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[0:00] Please take your Bibles again and turn to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 8, and I will read verses 1 through 11.

[0:15] Romans chapter 8, let's hear the word of God. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life sets me free from the law of sin and death.

[0:31] For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

[0:42] And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the Spirit.

[0:56] Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.

[1:07] The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.

[1:22] Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.

[1:34] And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your Spirit is alive because of righteousness.

[1:47] And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you.

[2:01] Amen. Amen. Well, hearing that Sunday school lesson and hearing you sing of our Savior has prepared my heart to preach this morning.

[2:17] There is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans chapter 8 begins with that triumphant note of assurance.

[2:29] And if you are in Christ, God wants you fully assured of your salvation, that there's no condemnation, no separation ever from the love of God in Christ.

[2:44] Now, assurance is no small benefit that is ours in Christ. I wonder, do you have it? Do you treasure it? But you do realize, don't you, that none of the good works religions are able to offer assurance to their followers, be it Islam, liberalism, Roman Catholicism, because they all depend, their salvation depends upon the good deeds of the person, him or herself.

[3:24] And that puts assurance forever out of reach because they're forever haunted by the question, have I done enough to satisfy God? Have I done enough good works to pay for my bad works?

[3:37] And that's all part of the psyche of false religion, to keep them guessing, so that they will work harder and do more for the church and give more and so on.

[3:49] That's man's way, but not God's way. Because the true gospel of Christ, as we've just sung, depends upon his finished work, not ours, to satisfy God's justice.

[4:01] And therefore, we can know that our salvation is secure in Christ. Because for all those in Christ, God has already condemned sin in the flesh of his own son, Jesus Christ.

[4:19] Therefore, he was condemned, and I am acquitted. He was punished, and I am pardoned. And God is too righteous to ever punish sins twice, once in my divine substitute on the cross, and then again, me in hell forever.

[4:40] Jesus paid it all, so I am his, and he is mine forever and forever. That's full assurance for all who are in Christ. That's who it belongs to.

[4:52] By far, the New Testament's favorite identity of the Christian is a man or woman in Christ, joined to Jesus Christ.

[5:04] And so the all-important question is simply, are you in Christ? Because if you are, your salvation is secure. And just saying it doesn't make it.

[5:17] Just saying it so doesn't make it so. So to help us come to the right answer, the true answer, the real fact of the matter, Paul gives us certain characteristic marks of all who are in Christ.

[5:31] Every last person in Christ is here set forth in Paul's description. Now we get into Christ by faith alone, but the evidence of being in Christ is clear.

[5:46] Paul describes them here. Both those in Christ and those out of Christ. And the contrast could not be greater. Those in Christ where there's no condemnation have been set free from the law, the power of sin and death.

[6:01] Whereas those outside of Christ are still under the reigning power of sin and death. Those in Christ have the righteous requirements of God's law fulfilled in them.

[6:13] Romans chapter 4. Those outside of Christ show their hostility to God by not submitting to his law. Indeed, neither can they.

[6:25] Those in Christ do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Those outside of Christ do live according to the sinful nature and not according to the spirit.

[6:38] Those in Christ have their minds set on the things of the spirit. And what pleases him? Those not in Christ have their minds set on worldly things.

[6:51] The things that the flesh desires, not the things of the spirit. And then those in Christ have the mind of the spirit, which is life and peace.

[7:04] They're spiritually alive to God and enjoy fellowship with him. While those outside of Christ have the mind of the flesh, which is death. Spiritual death.

[7:16] Separation from God. Content to live without him. So you see this contrast that Paul is making between those in Christ and those out of Christ.

[7:29] Now a couple clarifications are in order. First of all, Paul is not saying that a person in Christ lives according to the Holy Spirit's desires perfectly.

[7:39] or that he or she always submits themselves perfectly to God's law. That he never has his mind on the things of the flesh.

[7:53] Chapter 7 makes that abundantly clear. There is no perfection here in these matters. Rather, there's a constant struggle with indwelling sin because the spirit of God now lives within.

