SPEAKER_01: Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.
SPEAKER_01: I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.
SPEAKER_01: Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Born for War podcast.
SPEAKER_01: So we're back in Romans.
SPEAKER_01: Then that's good.
SPEAKER_01: But there's good and bad because we're in Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: And any of you that are Bible students know what Romans 7 is about.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 7 is like the built-in law of failure in your life.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot live the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot fully be devoted as a disciple of Jesus in your own power.
SPEAKER_01: That's Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: Now remember that Romans was a letter written to the believers to be read all at once in one sitting.
SPEAKER_01: So we're kind of chopping it up all the time with these chapters.
SPEAKER_01: So it's super hard to be in Romans 7 without going into Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: And it's really hard to be in Romans 7 without being in Romans 6.
SPEAKER_01: So we've already done Romans 6.
SPEAKER_01: So let me just rehearse where we're going.
SPEAKER_01: And then be patient because you're gonna read.
SPEAKER_01: You need to read it like every day to get ready.
SPEAKER_01: But Romans 7 is sort of a, this is sort of a downer because here's what Romans 6 is about.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 6 was about your identity in Christ, that you have died, your old self, your old ways, your old power, your old religions and ways of reaching God have died and been buried with Christ, but through the cross, it's been nailed to the cross, and everything that you tried to do, Christ did for us.
SPEAKER_01: So that through his resurrection, by conquering, what is the power of sin?
SPEAKER_01: The power of sin is death.
SPEAKER_01: What's the power of death?
SPEAKER_01: Power of sin.
SPEAKER_01: They reproduce each other, sin and death.
SPEAKER_01: So then we're raised now with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's all Romans 6.
SPEAKER_01: We already covered that.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we have baptisms today, which are metaphorical of the death going under the water into ourselves and the death of Christ, and then raised up with the resurrection of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now we're in Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: So turn in Romans 7, because Romans 7 is a civil war.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the war of the will.
SPEAKER_01: It's us trying to be a good Christian, try to be a good people and try to be a good, um, I don't know, good person, I guess.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I think it's like: it's like this kid coming up to me and said, I can swim.
SPEAKER_01: You ever take swimming lessons?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: I know I can swim.
SPEAKER_01: I can do it.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what do you do with a kid like that?
SPEAKER_01: Just push him in, man.
SPEAKER_01: And so you just push him in there, and then in the deep the deep end, and you say, Swim.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's kind of like I remember Bill Cosby had this uh comedy routine in one of his albums years ago, and it said, I just threw my kid in, you know, and uh, and and then the bubbles would come up, and then it and when the bubble would pop, it would say, Help, pop, help, help.
SPEAKER_01: That's Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: So Romans 7 is you trying to do it and you can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: But so it's Romans 7 today, it's Romans 8 next week.
SPEAKER_01: So remember that.
SPEAKER_01: So let's look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Or do you not know, brethren?
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, he's coming from the new identity we have in chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: Do you not know, brethren?
SPEAKER_01: For I speak to those who know the law.
SPEAKER_01: He's speaking to the Jewish believers who had started the church in Rome, that the law is dominion over a man as long as he lives.
SPEAKER_01: So, what had happened is that the Spirit of God had come at Pentecost.
SPEAKER_01: The Jews were there for the feast of Pentecost, they got saved.
SPEAKER_01: 3,000 people, and part of that list of the nations is from Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And they came back, we didn't have a they don't have a Bible yet.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have an understanding of grace and faith yet.
SPEAKER_01: So now they're trying to live the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: They're trying to live for Jesus with the law, using the law, the Mosaic law, and he's saying, look, if you think that you can do it that way, then you better not mess up.
SPEAKER_01: You better get it perfectly right.
SPEAKER_01: Then he says, for the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives.
SPEAKER_01: But if the husband dies, she's released from the law of her husband.
SPEAKER_01: So then, if while her husband lives, she marries another man, she'll be called an adulteress.
