Freedom from Condemnation in Christ

So, we're back to Romans, and we're talking about, we're in Romans 8, and we're talking about freedom from condemnation. That's really Romans 8 is a big one. However, the main topic is how to be practically free from death and condemnation. And death and condemnation are inwardly are the same thing. This is not talking about being delivered from the wrath of God.

Therefore there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after 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 sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Now let's talk about that for just a second. The law of the Spirit of life is operating in me, right? There's no condemnation for me who walk not after the, number one, I'm in Christ. Number two, I'm to walk after the Spirit. If I'm walking according to the Spirit, I'm walking to another law. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ that makes me free from the law of sin and death, which the law could not do. What could, what law? The law of God could not set you free from the law of sin and death. Even if you fulfilled the law, it wouldn't have set you free from death because the death was upon you because of Adam's transgression. It was an imputed death that you inherited whether you sinned like Adam or not. And even if you were to, quote, fulfill the righteousness of the law yourself, you would still die because righteous fulfillment of the law does not guarantee freedom from death or immortality. That sentence has already been passed, okay? And then also the law obviously could not set you free from sin. In fact, the law entered that the offense might abound and sin is the strength of the law and the law of sin in your members took advantage of the law of God and worked in you all manner of sin, evil, and covetousness so that when you did want to do good according to the law, evil was present in you. So the law of God actually exacerbated your problem. It did not set you free from the law of sin and death. Only the Spirit of life in Christ can do that. And that is not something once and for all. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. That's not once for all. It's only true while you're walking in the Spirit. If you go back to walking in the flesh, that law does not avail you. Even though Christ and all the realities I described at the beginning of the message are true of you in heaven, you'll go back under condemnation. So this is always now. This is always today.

But Romans 8 is talking about how to live with the inward sense that all of this is true to the point where you're no longer living in shame and condemnation and fearing God and shrinking back and measuring your performance and considering your yesterday and wondering if you're doing good enough and wondering if you're doing enough and wondering if God loves you. See, you can have all those conditions and still be saved, obviously. All of us got saved and then we all got drowned, it seems like, in different levels of legalism and condemnation and shame. I don't know anybody who's genuinely saved who has not gone through that. The only people I know that haven't gone through that aren't genuinely saved because the enemy attacks God's people and there's a war. You find yourself on enemy territory as an invading and occupying force, the kingdom of God, and he's gonna attack you. He's gonna attack you through your conscience to try to get you to hide from God and stay away from God so that you don't have any strength and any power and so that eventually you'll be a source of ridicule for the gospel, but you know what? Even if you are, Jesus is not ashamed to call you his brother. Those who are being sanctified and he who sanctifies are all of one, therefore he's not ashamed to call them brethren, saying in the midst of the congregation, I will declare thy name and sing your praise and put my trust in you. Behold, I and the children you've given me, he presents you to God as a trophy because he knows the end of the story. He's the good shepherd, he's lost none, and he's going to bring you into glory. He is going to crown you with glory and make you an heir and he has secured your inheritance and it is a guaranteed thing. You don't have to worry, okay? Even if you feel like I am just a reproach to Christ, I'm not even worthy to be called a Christian because my life is so bad and anybody looking at me can see that I don't have the kind of righteousness that the gospel ascribes to me. Well, guess what? Then what it is you're putting on display, whether you know it or not, is a person living under the mercy of God. You know, it's not just his righteousness he's vindicating, he's also showing forth his mercy, the riches of his mercy. And he's showing forth that he's the father of mercies and the God of all comfort. And he comforts you in the midst of weakness and affliction, which we'll see in Romans eight. You are weak, you are not expected to be strong. And the sooner you get free from the idea that you have to be strong, the sooner you'll learn to rest in grace. And as you learn to rest in grace, there is a new law called the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And that law, on the one hand, will free you from the condemnation and the fear and the shame and the embarrassment that Jesus doesn't feel about you, but you feel about yourself. And on the other hand, it'll cause the righteousness of the law to be fulfilled in you as you walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. The righteousness of the law is not, see the law witnesses a righteousness, but it's not righteousness itself. Righteousness itself is Christ. God himself is the righteous one and he's embodied in Christ. And now he is the law of the spirit of life in you to fulfill the righteousness that the law requires. And remember, Galatians says that if you loved, you fulfilled the law. Love is the fulfillment of the law. And against the things, the fruit of the spirit, there is no law. There's nothing the law can say about you if you've got the fruit of the spirit. Whereas the fruit of the spirit is just love and joy and peace and happiness. Now these things, the list, the problem is you turn it into a list and then you buy books about each item on the list and think that they're things that you're supposed to do. The fruit of the spirit is not something you're supposed to do. What you're told to do is walk in the spirit, not set about trying to cultivate fruit. You don't go out to an apple tree and give it instructions on how to bear apples. It's life. The law of its life causes it to bear apples, right? All you need to do is make sure the roots are in good soil and the soil is watered and has nutrients and the tree will automatically produce apples. And even if you take a branch off an orange tree and cut it off the orange tree and graft it into the apple tree so that the orange tree is now receiving the life of the apple tree, do you know what kind of fruit that orange branch will bear? Well, now that it's been grafted into the apple tree, it will bear apples. Why? Because of the law of the life in the apple tree. The apple tree life has an apple tree law that produces apples. It's programmed in the life. And you have a life that is programmed to be, well, it's not even programmed. It's the life of God. And it has a principle of operation that will, on the one hand, set you free from condemnation. And to the degree that you get set free from condemnation, you'll find you also have the fruit, which is just Christ in manifestation as life and peace and love and righteousness, you know? And try not to over-idealize what that looks like. The problem is, is you do that, then you get yourself back in the flesh. If you try to go, am I producing the fruit? Now you're back in the flesh. Well, guess what? If you're in the flesh, you can't produce the fruit. You need to get your eyes off yourself and your performance for this to work. The self and the performance is the source of condemnation. Condemnation comes because you look at a law, the law of the letter, and say, let's say there was an instruction on how apples are genetically and biologically constructed. And you read those instructions, right? Well, the only thing you can conclude from those instructions is, well, that's not something I can do. That's science. That's life. That's something deeper than something I can perform. But if you take it as a letter and say, I'm supposed to be doing this, and then you look at yourself and you say, well, I'm not doing that. I don't know how to do that. I can't do that. Then what do you have? You have condemnation. You've fallen short of the glory of the apple life. See what I'm saying? This is not something that you're supposed to look at a list of instructions and figure out how to do. And