[8:08] What Paul does mean is that for anyone in Christ obeying and pleasing God, living according to the spirit's desires, those are the things they live for.

[8:19] That's what characterizes their lives. That's the prevailing disposition of their life and heart. It's their deepest desire. It's their predominant direction in life.

[8:31] It's what habitually defines them. Set free from sin's reigning power, though not yet its remaining presence. That's the first clarification. We're not talking, Paul's not talking about perfection.

[8:45] Romans 7 forever clears that up. Secondly, we need to be clear about cause and effect. Paul's description here of the man in Christ is not the cause of his salvation, but the effect of his salvation, the benefit of salvation itself.

[9:05] In other words, all these things that I just listed that are true of the man or woman in Christ is not what gets you into Christ as if you had to do all these things and accomplish these things in order to get into Christ.

[9:18] No, it's through faith alone that you are united to Christ. Christ. And these things are the evidences, the effects, the fruits of those who are in Christ.

[9:32] Now that distinction is all important. You realize it's the distinction between the true gospel and the false gospel. The false gospel says if you do all of this, you can be saved.

[9:47] The true gospel says because you are saved, you will do all these things because the spirit of God lives in you. It's the difference between how to be saved and how to know you are saved.

[10:02] Those are two different questions and to confuse them is to lose the gospel of grace alone, of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

[10:16] So Romans 8 then is about assurance of salvation, about knowing for sure you're in Christ Jesus and the many benefits that are freely yours in Christ as part of this rich gift of salvation.

[10:32] It's defined and unpacked for us in this chapter and it all, each one of them, just assures us more and more of the security of everlasting salvation.

[10:45] But now, today I want you to see that Romans 8 is not only about assurance, it's also about the Holy Spirit and his role in our salvation. If you were reading the book of Romans in one sitting, you would notice something rather startling.

[11:03] That as you're reading from chapter 1 all the way through the end of chapter 7, the Holy Spirit is only mentioned three or four times. But when you get to chapter 8, you find the Holy Spirit mentioned 20 times in that one chapter.

[11:20] Whoa! God is obviously saying something important to us here and we don't want to miss it. And it has to do with the Holy Spirit, the eternal, third person of the Blessed Trinity.

[11:37] So, Romans 8 is about the Holy Spirit. And what it teaches us is that our salvation is a Trinitarian salvation.

[11:50] Sometimes people are so strong in emphasizing that it's a God-centered, or it's a Christ-centered salvation that there's almost to the exclusion of the Father and the Spirit.

[12:06] And that's not fair. That's not right. It's not biblical. When we say that our salvation is Trinitarian, we simply mean that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit combine together to save sinners.

[12:22] They all three share, the three persons of the Godhead, all share in the work of our salvation. And so, as we're looking at the Holy Spirit's work today, that too is part of the good news of the Gospel, for in order to save sinners, God not only sent His one and only Son into the world, but along with Christ, He also sent His Holy Spirit from heaven into the world to apply to the elect the salvation that Jesus Christ has accomplished for them.

[12:56] So, we're looking then at the Holy Spirit's role in this so great salvation. God the Father planned our salvation.

[13:06] He chose whom He would save before creation. He chose Christ to be the Savior and gave us to His Son and then sent Him into the world to work out our salvation through His life and death.

[13:24] God the Son came, sent by the Father. He lived and died and rose again for the salvation of all that the Father gave Him that we might have our sins forgiven and receive a perfect record of righteousness before God.

[13:40] But even after all that, if the Holy Spirit had not been sent from heaven to do His work of salvation in our hearts, no one would be saved.

[13:53] For the Son's life, death, and resurrection for us is only made good to us if and when we believe. for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

[14:12] And so, this great salvation planned by the Father, accomplished by the Savior, is only applied when it's applied by the Holy Spirit to individual sinners in our lifetime.

[14:27] we would not, we could not, believe on Him whom we hated and refused to submit to. We could not do the first thing to please God as we saw in verse 8.

[14:40] We had no desire to repent and to leave our life of sin. Our mind was set on the things of the flesh, not the things of the Spirit. We loved our sin.