SPEAKER_01: But if her husband dies, she's free from that law, so that she is not an adulteress, though she has married another man.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we now can bear fruit to God.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is this is that just as if you were married to someone and then they died, and that freedom that came after the death of you now on your own, you don't have any obligations with that other person, same with the Jewish believers at that time, they are dead to the law.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have, that's not gonna save them.
SPEAKER_01: All that effort's not gonna save them.
SPEAKER_01: And the rest of this whole chapter is about us figuring that out, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But you're now married to another.
SPEAKER_01: You're married to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: When you receive Christ, you're in a sense married to Christ, you become a bride of the bridegroom.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And so through that relationship now that we have with him, and I just decided to write it out because I do these things for a lot of young people.
SPEAKER_01: I've got a some I've got a marriage next month that I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus might have said this to us I, Jesus, take you, sinner, to be my bride.
SPEAKER_01: Or I could say, I Jesus, take you the church, to be my bride.
SPEAKER_01: And I do promise and covenant before my Father to be your loving and faithful Savior and bridegroom, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish for all eternity.
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty good news.
SPEAKER_01: Christ takes you, He loves you, you're His.
SPEAKER_01: You can't get out of it now.
SPEAKER_01: I tell all our single young people from time to time, it's better to be single and wish you're married than to be married and wish you were single.
SPEAKER_01: So we're married into Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, look, that religious life, which all of us in this room came out of, is not going to get you saved.
SPEAKER_01: Christ came and he took it all on the cross, and now we're in a new personal, divine, growing, intimate relationship with him.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5.
SPEAKER_01: For we were in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: In my Bible, I circled that.
SPEAKER_01: That's important.
SPEAKER_01: We were in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: The sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.
SPEAKER_01: But now we've been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit, not in the oldness of the letter.
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, men and women, if you if we're trying to live the Christian life in the flesh, you're not able to do it.
SPEAKER_01: So I wrote on my side, I would just encourage you, if you have a little margin in your Bible, you might write over to the side of verse five, working in our own power.
SPEAKER_01: Working in our own power.
SPEAKER_01: In your own power, you're trying to do the right thing, which is fine.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's nothing trying to do the right thing is better than not trying to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: But he's just saying that you, in your own power, trying to do the right thing is gonna constantly fail.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: How many of you come out of some kind of a religious background?
SPEAKER_01: Any, you know, or southern.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So most religions, even the Christian religions, are built on rules and regulations that are focused on outward behavior.
SPEAKER_01: It's you trying and trying and trying to be a good person.
SPEAKER_01: And the result of that is constant failure.
SPEAKER_01: Religion has a built-in fabric to it of failure.
SPEAKER_01: And in this case, he's leading us to Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: There's a point to this.
SPEAKER_01: Here's your identity.
SPEAKER_01: Buried in Christ, resurrected in Christ, but you're still trying to do it through religion.
SPEAKER_01: You're still trying to do it through commandments and stuff.
SPEAKER_01: You're failing, you're failing.
SPEAKER_01: That's where he's going with it.
SPEAKER_01: And now, Romans 8.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Jot this down.
SPEAKER_01: This is great.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the New King James Version, so some of you have different versions.
SPEAKER_01: But listen, law is mentioned 15 times in Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: Law is mentioned 15 times in Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: Another way to say it is law slash religion.
SPEAKER_01: Any kind of religion.
SPEAKER_01: Religion.
SPEAKER_01: Law, 15 times.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 8, check this out.
SPEAKER_01: 15 times spirit is used.
SPEAKER_01: Spirit's only used once in Romans 7.
SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like he's pushing us into the deep end and you're drowning.
SPEAKER_01: And now he's preparing us for swimming lessons that are coming out.
SPEAKER_01: Let's see what he says next.
SPEAKER_01: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_01: Is the law sin?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, guys, that would be the natural way to think.
SPEAKER_01: That if the law, the commandments, the Mosaic commandments, or your religious background, creates in you a built-in system of failure in which you try to do what it says to do and you can't do it, then your natural thinking might be, then the system's bad.
SPEAKER_01: If the system's not good.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, here's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_01: Is the law sin?