people who read the Bible that way are perpetually under condemnation. No, the New Testament is called a testament because the death of the testator has occurred and he has secured an inheritance for us. And now he's the mediator of this testament and he's dishing out truth about what it is that he's accomplished and who he wants to be in you so that you can get your mind off of yourself and onto Christ, which are the things of the spirit. And as you do, you will walk according to the spirit. And as you do, the law of the spirit of life will automatically work in you. And you'll find that you've got, instead of a condemnation and a dirge of shame in your heart, you have a song of praise in your heart and he's the glory and the lifter of your head and you got a smile on your face. And guess what? A thankful heart is the fruit of the spirit. Thankful heart is a heart that's full of good things from God produced by the spirit as he bears witness on the one hand to everything God's accomplished in Christ. And on the other hand, to the fact that you are a child of God. And we'll see all of that in this chapter. In fact, I pretty much just described how the whole chapter works. And now we're just gonna read it and see, right? Therefore, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh, but after 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 sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Now let's talk about that for just a second. The law of the spirit of life is operating in me, right? There's no condemnation for me who walk not after the... Number one, I'm in Christ. Number two, I'm to walk after the spirit. If I'm walking according to the spirit, I'm walking to another law, the law of the spirit of life in Christ that makes me free from the law of sin and death, which the law could not do. What could, what law? The law of God could not set you free from the law of sin and death. Even if you fulfilled the law, it wouldn't have set you free from death because the death was upon you because of Adam's transgression. It was an imputed death that you inherited whether you sinned like Adam or not. And even if you were to quote, fulfill the righteousness of the law yourself, you would still die because righteous fulfillment of the law does not guarantee freedom from death or immortality. That sentence has already been passed, okay? And then also the law obviously could not set you free from sin. In fact, the law entered that the offense might abound and sin is the strength of the law. And the law of sin in your members took advantage of the law of God and worked in you all the manner of sin, evil, and covetousness so that when you did want to do good, according to the law, evil was present in you. So the law of God actually exacerbated your problem. It did not set you free from the law of sin and death. Only the spirit of life in Christ can do that. And that is not something once and for all. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. That's not once for all. It's only true while you're walking in the spirit. If you go back to walking in the flesh, that law does not avail you, even though Christ and all the realities I described at the beginning of the message are true of you in heaven, you'll go back under condemnation. So this is always now, this is always today. This is always a matter of getting free today, not getting free over time as a process, but taking a stand today in my position in Christ and walking in the spirit, which we'll talk a little bit more here. So the law of God could not set you free from the law of sin and death, but the law of the spirit of life will, first of all, because God sent his own son in the likeness of the flesh and for sin and condemned sin in the flesh. You could not die to sin, but remember in Romans six, Christ died to sin once for all, and he who died is free from sin. Once you die to something, you're free from it. He died in our place for sin and unto sin and condemned it in his flesh. He swallowed it up and nullified it and destroyed the body of sin. The walk of sin, the power of sin, the lordship of sin was all destroyed in his powerful death, which was not a tragedy, but an accomplishment and a victory, right? So sin can't rule over you while you're walking in the spirit. It can still tempt you and you may still sin, but if you keep walking in the spirit, it won't lord it over you through condemnation and it won't be so powerful to you in temptation. Okay, so the first thing he did was destroyed or condemned sin in his own flesh. He judged it and defanged it, okay? That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. I remember from Romans six, we're told that we died with him, we're to reckon ourselves dead so that we will be in the likeness of his resurrection. If we're planted in the likeness of his death, we'll be in the likeness of his resurrection. And as the glory raised, as Christ was raised from the glory of the father, we also might walk in newness of life. This is what he's talking about, newness of life. Where is the life? The life is in the spirit. What life is that? It's the eternal life that was with the father, that was the father in the son and the son in the father who became a man, incarnated himself, lived a human life and offered that life, that divine human life up through the eternal spirit so that now that life is flowing out from the throne of God and of the lamb as a present reality to be a satisfying drink to you as rivers of living water and as the fountain of life within you. And also to be the reality of everything Christ is to be your very life so that for you to live is Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. How? By the spirit. Where's the life? In the spirit. He's the spirit of life. Okay, I gotta sit down. So the righteousness of the law who can be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. So the key is to walk according to the spirit. Why? Because the life is in the spirit. Don't think of the spirit as something separate from Christ. Once, you have to understand with the triune God that they co-inhere. The father is in the son and the son is in the father and the spirit is the realization of the son and the father and the fellowship of the son and the father and the flowing out of the son and the father and the realm of the son and the father. Bringing the son and the father to you, okay? As a river of living water to flow to you. That's how you are regenerated. When you are regenerated, it wasn't just that the spirit came and it wasn't just that the Christ came, it was that the triune God came to dwell in your spirit and make it life. That is the eternal life, okay? The righteousness of the law who might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh. But they that are after the spirit, the things of the spirit, are to mind the things of the spirit. Okay, so now how do I walk according to the spirit? What's that got to do with my mind? I can mind the things of the flesh or I can mind the things of the spirit. And so many people think that minding the things of the flesh means I'm minding sinful things. I'm watching TV, I'm listening to music or I'm looking at pictures or something. No, it's more than that. The flesh is the entirety of me and minding the things of the flesh has to do with minding me and my performance and how am I doing and am I getting what I need and am I getting what I want? As if you're an orphan in the world apart from God under judgment and you've got to survive this thing by yourself and maybe you can win his favor. So it includes sinful flesh but even more importantly here in context, it includes the flesh that's under the law. Remember he says in Romans 7, for when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin which were by the law worked in us all kinds of evil. So being in the flesh has to do with performance by the law really. And walking according to the flesh here and being after the flesh is to be someone who you could be saved but you don't have a grasp of gospel realities. You just haven't dug in and you have not set your mind on those things. Your mind is on woe is me and look at my problems and look at my situation and God doesn't love me and I thought if he loved me, I would be blessed but he doesn't and I feel terrible and I feel all ashamed so obviously he hates me. Obviously you're thinking wrong. Your thinking is not according to the gospel, your mind is not renewed. So it's very critical to get your mind renewed. Renewing of the mind is not just getting new information in your mind, it's the life. Remember Jesus said the flesh profits nothing by word, it is spirit and it is life. You have to take the word of faith, the word of the gospel, the word of the truth of the gospel concerning all the things that God has done in Christ and believe