The Remedy for Sin

Last week we covered—or actually two weeks ago now—we covered four New Testament definitions of sin. And at the beginning of the sermon, I asked all of you to give me a definition of sin. In unison, well, it's the breaking of God's law. I did the same thing in Murfreesboro, and I got the same response. And then I said, but that's just the beginning. We understand that that is a definition of sin.

I went through the four different definitions of sin—breaking of God's law, all unrighteousness— and then we have to explore what unrighteousness is. I mean, the law defines righteousness, but there's a lot of definitions of righteousness. Basically, it's the will of God. So anytime we do something that's not the will of God, we've sinned. To know to do good and not to do it is a sin. And as I said, as I got to these last two of these definitions, I've struggled with these over the last 15 or 20 years because I started to realize what they really mean.

There's lots of times when I know I should do something good. It's not like I did anything wrong. I didn't break one of the laws of God, but I didn't do the good that God expected me to do, because, well, I got involved in something else that was more interesting or more fun. And actually, I sinned because it wasn't what I was supposed to do. And then the last one, it gets a little complicated, is when making judgments that are not biblically explicit, that whatever is not of faith is sin. And you know how Paul dealt with that? He went through and showed that Paul said sometimes we can't judge another person over something that's not specifically spelled out.

Now, obviously, there's lots of things the Bible says that we're supposed to do or not to do, but that's not what he was talking about. It's why we can't make judgments on each other about medical decisions. Medical decisions are personal decisions. And whatever is not of faith is sin. So we have to—we can't do that with each other.

We have to make our own decisions before God. Well, you know, finishing up that sermon, as I said at the end, I said, now that we have all the definitions of sin, wow, it's hopeless. I mean, we understand what sin is. Okay, I've got this down. I don't steal. So good. Now let's move on from kindergarten. I mean, the basis has to be the law of God. That's where we start, any definition of sin. But where do we go from there? And in the sermon, I showed how Paul struggled with this and how difficult that was for him, who was a man who grew up in Judaism, was the pinnacle of what a practicing Jew could be and kept the letter of the law at a remarkable perfection.

And yet he struggled with what sin really, really was and what it really meant to him, when he began to understand Jesus Christ. Well, in about a month, we're going to be keeping the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. And the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are all about sin. So we talked about sin two weeks ago, but now we're going to talk about God's remedy for that. What is God's remedy for sin? Now, I know that all of us could start filling in the answers to that. Well, God's remedy to sin is this and this and this and this.

And we can take sort of this big overview that shows us what the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread are really all about. Really what God is teaching us as we keep those days. Now, we can only understand this subject and the concept of slavery to sin. Now, because when we look at Israel coming out of Egypt and that they were slaves, and we always tie that in every year to, we are slaves to sin. And God is bringing us out of sin. To understand that slavery to sin, we've already looked at definitions of sin. But we're going to understand our relationship to sin and what God must do to change that relationship.

So, a relationship to sin? I know what sin is. Keep the Sabbath day. What's our relationship to sin? Well, we go back to Genesis and we see that God created Adam and Eve.

He looked at them and said, this is very good. I want you to understand, when Adam and Eve were first created, and they meet each other, and they're living in the Garden of Eden, and all they know is God, there was nothing wrong with them mentally, emotionally, physically. There was no sin. They had not committed sin, and sin wasn't part of them. At this point, they'd only known goodness, and that's all they experienced.

There's nothing wrong. God didn't look at Adam and even say, Ah, wow, this is sort of good, but boy, you people are messed up. I can tell you, when God looks at every one of us in this room, he says, Boy, are you messed up. He didn't say that to Adam and Eve. They weren't. They were made, though, in the image of God. Now, about five years ago, I gave a sermon on this image of God, and I want to cover just a few things I covered in that sermon five years ago, just as sort of an introduction as we lead into what we're going to talk about here.

In that sermon, I said that there are five major ways in which we are in the image of God. I mean, we're physical. He's spirit, right? So we're not in God's image that way. We have to eat food. He does not. So we're not in His image that way. We have to sleep. He does not. So there's all these things that have to do with us being physical, us being flesh. We're flesh and blood.

He is not. And because of those differences, there's huge differences between us and God. We can die. He does not. He cannot. But what are some fundamental ways that we're like God? Well, first of all, we have the ability to reason. In other words, we have the ability for self-conscious thought.

That's an amazing thing. And in that sermon, I gave a lot of examples of how we have this remarkable thought process and self-consciousness that's not...no other mammal has anything like that. I mean, I know where I'm going to go today. I know where I'm supposed to be tonight. I have the next week planned out.

