Freedom from Condemnation

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We’re going to be in Romans chapter 7 and Romans chapter 8 this morning. Don’t worry, I’m not preaching two whole chapters. Just sort of the dividing line between the two fell in the middle of the text I want to look at this morning.

But we’ll start in the end of Romans chapter 7. I told you last week that through the month of July I was planning to preach on freedom and the freedom that we have in Christ. The Bible has been twisted and misinterpreted by people throughout the years to justify all sorts of oppression. And I think I mentioned last week one of the favorite things to say of people who don’t believe the Bible is, well, you can make the Bible say anything.

You can use the Bible to say anything. No, you can misuse the Bible to say anything. When you get to the point of what the Bible is about, the Bible really is a book about freedom.

The Bible says very clearly in the book of John that if the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed. You will be free. And so I want to look, we started last week, want to look today in the next couple weeks at some of the areas of freedom that the Bible talks about.

We talked last week about freedom from sin. Now, I don’t want to give you the impression that we are in Christ free from sin in the sense that we will never sin again. I mean, that would be great.

That would solve so many problems in my life and yours, I’m sure, if we came to a point where I’ve trusted Christ as my Savior now, my sins are forgiven, and guess what? There aren’t any more. It doesn’t work that way because we still have the sin nature, as the Bible talks about, as we’ll see today also.

But we are freed from sin. That means that we are born sinners, and we exercise that job description very well. And until we come to Christ, we sin really because that’s our nature.

That’s all we know to do. And yet when we come to Christ, that sin is forgiven and we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit who then gives us the power to resist that sin. Are we always going to listen to him and resist?

No. It’s like the song in My Fair Lady where Eliza Doolittle’s dad says, when temptation comes, you’ll jump right in. Sometimes we do that.

But with the Holy Spirit, we for the first time have the ability to resist sin, have the ability to resist temptation. And so in Christ, for the first time, we are free to choose to do what’s right when we’ve never really had that before. This morning, I want to talk about freedom from condemnation.

Two different things, because freedom from sin, yes, means that we’re no longer slaves to sin. We now have a choice in whether or not to obey sin. and hopefully as we go along further and further, the less and less will obey sin.

But there are also effects and consequences from sin. Every choice, every action has a consequence. That’s biblical, but on top of it, for those who don’t believe the Bible, they can’t really argue with that principle because that’s scientific.

For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. There are consequences to everything we do, every choice we make, everything we think. I’m fond of saying when it comes to politics that ideas have consequences.

There are consequences for everything. And the consequence of sin is condemnation. And yet in Christ we have freedom from condemnation.

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, I was thinking this morning on the drive down here how to illustrate this idea of freedom from condemnation. And the best illustration I could come up with was Richard Nixon. Now, many of you in here will remember the Watergate era.

I don’t. I was born during Reagan’s second term. The first president I remember is Bush 41.

So that was a little before my time, but I’ve read about it and watched things about it. The Watergate era started out with what we would look at today with all the scandals that go on in Washington and Oklahoma City and wherever else there are concentrations of power, a relatively minor scandal. They broke in, and people that worked for the president broke in in 72 and bugged the Democrat campaign headquarters in the Watergate Hotel. The even bigger problem came, I mean, that was criminal behavior, and people were going to go to jail for that.

But the bigger problem came when the president said he didn’t know anything about it, began to destroy records. I’m still not clear on everything that happened. It was such a, I mean, Nixon was a brilliant, cunning man, and I don’t say that necessarily always as a compliment.

there are some leaders our country has had Nixon, Bill Clinton, I put them in a class by themselves they were brilliant men, just wish they’d always used their brilliance for good but they were brilliant men, Nixon, I can’t even unravel everything that happened in Watergate, but there was lying, there was cover up, there were tapes destroyed, there was people refused to testify before Congress and it got to such a point that as a consequence of the actions of whether it was Nixon, whether it was the people who worked for him and he just knew about it, the people of the United States were ready for heads to roll. I mean, there were protests from what I understand, people wanting Nixon out of office. The Congress was considering impeachment, and it was actually the articles of impeachment were actually referred to the Judiciary Committee in the House.

Now, I didn’t come here to give you a history lesson this morning. Nixon ended up resigning, as you’ll recall, because the evidence against him was so glaring. There was such evidence of wrongdoing.

Nixon was a fighter. Nixon was known as a comeback person. There was no way Nixon would have resigned unless he’d seen the handwriting on the wall and realized, I’m finished.

