righteousness is accounted to us.

My only hope in heaven and earth is the righteousness of Christ. If you take away His righteousness from me, and all you leave me with is my own, then you have left me in a position where not only can condemnation reach me, it most certainly will reach me. That is why, if we have to die on this hill, let us be willing to shed our blood if necessary for the sake of the gospel.

What Is Your Mindset?

“He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” Paul continues to set forth the contrast between life in the Spirit and life in the flesh, between the old man and the new man, which we have been looking at for the last few weeks. He gives us some more insights by describing more characteristics of what it means to be in the flesh and what it means to be in the Spirit. Let us listen carefully to these descriptive terms.

Verse 5: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.” The first thing we see that describes the unregenerate person who remains altogether in the flesh is a mindset. Whenever you ask yourself: “Am I in the kingdom? Am I a Christian or am I a pretender,” that is the first place you look. What is your mindset? What is the focus of your life? What do you think about all the time? Are you preoccupied with goals, ambitions, desires, and appetites of this world, of the flesh, of sin? Does that define your thought process, your mindset? I am not asking whether you ever think about things of the world. That is not what I am talking about. I am asking whether your mindset is preoccupied with the world. Is that what your focus is? Is that what defines who you are as a human being?

I do not know where I am going to be a year from now. At least twenty-five times today, my wife has said to me, “Happy anniversary, honey.” I said, “Happy anniversary.” We turned the clock back forty-six years. When we were having lunch, Vesta looked at her clock and said: “We weren’t married quite yet. The service had started, but they hadn’t pronounced us man and wife yet.” I said: “That’s right. Happy anniversary.” She said, “Yes. Happy anniversary.” So, we have had a wonderful day. When you have an anniversary, you wonder: “What am I going to be doing next year at this time? Am I still going to be here?” I do not know. I do not know where you are going to be a year from now. I do not know where you are going to be ten years from now. But what I really care about is where you and I are going to be one hundred years from now.

One thing I know for sure is I am going to be somewhere one hundred years from now, and so are you. If it is my mindset to spend my brief sojourn on this planet by focusing merely on the things of the flesh, then one hundred years from now, I will be in perdition. But if my mindset is concerned about the things of God—the things of the Spirit of God, the truth of God, the sweetness of God—then I know that one hundred years from now I will be enjoying the brightness of His glory without interruption in eternal felicity.

It is so easy to fix our minds on the things of this world that we go through our whole lives missing the things of eternity. Where is your mindset? Where is your heart set? Where is your treasure?

Enmity Against God

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.” Here is the second thing that marks carnality: “For to be carnally minded is death.” If we set our mind on the things of this world, there is an inescapable consequence to that. The only possible consequence is death. We will do anything in our power to escape death, but it is the only possible consequence if our mind is fixed on the things of this world. Paul says, “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace”—carnal mindedness, death; spiritual mindedness, life and peace. Why is that? He answers it for us clearly: “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God.”

If you repeat a lie often enough, people will begin to believe it, and they will not only believe it but defend it as a truism. The idea that permeates our culture today is that there is no war between man and God. We think sinners do not hate God. Sinners may be indifferent. They may not be excited about God, but they certainly do not hate Him. By all matter of certitude, we think we can rest assured that God does not hate them. We hear the platitudes: “God hates the sin, but He doesn’t hate the sinner” and “God loves everyone unconditionally.” That is the biggest lie of our day. He does not. When judgment comes, God does not send sins to hell; He sends sinners to hell. Though even sinners enjoy the blessings of the providential love of God, the filial love of God is not their reward. Scripture is graphic when it describes God’s attitude towards the impenitent, carnally minded person. God abhors them.

Is that not strange to us? You do not hear that today. No one talks like that anymore—except God in His Word.

If you set your mind on the things of this world, it is death. Why? “Because the carnal mind is at enmity against God.” God is the supreme obstacle that every person faces between the desires of the flesh and reaching happiness from them, because God is always standing in the way. The life of the flesh is life lived not in neutrality before God, but in opposition to God. This is what the Apostle is saying. To be carnally minded is to be at enmity against God.

I have mentioned before that I was invited to speak at a university once, at the Atheist’s Club. They wanted me to give an argument for the existence of God, which I did. They were intellectually intrigued.

At the end I said: “I’ll be happy to continue to discuss these philosophical arguments regarding the existence of God with you as long as you want to discuss them, but you have to know where I’m coming from. I don’t think your problem is an intellectual one; I think it’s a moral one. I think your problem is not that you don’t know whether God exists. You know very well that God exists. Your problem is not that you don’t know God. Your problem is that you don’t like Him. In fact, that’s way too weak of a statement. The reality is you hate Him.”

That is as close as I have ever come to being tarred and feathered, I think. There was this paroxysm of rage that came: “What do you mean? We don’t hate Him!” Methinks thou dost protest too much.

I said: “If the Word of God is true, that’s exactly how it describes your position. You don’t want God in your thinking. You want to get God out of your mind and out of your lives because your mind is fixed on the things of this world. You have a mindset that is utterly incompatible with the things of God. So, you would like to banish God from the universe as far as you could get Him away because you don’t like Him. There’s enmity. He’s your sworn enemy. Not only that, if God were to make Himself vulnerable before you this night, you would take His life and murder Him in cold blood. That’s how much you hate Him.”

People will never admit to that, but the carnal mind is at enmity with God.