[14:50] We were in bondage to them. We couldn't break loose from them ourselves so that when sin called, we answered and we were its willing slaves. We were spiritually blind and so we could have Christ offered to us the whole of our life every day and we would see no beauty in Him that we should desire Him or seek Him.

[15:12] We were spiritually dead toward God, quite content to live without Him. Completely unable, you see, to do the first thing toward our salvation.

[15:23] And so the life, death, and resurrection of Christ would have done us no good apart from the Spirit coming to our dark hearts, our dead hearts, and giving us life, spiritual life.

[15:36] Because the Bible is clear, it was precisely then when we were dead in sin, Ephesians 2, 5, that God made us alive in Christ.

[15:46] born of the Spirit, we then came most freely and willingly to Jesus Christ for salvation.

[15:58] Drawn to Him with the cords of love, we came, we received Christ and in Him full salvation. But no one, Jesus said, can come to me unless the Father draws him and the Father draws him by the drawing work of the Holy Spirit.

[16:15] So the Spirit of God found us dead and made us alive with Christ. So though our eternal salvation had been accomplished by Christ, it's only of any saving benefit to us as it is applied to us by the Holy Spirit.

[16:36] There simply is no salvation apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. I trust that does not trouble you in any way. our salvation is a Trinitarian salvation, the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

[16:52] And it's not just here in Romans 8, it's all throughout our Bible. So Romans 8, 1 to 8, has already said much about the Spirit's work in salvation.

[17:04] We've already seen much of the Spirit in these first eight verses. verses. And today, in verses 9 to 11, we'll see even more of the Spirit's work in salvation.

[17:15] Indeed, six times in these three verses, the Spirit is mentioned. So it's not hard to see that the theme of this section is the Holy Spirit's role in salvation.

[17:27] So let's dig in. It's just coming off of verses 7 and 8 where Paul has been describing the unbeliever's mind that is hostile toward God, that hates God, that is at enmity against God and shows it by not submitting to his law.

[17:42] Neither indeed can him, can he, can't submit, won't submit, can't because he won't. And now he shifts to his believing hearers in the church at Rome in verse 9.

[17:54] And this is what he says. You, however, you see he's contrasting them with those who are not in Christ. You, however, are controlled not by the flesh, as they are, but by the Spirit.

[18:08] That is, if the Spirit of God lives in you and if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.

[18:20] So let's draw some important truths about the Holy Spirit from this verse 9. First of all, first truth, every believer has the Spirit of God living in you. Every believer.

[18:31] Because to not have the Spirit living in you is to not belong to Christ. He doesn't say it's not just that you're a carnal Christian and you won't have as many rewards.

[18:43] No, you're no Christian at all. You have none of Christ. You don't belong to Him. So the Spirit of God lives in all believers. Period.

[18:55] Furthermore, the Holy Spirit comes to live in you the moment you trusted in Christ to save you. It's not like you get Christ at conversion and then maybe later on you have a second experience in which you get the Holy Spirit.

[19:12] Some call it a baptism of the Spirit or some super submission to the Spirit and yieldness that then you get the Spirit.

[19:23] No, no. You get the Spirit the moment you trusted in Christ by faith to save you because to not have the Spirit of God living in you is to not belong to Christ.

[19:34] So how could you have Christ without the Spirit? You can't. They come together. The same faith that lays hold of Christ as your substitute receives the Holy Spirit as He comes to work out that salvation throughout your life.

[19:54] The Holy Spirit takes up His home in every believer at the first moment. of saving faith. Paul says in Galatians 3, 2, I would just like to learn one thing from you. Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law or by believing what you heard?

[20:10] Well, they received the Spirit when they believed the gospel. He says later in verse 14 of Galatians 3, Christ redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus.

[20:23] What blessing? So that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. We receive the Holy Spirit through faith. The same faith that unites us to Christ brings the Holy Spirit to live in us.

[20:42] And because it and this is crucial because it is impossible to live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit in you from the very first day you would not have been able to live the Christian life without Him because the Christian life is a supernatural life.