Once all of this gets investigated by the House, I’m going to be impeached. The Senate’s going to remove me from office. We have never removed a president from office, and he had who have seen that that was coming.

And so Nixon resigned to try to put some of this behind him. Well, what happened, there were still people calling for blood, essentially, maybe not literally. There probably were some that were calling for it literally as well.

But the people still wanted Nixon punished. And you know what? If he did the things they said he did, then yeah, he deserved to be punished.

When he resigned, his vice president, Gerald Ford, became president in his place. And one of the first things he did in office was to issue Nixon an unconditional blanket pardon for any criminal activities he might have committed. And people lost their minds over this and said, he didn’t deserve that pardon.

Now let’s think about this for a minute. If we need a pardon, do we deserve it? By the very definition of needing a pardon, you don’t deserve it.

But there are instances where people have been wrongfully convicted and they’ve been pardoned, but usually when you get a pardon, it’s because you’ve done something wrong, you’ve been convicted, and the president or the governor or whoever it is says, but we’re going to put that behind us as though it never happened. That’s incredible grace and mercy right there to say we’re going to wipe the slate clean and say it didn’t happen. Now, they could have discussed and debated whether it was appropriate to pardon him or not.

That was a completely separate issue. Did he deserve the pardon? No.

The man stood condemned. He was about to lose his office. He was about to be the first president, removed from office probably by two-thirds vote of the Senate, likely facing criminal charges for some of the things he had done.

And suddenly, all of that just goes away because of a pardon. The man was condemned and was given a clean slate. Now, we can argue he didn’t deserve that.

That’s why he needed it. None of us deserve pardon. If I went and killed somebody and the governor pardoned me, I wouldn’t deserve that.

I was a murderer. If we embezzled funds and the governor pardoned us, we wouldn’t deserve that because we’re embezzlers. And yet this condemnation can be taken away.

Now the freedom that we have in Christ that I want to talk about this morning is this freedom from condemnation. We stand condemned before God, which I don’t know about you all is a lot scarier to me than condemned before the government or public opinion. You know, when it comes to public opinion, everybody in the country can hate you and eventually you’re going to die and it’s not going to matter anymore.

The government can throw you in prison for the rest of your life and swallow the key and eventually it’s not going to matter anymore. You stand condemned before God. You’ve got problems on earth in this life and in the life to come.

And we stand condemned before God because of our sins, and yet Christ gives us this pardon. And we don’t deserve it, and yet He gives it to us anyway. And we’re going to start in Romans 7, 22.

I looked back, and there was further stuff. We could have gone further back in chapter 7 where he’s talking about the law, but there’s really no, I mean, it’s all good and we could be here all day. So we’re just going to start in verse 22.

Paul writes to the church at Rome, for I delight in the law of God after the inward man. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. So what he’s saying here is in verse 22, he delights in the law of God after the inward man.

He says, but he sees this other law in his members. He’s describing the conflict that rages within each of us, even as Christians. The world has the idea, and sometimes we have the idea, that when we become Christians, when we trust Christ, when our sins are forgiven, the change is supposed to be so immediate and so thorough that we’re just not supposed to have any problems with sin anymore.

It doesn’t work that way. It continues on. As I’ve said before, sanctification takes place immediately in the sense that when we trust Christ, we are set apart unto God and He says, He’s one of mine.

But sanctification is also a process that takes the rest of our lives where God changes us from the inside out. And from the moment of my conversion, I mean, it’s called conversion for a reason. We are changed from one thing into another.

From the moment of conversion, there should be some little spark of change that says, you know what, I’m just a little bit different. Some people, some people, you look at them and they come to Christ and the change is remarkable. I mean, it’s just incredible, almost instantaneous.

You can see it on their faces that they’ve gone from this sullen, cranky person, however you want to describe it. And they’ve got this indescribable joy that’s just written all over their faces. We know how hard it is sometimes for people to give up things like alcohol.

And I’ve seen people just give up alcohol, cold turkey, because they’ve come to Christ. And it’s just remarkable sometimes the change that takes place instantaneously. For a lot of us, it takes a longer stretch of history. But there should be some sort of instantaneous change, even if it’s a small one.

And God begins to work on us. And God begins like a potter with the clay to shape us and mold us into what he wants us to be. And sometimes the pot takes longer to make them.

Some pots take longer to form than others. And yet, as we go through this process, there’s this war between the spirit that now indwells us and the sin nature that we unfortunately are born with. And he says, in my mind, I know.

I know what God’s law is. And I want to follow it. I want to do what God says.

and yet there’s this thing that creeps up within me. There’s this war within my body, within myself. This war against the law of my mind.