Subject to the Law of God

The carnal mind is enmity against God because it is not subject to the law of God. Why do we hate God by nature? Why, in our original state of corruption, do we have a mindset of the flesh? Why is it that we do not want God in our thinking? Why is it that we have what Paul earlier called reprobate minds? It is because of His law. We are at war with God because we do not want to be subject to the law of God.

Just read the paper or listen to the news for fifteen minutes a day and look at all of the ethical issues that our country is embroiled in day in and day out—people do not want Christianity mentioned. They do not want the church involved in anything ethical because they want to say, “No one going to tell me that what I’m doing is wrong. I have the right to do what I want to do.” Who gave you that right? It was certainly not the law of God.

Every time we want to do our will, express our appetites, and live out our preferences, right into the wall of the law of God we run every time. Like Reagan to Gorbachev, we want to say: “Mr. God, tear down that wall. Get rid of that law so that I can do what I want to do with no condemnation.”

Why are we at enmity with God? Because the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God. But it is worse than that. The carnal mind is not subject to the law of God because it cannot be. Paul says, “The carnal mind . . . is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be.” Paul has made this point again and again in this epistle, and he keeps bringing us back to our natural state of moral inability. Original sin has such a powerful grip on our souls and wills that in our flesh, we are simply not able to do the things of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and the flesh profits nothing. It profits nothing because it cannot profit anything.

The Flesh Cannot Please God

“So then,” here is the conclusion of this little section, “those who are in the flesh”—that is, in this state of original sin, unconverted, unregenerate—“cannot please God.” They cannot obey the law of God. They cannot do the will of God. The worst verdict is that they cannot do anything to please God.

Do you know how many times we make decisions and do things because we do not want to displease people that we know, people that we love—our parents, our spouses, our friends? We want our friends to be pleased with us, do we not? We want them to take pleasure in how we are and how we behave. If I said to you, “There’s nothing you could possibly do in this world to please your parents, your friends, your children, or your spouse,” would that not be a very discouraging announcement?

Take it to the next realm. If you are not a Christian, there is nothing you can do, nothing, to please God. The only response you will ever have from God as long as you are in the flesh is a response of His displeasure, which is a euphemism for wrath.

Remember the context here: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” But, beloved, for those who do not walk according to the Spirit, who are not in Christ Jesus, there is nothing but condemnation. That is the only possible consequence to a life defined by a mindset of the flesh, where the mind is at war with God, the mind is opposed to the law of God, the person does not want to be ruled by God, and the person is in such bondage that he cannot even begin to change this.

If the Spirit Dwells in You

“So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” Many years ago in Pennsylvania, I taught a Bible study every Tuesday morning to some people from around the different communities. I once made the comment that my favorite word in the Bible is “but.” It is the word that gives me relief when my life is set against the law of God, when I see myself being measured by the standard of God’s righteousness and slipping deeper into despair because I cannot begin to measure up. Just when I am ready to jump off the bridge, relief comes with that word “but.”

Paul writes to the Ephesians, “But God, who is rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4). That is the thing that defines the Christian’s life, that at one point in your life God said, “But there is something else.” Paul says here to the Christians at Rome, “But you are not in the flesh”—they are not in the condition that he has just described so painfully—“but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” That is the only necessary condition he gives in this text.

If you want to know whether you are in the flesh or in the Spirit, Paul does not say that you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if you are filled with the Spirit, if you have the victorious Christian life. No, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if one condition is met: if the Spirit of God dwells in you.

This is where our understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives is so vitally necessary to having a biblical understanding of what Christianity is all about. You cannot be a Christian unless the Holy Spirit regenerates you, unless God the Holy Spirit changes your heart of stone into a heart of flesh, unless that supernatural work is done. As Jesus said to Nicodemus, unless a man is born of the Spirit, he cannot even see the kingdom of God, let alone enter it.

Every person the Spirit regenerates, the Spirit enters and indwells. Everyone He indwells, He gives the guarantee of future redemption. Every person that the Holy Spirit indwells, He seals against the day of judgment.

In a sense, when you are born of the Spirit, you are signed, sealed, and delivered. You still fight with ongoing sin—we have already looked at that in chapter 7. But if the Spirit is in you—not if you are full of the Spirit, not if you are filled to the tippy top of your head with the Spirit, but if He is in you at all—you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, you are in Christ, and these blessed promises apply to you.

“Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,” Paul goes on, “he is not His.” If you are not indwelt by the Holy Ghost, if you have not been reborn by the Holy Ghost, you do not belong to Christ. But if you do belong to Christ, you have been born of the Spirit, you are indwelt by the Spirit, and you now have been set free to live not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Paul says more about this in the verses that I read but have not finished, but that is all right. Rome was not built in a day. I never promised to finish this book in any specific period of time. So, we will see what the rest of those explanations are, God willing, the next time that we come together. Let us pray.

Father, we have not begun to understand the depth of our moral weakness, our natural inability. We have never come to grips with our basic nature being at enmity with You, how we lived in times past with a mindset that focused our attention on the things of this world until You awakened us from that dungeon and caused the chains to fall off, when You gave us eyes to see and a heart to embrace with affection the sweetness of Christ. We know that was not of the flesh. It was accomplished only through the power and the presence of Your Spirit. Comfort our souls tonight with the assurance that we are in the Spirit because the Spirit dwells in us and we belong to Christ. For we ask it in His name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.