it. And when it's mixed with your faith, it becomes spirit and life for your mind so that you can have a mind set on the things of the spirit and a mind even set on the spirit. To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace and as we said, death is condemnation in contrast to life and peace. What is peace? Peace is Christ has made peace with God on my behalf and through the blood, I am under a perpetual sunshine of a smiling face from my father. I'm no longer at odds with God, I'm not his enemy anymore, I've been reconciled through the death of his son and he loves me. Independently of my condition and I can't be more pleasing to him today or less pleasing to him today based on my performance, he loves me in Christ. Apart from anything I've done, he saved me while I was an enemy in my mind. Alienated from him, hostile to him, how much more shall he save me from wrath now? How much more shall he give me all things in Christ and how much more shall I be saved in his life? This is talking about being saved in his life. Saved from what? Saved from condemnation which is death. To be carnally minded and to have the mind of the flesh, the mindset on the things of the flesh is just death. So many Christians just live in death because they don't have the fellowship because their mind is not full of gospel reality. It is all me, did you bring me out here to die? Unbelief, wilderness wanderings, never getting any better, just trying to go to the law and repenting for breaking it. Go to the law, repenting for breaking it and always in that cycle of condemnation. But once you get free from all that, you say I died to the law, there's no performance demanded of me, I am free from that whole realm. God has accepted me in Christ and I have peace with God and through the blood of Jesus, I come to you father right now and I thank you that you dwell in me. I thank you that I have the spirit. I thank you that I can walk after the spirit and I thank you that that spirit will set me free in my mind from the bondage of condemnation and the taste of death and fill me with the taste of life and peace. This is something very subjective. This is not, this is a taste. Life and peace is a matter of having a totally different atmosphere in your heart. When you've got a heart full of faith and thanksgiving, guarantee you've got a spiritual mind of life and peace. And it's not that you have to know a whole lot or be a Bible expert, but you do need to be diligent to come into the full assurance of faith and answer all the questions of your mind. The enemy lodges himself in your mind and launches accusations at you and questionings against God. And until you answer those, you will still have a mind that's dominated in a carnal sense that's got death. But to put on the gospel and put on the armor of God is to set your mind free from that and put it in, saturate your mind in gospel truth to where eventually all those questions are settled. You can't, the devil couldn't convince me the way he convinced me a year or two ago of the kind of things he used to convince me about God's attitude towards me. Because my mind has been renewed to the point where I can't, those thoughts don't feel at home anymore. There is a point where you get progressively delivered, but it comes from fighting the fight of faith, to stand in the gospel and fight for the truth and don't listen to the lies. There is a matter somewhat of warfare here. It's not all just rest. It's a lay, you have to be diligent to enter the rest. And that diligence is in fighting to get into the land and there's enemies in the land. And those enemies are in your mind launching all kinds of arguments and accusations against you. But as you get free from all these different arguments and accusations and learn to rest in the grace of Christ, you'll find a different atmosphere in your heart and you'll find the righteousness of the law and you'll find the law of the spirit of life in Christ. So the carnal mind is empty against God for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Oh, I can't please God, I'm always in the flesh. I'm always in the flesh, really? Verse nine, but you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if any man has not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. The spirit is life because of righteousness. So you are not in the flesh. You used to be in the flesh, but you were crucified with Christ. The old man was destroyed, he was terminated. That person is gone in God's accounting. And now you are risen in Christ, a new creature. All things are made new in this new creature, this new inner man, this new man that was created in the image of Christ after two righteousness and holiness and is a new creature, fashioned, refashioned in the image of God. He's totally new. And new means it's a permanent state. He's not new and getting older. He's always new. He's always flowing out. And as long as you're under that flow, you're walking in the newness of the new creation. But look at this. So you are in the flesh. You are no longer in the flesh, right? If the spirit of God dwells in you. I love this. It's the spirit of God, the spirit of Christ, Christ. It's the same person. It's the spirit of God that dwell in you. Now, if anyone has not the spirit of Christ, he's none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin. So how is Christ in you? Well, he's in you because he's the spirit of Christ. And that spirit of Christ is the same as the spirit of God. The spirit of God dwelled on the face of the waters in the Old Testament, when God said, let there be light. But now he's the spirit of Christ. What does that mean? Christ is the man who was God who became a man and was the seed of the woman, seed of David, seed of Abraham, the last Adam. That person was the Christ, the anointed one. And he went through death and resurrection. And in doing so, he offered himself up through the eternal spirit, according to Hebrews 9.14. And so the spirit today is not just the spirit of God, but he's the spirit of Christ. He's the spirit who was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified, according to John 7.37, when he said, if anyone is thirsty, let him come unto me and drink. As the scripture says, he who believes on me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spoke of the spirit who was not yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. Was he not yet in existence? Was he not yet given? He was not yet in the sense that he was the spirit of God. But now through death and resurrection, through the glorification of Christ, Christ has offered himself up through the eternal spirit so that today the spirit of Christ is, or the spirit of God is the spirit of Christ. That means he can be Christ himself in you. He conveys Christ to you, so that the way Christ dwells in you is by being the spirit of Christ and by the spirit of Christ being Christ. There's still three, but they're all tangled up together as one to be in you as life. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, verse 10. Okay, so that's true. You still have the capacity of walking according to the dictates of the law of sin that dwells in your members. Don't think that you don't. You can still be in the flesh and be under condemnation, but you are no longer in the flesh. The location of you has changed. Do you still have your members which you can yield to either to sin or to God because you're still in this body, but you are no longer in the flesh. Those who are in the flesh can't please God, but you are not in the flesh. And guess what? You are pleasing to God. You are in the spirit, if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if any man has not the spirit of Christ, he's none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. Now here it's a capital S spirit, but really it probably should be the lowercase S because it's talking about your human spirit. And I think I'm gonna have to stop here and go in the next one, we'll talk about the human spirit a little more and how the spirit has been joined to our spirit to make it life. So that the life of God, the life of Christ and the law of the spirit of life can operate in me. But it's all a matter. It's simpler than it sounds. It's very complicated because he's talking about the physics of the thing, the metaphysics. But really we're just talking about get your eyes off yourself and get your eyes on what God has done for you in Christ and enjoy him. And as you do, you'll be free from condemnation and you'll have your fruit, life and peace. And if you're walking in life, there's nothing that you need to worry about as far as pleasing God or anything like that, because your heart is full of thanksgiving and that's really what he's pleased with. The sacrifices of God, thanksgiving. Yeah, maybe I'll look those verses up.

