Introducing . . . The Holy Spirit (Romans 8:2–4)

Freedom is one of the most overused words in Christian conversation, and one of the most misunderstood. We open Romans 8:2 and slow down on Paul’s phrase “the Spirit of Life,” because that single title explains why believers can be honest about ongoing struggle with sin while still living with real, present-tense liberation. We are not promised a life with zero battles, but we are promised a new ruling power that breaks the old “law of sin and death” and removes condemnation through Jesus Christ. 

We also get practical about who the Holy Spirit is. Not an energy. Not a vibe. Not a spiritual add-on. Scripture describes Him as a divine Person who can be resisted, grieved, quenched, obeyed, lied to, and even insulted. That personhood changes how we pray, how we repent, how we read the Bible, and how we think about spiritual growth and sanctification. Along the way, we clarify a common confusion about the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equal in essence, while carrying out different roles in perfect harmony. 

Then we move from doctrine to the daily walk. Romans 8:4 points to a life that does not “walk according to the flesh” but “according to the Spirit,” and we talk about the passive work God does in us and the active surrender we choose in ordinary moments. One clear test rises to the top: the Spirit loves to glorify Jesus, so Spirit-led living puts the spotlight on Christ, not on us. A powerful prison story closes the conversation with a reminder that God often prepares the next step before we even know what to do. 

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Transcript

Trinity Equality And Functional Roles

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Jesus himself said in John 16 13, But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify me. There are people who misunderstand this and say, well, the Spirit must be less than the Son, and the Son less than the Father, since we read of the Son obeying the will of the Father. This is what we call equality in essence, but subordination in function. They are all three equally God. But you find the subordinate role that the Holy Spirit exalts Jesus Christ. So if you go back in your Bibles to the book of Romans in chapter 8, I want you to notice verse 2, where we are given this special introduction by the Apostle Paul. For the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. We have just been introduced to the divine being

The Spirit Of Life In Romans 8

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who literally has taken our hearts away. He's called a number of things in the New Testament. Here he is referred to with this magnificent title, The Spirit, and your translation ought to have a capital S, The Spirit of Life. Now, thus far in the book of Romans, Paul has only rather subtly mentioned the Spirit of God two times, but in chapter 8, he will refer to him over and over and over again for a total of some twenty times. And we're going to go back in our studies over these next weeks and address who he is and what he does and why he does what he does and how we know he is at work in our own lives. But for now, at least, I want you to know we're talking about a real person. We're not talking about some mystical force. We're not talking about some ethereal power. We're not talking about some supranatural air, some experience. We're talking about a person. He can be resisted, as Stephen said in Acts 7.51. He can be grieved, as Paul warned the Ephesians in Ephesians 4.30. He can be quenched or stymied, we read in 1 Thessalonians 5.19. He can be obeyed, 1 Corinthians 6.19 and 20. He can be lied to, as Peter challenged a church member named Ananias when he asked him, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? Acts 5.9. He can be lied to. The Holy Spirit can be insulted. Literally, you could render it outraged in Hebrews 10.29. He is insulted. He is outraged at the disregard of the unbeliever, this text tells us, who disregards the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. That insults him and that outrages him. He is a real person, the divine member of the Trinity. And in our text, Paul introduces him with this title, The Spirit of Life. What a great expression that is. And when you think about it, the Spirit tends to do just that, doesn't he? He brings things to life. The very first introduction we're given of the Holy Spirit is in Genesis chapter 1, verse 2, where we're told that the Spirit of God moved across the face of the earth. He was involved in the creation of life, bringing the universe to life. The Holy Spirit also