So the mind or the spirit says, I want to be a good boy and follow God. And yet the flesh says, no, I want you to do this. And there’s this constant struggle.

And I’ve got to believe you know what I’m talking about. And some days we’re victorious over this and some days we go to God and say, I don’t know what happened. Can you help me do better tomorrow?

Because there’s this constant struggle between the spirit and the flesh. And Paul recognized this and said in verse 24, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Who shall deliver me from the body of this death, O wretched man that I am?

And now this war still rages on within us, even after we become Christians. But I think really what he’s talking about here is Paul, even before he came to Christ, knew the law of God. New, right, and wrong, the Bible says that the law of God is engraved on man’s hearts.

It’s not a direct quote. But we’re born with a conscience. We’re born knowing some things right from wrong.

If you don’t believe that, that’s why society, it’s almost universal, some things, that people all over the world look at and say, that’s wrong. You’re not supposed to do that. We know we’re not supposed to steal. We know we’re not supposed to murder each other.

Now, different societies may have different ideas about what constitutes theft and murder, but we know it’s wrong when we see it. We know it’s wrong. And so we know up here, even the unregenerate, even the unsaved, know, hey, here’s right and wrong and I really should try to do right.

And yet there’s this other force that pulls me the other direction to the point where Paul says, I am a wretched man. Who will set me free from this? We stand condemned before God because of our sins.

We are wretched people and I don’t say that to make you feel bad. I think you’re all perfectly nice as far as my human standards are concerned. But there’s not one of us who can stand before a holy God and say, look how good I am.

Isaiah was a pretty good man by human standards. And you look in Isaiah chapter 6, when he saw the vision of God and all his holiness and his glory, Isaiah became a basket case. Just fell apart.

Woe is me. I know we don’t talk that way today. I can’t think of what the equivalent would be in our speech today.

I think maybe throwing ourselves on the floor and calling out to God, don’t kill me. Woe is me, for I’m undone. I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.

In contrast to a holy God, we are just dirt. Even the best of us, just dirt. Before you feel too bad, it makes it all the more incredible that he would love us anyway.

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And he says in verse 25, in response to this despair that he has as a man who’s condemned under sin, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind, I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin.

And he talks more about this division. But after he’s asked, who will deliver me? Who will set me free from this?

He immediately turns and says, I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. God can and will deliver us from sin and condemnation, and he does so only through Jesus Christ. He doesn’t look at us and say, well, you’re nice. I think I’ll let you off.

Or I like the way you did your hair today. I’ll give you a few extra points here or there. No, God is not a respecter of persons, and God does not compromise with sin.

But because Jesus Christ went and paid for our sins and was punished for them, because the penalty was paid and the punishment was meted out in Jesus Christ, God now can look on us and say, I pardon you. You don’t deserve it, but because of what he did, I pardon you. I pardon you.

I pardon you. And he says in chapter 8, I’m sorry, verse 1, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk after the flesh. I’m sorry, let me start over with that verse.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. There’s how much condemnation? No condemnation.

There is now therefore, that word therefore ties it back to the previous verse and says, because of what he did. Not because we’re so nice, not because we’re so wonderful, but because of what Jesus Christ did, there is now therefore no condemnation. That condemnation is the weight of sin and its eternal consequences on us, which we’ll get to in just a few minutes.

To them which are in Christ Jesus. The Bible says that when we trust Him, we are then in Christ. When we trust Him as our Savior, we are in Christ. So those who’ve been born again, who’ve trusted Christ as their Savior, now have no condemnation because of what He’s done. It says, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

This is not adding another condition on here, saying there’s no condemnation for those who are in Christ because you’ve been so good and walked after the Spirit and not the flesh. What he’s saying is that is a characteristic of those who are in Christ Jesus. We walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh.

Yes, we still have, as he talked about in verse 22 and 23, and then again in verse 25, there’s still this conflict that goes on within us. And sometimes we’re going to fail, but the overall trajectory of our life, Good science word there. The overall path our life takes should be one of following the Spirit and not the flesh.

There are days I stumble and follow the flesh. You know what? Let me reword that.

There are hours. Because I don’t know that I can go a day and say, I didn’t follow the flesh today. But the desire I have is to follow the Spirit.

What I strive toward is following the Spirit. And as we go on, the following of the flesh should be the exception. He said this is sort of a characteristic of those who are in Christ. There is now therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, those who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath 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. A few things here.