[21:02] It's not the natural way. This is the natural way. But that's what you were. Now the Spirit has come and you are a different man. You're a different woman.

[21:14] You couldn't take a step in the Christian life without the Spirit of Christ living within you, working in you both to will and to do of the things that please God.

[21:25] Every single holy thought that you've ever had as a Christian, every godly desire, every God-pleasing decision or action is the work of the Holy Spirit in you.

[21:39] Every fruit of the Spirit, every bit of real love, real joy, real peace, real patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control, gentleness.

[21:52] It's a fruit of the Holy Spirit's life within you producing this fruit. There simply is no true religion without the life of God, the Spirit, in the soul of man.

[22:07] Kids, we could memorize all the commandments of God in Scripture. But if we don't have the Spirit, we don't have the power to obey those commands. So do you feel weak spiritually?

[22:20] Here's your answer. You have the Spirit of God, the mighty Spirit of God come to live inside you to empower you to do what you otherwise wouldn't and couldn't do.

[22:32] And that's why in the words of verse 4, the righteous requirements of the law are fulfilled in those who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

[22:43] The Spirit enables us to keep God's law, whereas the flesh refuses to submit to the law of God. Well, all of this was promised in the New Covenant promises of the Old Testament that Jesus then came and sealed with His blood on Calvary.

[23:02] Ezekiel 36, 27, God says, I will put My Spirit in you and move you to follow My decrees and move you to be careful to keep My laws.

[23:14] You see, this is something God would do by the Spirit. He writes His law in our minds and writes them on our hearts. Now, if you're anything like me, I'm sure that the indwelling Spirit of God is something that you take for granted far too much.

[23:37] What I mean is this, if Jesus Christ were physically coming to your house this evening or tomorrow for supper, you'd be scurrying around to prepare for Him, wouldn't you?

[23:50] And rightly so. It's no ordinary guest you're having over to your home. But the reality is that the Spirit of Christ is living, believer, in your heart as His home.

[24:07] And what are you doing? to make it a more pleasant place for Him to live? What kind of pollution pollutes the environment where He lives? Pollutions of sin.

[24:19] You see, this is a reality. We can go for weeks without realizing God lives in me. His Holy Spirit, He is as much the God as Jesus is God.

[24:35] He's as much God as the Father is God. and He's come to live in me. That's it. That's what our Bibles are teaching us here and in every place and many other places.

[24:47] It's a real indwelling. Just as you live in your home, He lives in you as His home. Galatians 4, 6, because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts.

[25:02] the very control center of your whole being. Your mind as it thinks, that's where He dwells. Your affections as they desire.

[25:13] Your will as it chooses. That's all the faculties of the heart and that's where the Spirit of God dwells. You see, His work in His people is not from afar, but is from within.

[25:27] So the Holy Spirit is God's on-site agent of change and power and source of the divine life. And it's He who makes us to differ from those who are outside of Christ.

[25:40] Can I say that again? It is only He that makes us any different from those who are outside of Christ or makes us different than what we were before we were in Christ.

[25:53] what do you have that you've not received? You've received the Spirit as a free gift from the Lord Jesus and His Father and that makes all the difference.

[26:06] The third member of the Trinity dwelling in us. There really is something amazing and shocking about that and I confess I am not shocked and amazed enough at it.

[26:19] If we know who we are and we know who God is, if we know where He dwells and deserves to dwell and what kind of a heart I bring Him. Isaiah 57, 15 This is what the high and lofty one says, He who lives forever whose name is holy I live in a high and holy separate place set apart from anything else but also with Him who is lowly in spirit and contrite in heart.

[26:52] to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Amazing that He would take up His home in the likes of us.

[27:03] None higher. God as we just sang of Him majestic and yet stooping so low as to dwell in our poor hearts. Let's be more amazed at that reality.

[27:17] Let's be aware of the kind of environment that we give Him in our thoughts and our desires and our decisions of the heart. So that's the first truth that meets us.

[27:30] Every believer has the Spirit of God living in you. Live in the joy, the delight of it, brethren. And then secondly, if you are in Christ and the Holy Spirit lives in you, He makes His presence known.

