If you faint in the day of adversity, how narrow is your strength.

Proverbs 24:10

How we handle adversity is one of the most defining things about us, because it reveals the real us. It is who we are when we can’t control our environment.

At moments like this, we don’t tend to feel very much like conquerors. We are cooped up in our households, close to the refrigerator, with annoying housemates and family, and feel drawn like zombies to the pleasures of computer screens.

1. Many of us have had a profound struggle and failure to do what’s good. That is, we experience the eruption of our worst selves. When our routine is interrupted, most people find that they had structured their behavior, but they aren’t masters of their soul.
2. We also struggle with the world as it is; hearing reports about disease and economic turmoil, we can easily feel that the world shouldn’t be this way. We can feel that God shouldn’t allow creation to be disordered in this way. It is a struggle to be so weak and to live in a world that is broken in these ways.
3. There is the real, daily and practical suffering of real pain, or fear that we are facing. We fear life is bad or is going to be bad, and we have fears for the present in the future.

In Christian terms, these are our three inner battles: the Flesh, the Curse, and suffering. We face an inner battle against our worst self, the groaning of a world not as we long for it to be, and we face pain that seems to find us everywhere. All of these discourage us personally and in our relationship with God. We feel wretched and discouraged, and God feels far away. It feels like he is doing nothing.

These three enemies of the inner person will either overpower us or drive us to become the conquerers we were created and redeemed to be.

3 enemies in a phrase:

1. The Flesh: “What a wretched man I am” (Romans 7:24)
2. The Curse: “All of creation was subjected to futility” (Romans 8:20)
3. The Suffering: “All day long we are like sheep to be slaughtered.” (Romans 8:36)

Misnomer about Romans

It’s all about “Justification: forgiveness and imputation of righteousness through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus the Christ.

Romans is about Salvation: all the way form God’s choice to save, all the way to us seeing the glory of God.

Romans 8 deals with a very specific part of salvation: being saved from defeat. Especially the defeat of our inner self, the “inner man”—what Paul calls the mind, the will, “myself”—and how it is constantly overcome by what he calls “the flesh.”

The Flesh is our worst self, living the path that leads to death, and rejecting God as creator and king and the true good in favor of our disordered desires.

Romans 7 shows us that just knowing that God is real, and that his law is good, isn’t enough to overcome the domination of the Flesh. And even if we believe in Jesus as our savior, believe in God and believe his commands are good, we can still find ourselves consistently failing, and losing our conflict with the enslaving power of the Flesh.

Romans 7 ends this way

For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Romans 7:19-25 19

In this state, even the “would be Christian” feels both wretched and defeated—both conquered and condemned.

Peterson’s Objection: what you do is what you believe. So how can anyone say they believe in God when they are constantly doing things that don’t show that belief. You don’t really believe. This is a problem for “salvation by faith” as cheap grace.

If you stop at forgiveness, imputed righteousness, or even reconciliation, you will not escape this wretched discouragement—and fear that you will be lost to your worst desires, and deserve re-condemning in your wretchedness.

You must go on to the whole of Christian salvation, because it is shaped around the whole of human need.

Christians conquer the flesh, curse and suffering in the Spirit.

Or for this morning: Christians conquer the flesh in the Spirit.

3 key steps to conquering the flesh through the Spirit:

God condemned our powerlessness, weakness, and wretchedness instead of us.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

Romans 8:1-4

Jesus didn’t just pay for our sins, he condemned sin by dying in the flesh:

• He paid for sin as a sin offering.
• But in dying in the flesh- he feed us from the domination of the Flesh.
• Therefore: neither our crimes, nor our condition need condemn us.
• Therefore, “in Christ Jesus” there is no condemnation, because there is a cure even for the wretchedness of our weakness in the flesh.

But how does he save us from our wretchedness? Romans 8:2: because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death.

Key summary: Through Jesus Christ, the law of the Spirit of life has set you free form the law of sin and death (The Flesh: the “war in my members”).

• Through Christ Jesus
• The Law of the Spirit
• The Spirit of life
• Has set you free from the law of sin and death (The war and captivity of the Flesh—Romans 7:24-25)

This is accomplished in the death of Jesus the Christ—in the FLESH.

• Jesus didn’t just triumph over sin by not sinning, he triumphed over the Flesh also—having been born to true humanity—in human flesh. And dying in the flesh, to the law, and for sin, he conquered all three.
• He atoned for sin, as an offering
• He condemned the power of the Flesh, suffering in human flesh.
• He set us free from the Law by dying to that contract.