First of all, when he refers to the law of sin, he’s talking about the law of Moses, the law that God gave Moses in the Old Testament. And he’s not saying that that law is sinful or that somehow we are sinful for following the law. The point of the law was, as Galatians tells us, was to be a schoolmaster to point us to Christ. We are born sinners.

We were sinners before he gave the law to Moses. But it shows us how sinful we are. It shows us how high the standard is and how impossible it is to attain to it.

I think I’ve given you the example before that if we were to go to an amusement park and stand in front of one of those things that says you must be this tall to ride this ride. Say a child, say the standard is right here. Benjamin would not be tall enough to ride that ride.

I mean, not yet. If we keep feeding him, maybe. But he would not be tall enough to ride that ride.

Now, if that’s the standard, he would be too short whether the sign was there or not, wouldn’t he? But because that sign is there and he’s able to stand up against it, we see how far short, literally, he is of the standard. The same goes for us in the law.

The law points out how sinful we already were. The law, we’re not sinners because, okay, here’s the law and it’s set so high, now we can’t do it. We were already sinners, and it just showed us how high the bar was set.

So that’s why he calls it the law of sin, because it’s what identified for us how sinful we really were. And he says, 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. Okay, what he’s saying here is the law was weak in the sense of trying to justify us before God.

There were most of the people in Paul’s day, most of the Jews in Paul’s day, And many people today, even who claim to be Christians, are using the law incorrectly, are saying, okay, if I can just be good enough, I can be justified before God. If I can just do enough good things, then God will love me. They tried in Paul’s day, the Jews were trying to, the Pharisees and others said, if we can just keep the law perfectly, and they thought they could.

They couldn’t, because they neglected the matters of the heart connected to the law, too. You can do anything outwardly. I think the law would be very hard to keep outwardly.

but you can keep it outwardly. But there’s still the sinful thoughts and feelings and motivations. And they thought, if we can just keep the law, then we can be justified before God.

We can have our sins forgiven. We can have a relationship with Him. It didn’t work that way because the law was never intended to do that.

The law was to show us how sinful we were. And so he says the law was weak. What the law couldn’t do, Jesus was able to accomplish.

The law couldn’t make us righteous. The law could only point out how unrighteous we were. And he says, in contrast, God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh.

Jesus Christ was not sinful, but he was made to have flesh the same way that you and I have sinful flesh. And even though he didn’t sin, he bore our sin on the cross. And when he was condemned, that sin was condemned with him.

When he was scourged, that sin was scourged with him. That sin was punished and God’s wrath was poured out on that sin in him. Verse 4, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.

So he says here that what the law was unable to do, Christ was able to accomplish. The law, and just none of us here, I’m sure, try to follow the whole Old Testament law, but we hear it a lot of times among people who profess to be Christians, if I can just be good enough, whatever they think God’s law to mean, well, if I can just do that. Whatever the Old Testament law could not do for the Jews, Christ was able to accomplish.

What your goodness, what your good efforts, what my good efforts to obey God will not be able to accomplish, Jesus was able to accomplish, and that was to forgive our sins and to make us righteous. Because he was condemned in our place. 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.

For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. And he talks about this change that takes place, and I could spend days just talking about this part, but I want to focus on the condemnation aspect of the passage. He talks about this change that takes place because Christ has been condemned in our place, that we’re now able to be spiritually minded, and he says to be spiritually minded is life and peace, because the carnal mind is enmity against God.

The carnal mind is sort of the natural way we think, the sinful fleshly way that we’re just programmed to think when we’re born. To be carnal, because the carnal mind is enmity. The state of being an enemy against God.

A few years ago I discovered the first time when it was paid attention, I guess the first time in Romans chapter 5, verse 1 where it says, therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And it hit me. You mean we weren’t at peace with God? We had to be given peace?

I mean I’d never put it, I thought of forgiveness, but I’ve never put it in terms of peace. But the Bible says elsewhere that friendship with the world is enmity with God. In our natural state, we are enemies of God, and not because God is mean.

We rebelled against Him, and yet there’s, though the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed be. He says, so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God, but ye, speaking to those of us who are no longer condemned, because Christ has been condemned in our place and we’ve accepted the pardon, he says, but ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. If so be that the spirit of God dwell in you.

Now, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. I just want to point out four brief things to you this morning from this passage, because we are free this morning from condemnation if we’re in Jesus Christ. The Bible, I think, makes that abundantly clear. There’s no need for us to stand condemned anymore because Jesus has been condemned in our place.