[27:49] Where the Spirit lives, He makes His presence known. Now that should go without saying but it needs to be said because there are some professing Christians who claim to have the Holy Spirit within when it makes no visible expression in the life.

[28:05] They go on living like this. One that's outside of Christ and yet claim to have the Spirit. And so I'm saying point number two is that if you're in Christ, the Spirit of God lives in you and He makes His presence known.

[28:23] Kids, can an elephant live in your house without making His presence known? Wouldn't there be some noise in the house? Some rearrangement of the furniture?

[28:34] Wouldn't there be some evidence that you got an elephant in your house? You say, yeah, it'd be impossible to have an elephant in my house without it making its presence known? If it's a living elephant, well, neither can you have the Holy Spirit living in your heart, His house, without Him making His presence known there.

[29:00] Verse 9 says, you, however, are controlled not by the flesh but by the Spirit if the Spirit lives in you. in other words, if the Spirit lives in you, He will be the controlling power of your life, directing you in the ways of the Spirit, not perfectly but really and radically, radically different from the life without Christ and without the Spirit.

[29:23] and so this is none other than the very Holy Spirit who for all eternity lived in fellowship with God the Father and God the Son in perfect harmony forever and ever and He's come to live inside of you.

[29:40] The very Spirit who at creation brought order out of the chaos, He's made your heart His home, believer. The very Spirit who came upon the humanity of Christ at His baptism in the form of a dove to equip Him and to enable Him to serve both God and man in His public ministry.

[30:00] He's the one that's come to live in you. The very Spirit who gave new birth to Nicodemus and the woman at the well to the Gerasene demoniac to the Apostle Paul to Peter, James and John and every other believer that's ever been saved.

[30:16] It's that same Spirit who has come to dwell in your heart. It's the same Spirit who by His divine power brought a dead Jesus back to life on the third day. That's the Spirit who lives in you, believer.

[30:29] And if you think that this omnipotent Holy Spirit can live in someone without making His presence known, think again. Think again.

[30:40] If you think the Holy Spirit can live within you without making you holy, think again. If any man be in Christ, he's what?

[30:56] He's a new creation. All things passed away. Behold, all things have become new and new. Why? Because the Holy Spirit of God has now taken up residence there.

[31:10] Should we be surprised that where the Holy Spirit lives, He produces holiness of life. you are different from those controlled by the flesh. You are different from what you once were because the Spirit now lives within and He doesn't leave you as He found you.

[31:28] He found you dead in sin. He makes you alive with Christ. He found you with your mind set on the things of the flesh and He set your mind on the things of the Spirit and so on and so forth.

[31:40] Making us over into the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In different degrees, yes, but mightily working in all those that He indwells.

[31:54] So, I want to say this is a very searching passage because it's describing, not commanding, it's just describing the way things are. Those who are in Christ have the Spirit and the Spirit is the dominating, controlling power of their lives and it's evident in a life of holiness.

[32:16] For without holiness, no man will see the Lord. But that's too big of a burden for you to bear yourself so God puts His Holy Spirit in you to produce that holiness. Isn't God good then?

[32:28] Isn't God good to give us such a gift as the Spirit living within us? That's why we're no longer slaves to sin. For in Christ, the power of the Spirit of life has set me free from the power of sin and death.

[32:42] That's why we're no longer hostile to God but now love Him. It's why we now keep the requirements of His law instead of refusing to... It's because of the Spirit and what He's doing in us.

[32:57] That's why our minds are now set on things of the Spirit and so on. He's at work in every heart where He lives making a difference a holiness difference equipping and empowering us to serve both God and man and He will be doing this in dwelling us for all eternity.

[33:17] You know, when the Spirit moved into our hearts, we were all fixer-uppers.

[33:35] We all had a lot of work to be done and God knows that. That's why He sent the Spirit as His divine agent of sanctification to live on sight, not some faraway office in the heavens, but right on sight He set up His trailer in our hearts and there He's going to work.