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not, exclamation point.
SPEAKER_01: What it's not?
SPEAKER_01: On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law.
SPEAKER_01: For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, you shall not covet.
SPEAKER_01: But sin, I'm gonna give you, I want you to write on the side, right on your left margin there or right margin, whatever is in your Bible, make sin a capital.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll explain in a second why I want you to do that.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to put sin, and another way you could do it is put sin capital slash demon.
SPEAKER_01: Or sin slash Satan.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll explain.
SPEAKER_01: Taking opportunity by the commandment produced in me all manner of evil desire.
SPEAKER_01: For apart from the law, sin was dead.
SPEAKER_01: So it could be natural, it would be very, it would be the next, I know, reason in our reasoning to think that the law itself must be bad if it arouses sin in me.
SPEAKER_01: Let me give you three purposes I think of the law.
SPEAKER_01: Three purposes.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason this is important is because in progressive Christianity, who knows the term progressive Christianity?
SPEAKER_01: Anybody know the term?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, some of you do.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, progressive Christianity is a new wave of liberalism that's flowing now into the evangelical church.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the aspects or character qualities of that is that the Old Testament is not as annoying and it's not as inspired as the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: So, Genesis to Malachi was for a different generation, for a different time, and a different dispensation.
SPEAKER_01: But now we have the New Testament, we don't need the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: I disagree with that.
SPEAKER_01: I believe all 66 books are inspired by God.
SPEAKER_01: Just say that.
SPEAKER_01: All 66 books are inspired by God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's what we believe at the road.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so do we understand everything in the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_01: No, but do you understand everything in the New Testament?
SPEAKER_01: Of course you don't.
SPEAKER_01: You're a liar if you think you do.
SPEAKER_01: Because we walk by faith, not by perfection.
SPEAKER_01: We don't, we're, it's a mystery.
SPEAKER_01: There's some mysteries in it.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, here's the purpose of the law.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, it's to show us or reveal to us the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: The law is there to show us what God loves, what God hates, what God cares about.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any idea about or any questions or want to understand better what God blesses and what God curses, read Deuteronomy 28 through 32.
SPEAKER_01: Right there, you see, this is what God loves, this is what God blesses, this is what God hates, this is what God curses.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a wake-up call to America, too.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, by the way, the Matrix Media through YouTube has canceled our service today.
SPEAKER_01: We're not on YouTube because I spoke on the Great Reset a few months ago.
SPEAKER_01: You guys remember that?
SPEAKER_01: So, if you've swallowed the red pill, you're in the right church.
SPEAKER_01: If you like the blue pill, you'll probably be comfortable somewhere else.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I just found that out this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So I just thought that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01: That's a red badge of courage.
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
SPEAKER_01: So, first thing, God reveals his character through the law.
SPEAKER_01: Second thing is that God reveals your sin through the law.
SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't know covetousness, you wouldn't know jealousy if you didn't have a law that said, you know, do not covet, do not murder.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus redefines it as being a heart issue in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7.
SPEAKER_01: So, number one, it reveals the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, the law reveals sin.
SPEAKER_01: And then number three, and this is important, it produces a longing for freedom.
SPEAKER_01: The law produces a longing for freedom because we can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have what it takes.
SPEAKER_01: We have to have Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We have to have the cross.
SPEAKER_01: We have to have the resurrection.
SPEAKER_01: Because the power of sin is death.
SPEAKER_01: The power of death is sin.
SPEAKER_01: So the power of faith, listen, the power of faith is freedom.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what Romans 8 is going to be all about.
SPEAKER_01: So Augustine wrote and said it this way: the law binds us as we try to fulfill its requirements, and we become wearied in our weakness under it to know how to ask for the help of grace.
SPEAKER_01: So God is producing life in us by also producing death in us.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 9.
SPEAKER_01: I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.
SPEAKER_01: So when I was coming up as a college student, and then into probably the first 10 years of my Christian life, I read so many missionary biographies.
SPEAKER_01: And I still remember one by Don Richardson called Peace Child.