I can tell you what I did yesterday. I can tell you what I did three months ago, especially if I go get out my day planner and I look it up and I can tell you what I did. Cows don't do that. You know, it's just an urge to eat, and they go eat. This ability to think, to reason, to contemplate, to decide, try to decide what's good, what's evil.

They also, in the way that they were like God, they had emotions. Real, core emotions. And as long as they were in the garden with God, they experienced love and joy, empathy. They would eventually know how God feels when he deals with his own sorrow. God experiences sorrow, especially in his relationship with us. We cause sorrow to God. You can see that in the Scripture. So they have this ability, or we have this ability, for emotions, which they were given.

Imagination and creativity. Every human being is creative in one way or another. It's absolutely amazing to me how creative we can be in different ways. I am amazed at people who can write music. I'm just amazed at that ability. I don't have it. But you know, I used to work with my dad when I was a teenager. We had sand floors. And he had an amazing creativity in being able to take floors, wooden floors, and make them look like what people wanted them to look like.

You ever watch a bricklayer? There's creativity to that. We all have these different abilities. We have different imagination. It's one thing to read a blueprint. It's another thing to create a blueprint because it doesn't exist. Imagination. Also, a way we're like God is we have volition or will. In other words, we have the ability to make decisions. We have the ability to make decisions. And in a fifth way, we're like God is we are created as relationship beings. You and I are created to have a relationship with God and with each other.

We're created to relate to each other. We're created to love each other. We're created to want to spend time and share with each other. That's the way we're created. And remember, when Adam and Eve woke up and God created them, they were totally dependent upon God.

He had to tell them what to eat. He had to tell them what to do. And they weren't having any troubles at all. He told them what their marriage was. They had no problems. Everything was fine. They experienced nothing but love and peace and joy. They didn't suffer. This is what life was like for the first humans in the garden.

And then sin entered into their lives. Simple sin. Don't eat that. They did. It's simple sin compared to a lot of sins, right? Don't eat that. Because when you do, you're taking upon yourself something that only God has. And that is the ability to tell you what's right and wrong. And they did it. They ate this forbidden fruit, which means they disobeyed God.

And sin entered into their lives. Now remember, they were made in the image of God. Now we talked about all the ways they were made in the image of God. The moment they disobeyed, something happened to them. The image of God was corrupted. It became distorted. It became twisted. You read about it and you realize, first thing they did is they went and hid from God. Because the first thing that happens when we sinned is we're separated from God.

Sin literally separates us from God. They had never been separated from God. They went and hid because they were afraid. They were ashamed of themselves. They get kicked out of the garden and they were separated. And when you start reading human history from that point, what you see is that people have, human beings have a distorted reasoning power. When God says in Isaiah, My thoughts are above your thoughts, they're not even close. And what we do is we try to imprint onto God our thoughts.

You hear people all the time saying, well God's unfair. God's, that's not right. God wouldn't do that. Why would God let this child die? Why did God allow slavery in the Old Testament?

I mean, I hear this all the time. He's not really God. God would not have killed the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. And we imprint onto Him our thoughts instead of understanding His. Because ours are all distorted. Our emotions, let's face it, you and I are a mess of distorted emotions. Distorted negative emotions. Hatred, anger, envy, greed, arrogance, jealousy. You start listing all these negative emotions we have, and they fill us, and we struggle with them all the time.

And we're pulled back and forth between emotions, and sometimes we're not even thinking, we're just being driven by emotions. Imagination and creativity. Think of all this imagination that God has given to us, all this creativity. And what do we do? Well, we create the atomic bomb. We take this amazing mind, and we create destructive things. He gave us volition or free will. We're going to look at a minute at how much that's been distorted. The free will, the ability to choose between right and wrong.

Does the average person even have the ability to choose between right and wrong when it comes to salvation? Well, look at that in a minute. How distorted has our will become? And then, of course, the last thing is relationships. We live in a world of messed up relationships. Everybody's trying to find somebody to love, somebody to love them. Friends, family, coworkers. Everybody's trying to create God in their own image so they can love God and feel loved by God, and none of it works.

Because inside, we're just all distorted. Think of it this way. Think of Adam and Eve as the perfect image of God, physical image of God, made out of clay. And someone brings along a hammer and pounds that clay statue and distorts it so much that you look at it and think, I don't know, it's an image of something. I can't even tell what that is. Welcome to the human race. We were made in the image of God, and we have been beat and hammered and slammed between Satan and ourselves and everybody else, affecting our lives and our own decisions, until we don't even look like the image of God.