The Spirit Gives Life And Insight

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brings to life the heart and soul of a person who's regenerated. We're informed in the Bible in Ephesians chapter 2 that the spirit of fallen men is dead. However, we're also told that at the moment of conversion, when a person transacts the gift of life by handing to God his sin and trusting in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, at that moment he comes to life by the agency of the Spirit of God. In John chapter 6, verse 63, Jesus said that it is the Spirit who gives life. He has that unique role within the Trinity of bringing life to things that are dead. Another enlivening work of the Holy Spirit is that he brings spiritual discernment to life. He literally brings the words of God to life and away in the mind of the believer who's come to life by the Spirit so that it makes sense to them. Paul had this in mind when he wrote, For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of a man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the Spirit of man or the Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God. Which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. However, a natural man that is an unbeliever does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he doesn't understand them because they are spiritually discerned. In other words, you can only try and explain so much to an unbeliever because he just doesn't get it. Unless the Spirit of God awakens their conscience and gives sight to their blinded eyes and insight to their spiritually closed minds, they just can't quite follow along. It is the Spirit of God who brings the life. And then the words of life mean life to the one who's come to life. Now in Romans 8.2, we're given a specific role of the Holy Spirit. We're told that he did something actually in the past tense. We read that he set us free from the law of sin and death. Now, doesn't that contradict what we've been talking about in Romans 7? I thought we were still bound, as the word of the flesh. I thought we were still bound to the possibility of sin and the presence of sin and the corruption of sinful desire. Did we misinterpret chapter 7 and

Freedom From The Law Of Sin

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get to chapter 8, verse 2, where we're told we're now free? No, as a matter of fact, we have the fuller picture here. Yes, we are still bound to the presence of sin and the lure of sin so that the possibility of sin finds us at times performing sin. Yet at the same time we are free. We are free through the Spirit of Christ. We're no longer bound to the eternal penalty of sin, and one day we'll be released from even the presence of sin. But even now at this moment we experience the liberation of the Spirit of God. Satan cannot keep us as though he would and could if God would allow him, but he cannot keep us from enjoying the presence of God the Father in prayer. He cannot keep us from rejoicing in Christ. He cannot chain us so that we cannot serve in the cause of Christ. He can't prevent us from experiencing the peace of God and the victory of our Lord and the hope of heaven. He can't rob us of the presence of God and who fills our hearts with the word of God. In fact, if he could, but he can't, he would keep us from gathering today and singing at the top of our lungs to the glory of God, and he can't stop it, and he hates it. He hates it. With all that said, all you have to do is take maybe a little closer look at verse 2 where you find the truth implied. Look there carefully. Paul does not say the Spirit of life has set you free from sin and death. He doesn't say that, does he? He says he set you free from the law of sin and death. Is a believer free from sin? No. Is the believer free from experiencing death? No. Unless the Lord raptures the church while we're still alive, we'll all experience death. There's a casket in our future. But what he does say is that the believer is set free from the law of sin and death. Well, what does he mean to be set free from the law of sin and death? Well, every one of us here are experiencing one particular law that I have in mind. It's the law of gravity. You didn't have to strap yourself in when you came in here and sat down so that you wouldn't somehow float up to the ceiling. The law of gravity keeps you in your chair. It keeps you down. Well, I can illustrate that here. Watch me as I hold up my Bible and then I let it fall. When I let go of it, it falls down to the pulpit. If I do it again, I wonder what will happen. It falls down to the pulpit. If I did this a million times, every time I let go, it would fall down to the pulpit. It's under the law, as it were, of gravity. On the three millionth time, I can't expect it if I should let it go that somehow it will reverse the law and it'll float to the ceiling. No, every time I let go, it's going to fall to the pulpit, no matter if I do it five million times, however many, unless something happens. Unless I interrupt the law by introducing something else, like my hand. And then if I let go of the Bible, I catch it. I practice that at home so I could make sure that I caught it just right for you today. I interrupt the law of gravity with a greater law, as it were. My arm and the strength of my hand has intersected the law and it now supersedes it because now when I drop the Bible, it's still under the influence of the law of gravity because it's not floating off of my hand. But it is being kept from falling all the way down because of this new law. You see, we are not under the law of sin, which would cause us to ultimately be destroyed. We are under the law of the Spirit, and it is a spirit of life. Now, when did this new law take effect? If you go back and look at the very next verse following this introduction and this simple explanation, we're told, look, for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did. Sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. He says, For what the law could not do, what is it that the law could