SPEAKER_01: And in that biography, he talks about going into Papua New Guinea and reaching a tribe that had never been reached with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And the amount of murder and the amount of infanticide and the amount of child sacrifices that was happening at that time that was just for centuries had been a part of that particular tribe.
SPEAKER_01: And then they got saved.
SPEAKER_01: And then they came to know the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: First thing you do, translate the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: You start translating the scriptures, they start realizing, well, maybe we shouldn't do that.
SPEAKER_01: You know, maybe we should not eat as many people, you know?
SPEAKER_01: And probably it was like that.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, let's let's eat, let's eat one less person this week, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, they started repenting because the law was given him.
SPEAKER_01: They didn't have the law, they didn't know, so they were cannibals.
SPEAKER_01: And they, and being cannibal is not good.
SPEAKER_01: And so they they had the law, though.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what it did for us.
SPEAKER_01: And so, even in your religious background, my religious background, there's really good things in it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I did the catechism with my dad.
SPEAKER_01: So I had to I had to learn the Lord's Prayer, I had to learn the Ten Commandments, I had to have it memorized to graduate, you know, for the little ceremony, catechism ceremony.
SPEAKER_01: They call it confirmation, the confirmation thing that I did.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember saying to my dad, this shows how just, I don't know, kind of an idiot we are, but anyway, I am.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like I said, Dad, why didn't you ever teach the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Um, do you have your notes from your catechism class?
SPEAKER_01: And so I went back and I literally found them, and uh, and he, man, he had taught me the Bible, like inside and out for confirmation class.
SPEAKER_01: But my heart wasn't changed.
SPEAKER_01: Do you get it?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I understood it intellectually, but my heart wasn't changed and I couldn't live it.
SPEAKER_01: And so what Paul is saying here is he's setting us up with this built-in system of failure.
SPEAKER_01: You in your own willpower can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: You can't live a holy life.
SPEAKER_01: You can't fast and pray.
SPEAKER_01: You can't tell the truth.
SPEAKER_01: You're constantly failing in that.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10, and the commandment, which was to bring life, I found it brought death.
SPEAKER_01: For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me.
SPEAKER_01: And by it killed me.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.
SPEAKER_01: Has then what is good become death to me?
SPEAKER_01: Certainly not.
SPEAKER_01: But sin, that it might appear sin was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.
SPEAKER_01: For we know that the law is spiritual, but I'm carnal, I'm soul under sin.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to see I, I, me, I, me.
SPEAKER_01: Thirty times in this chapter, over thirty times, Paul's saying, I, me, I, me, because he's trying to do it.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Luther was trying to do.
SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther is an Augustinian monk, crawling on the steps of that cathedral in Rome, bloodying his knees, trying to find righteousness in his own effort, and failing and failing.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you have been, you're you're godly people.
SPEAKER_01: You're beautiful people.
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to do it.
SPEAKER_01: And you and you're and you're constantly failing.
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
SPEAKER_01: You're supposed to fail.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: And even on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: Remember?
SPEAKER_01: God spoke about panic and anxiety.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are in panic attacks and anxiety attacks and in depression because you're trying to do the right thing, but you keep failing, and you're just driving yourself crazy, trying to do it in your own effort and in your own power.
SPEAKER_01: It can't be done.
SPEAKER_01: Only Christ can do it through you.
SPEAKER_01: It's through the power of his Holy Spirit that it can be done.
SPEAKER_01: For what am I doing?
SPEAKER_01: I do not understand.
SPEAKER_01: For what I will to do that I do, I do not practice what I want to do.
SPEAKER_01: But what I hate, that's what I do.
SPEAKER_01: I can't tell you how many times I've been with people who are on some kind of an addiction.
SPEAKER_01: Whether it's drugs or alcohol or porn or whatever it might be, that's that's what I hear.
SPEAKER_01: I know the right thing to do, Pastor Steve.
SPEAKER_01: But I can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: Or I come forward and I get prayer, and then five days later I'm back in it again.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone relate?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's that's the human dilemma, man.