[33:55] You see, making us according to the blueprint of Jesus Christ. What a good God. What a preciously good Holy Spirit. We need Him and He's given to us.

[34:10] Now, if that's not enough, verse 10 says, verse 9 talks about Him as the Spirit of God, God the Father, the Spirit of Christ.

[34:22] He's one and the same. He's called the Spirit of God the Father because the Father sends Him. He's called the Spirit of Christ because Christ sends Him. The Father gave Him to the Son after His ascension and the Son poured Him out upon His church.

[34:35] So He's the Spirit of God. He's the Spirit of Christ. And yet, here in verse 10, it says, if Christ is in you. Do you know what He's saying? He's saying that if you have the Spirit of Christ in you, you have Christ in you.

[34:51] Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is the Holy Spirit who mediates to you the presence of Jesus Christ. Now, verse 10 gives us two facts.

[35:03] Again, they're not commands. They're just statements of reality. These two things are true for every believer, for those in Christ Jesus. Two simultaneous realities.

[35:14] There's one that's bad news and there's one that's good news. What do you want first? Paul gives us the bad news first and then the good news. He says, the body is dead because of sin and the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

[35:28] There they are. Let's look at the bad news first. The body is dead because of sin. He's talking about the physical body of the believer. Though indwelt by Christ and the Spirit, the believer's body is dead.

[35:44] Death and decay are already at work in us. As he will say later on in the chapter, they cause us to groan. This death is at work in us.

[35:56] We have many reminders of it the older we get. And this is why some mornings you may feel more like death than being alive. Death is at work in us.

[36:10] The reality, the fact is we all, young and old, we all are dying. Death has come to us. And though we're in Christ, we're not delivered from the experience of death.

[36:23] We must pass through that final river as it's often spoken of. The ultimate separation of body and spirit. And why is the body dead?

[36:37] Well, he tells us because of sin. The wages of sin is death. Romans 6, 23. Romans 5, 12. Just as sin entered the world by one man, death entered by one man.

[36:52] Death came to all men because all sinned. We all sinned in Adam and so death came to all of us. Why is the body dead? Because of sin. Just as a coroner puts on the death certificate, cause of death.

[37:08] So God is here putting the cause of death for everyone that dies. Sin. Sin. Sin. He's looking past all the second causes, how it was brought about.

[37:20] He's getting right down to the root of the matter. Why? What's the cause of death? We, the body is dead because of sin. He traces it back to the first cause.

[37:33] But there's more bad news about this body of death. And it's what leads Paul to say at the end of chapter 7, verse 24. O wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death?

[37:48] That's what he's talking about here in verse 10. And the body is dead because of sin. Who's going to save me from this body of death? And this physical body of death is a body in which sin still dwells.

[38:04] It's not just the place where the Holy Spirit dwells. Romans 7 has taught us that it's also the place where sin still dwells. It doesn't reign over us like it used to, but it still remains.

[38:18] It's still living there like a border that refuses to be evicted. He's there. And so the physical body is the body in which sin dwells.

[38:34] And that is the cause of our lifelong battle with sin and temptation. So that's the bad news for the believer. This body we live in is dying and is doomed to die.

[38:47] And it's a body in which sin lives and fights against us. You ready for the good news? It's this, that the spirit is life because of righteousness.

[39:01] And I believe the ESV and I think the King James and other versions get it right by putting a capital S for spirit. It doesn't say your spirit, lowercase in the Greek.

[39:16] It doesn't have your, it doesn't have spirit with a capital or a lowercase. The context tells us, is he referring to our spirit or is he referring to the Holy Spirit?

[39:27] Well, all through this section, he's referring to the Holy Spirit, not man's spirit. spirit. And throughout this passage, the Holy Spirit is connected with life.

[39:40] Verse 2, he's referred to as the spirit of life that sets us free from sin and death. Verse 9 says, he's the spirit of God living in you. The spirit and life, you see, go together and nothing so answers the need of a physical body being dead like the spirit of life.

[39:59] And so, I believe it's referring here in verse 10 to the life-giving spirit of God as he goes on and says, and if the spirit of him, verse 11, who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, that's the spirit of God, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in you.