God Does What Law Cannot

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not do? It could not justify you. The law could not save you. The law could not redeem you. It could not reconcile you. Only God could do that. So the law can't do it, but God can through the spirit of life. Only God can clean you up. Only God can redeem you. Only God can reconcile you to himself. And so he did, Paul wrote, what the law could not do. How did he do it? He goes on to say, God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Now I want you to look at that very carefully. Paul says that God sent his own son in the likeness of flesh, sinful flesh. Now, what Paul did not say is that he sent the Son in the likeness of flesh, that would mean that he really wasn't a man. That he wasn't fully man and fully God. So he doesn't say that. He also does not say that God sent his own son in sinful flesh, because that would mean he was a sinner. You notice how he articulates the incarnation with great care. God sent his son in the likeness of sinful flesh, so he could be an offering for sin. See, Jesus Christ had to be God to pay an infinite penalty of your sin. But he had to be man so that he could experience something God doesn't experience, and that is death. And so Jesus Christ took a body so he could be crucified, so that he could experience death, so that his atoning work, which involved death, would give us life, and punishment and wrath could be meted out upon him with a full expression of God the Father. It was the innocent one giving his life for the guilty ones. And in the moment we accept the Lamb, who was given in atonement for our sin as our substitute, as soon as you exercise faith in him alone, the Spirit of life brings life to your spirit. And you're brought to life spiritually. Now, on the heels of this special introduction and simple explanation, Paul goes on to give us a rather significant application. In fact, Paul is going to come back to it time and time again. I want you to notice verse 4. In order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Now don't make a common mistake that some do. Paul is not