First of all, the Bible teaches that we’re condemned by our sin. As human beings, it’s just the natural state of things that we’re condemned by our sins. I’ll say it this way, and I want to be very careful about how I say it because people have gotten upset with me in the past, not here, but we are born condemned in our sins.

Now, my understanding of what the Bible teaches, and I understand there’s disagreement about this both ways, and it’s not really anything that I think people have to fight over. My understanding is there’s some sort of grace that God gives to small children before they’re able to understand. Now, I have reasons for believing that, but if you want to know about, we can talk about later.

There are others who don’t believe that. I’ve lost two children before they were born, so I kind of have to hang my hat on that, that God exhibits special grace toward them. But in our sinful state, we are born condemned by our sins.

Even before we sin, we are sinners by nature. And that’s why Paul says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? He stood condemned by his sins, and then he sinned as a result of being a sinner, and it’s just a vicious cycle.

And you can almost feel the condemnation of God. When I was five years old and trusted Christ as my Savior, it was the result of something that was taught in children’s church. I was raised in church.

I was sharing with the men in Sunday school this morning. I’m sure I had heard the gospel before this point. I was raised in church, went twice every Sunday and on Wednesdays and went on visitation with my parents.

Mom was the church secretary, so I was up there all the time. I was always around church, always around hearing things about the Bible. I’m certain I heard the gospel before this.

But the first time I really remember hearing it and it making sense, I was five years old. And I realized that I’d sinned against God. Now, I thought I was a good kid.

I was scared to death of mom and dad. Still am a little bit. But I was scared to step out of line, and I thought, well, I’m good.

Well, the Bible says that’s not the case. And when I realized I’d sinned against God and that he was angry with sin, that God hated sin, that hell was the punishment for sin, even at five years old, I felt the weight of that condemnation. I don’t know if I’ve ever told my mom this.

I’ve told her this part. That was on Sunday, and I went home and stood about it for days. It was on Thursday that I finally asked my mom, what do I have to do to be saved?

And she led me to Christ at our kitchen table. This is the part I’m not sure if I’ve ever told her. I felt such a weight lifted off of me that when she went to go call dad at work to tell him what happened, I was in there bouncing up and down on the couch because I was just that excited to have the strain, have the weight of that condemnation off of my little five-year-old’s shoulders.

The reason I said I don’t know if I’ve ever told her that or not, that was a big deal because you don’t do that. So there I went sinning again. but I was just so excited.

Just so liberated. And you probably think, well at five years old, what time did you have to do to get down to any real serious sinning? See, it’s not the amount of sinning, it was the fact that I was a born sinner.

And there was that weight of condemnation. And that’s why people talk about having felt conviction when they’re sitting hearing someone preach, or they’re in the car remembering something from the Bible, wherever they are, and they feel the Holy Spirit impress on them, You have sinned against God. And they realize the weight of that sin and the condemnation where we stand basically as condemned men and women before God, about to suffer, about to pay the price for the sins that we’ve committed.

We stand condemned by our sins. And there’s an incredible weight in that. That’s why I compared it to a pardon this morning.

That’s exactly what it is, what Christ does for us. Even though he was guilty, even though he deserved whatever he might have gotten, I can’t imagine what had to have been going through Richard Nixon’s mind. The thought of, okay, am I going to prison?

What’s going to happen here? What am I about to suffer? And then the weight that would be lifted off your shoulders when all of the worries that you have of those things are now behind you.

The second point this morning is that in Christ we no longer stand condemned before God. We are born condemned by our sins, but in Christ we no longer stand condemned before God. See, we think of salvation and we think, oh good, I get to go to heaven.

As wonderful as heaven is going to be, we can’t treat salvation as though that’s all it is. Salvation is more than fire insurance and a ticket to heaven. Salvation is the clearing of the eternal consequences.

I’m getting ahead of myself in the points here, but that’s all right. Sin is the clearing of the writing of that relationship that we have with God. Because of what Christ did, We, for the first time, can stand before the King, the Creator, the Judge of the universe, and not be condemned by the penalties of our sin.

That’s why he says, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Guys, we’re set free. When you realize how offensive our sin is to God, I think I still don’t completely understand this, but the more we realize how offensive our sin is to God, the more we feel its weight, and I’m not suggesting you go out and sin more so that you can feel this, but the more we feel the weight and the gravity and the wickedness of our own sin, the more incredible it should be to realize the weight that has been pulled off of our shoulders, the condemnation, the anger, the wrath of God that we rightly deserve that Jesus Christ took on Himself so that we wouldn’t have to.

And now we are no longer subject to condemnation becaus