right? Communion is not a Passover. Communion is a actually something that we call it communion, but it's the Lord's Table, Lord's Supper. The Apostle Paul received some new revelation about that. That it was not a matter of Christ making a covenant with us, the Church, like he did with Israel, but that we are the bread with him as one body, one loaf. And the idea is that it is a statement of our standing in the resurrection of Christ after he accomplished his work. And what did he do with that work? Well, he redeemed us. He forgave us all of our sins. And he also rose from the dead as the head of the body. And we now are members of his body. So when we come together, which hardly any of us do, for breaking of the bread, it's no longer just a picture of Christ and his death. It's a picture of our stand in his resurrection as his body, as the many grains that have become one loaf. So it's really beautiful. And it's a memorial of his forgiveness. It should be a celebration. Most people take communion as in a somber way, but actually it is our stand in the victory of Christ. And communion should be full of loud phrases and shouts, glorifying the Lord based on what he accomplished and proclaiming his accomplishments. And that should be a declaration to the principalities that he has the victory. And so one thing I did love about the way the church that I was in for a long time met was when we would get together, our meetings, we sat in a square. There wasn't a pastor. And when we got together, each one had someone would prophesy, someone would speak, teach. And prophesying wasn't, thus says the Lord. Prophesying was speaking forth Christ for edification. The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus Christ. We would proclaim his person, his work. But in the middle of this square, there was a table and on the table was the bread. And at some point in the meeting, by the leading of the spirit, we would come together around, we would come together around that table and all of us would put our hands on the bread together and break it. And we would take turns praying and proclaiming what Christ had done. Thank you, Lord. You have the victory. Thank you, Lord, that you have headed us up and you are the head of the body and we are your body and we are here standing in your victory and your resurrection. Thank you that we have your life. Thank you that we have your spirit. Thank you that you're our food and drink. Praise the Lord. And it was a joyful, rejoicing, noisy time. And in China, that group of people is called the Shouters because they just shot the Bible at each other. But what they're doing is they're proclaiming the victory of Christ. And when you read about communion in Corinthians, he talks about one of the reasons the women were to wear head coverings was for the sake of the angels. Paul's view of communion, our Lord's table, was very sober because it was the administration of God on display, his victory on display. It was the symbolic representation of Satan's defeat in a city on behalf of the church. Christ's victory on behalf of the church. So, the Lord's table is misunderstood, I believe, based on my experience. But the other ordinance is our baptism. Some people think because baptism is not necessary for salvation, we should just disregard it. But there's a really valuable lesson in baptism. And what is that? Well, most people believe baptism is a public proclamation of your dedication to God. He's a Christian now. Let's have him get in the water and then we'll say this guy has committed his life to Christ and we'll all applaud when he gets out and have cake afterwards. But that's not the same way as it's experienced in Saudi Arabia. You can proclaim the name of Jesus and you can get saved relatively unnoticed. But if you get baptized, you're risking your life. It's associated with death in some countries. Baptism does not save us from eternal torment or a lake of fire or anything like that. But Peter does say baptism saves us in that it's an answer of a good conscience to God. It's not a salvation of cleansing of sins, but it's a salvation from condemnation. You go, well, how is that? We're not condemned. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, right? Absolutely. But in Romans 7, we're told, know you not brethren, how that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. So what is baptism? According to Romans 6, when we were baptized, we were baptized into the death of Christ. Now the real baptism is the baptism of the Spirit. When we call the name of Jesus, when we believe in him, after we believe the gospel, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise. We've received the Spirit. We've been baptized into Christ and have put him on. We're members of the body of Christ where we are regenerated. But water baptism is supposed to be accompanied with some teaching, and it almost never is. Or it's just not that understood when we do hear it, because we're babes in Christ. But that teaching is that you died. You were so bad that Jesus didn't come just to forgive you of your sins. He came to terminate you. He has judged you. You are rightfully judged, worthy of death. You might not think you're that bad, but that's just because you haven't lived long enough to see sin flower in all of its different manifestations in your life, and you see how much it can damage other people. Eventually, once you live an adult life and you start making big people mistakes, you start to realize, oh my, there's no hope for me. Baptism is me going into the water, supposedly with the recognition that I can do nothing. No good dwells in my flesh. If something good dwelled in my flesh, God wouldn't have had to crucify me. No, he's done with the old creation. He's done with me because of the sin of my members. And there was no law that he could give that could have corrected me. Righteousness couldn't come by the law of it. Could have. Christ died in vain. There's no work I could do to remedy the situation, and there's no cure for my situation. It's terminal. And God has to put me out of the way. So it is not a proclamation of my commitment to God. It is a proclamation of exactly the opposite. That's why Jesus said, you know, let your yes be yes and your no be no. Anything more than that is from the evil one, because you can't make one hair on your head change its color. You can't add one cubit to your statue. You don't know what you'll do tomorrow. You don't know what you're capable of, but by the grace of God, you know. So when I go into the waters, that is not supposed to be a demonstration of my ability to commit to God. That is supposed to be a recognition of my total inability to do anything. And the law has dominion over someone as long as he's alive. You cannot get free from the law and the condemnation until you see your death with Christ. And this should be the first thing we learn as Christians. Baptism is at the beginning of the Christian life, not later. And yet for most of us, we were in Christianity for 20 years before we started to finally figure out our death with Christ and be attracted to it. We oppose it. Religion opposes it and we oppose it. We are by nature enemies of the cross. We are trying to preserve our life. We value our religious flesh. We value our religious life before God and we want it to be useful to him. And we want rewards and accolades for it. We want to show off our commitment and we want everybody to applaud and then have cake. No. God is done with us. And what when if you want to get free from condemnation, baptism is really critical. Not the act itself, but the teaching behind it. The answer of a good conscience to God saves you from condemnation. What is a good conscience? Well, an evil conscience tells you, no, there's still something left for you to do. You can do it. Come on. Pick yourself up by the bootstraps. You can do this thing. You just haven't tried hard enough yet. But as long as you're in that realm, you are repelled from the glory of God. Your flesh just shrinks back from it because you're under condemnation. You think you haven't done enough. Okay. So as long as you, and that's because your evil conscience has law consciousness because you have not seen your death with Christ. No, you not brethren. I speak to those that know the law, how that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives. As long as you're alive, you are married to the law. No matter how much you think