Walking By The Spirit Daily

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contrasting here in this verse two kinds of Christians. We have one kind of Christian that walks according to the flesh, and we have another kind of Christian that has our ducks all lined up, spiritually speaking, and they walk according to the Spirit. No, Paul isn't contrasting two kinds of Christians. If you go back, the verse begins so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. In the original construction, this is passive, which means this is something that has happened in us and not by us, which is wonderful news. Because we're not told that now that we believe in Jesus, now we're supposed to go out and fulfill all the law. Because what can we not do? Fulfill all the law. So he doesn't say it's fulfilled by us. You ought to circle that little word. He says the law might be fulfilled in us. It's a passive work of God. It's something God has done for us. Now, who are the us? Who does Paul have in mind? Believers. These are the us. How do you know who the believers are who've experienced this passive work of God by the Spirit of life that has brought them to life? Here's who they are: they are the ones who do not walk according to the flesh, but they walk according to the Spirit. He's contrasting the believer with the unbeliever. You say, but isn't the believer admonished to walk after the Spirit and not after the flesh? Yes, there are other passages, in fact, later on in this chapter, which leads me to say there are two sides to this work of the Holy Spirit. Two sides to walking according to the Spirit, both passive and active. It is something that God does in us, and it is something we choose to do as we walk with God. Walking after the Spirit is something every believer, every true believer will do. It doesn't mean you don't fail or sin or fall on the path, but you're on the path. The Spirit of God has brought you to life. And it's one thing to fall on the path as you walk after him and get up and confession and repentance and continue to walk and fall off the path. You won't find that. You fall on the path as you walk according to the Spirit and you confess your sin and walk after Him. So let me put it to you this way as I put these two rather paradoxical ideas together. When you surrender to the Spirit of God and you choose to walk according to the Spirit, you discover that the Spirit has planned your walk already. And isn't that an amazing thing? For something to happen in life and go, no, no, no, God had to do that. The Spirit had to arrange that. We talk about divine appointments for those who are on our evangelism explosion teams going out, and they go to a home and the person doesn't know Jesus Christ, and they give them the gospel and they pray to receive Christ, and I get the emails every Thursday morning telling me, here's who accepted Jesus Christ this week, and every week people are coming to faith through our evangelism efforts and ministry. And those evangelism EE teams leave saying, We had a divine appointment. It was obvious God wanted us. It's amazing how God works all the details out. And so you tend to live that way. When you surrender to walk with him, you discover he has planned your walk already. So, in a way, there are two sides to walking according to the Spirit. The positional side, which is passive, he references in verse 4. And the active side in other references, such as Galatians, where Paul says, walk, he commands to walk according to the Spirit. One author wrote it this way everything that is a spiritual reality for the believer is also a spiritual responsibility. Consider this a genuine Christian will want to speak to his heavenly father in prayer, but he is also commanded to pray. He is also responsible to pray. A Christian is taught by the Holy Spirit, but he is also obligated to study the Word of God and to learn from the Word. The Holy Spirit will produce spiritual fruit in the believer's life, but the believer is also admonished to bear fruit. You are told to receive the gospel and accept the Savior, and yet you are also told that God has already chosen you for Christ. Those truths are part of the amazing and seemingly paradoxical tension between God's sovereignty and man's will, but they are both clearly taught in the Word of God. Now, what Paul is referring to here in Romans 8, verse 4, deals with our position. Now you would ask the question, well, what does that mean as it relates to our practice? And I know you want to talk about that, and we're going to talk about it next Lord's Day. But let me just at least say this. Understanding what the word walk means simply means you walk around. You walk about. You walk through every event of life, conscious of the fact that the Spirit of God is residing in you and empowering through you obedience to God the Father. You surrender to the Spirit and then you rest in the Spirit's direction through the daily events of life. Which means that walking according to the Spirit is not that spiritual mountaintop alone. It can be the mundane events of life. It can be among the common duties and responsibilities of life. It isn't all bells and whistles. It's a walk. Think about it this way. What's one of the responsibilities of the Holy Spirit? We're told that the Holy Spirit's role, one of his chief roles, is to exalt whom Jesus Christ. Jesus himself said in John 16, 13, but when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify me. There are people who misunderstand this and say, well, the Spirit must be less than the Son, and the Son, less than the Father, since we read of the Son obeying the will of the Father. This is what we call equality in essence, but subordination in function. They are all three equally God. Three persons, one God. One is not less than the other. But you find the subordinate role that the Holy Spirit exalts Jesus Christ, promotes the ministry of Jesus Christ, illumines the words of Jesus Christ. And the Son, we read, obeys the will of the Father. They work in perfect harmony together. Well, that gives us a little bit of a clue that you can know you are practically walking in the Spirit when you exalt and honor and glorify who? Jesus Christ. When you seek to glorify and honor yourself, you're not walking according to the Spirit. But when you find your life and the daily events of life being nothing less than a desire to glorify God, no matter how mundane, no matter where you are, you are walking according to the Spirit. And the Spirit seeks to glorify Christ. Robertson McWilkin wrote it this way: He said, Imagine the President of the United States coming to speak at your local high school auditorium, and the band strikes up as soon as he walks in. Hail to the chief. As the president then strides to the microphone, the spotlight follows his every step. He arrives to the stage, steps up behind the microphone, and the spotlight is there on him. Suddenly the crowd, as one, rises, and what's this? They turn their backs to the stage and pointing to the balcony, erupt an applause for the fine performance of the spotlight operator. Absurd? Of course. But it illustrates a truth about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit glorifies, shines the spotlight on the Word and the life and the redeeming ministry of the Son. He points mankind to the Redeemer and highlights the work of Christ on their behalf to great truth to know. And I will just sort of go off on a little rabbit trail here and tell you that those movements who exalt the Spirit, who pursue the Spirit alone above all others, who focus on the Spirit, who magnify the Spirit, they are missing it. They are applauding the spotlight operator whose job is to illumine the sun, to exalt the sun, to point our attention to the sun. For the believer who wants to know if he's walking in the Spirit, all he has to ask himself is whether or not his life is focused on in bringing attention to Jesus Christ. The wonderful thing about walking according to the Spirit is knowing that God has done that work in us and we passively receive it as part of that redemptive process. And then we actively submit to the work of the Holy Spirit and walking with him. It's simply that. It's a walk. You don't have to have it all figured out. I'm so glad that he didn't say sprint in the Spirit. That'd be hard. He said walk. Walk about, not panicking here and there, even though life is filled sometimes with panic, not in a frantic desire to please him, although life is filled with a frantic pace. It's a daily walk, one step at a time, and the Spirit of God gives you just what you need for that next step. Charlie Murphy has recently been released from prison for what is called white-collar crimes. That's what we call crimes of financial illegalities. He landed in prison with a sentence to serve of around four years. He served about four and a half years. But God was at work even before Charlie was redeemed and drawing him to himself and measuring out his path. And it began the very first night as he was being placed