[40:24] So, the Holy Spirit is the life-giving spirit of God who is going to give life to your dead body. the same Holy Spirit that lived in Jesus and raised him from the dead on the third day is living in you and his presence inside of you is the guarantee that you too will be raised like Christ.

[40:46] Though our body experiences death, that's not the final word if we are in Christ. For what the Father did through the spirit for Jesus, he will also do for all those who are in Jesus.

[40:58] and that because of righteousness, verse 10 says, the spirit is life because of righteousness. Death has no permanent hold on me because of the righteousness of Jesus that won for me his spirit as a resurrection power in my body.

[41:19] So, just as the body is dead because of sin, the imputation of Adam sinned to me, so also the spirit is life in me because of the imputation of Jesus' righteousness to me.

[41:34] Because I live, you too shall live, Jesus is saying. So, what's Paul saying as we sum it up? Well, he's saying by the power of the spirit, this mortal body is going to be changed.

[41:47] It is mortal now, it's going to rise in immortality to die no more. Furthermore, this body is the body of death in which sin lives and wars against us all of our lives.

[42:03] This body is going to rise to sin no more as we rise in the likeness of our sinless Savior. What will it be to die no more? What will it be to sin no more?

[42:16] Well, that's the good news for those who are in Christ Jesus. You will live to experience it. And that is the final act of salvation and victory over sin and death at the return of Christ.

[42:28] And we see the spirit's role in it. The same spirit that raised Christ from the dead in that day is going to raise everyone in Christ. Is that not good news, brothers and sisters?

[42:41] So, Romans 8 is teaching us that the work of the spirit is an integral part of our salvation as he applies the salvation that Christ accomplished through his life and death and resurrection.

[42:53] We've seen this morning the connection then between assurance and the Holy Spirit. I said Romans 8 is about assurance and it starts off with that statement, no condemnation, ends with no separation.

[43:08] But we also see that Romans 8 is about the Holy Spirit 20 times referring to him. What's the connection? Well, we've just seen that his living inside of us is the guarantee of our full salvation, our final salvation that enables us to live different than what we once did.

[43:28] Now, kids, maybe resurrection life doesn't mean so much to you today, but when it comes your time to die, this passage will take on a whole new significance.

[43:40] and if we're in Christ, whether we're 5 or 85, we're ready to die. And so it gives us the freedom to live life with the living hope and joy of the resurrection that is coming by the Holy Spirit that lives in us.

[44:02] In weeks to come, we'll learn more of the Spirit's work in our salvation, but let's just appreciate the Holy Spirit living in us. This precious gift was purchased for us by Christ at the cross.

[44:17] Jesus not only saved you from condemnation of sin to leave you all of your life under the reigning power of sin. No, he shed his blood to free you both from sin's condemnation and sin's reigning power.

[44:32] He died to secure your freedom from sin in your life right now and then forevermore in the resurrected state. He is of sin, the double cure, saving us both from its guilt and its power.

[44:49] When we were lost and needed a Savior, God didn't send an angel to die on the cross and live for us. He sent his one and only Son. And when we needed someone to apply that salvation to us personally, he didn't send an angel to live inside us.

[45:08] He sent God the Spirit, the omnipotent Spirit, to live inside us as comforter, counselor, healer, helper, teacher, assurer, restorer, reviver, revealer of Jesus Christ to us.

[45:29] To apply to us all that Christ has accomplished for us once and for all. And so God raised this Jesus to life and Peter says, we are all witnesses to the fact, exalted to the right hand of God.

[45:46] He's received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out upon his church what you now see and hear. the Spirit comes to live in us sent by both the Father and the Son.

[46:02] He is the crowning gift of resurrection. As the reward for his suffering and death, God raised his Son from the dead and said, here, Son, pour out our Spirit upon the church.

[46:15] Let's rejoice and let's worship him. Let's worship the Spirit as God and bring him our praises in our overhead song as we conclude. For your gift of God the Spirit, we say thank you.

[46:29] Stand with me and sing. Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him in order that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[46:51]  Amen.