But we were made in the image of God. That's God's purpose for us. And here we are. In this mess. In this mess. So what happens? God comes into our lives, and remember last time, we went through parts of Romans 6, 7, and 8. This time of year, there's always a sermon where we go through parts of Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. This year, we're actually going through some different parts than we did last year. But we always end up there before the Spring Holy Days in one form or another.

Remember last time what we talked about was the Apostle Paul struggling years, around two decades after his baptism. And he's struggling with sin and a definition of sin. Paul was a man who understood that sin is the breaking of the law of God as much as anybody ever has.

He was a man who grew up his entire life dedicated to keeping the law of God. And as he said, I would not have known not to covet except the law of God told me not to covet. And now, after decades of having God's Spirit, after being confronted by Jesus Christ, he's struggling with something else. And this is where I want to go, because this has to do with why you and I keep the Passover and the Days of Levon Bread. This is why we take leavening out. This is why we eat unleavened bread. Because if we only do those, because they're physical rituals, we're wasting our time.

We have to understand what God is doing. So let's go to Romans, Chapter 7. Let's not go to Revelation. Let's go to Romans.

Romans, Chapter 7.

And we're picking up sort of where we left off.

Two weeks ago.

And verse 14.

Because remember, Paul is struggling with the law. Now, he asks, is the law sin or should we not keep the law? He says, well, certainly that's wrong. We have to keep the law. But then there's other places here, especially in Chapter 5, where he seems to be saying, no, you don't have to keep the law. And then he says, well, you're not under the law. And then he says, but we're...it seems all confusing until you get here and you realize what he's actually saying. And Paul moves from this point where he makes it very personal.

This is really sort of unusual for ancient writings, for people to be as personal as he is.

Paul argues like a rabbi.

Paul argues at times like a Greek philosopher. It's amazing.

I am absolutely floored by his logic at times.

And then I'm floored at times where he's arguing like a rabbi, which I have to go read some Jewish commentary to figure out what he's saying.

And then sometimes Paul being Paul just says how he feels.

He's such a complex man.

And he says here, verse 14, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. In chapter 6, he explains how we are slaves to sin. He says, I am bought and sold under sin.

20 years after baptism, I am bought and sold under sin.

He says because the law is spiritual, the law of God is an expression of the great mind of God. But he says, I'm not God. I'm stuff. I'm flesh.

And because I'm flesh, I don't get the great mind of God.

So look what he says next. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice, but what I hate, that I do. Now he begins to explain an inner conflict. Now remember, this is a man who never committed adultery.

This is a man who kept the law of God in the letter. And he started to understand, once confronted by Jesus Christ, it's more than that. Now he didn't say it's okay to commit adultery. In fact, he's going to go on through here, we'll see, and actually support the keeping of the law. That's not the issue here.

The issue is, there's something inside of me that doesn't work.

And this is what the Passover, Days of Love and Bread, and Pentecost all fit together to teach us this. There's something inside of him that did not work. Verse 16, if then I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it's good. He says, when I do something, I know it's wrong, in my mind I'm saying, no, the law is good and the law tells me not to do that. The law tells me I shouldn't be so greedy. Now he didn't steal, but he was greedy. He wasn't generous when he should have been generous.

Oh, remember what we read about the four definitions of sin? When you know to do something and don't? So, okay, I wasn't generous when I should have been generous. Well, that's a sin, too. He says, there's something inside of me saying, no, you should have done that. Or you shouldn't have done that. He says, I know that's the law of God. That's the teachings of God. And I love that. That's good. Oh, why didn't I do it?

But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells. For to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. He says, I want to, but I fail.

Now, he wasn't... He's not saying that he's just living in a continual state of sin. That's what he's saying. He's saying, I struggle all the time. There's something inside of me, this internal struggle going on. Remember, converted Christian, apostle of God. And he's saying, inside of me is a war. Did I fight? And he says, my will is to do it, but I can't even get my will to do it.

I want to, and I fail. 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. Now, if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find that a law that evil is present with me, the one who dwells, who wills to do good. I will to do good, and evil is with me. He looked deep inside himself and found out, I am a terribly flawed image of God. He saw it in himself. And the rest of his he talks about it.

In fact, towards the end of this chapter, he says, oh, what a wretched man I am! Wow! This man was taught personally by Jesus Christ. This man knew Peter and James. This man, God, had done great miracles through. This man followed God in a remarkable way, and here he writes, I am a wretched guy.