Therefore, his goal:

• No condemnation for those in Christ—our fear should not be condemnation, or the belief that God holds us with contempt in our failures to overcome sin in the Flesh.
• Set free in “the Law of the Spirit of Life”—the new drive and aid that comes in participation with God’s Spirit leading us to God and his righteousness.

You must believe in the mind of the Spirit.

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 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 because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Romans 8:5-11

Part of faith is repenting of the “mind of the flesh”—the logic and mental culture and desires of sin, worldliness and rebellion.

You can’t repent of sins, and not the logic that justifies them. Coming to repentance means repenting of the acts and their justification.

Faith requires embracing the mind of the spirit:

• Rejecting the way of death
• Releasing our hostility towards God and his moral requirements

3 Phases of Bad Spirituality:

• Irreligion: Recognizing that before spiritual conviction, we don’t want those commands (Romans chapter 1).
• Religion: In a “religious phase,” we apply those commands to others legalistically, and to ourselves self-justifyingly (Romans chapter 2).
• Illuminated but unspiritual: after we received spiritual conviction, we may be hostile toward God and his requirements because we find we can’t do them (Romans chapter 7).
• All are a “law of death” and all lead to avoidance and hostility toward God.

What is the “mind of the spirit”? How do we unite with the Spirit?

Step one: It is a “mind,” or being “in” the Spirit. It’s an act of inner faith, of trust in the truth of God’s gift of the Spirit in Christ.

What is the Spirit “of”?

Spirit of life: Psalm 1 and Proverbs say that God’s ways lead to life, and the ways that stray from his wisdom and truth are the ways that seem right but lead to death.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.

Proverbs 14:12 NIBO

The law of the Spirit who gives life has set you1 free from the law of sin and death.

(Romans 8:2 NIV)

The Spirit of Christ: The one who is God made flesh.

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

ESV Romans 8:9

The Spirit of sonship: The one that points our heart to the one that accepts us tenderly, and wants to help us.

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. {Or adoption} And by him we cry, “Abba, {Aramaic for Father} Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:15-16

How do we appropriate this life in the Spirit?

You can conquer in participation with the Spirit.

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 because of his Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Romans 8:11-17

How do we accept and receive the spirit of life and Christ? 4 ways in this passage:

Embrace your obligation to the “law of the Spirit of life.”

The Spirit is the new “law” for the Christian, both in directing us, and as the new obligating power. So we can fulfill the law without being under it. We fulfill its moral “ordinances,” without being under its specific written code (Substance chapter 6, Freedom For).

Embrace the death and resurrection identity.

Death: In Christ’s death the flesh is condemned. This is imputed to you if you are dead in him. Have you embraced and accepted that you are in Christ in his death, and have you participated in it in baptism?

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Romans 6:1-4

Resurrection:

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.

Romans 8:11

By the Spirit, execute the Flesh—with extreme prejudice (Spiritual brutality/ferocity).

For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Romans 8:13-14

The Spirit gives us peace with God, not peace. We are newly hostile to the Flesh, and seek to kill it like a disease.

Accept the “spirit of sonship”…

…and that the whole of the gospel is a “demonstration” of God’s love meant to support our boast, and joy in the hope of his future glory to which we are heirs. The joy we take in this hope, that is rooted in the demonstration of the love of God in Christ, and in the giving of his Spirit of life that sets us free, is the foundation of our conquering in the inner man, in the face of the curse, and in the direct sufferings of daily life.

The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Romans 8:15-16

Power versus participation

Any attempt to serve God in true godliness without embracing a cooperation and participation in the Holy Spirit will leave us wretched and defeated.

We will feel 10x worse off than before we knew about God—we’ll be nearly as sinful, but feel 10x more condemned and defeated. The Flesh cannot be defeated by any part of salvation other than receiving the inheritance of a new life and mind in the Spirit.

Being “in the Holy Spirit” doesn’t mean that we forfeit any of our responsibility to make our own decision or fulfill our calling to serve God as his image bearers. It means that the Spirit empowers and informs us in that process. He teaches us the way of life and righteousness. He teaches us the mind of Christ. He teaches us to how to embrace the identity of being God’s beloved and intimate children. And in these we can walk out of condemnation and defeat into freedom and triumph.

In this life, God has not given us final victory over the Flesh. That is probably so we can find humility, and learn to truly participate in and with the Holy Spirit in our mind and life. You will never have the power in yourself only to overcome the flesh. But in the Spirit, you will always have the power to do so. And even when you fail, in the mind of Christ, you will return to the attitude of sonship, and therefore fail in the right direction.