you know about grace and you can teach about justification by faith to your blue in the face. But if your teaching does not include our death with Christ, then no one's going to get free from inward condemnation. Freedom from inward condemnation comes from being dead to the law. You are married to it. It's in your nature. Now on the one hand, there's the law of Moses that was given as a covenant as a picture, but the Gentiles who had no law were a law unto themselves, their conscience accusing and excusing them, right? Their actions. So even if you're not technically under that law, you are still under the sense of a law of your conscience that ever since the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is a problem for you, produces condemnation. The first response to the law is to shrink back from God. You know, that's why Adam and Eve, Adam hid himself when he heard the voice of God walking through the garden. He hid himself in shame. Before that, before he took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was naked and unashamed. Well, ever since then, we've been married in principle to law. And God's intention is not for us to sustain that relationship beyond our death with Christ. But most people don't see that they died with Christ. They see that Christ died for them, but they don't accept that Christ crucified us and that we died with him. And as a result, they attempt to keep in maintaining their own righteousness. And as a result, they're still under condemnation, no matter how much they pretend to be free. And their teaching will still convey condemnation, no matter how much they talk about grace. If you don't talk about our death with Christ, you don't have any means for people to be delivered from the law. Because the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives, right? And then for the woman which has been a husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he lives. But if the husband be dead, she's loose from the law of her husband. So then, if while her husband lives, she's married to another, she'll be called an adulteress. But if her husband is dead, she's free from the law so that she's no longer an adulteress, though she'd be married to another man. So here's the dilemma. If I'm married to the law, it's not lawful for me to marry Christ. That's what he's trying to say. He's not trying to say, he is saying it. Wherefore, my brethren, you are also become dead to the law by the body of Christ, so that you should be married to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Fruit bearing unto God is related to the life of Christ, okay? But if you are still married to the law, then that kind of life of Christ, fruit unto God marriage, will feel illegitimate to you. And that's why people persecute those who bear the message of the cross. In their mind, it's adultery. No, we have to stay with the law. Don't you see we're married to the law? Paul's saying, no, you died to the law. How? Through the death of Christ, so that you can be righteously married to Christ. So that's why the teaching of vicarious law-keeping is just a shame, because it's a spiritual adultery. It takes people who are married to Christ and then puts them back under the law, saying, you know, Christ kept the law for you, and he is your law keeper, and it's still a law situation, and your life still needs to be defined by the law. Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. That can produce nothing but condemnation, because you don't love God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your mind. You say, well, no, I love God with my inner man in that way. No, your inner man doesn't have a mind, will, and emotions. Your spirit is expressed through your mind, will, and emotions. Your mind is somewhat neutral. Your soul can either be the mind of the flesh or the mind of the spirit, even as a believer. So we really need the spirit, our human spirit, which has this divine spirit, flowing through our soul to produce fruit. God is not requiring us to muster up our love for him from the recesses of our fallen flesh. No, he has something new, the love of God shall broaden our heart by the Holy Spirit, which he's given to us. And it's as we grow in the knowledge of his love, and this is love, not that we loved him, but that he loved us, that we're perfected in love. And what does that perfect love do? Cast out fear. What is fear? Well, fear has torment, because you're afraid of judgment. Why are you afraid of judgment? Because you still have this lingering idea that you're married to the law, and it has dominion over you. You think God's expecting something of you. What is the sum of the law? To love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Is that you? If you say it's you, then move over, Jesus. You know, I got this. Jesus died in vain. If you could fulfill the law, Christ died in vain. Paul says in Galatians, I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness came to the law through the law, Christ died in vain. You frustrate the grace of God when you think that righteousness is a matter of law-keeping. And not only that, but you make Christ an illegitimate husband, and accuse him of adultery. When really you're the one who's in adultery, because on the one hand you're married to Christ, but on the other hand you're still trying to stay married to the law. That's why baptism is so important, if it's done right. And it, you know, in the early church they used to teach people for months before they let them get baptized. When people would get baptized, they knew darn good and well that this was not a public display of their commitment to God. It was a recognition of the flesh being put out of the way, and the strength of the flesh being put out of the way, and the requirement on the flesh being put out of the way, so that Christ can now be the life. Right? Wherefore, my brethren, you are also become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that you should be married to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. If you stay married to the law, you frustrate the grace of God, which means there's no fruit. That's the end of Galatians. Galatians is, you find yourself just under the law, sowing to the flesh, reaping from the flesh, corruption. And those who don't see that they're dead with Christ, and have a legal view of righteousness, especially in this area of love, will eventually find that they are consumed, fighting and devouring one another, because their so-called love is just a legalistic sowing to the flesh. And eventually it's manifested as hatred. And that's why Jesus went into the crowd of Pharisees and laid into them the way he did, was because they thought they were so nice and loving. You know, they were genteel. They were not considered to be murderous. They were considered to be the example of how to be nice. Okay? And yet, when Jesus provoked them, the murder in their heart came out, the hatred. Their natural love was revealed for what it really was, which is a legalistic deception, which actually can turn into hatred real fast. It's just a mask for hatred, actually. No, that's why we have to see our death with Christ and put the flesh out of the way, or we'll try to use it to serve God and then really create problems, you know. He says, we bear fruit unto God, how? By being joined to Christ and dying to the law. We had to die to it. You can't be married to the law and to Christ without making Christ illegitimate or you illegitimate. Either Christ is an adulterer or you're the adulterer because you're still married to the law, or trying to be, and you should be in relationship to Christ. That's what spiritual adultery is. When Jesus talks about fornication and adultery in the letter to the church of Thyatira, he's really talking about this. The root of it is law righteousness. And you can look back in history and put that together. I can't deal with that right here. So what's the answer? We have to learn about our death with Christ and focus on it until we really see it just as clearly as we see that he forgave our sins. We're good at 1 John 1.9. If we're faithful, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. We're pretty good at that. And that's practice for a deeper truth, which is, know you not that you were baptized into his death. And now you're to present yourself as one who's alive from the dead, realizing that you're joined to Christ and he dwells in you. And then stop trying to perform religiously and believe what Christ is in you in reality. And that is just accumulating the knowledge of the truth and believing it. There's no other answer but being in the word and believing the word. I believe that I'm a new creature. I believe Christ is in me. I believe I'm dead to the law. I believe I'm dead to sin. I believe I'm alive to God. I believe that there's no condemnation for me. I believe he's accepted me on the ground of Christ and in Christ. And I expect only blessings from God. I mean, yes, he disciplines me, but even his discipline is a blessing. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. You got to preach the gospel to yourself, man. People say that's crazy, but I don't know another way to come under the hearing of faith for the supply of the Spirit. It is entirely a matter of supply of the Spirit, walking in the Spirit, and minding the things of the Spirit. That's how we live the Christian life. Not by law-keeping, but by acknowledging what God has done. So, I know this is a little wandering, but the two big ordinances are communion and baptism. And it would be good for us to have a better understanding of what these things really mean, especially baptism, because it introduces us to the basic principle of the Christian life of how to walk it out. And that teaching is almost entirely missing from Protestant Christianity, even the ones who supposedly teach grace. And it's for that reason that even 150 years ago, the Brethren said Protestantism is thoroughly Galatianized, because they're all under the law for a rule of life. They are still measuring their righteousness based on their performance and God's demand and how much they love God and all that. No, he's taken all that out of the way. He's not even looking at that anymore. What he's looking for is how much Christ do you have? How free are you in Christ? How much have you acknowledged the truth that's in him? How much have you grown in your assurance that he is everything in the Christian life? He's the start and he's the beginning and the end. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He's the author and the finisher of your faith, and he's the captain of your salvation. He's the one leading you into glory. He's your high priest. He's your life. He's your wisdom from God. He's your righteousness. He's your sanctification. He's your redemption. He's your hope of glory. He is the Christian life. He's the whole thing. That's what growth in the Christian life means. It's a greater and greater acknowledgement that I can do nothing. God's not requiring anything from me. Christ is everything and he really lives in me. So it's not that we say we don't work, like we just enter rest and nothing happens. No, we enter rest fully expecting Christ to be manifested. Like I said, you don't have the reality of the Sabbath until you're in the Holy of Holies with the Shekinah and you are dead and he's alive. That's the reality of the Sabbath, not just stopping working. And that's why I said, you know, what the more I focus on resting in Christ and acknowledging the truth of what he accomplished in my death with him, the more utterance he gives me, the more supply I have, the more resurrection I find that I'm able to stand up instead of collapsing under various things. And I'm able to walk, not consumed by bitterness, but keep teaching the truth and contending. Not taking down my channel and getting wiped out, having a pity party, you know, for more than a couple of minutes, but getting back on it and teaching and proclaiming the good news. And anytime I go through these things, it's interesting because there's more people get free. It's like the more I get accused of stuff, the more free people get because the resurrection responds. And it's not because I'm doing anything. It's because in these moments I go, Lord, please don't let me respond in the flesh. Please. I so badly want to defend myself and email out all the different things I know and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, no. So you give that to Jesus and say, Lord, I can't do this. I can do nothing. Lord, if it's not you, I will be completely defeated by this situation. I'm a very sensitive person and very insecure. Uh, hate when people don't like me, uh, hate conflict, you know.

You know, the good news is that we've been made children of God and heirs of Christ. And there's a whole bunch of blessings involved with that. But we're so sin-focused and so focused on ourselves that we have to get that part clear. We have to get the assurance before we can even really talk about the inheritance. We have to understand that we have peace with God. So the first three chapters of Romans, first five and a half chapters of Romans, are talking about this aspect of condemnation that has to do with God condemning us or not. And Christ's blood appeases the wrath of God. It's what answers. The law shut our mouth, but the blood shuts the mouth of the accuser and shuts the mouth of the law and even shuts God's wrath from being poured out on us. That's good news. And we know that as believers. We are, when we get saved, that's the good news that saves us. You can have peace with God through the blood of Jesus Christ. We kind of know that, but it's far away from us because it's about something that happened apart from us. It happened in heaven. It's an alien righteousness. My righteousness is in heaven where nothing can touch it. But because nothing can touch it, because it's in heaven, sometimes it's hard for me to touch it. So I believe it, and yet in my daily life, I struggle to sense it, that peace with God. I know it's true from God's point of view, but boy, it sure doesn't seem true from my point of view. And this has got to do with the second aspect of condemnation, which is revealed in Romans 8. And like I said, once it starts talking about organic salvation or salvation of life, how much more should we be saved in his life, now we're talking about the work of Christ in me. So Romans 1-4 is the work of Christ outside of me, and a righteousness that's in heaven that I get it, I agree, but I don't feel it. And it's a good thing that it's not dependent on my feeling. I can't touch it, it seems like, because it's in heaven. Christ's blood is my righteousness. But then, starting with that phrase, how much more should we be saved in his life, he begins to talk about grace being poured out upon us. Grace abounding towards us. And I've said this in another message, that grace is Christ himself, to be our everything. Of his fullness, we've received grace upon grace, right? It's Christ being poured out as life into us. We were baptized into him, and he came into us to dwell in us as the spirit. Now that turns the attention to me and my life here on earth. There's a new thing that happened. I was crucified with Christ, and I'm now to reckon myself dead with him, and I'm to present myself as one who is alive from the dead. Present myself as a living sacrifice. Present myself as one who already died with Christ, sinning the law, and recognize that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in me now, and he'll give life to my mortal bodies. And yes, that speaks ultimately of being raptured, or resurrected, or transfigured, but it also speaks of my daily life, to walk in the newness of the spirit. And if you are not walking in the spirit, you will gravitate towards an inward condemnation. And this is what Romans 8 deals with. And Romans 8 starts with, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. I'm going to stop there because the next verse scares us. If you read the King James, it says, who walk not 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. So what is this? There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ, for only those who are walking in the spirit? I thought it was based on my faith in the blood. This isn't fair. Is this works? Well, here he's talking about another kind of condemnation. There's the condemnation before God. We are no longer condemned there. But in our hearts, we struggle with assurance and the righteousness, which is in heaven, seems so far from us. And the peace we have with God seems so far from us sometimes. And that is because our flesh, our nature, is a performance machine that wants to be credited for righteousness or judged for a lack of it. That's our nature. We are transaction based. We want to earn this thing. And whenever