Now, he said, wow, that's terrible. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You have to see how he gets out of this. Paul sees this sin inside of him. It is not just the law outside. See, there was a solution to this in Judaism. So that you remember the law of God, you wear tassels on your clothes. So remember the law of God, you would take the Ten Commandments and you would wrap them up and you would put them in a little hole there over your doorpost.

So that you would remember the law of God. And what Paul says here is, he's looking at it and he's saying, you know what, that doesn't do it. That might make me remember, oh wait a minute, I should go see my parents because I should honor my father and mother, but that doesn't change something that's inside of me. We talked about that some last time when we went through some of these writings in this section. What Paul deals with, no, no, no, I understand these things, but there's something inside of me.

And here he even says, I will to do what's right and I can't even get my will to do it. Oh, what wretched man I am. What's God's solution to this? What's the remedy to this? Well, first of all, we have to understand that the law gives us definition of sin. But we have to understand sin is more than that. Because envy and lust and selfishness and self-righteousness is internal. And I can post the Ten Commandments all over my house and try with all my heart to keep them and never deal with the internal part.

The sin that is in me, this is tough. The sin that is in me. The more he kept the law, the more he became aware of his weakness. Sometimes we think, well, the more I keep the law, boy, look at me, the more I keep the law, the better I am. The better I am. And what Paul said, the more I keep the law, the more weak I seem.

Because I realize the enormity of what? Who God is. First step in that remedy is back in Romans 5. So let's go back, page 6. For when we were still without strength and due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Understand that's all of us. If you've grown up in the Church, God has given you a special privilege. He's let you have a relationship with Him. He's opened that door. And because of that, you probably haven't committed certain sins that others have committed. Oh, you've had your share, but you haven't committed certain things.

Because why? Well, you lived in this protection. But what you have to come to grips with is deep inside, you're ungodly. That sounds harsh. Deep inside sin lives. It's not just the external commandments. Deep inside every one of us. None of us are reconciled to God until we get that. Now, you're already reconciled to God in a very special way. We'll talk about that in a minute. But you can't complete the process until you come to grips with. What's wrong with you?

It's the same thing that's wrong with every one of us. It's not like you're unique. Every one of us had the same problem. He says, for scarcely, verse 7, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die. Yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

God's law requires your death and my death. That's how righteous God is. You say, well, yeah, but I haven't killed anybody. I haven't sold drugs to little kids. I mean, you think of all the bad things. I never raped anybody. Why would God require my death? Because deep inside we're capable of just about anything. Deep in here, put in the right circumstances, without God, we're capable of just about anything. It's a little different from person to person. Sit is in us. He says in verse 9, Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. What does that mean, saved from wrath? Whose wrath? God's wrath. God hates sin that much because it is destructive. It destroys. You know what sin's done? Every human being, except Jesus Christ, who came from Him, every human being was designed to create a by God to be His in His image. And every human being is a gnarled up, distorted, grotesque sculpture that doesn't look like the Father who created it. That's why. Well, not that grotesque. Or if we could just see it from God's viewpoint. Well, this is hopeless. He saved us from wrath through His death.

Understand. How much more does God have to do to show us His love? Christ came and died for us to show, this is what you deserve, but it's not what's going to be required if you just do something.

And so, this is the remedy. This is the first step in the remedy.

He says, verse 10, for if when we were enemies, that's right, enemies of God, every human being is an enemy of God. I don't know when it starts somewhere, and that little brain evil begins. It gets, what's the seeds there? It just sort of spreads. Maybe it's the first time you don't get your diaper changed on time, and you throw a temper tantrum. And it's like, oh, that was pretty cool. I did that, and people ran in here and took care of me. I think I'll do it again. Maybe that's not what they think. They don't think. You know what I mean? There's some little grain that gets in there, and once it's in there, guess what happens? The image of God begins to be distorted. It begins to be changed.

Until we're not in that image anymore.

