ETS Home        10/29/06

What The Law Could Not Do…God Did

 Romans 8:1-11

    There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. [2] For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. [3] For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, [4] in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. [5] For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. [6] For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, [7] because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; [8] and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. [9] However, you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him. [10] And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. [11] But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

    We saw two weeks ago that the Law was weak.  The Law cannot change the heart of a person.  The Law was not given by God to do that.  The Law cannot make anyone righteous.  Paul said that the Law was a “tutor” (Gal. 3:24, 25) to lead us to Christ.  So why is there no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus?  That is because we have right standing with the Father through the blood atonement of His son and our Lord.  No one has right standing before God who is not righteous.  This is the “spiritual DNA” that comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ.  Remember when Jesus told Nicodemus that he “must be born again?”  Well, just as in every birth, the newborn has the DNA mix of both mother and father.  In the “new birth”, there is not a mix of two people, but of one…our Father-God. 

 Though there are many, even some theologians, who deny that we are born into sin, but the fact is the Scriptures plainly tell us that we are.

 Psalm 51:5

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

 Romans 3:10

As it is written, "There is none righteous, not even one;”

 Romans 5:12

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned--

 Ephesians 2:1-3

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, [2] in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. [3] Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

 People are not basically good.  People want to believe that their natural inclination is one of goodness.  The first thing that the Holy Spirit raises in a person’s consciousness is that he is a sinner.  When the Spirit quickens the heart of person, they are first faced with the holiness of God.  Not until the Spirit brings life to a dead heart can that be acknowledged by the sinfulness of one’s heart.  It is not until the Spirit quickens the heart that Law of God has power.  The Law is the representation of the holiness of God.  However, the Law cannot change a sinful heart to see the holiness of God.

 When the sinner comes to Christ through faith, he becomes a work in progress through the grace of God.  Faith in Christ does several things.

Verse 3: declares that the Law was weak to change. The Law is a powerful tool for condemnation, but it is a weak tool for change. It was weak because it did not have the power to give life.  The death sentence upon our lives because of sin could not be changed by the observance of laws.

Verse 2: God tells us that there is another kind of law at work.  It is the “law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.”  The tablet law actually declares us to be dead.  The law reveals the command of God based upon His character.  Since we were born with natures of wrath, natures that stand against the commands and nature of God, we are declared spiritually dead.  The Law of the Spirit of Life is the essence of who Christ is.  He is Life everlasting.  He was the creator of all that is.  He said that He was Life.  He was the resurrection.  He is with the Father now.  He is what the sinful nature needs.  He came to be for us what we could never have done for ourselves.  He is the essence of all that the Law demands.  His fulfillment of all of God’s demands became our freedom from the Law, and subsequently our death. 

Verse 4: The requirement of the Law is that we be righteous.  Righteousness is not an option for the sinner.  Death produces death; unrighteousness produces unrighteousness.  Righteousness is outside the scope of possibility or even in the thoughts of the unredeemed sinner.  However, the fruit of God’s mercy, forgiveness, grace and love is found in One who would become a substitute for mankind.  He came that He might, for us, on our behalf, live out the perfect life, fulfilling every facet of God, the Father’s, holiness.  Then through His gifts of grace and faith, we could have the effectual fulfillment of the Law in Christ. 

Story of Dick Hoyt

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in Marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a Wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and Pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back Mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except for ``the awesome feeling'' his dad gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe-wide smile as they run, swim and ride together.
This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an Institution.''  But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the Engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate.  And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out on his computer, “Dad, I want to do that.'' How was Dick, who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.''

Later Rick typed, “Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''  That sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then, they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour “Ironmans” in Hawaii . It must be a buzz-kill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, the record happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the Time. [From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]

What Rick could not do, his father did for him.  Rick lives through what his father does.  His dad’s running is like he is running.  Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”  That’s the ticket.  It is not my trying to accomplish something that is impossible (attaining a standard of living that God accepts…Law living).  Rather, it is allowing His fulfillment of the Law, the attainment of God’s standard, to be that which I depend on for my acceptance by God.  Our spirits are alive to God because of what Christ has done for us.

Don’t be looking around for the explanation as to why Christ has chosen to live His life through you.  Just accept the fact that He has extended His grace to you and that because of your faith there is “therefore, now, no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Yes, it is all “grace... through faith, that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Ephesians 2:8, 9)

Verses 5-8:  These verses remind us why we cannot please God.

§         The flesh is diametrically opposed to that which is of the Spirit of God.  The flesh has only one thing in mind…self.  Self desires that every want is delivered, yesterday.  The Spirit draws us to a place of God-worship, not self-worship.

§         The flesh condemns and finally destroys. The Spirit frees us to come to know the true joy and peace of life that God intended for us.  The Spirit frees me to live in the fullness of Christ’s sacrifice, the fulfillment of God’s demand for sin atonement.

§         The flesh is hostile toward God.  No one, outside the grace of God, fears God, looks for God, or even cares about God.  In fact, the flesh is not able to do so.

§         The flesh cannot please God.  What is there that God desires of the flesh.  The flesh cannot inherit eternal life (1 Cor. 15:50). 

The righteousness of Christ has been imputed to us so that, even in the reality of our flesh being active in us, we can actually live acceptable live to God through His Son.  It is what He is doing in us…not what we are doing for God.  Anything that I would do or attempt to do for God is flesh…death.  Rather, it is a submission to what God desires to do in and through me by His Spirit that becomes what I desire to do as an act of obedience.  In living this way, I find that there is a working out of the Law…in Christ…through me.