we're in that mode of looking at ourselves and our performance, that righteousness is hidden from us. And so you can be very well established in the truths of justification and still be full of condemnation. And I was for years. I couldn't figure out why. And then I learned that there were various types of legalism that were binding me up that were more subtle than just thinking that I was to be justified by law. I knew I wasn't justified by law. But I felt that if I didn't feel close to God and didn't maintain my Christian life in a certain way, that I was not good enough, not satisfying to Him, whatever. And I looked at myself a lot. I considered myself all the time. Even though I knew that I was free from the wrath of God empirically, objectively, with my mind, I was full of condemnation and the source was a living that wasn't according to the Spirit, but according to the flesh. See, when we read Romans 8, the legalist will say, walking according to the Spirit and setting your mind on the things of the Spirit and not walking according to the flesh means that you're walking a holy life and not sinning. That's what that means. They think flesh is evil, flesh is sin. It's almost like Gnosticism. And therefore to walk in the flesh means you're walking in sin. Or walking in sin means you're walking in the flesh. But the flesh, the mind of the flesh, see Romans 8 comes on the heels of Romans 7. And what is Romans 7 about? It is about the natural man who also is regenerated and there's a struggle in him because his inner man delights after the law of God and wants to do it. And then his mind agrees with this law and so he tries to rise up and do it. And then he finds another law in his members called the law of sin, which takes him captive so that the good he would do he can't do and the evil thing he doesn't want to do is what he ends up doing. Well that struggle produces an inward state of condemnation no matter how clear you are on justification because your mind is on yourself and not on Christ. And that's what Romans 7 is. It's a person who just does not have Christ in view. He's gone back to his performance. I was alive once but then the law came and sin revived and I died. Because when the law comes and I agree with it and I try to start doing it then the flesh rises up and the flesh will always be condemned. He'll always feel condemned because he can't perform what the law requires. He does the exact opposite. When the law is there it's actually strengthening and magnifying sin. It's designed that way. It's designed as a mirror to show you what the natural man is by getting the natural man to try to do what God wants and failing. So that is the purpose of the law. And then that produces an inward sense of condemnation that messes with your assurance. So at the end of Romans 7, he says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. There is therefore no condemnation now for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Some translations take that verse out and just say there's therefore now no condemnation in Christ. And they say some manuscripts didn't include the who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. And I used to gravitate towards those translations for that reason when it came to that section. Because I didn't understand. I thought when he was talking about there's no condemnation he was talking about from God's point of view. Even if you are in this struggle in Romans 7, don't worry, God's not mad at you. There's no condemnation. And that works okay, but it doesn't satisfy the person who's still in the flesh because he can't grasp it. That's still talking about that righteousness in heaven that I can barely reach. A conceptual thing. Theoretical almost. But now, if I stick the verse back in, who walk no longer according to the flesh but after the Spirit. For those who are according to the flesh bind the things of the flesh, and those who are after the Spirit bind the things of the Spirit. The mindset on the flesh is death because it cannot be subject to God, right? It's not subject to the law of God and neither can it be. But the mindset on the Spirit is life and peace. 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 Christ dwells in you. And if you don't have the Spirit of Christ, you're not His. So what is he talking about here? First of all, you are in the Spirit. You are no longer in the flesh, you are in the Spirit, that's a fact. That's the base. The real you is in the regenerated human spirit. But your flesh, which he's been talking about in chapter 6 and 7, the religious flesh and the sinful flesh, had to be crucified and put out of God's sight. So we were baptized into His death, but you still have that old man and he still wants to try to serve God. He wants to sin and he also wants to serve God, and he wants to justify his sin by serving God. He wants to justify sinning by being sorrowful to God and then trying to do something for God to make himself feel better. It's a vicious cycle. But then the more he tries to do things to please God, the sin comes out. And then he goes back to trying to be sorry and then working for God again, and he's just in a vicious cycle until he finally cries out for deliverance and realizes, wow, my flesh is ruined. That's when you realize, I had to be put on the cross with Christ. That's the beginning of freedom from the inward condemnation that comes from the cycle of performing before God. And the mind set on the Spirit versus the mind of the flesh, the mind of the flesh is the mind that is basically set on the old man wanting him to live still and have his cake and eat it too and get to serve God and get rewards and get to sin a little bit and plead the blood of Jesus. But he's never at ease because he's not even allowed to be running around. He's supposed to be put on the cross. He's supposed to be dead. The mind that agrees with this is the mind that starts to be set on the Spirit. Now I start to see, wow, my whole thing before God is a mess. I can't live like this. I can't serve him. I can't please him. When I'm in the flesh, my flesh, there's nothing good dwells in me. That's what Paul says in Romans 7, I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. You get to a point where even though you knew you were justified because Christ is in heaven pleading on your behalf, you still feel inward condemnation because you haven't seen how ruined your flesh is and how ruined the old man is. And so God uses the law to bring you into a place where you have tried and tried and tried and tried to get a sense inside of being pleasing to God by your performance. And finally got to a point where you realized, oh, the flesh is ruined. It has to go to the cross. It doesn't get to get up and move around and do stuff. It has to go to death. And this is God's view of the flesh. So you start to agree with God's view of the flesh, which was decreed even before the flood, you know, it's, he, he put it to death and that judgment still stands. And that's why we had to be crucified with Christ. Yes, he tasted the death, but we were put into it because no amount of good that we do will ever get us feeling right with God because we are loaded with the sin nature and the whole thing has to be put out of sight. That means that all I have left is to turn to Jesus and say, if you don't do something, there's nothing going to happen. And that's when you finally establish the law and really put your inward being in agreement with justification that used to just be something heavenly in Christ, far away from you that you couldn't touch. But now you realize that you can barely breathe unless you get some glimpse of that righteousness. And instead of trying to seek an inward sense of feeling right with God by your performance, you start to seek an inward sense of feeling right with God based on your faith in the gospel. And that becomes the mind of the spirit, the mindset on the spirit, which is life and peace, because Christ is not just in heaven. He is in you. He is in you as the spirit of sonship, crying, Abba, father, and bearing witness with your spirit that you're a child of God. You just couldn't hear him while you had your mind set on the flesh. And so all you had was this theoretical notion of righteousness, which was up in the heaven, but didn't have a mind that could grasp the inner witness of the spirit because your mind was set on your performance based on either the law or based on how I feel. I feel far away from God. I need to pray more. That's a kind of mystical legalism. I feel so dead. I feel so dormant inside. I feel so I'm not bearing any fruit. I'm not doing anything to please God. My life is pointless. I don't do anything. I've got no rewards. All of that is, is you're putting, see, you're saved, but you're putting your mind on the flesh and its performance and its feelings rather than on Christ. And until you stop that, you're going to be filled with inward condemnation. But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but according to the spirit. How do I walk according to the spirit? By setting my mind on the things of the spirit. And you say, well, that's a discipline. My mind goes all over the place. No, it's not that you have a, it's not a discipline in that sense where you're trying to, I'm going to be in the spirit. I got to be in the spirit. Help me be in the spirit. Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, help me be in the spirit. No, that's still a performance based thing on the flesh. It is a mind that's been broken and touched to finally see through exhaustion that there's no good thing that dwells in my flesh and that God had to crucify it. And so I'm going to stop looking to my flesh as the source of anything. I'm going to stop looking to my, myself for the source of anything that will establish peace towards God. And I'm going to only be willing to look at Christ. When I think about whether or not I have peace with God, I'm not going to think about how I feel and how I've been doing and whether I've been reading my Bible and whether I'm performing and whether I'm doing anything for God. Because that realm is condemnation only. The answer is no, you have not done enough. You haven't even started. I'm going to not look to that anymore. I'm going to look to Jesus Christ, my righteousness. And you will get there because God almost drowned you in the flesh and in the condemnation and give you a straw called grace that allows you to, it points up in the air above the water and air comes through and it'll be the only way you can breathe. He'll let you go through that where you feel like you're just going to die. You're going to drown if you don't get a breath of air and he sticks this straw in your face and the only thing you've got is, I got to breathe in Jesus Christ. And through that, then what happens? The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus will free you from the law of sin and death. The law, it works as a law. It's the spirit of Christ who bears witness in you to the gospel and gives life to your mind and life to your mortal body so that you are full of life and peace and free from that inward condemnation. That is by the working of a law. Just like when you set your mind on the flesh and try to perform for God, there's a law of sin in your members that brings you into captivity and causes you to do the things you hate and then brings you under condemnation. That's a law too. And the steering wheel or the lever for this law, these laws, is I look to myself as the source of something for God and that produces the condemnation or I look to Christ and look to him alone in his blood and his death and his resurrection. And I say, my flesh has been crucified. God is no longer looking. It still moves around, but God is not counting it anymore, nor am I allowed to count myself in the flesh. I have to consider myself as one who's alive from the dead by the spirit of Christ within me. He dwells in me now and he is my righteousness and I can't do anything. The only thing I'm allowed to do because I'm drowning down here is to breathe through that straw and get some grace. You're not allowed to start performing for God. All you can do is breathe and let that grace come in and fill you. Then once you learn to live that way, that'll become your survival. Every time you'll just start breathing out of the straw, you realize that that's the only place the air comes through. And so your method of living and survival will be to look at Jesus Christ and him crucified. And say, there is my righteousness. And then as you're doing that, the spirit in you is bearing witness that you are a child of God. And the more you focus on that, your mind will become life and peace. And life will come to your body and you will start living a righteous life that fulfills the righteous requirement of the law, which is just to love. Not by your effort, but by your breathing through that straw. The air that comes in the natural world animates your life, but you still have to move around and do stuff. But the air that comes through that straw, the grace, is the life-giving spirit, the resurrected Christ who operates and animates. And so he'll put a smile on your face and a word in your mouth. Because the only thing he cares about is his word going out. And he'll also give you a heart to do things. For people. It'll just be different. And it won't be because you're trying to earn something for him to get the guilties off your back. It'll be because you have a mind that's life and peace and you're free from the law of sin and death and you're free from the condemnation. So this is what it means to get free from the inward condemnation. And if you ignore this, or if you're not clear on it, you will still struggle with inward condemnation, lack of assurance, and feelings of death and woe is me and God doesn't love me, even though you won't be able to deny that the blood in heaven speaks for you. See, that's the thing. You go, yeah, I know the blood is up there speaking for me, and I know ultimately I have peace with God, but I feel miserable, like I don't have any kind of relationship with God. I don't even know him, and I'm not doing anything for him, and I'm not going to have any rewards, and it's hard for me to even believe he loves me. I know he has to tolerate me because he made a covenant, so I'll give him that, but I just can't do anything right in my life, and it's just a mess. Well, that's because you're living in the flesh. You go, well, I'm not trying to sin. I'm not talking about sin, I'm talking about you're living entirely focused on yourself and your performance. That's the mind of the flesh that makes you live in the flesh, and there's sin and righteousness in there. There's sin and works righteousness. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has good and evil. All of it is death, and that is what is animating you while you're looking at the flesh. You got to get over to look to the tree of life. Christ has to become your food. Your food, the fruit of the tree of life, has been granted to you, and the way you eat of it and partake of it is to recognize the facts. Not just that he shed blood for you and that blood is in heaven speaking for you, but that you died with him, that the flesh has been put out of the way, that it's no longer allowed to be the source of anything good for God, and that your only hope is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that's how he wants you to live, by faith. Live by believing the gospel. Don't live by trying to do things. See, some people say, well, yeah, you have the gospel, but what about your living? Yes, we got saved, but now how do we live? You live the way you got saved, which is, like Paul said, as you received him, so also walk in him, grounded, rooted in the faith, right? We got to be established in faith, and we live by faith. The way I live is by believing the gospel, just as the way I got saved. All the way to the end, it is merely a matter of drinking through that straw where the grace is coming through, eating and partaking of Christ. All the way to the end. It's nothing else. There's nothing else to do but to look at Jesus as my righteousness and become acquainted with him, and say, yes, Lord, thank you that you did shed your blood, and yes, thank you that I've been crucified with you. Thank you that it's not about my performance and my feelings. It's about you, and you are in my spirit, and you are alive. You have to agree with these things. You have to recite them to yourself and to the Lord and pray based on these things, and swing your being into agreement with the facts. The more you need a vision of Christ sat down at the right hand of God, yes, he purified me, yes, he shed his blood for me, yes, his blood speaks better things than that of Abel's, yes, I have a high priest in the heavens, yes, who intercedes for me, right.