SPEAKER_01: That's the human battle.
SPEAKER_01: And there has to be a point, honestly, church, there has to be a point where you surrender all.
SPEAKER_01: And you and you have to realize you can't do it.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have the capacity.
SPEAKER_01: God did not put the capacity for you to do that in you.
SPEAKER_01: And you're gonna have to surrender to the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: You've got to allow the life of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the divine exchange.
SPEAKER_01: There's the law of regulations, and then there's the law of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: That's next week.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody say we're in Romans 7 now.
SPEAKER_01: It is a system of failure.
SPEAKER_01: Next week we're in Romans 8, and that's freedom that we have in the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: But I can't go there yet.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to go there.
SPEAKER_01: But that's the that's the spoiler.
SPEAKER_01: The spoiler alert is that the Spirit is the only one who can do it in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: For what am I doing?
SPEAKER_01: I do not understand.
SPEAKER_01: For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate I do.
SPEAKER_01: If then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, you know the right thing to do, and by the fact that you know the right thing to do and you know that that's good, you're actually affirming that the law is good.
SPEAKER_01: But now, verse 17, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
SPEAKER_01: For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells.
SPEAKER_01: For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
SPEAKER_01: This Luther wrote a book, it was actually a booklet back then, you can find it in book form now, called Bondage of the Will.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is where Catholicism and Protestantism are different.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just say that.
SPEAKER_01: Catholicism in its theology leaves room for the goodness of man.
SPEAKER_01: Luther felt, and I tend to agree with Luther, that there is nothing good within us, and that's based on Romans, and he was an expert on Romans, okay?
SPEAKER_01: The idea being that there's nothing good in you that can do the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: Now, we're all created in the image of God.
SPEAKER_01: So there is good in the sense of the image of God buried down in there somewhere, but the point of salvation is it'll never work out through your works.
SPEAKER_01: It can only work out through the grace of God.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: So that's what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_01: So I find then, no, verse 19, for the good that I will to do, I do not do, but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a massive civil war.
SPEAKER_01: This is a really big civil war in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: And this is why I think it's, I say this from time to time to people if you're coming out of alcohol abuse, probably going to bars isn't a good idea.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're coming out of addiction to sexual stuff, probably it's better to have people around you when you're with the opposite of the same sex, whichever the struggle is, that you're accountable.
SPEAKER_01: Because that that's still there.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean you're forgiven, but if you put yourself in temptation's way, you're gonna be more prone to fall.
SPEAKER_01: So use, you know, using some kind of intelligent consensus within your spirit and your heart and your mind, the importance of guarding yourself on the boundaries of what you live by, because this is who we are.
SPEAKER_01: I then, I find then a law that evil is present within me, the one who wills to do good, for I delight in the law, but in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring, this battle going on, the civil war against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members, oh wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of death.
SPEAKER_01: That's the point.
SPEAKER_01: That's the whole point here is that you are caught.
SPEAKER_01: You're caught and you can't set yourself free.
SPEAKER_01: It can't be done.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: Religion's not gonna save you.
SPEAKER_01: Doing all the right things isn't gonna save you.
SPEAKER_01: It's only gonna be through Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the only way we're gonna find that affection, and that's through a love relationship with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So there's a new law, law of regulations, and now this new law, which we're gonna talk about next week, law of the Spirit, which is the law of love.
SPEAKER_01: That's why Jesus said, all of the commandments, all of the law is fulfilled in this.
SPEAKER_01: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: And what?
SPEAKER_01: Your neighbors yourself.
SPEAKER_01: So here's the great setup for chapter 8, verse 25.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: So only Christ can set us free.
SPEAKER_01: Only Christ can give us new life, only Christ can enable us and impact us and empower us to live the Christian life from the heart outward.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have the capacity to do it, but he does.
SPEAKER_01: Because he completed the total death of the law by taking on all of our sin upon himself so that you don't have to take it.
SPEAKER_01: And now it's receiving it, it's accepting it, and it's believing it.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit steveholtonline.org.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.