A Prison Story Of Guided Steps

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in the cell. He was given a Bible and he began to read it. Called a sister, and his sister is a member of this church. Her name's Jenny. And Jenny had been praying for him. He was an unbeliever but religious. He knew all the verses, but he didn't really know Christ personally, of course. He'd gotten the Sunday school amount of Truth, but it never invaded his heart, his life, and he had everything that you can want in life. He had a sweet wife and two daughters, and suddenly he's looking at years in prison. God was opening his eyes and his ears. Jenny shared the gospel with him, and after about an hour, with tears coursing down his cheeks, he prayed to receive Christ as his personal Savior. He came back into the holding place, a large room, and somebody walked up and gave him a Bible, and then he was placed in a cell, and he sat up most of the night reading his Bible, knew he'd been redeemed. He was so glad for that, and yet he had this sense of dread. He didn't know what it meant. He didn't know what to do next. He didn't know what step to take. And yet God was already at work. The next morning, an inmate walked up to him and seen him reading his Bible and said, Hey, I saw you reading your Bible. I want you to lead a Bible study. We'd like to start a Bible study. And Charlie said, I don't know how to lead a Bible study. I've never done that in my life. Don't know much about the Bible, except, you know, verses here and there, but I certainly can't lead it. And the guy said, You know, you can lead it. You got a Bible, and we've got some guys. We'll be ready tonight. We'll be waiting for you. Charlie didn't know quite what to think. Came to supper, and after supper, that inmate came up to him and said, We're ready. We're ready for what? We're ready for your Bible study. And so they were walking along, and Charlie saw about twelve inmates gathered waiting for him. And he told this inmate, he said, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. I don't know what to do. I've never led a Bible study. I'm just learning the Bible. I've just become a Christian. And the guy said, Well, I don't know either, but I got this daily bread, and he handed him a daily bread. He said, Why don't you read that? Half the guys in that Bible study couldn't read. And so Charlie got in there, he sat down after introducing himself, and he opened the daily bread to the date, and his eyes went immediately to those big bold letters at the bottom, you know, the thought for the day, and he read the thought. And he said, They seem to like it. And so he said, I started at the top, and I just read the verse and I read the story, and it had to do with becoming a Christian. And he said, I got to the end of it, and some of the guys said, We want to do that. And Charlie said, You want to do what? And they said, We want to accept Christ, like it said there. And Charlie thought his mind racing, I don't know how to lead them in this. I can remember a little bit of the prayer and I know what I did, but I don't know the gospel to tell them more. And in that moment of hesitation over the intercom system, Charlie was paged to come to the office and meet with the nurse and fill out some papers. And he said, Guys, I'll be back in a minute. And he walked to the nurse's station and he filled out some papers, and on his way back, he was met by an inmate who walked up to him and said, Hey, you know, I'm cleaning out my room, I'm getting out, and maybe you'd like this. And he handed him a bookmark. The bookmark was printed by the Gideons, and at the very top of it, it said, How to become a Christian. And all the steps were listed, printed out on that card. And so Charlie Murphy walked back, now armed with the truth of his bookmark. Isn't that great? He walked back to the group and he said, Okay, here's what you do. And he read the first thing Admit you're a sinner, and he worked all the way down the points until he got to the sinner's prayer, and four men prayed to receive Christ. Charlie Murphy was walking in the spirit. God was prepared, and God would prepare him, and God gave him at the right time the answers that he needed to have. You see, this is the kind of spirit that lives within us. You don't need to know everything, you just need to know him. And when you know him, the spirit of life, who brought you to life, that you're willing, you're choosing to surrender to throughout the course of the day, this one who glorifies the one who came to atone on our behalf. This one will bear fruit in and through our lives.