For when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Much more, okay, you are reconciled. You're already reconciled. Understand. When you take that Passover, well, right now, if you've been baptized right now, you're already reconciled to God. That relationship already exists. If you're not baptized, the door's open, which means, God, you have a relationship with God. It's not complete yet, but you already have it. You already have it. God's just going to take you to the next step. There's a remedy to this sin. You know what the remedy is to breaking the law of God? We have to repent. Okay, now I have to—well, you really don't mind now—I have to go repent for who I am, not just what I've done. Well, how do I change that? Okay, God reconciles. That means you're no longer an enemy of God. Every year during this time period, during the days of Unleavened Bread and before that, people come to me every year. Or I get phone calls or emails from all over the world saying, I don't think—I sinned this last year, and I don't think God wants me anymore. I think God wants to throw me away. I have failed. Well, you've already been reconciled. Yeah, but I messed up. I understand. But you've already been reconciled. Have you turned your back on God? Do you hate God? Have you—well, no. But because of my weaknesses, okay. So what I will to do, I don't do. So it sounds like the Apostle Paul.

Sounds like you need the Passover. You need it. You know, every year I am profoundly—as I get older, I—more and more. I mean, I remember when I was younger, but it seems more and more profound. Wow, I need this. I need this.

As we are taken back to the point where God does what he does in this process.

God loves us so much that Christ died for us so that you are already reconciled. And then notice the rest of the sentence.

Wait, wait, wait. I'm already reconciled to God when it's saved by his life. What in the world does that mean? Saved by his life. We have to figure that one out. Okay?

We're reconciled to God. We keep the Passover, and we're reconciled. We celebrate the death of Jesus Christ. I've had people that keep the Easter that say, we don't understand why you do that. We celebrate his resurrection. Why do you celebrate his death? Because we're celebrating what he said to celebrate because he was reconciling us to God.

If he wasn't resurrected, then we are, as Paul said, of all people most miserable. We're the most miserable people on the earth if he wasn't resurrected because we have no hope, we have no faith. He was resurrected, and it's by his life something is happening. Verse 11, and not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received the reconciliation.

So we're supposed to rejoice in the fact God has accepted me. That's what justification means. It doesn't mean he's happy with everything you do. It means he's accepted you into a relationship with him through Jesus Christ.

Okay, so we're already reconciled to God. You need to go into the Passover remembering that. You're already reconciled to God. If you haven't been baptized, you need to be thinking about, in terms of, Wow, God's opened this door to me and let me have a relationship with him. I really like what they've taken a step further, but that step is always when you're ready.

But there's always a next step in this reconciliation process because I wish to be totally free of my sins. But if God frees us of past sins, he forgives us of past sins, he takes the penalty of the law off of us. Where are we now? Oh, good! I have no past sins! Okay, if you came out of the water after being baptized, and that's all that happened, how long would it be before you sinned again? Maybe on the drive home? When you drive some guy off the road because he made you mad? When would the next sin take place?

So, okay, he forgives us, but where are we now?

What does it mean, saved by his life? Well, now we're going back to Romans 8. So we're going to flip ahead back.

I think last year I covered the last verses in chapter 8. We're going to be covering the first verses in chapter 8. I don't know if we'll ever get through a Passover season where at least some part of Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8 are covered.

Paul says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Jesus Christ. No condemnation. He just talked about in chapter 7 how condemned he felt.

I'm struggling, I'm struggling, I'm struggling.

But there's no condemnation to those who walk in Jesus Christ, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Wait a minute, what did he just say?

What we read in chapter 7 was he talked about how he was of the flesh, but the law was spirit, and he was carnal.

And inside of him even his will couldn't do it of itself because of what was inside of him. He said, Sin is inside of me.

And then he says, But I'm not condemned.

Remember what he wrote in chapter 5. I've been reconciled.

He hadn't left that reconciliation. He hadn't turned his back on God. He hadn't run away and said, I'm not going to follow God anymore. He didn't just go out and become a pagan.

But he fought this fight. That's why he calls it a walk. He uses the word walk here. It's a verb. He doesn't say, and we are standing still. He says, You walk according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.

Okay, we're moving forward toward something. We're walking toward something. We're moving. God is doing something.

And it's not according to this flesh because this flesh is weak and always fails.

Fail? Not always.

As time goes on, God's help is not to fail. That's the point. But it's because we're walking in the spirit. We're walking in a certain way.

He says, For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

He says, I'm free from sin even though I still fight it. Even though I still break it, or the laws of God. But God keeps bringing me back. Now, some people say, well, that means you don't have to keep the laws. As we read through this, that is the exact opposite of what Paul's saying.

What Paul's saying is, how can I keep the law when sin is already inside of me?

Well, verse 3. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin, and he condemned sin in the flesh.

He says, God gave us a remedy from this. Jesus became flesh of blood like us, lived a perfect life, and died to take upon us his sins. But something else must have happened, has to happen. Because we now are saved by his life. Look at the rest of the sentence, verse 4. That the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. The righteous requirement of the law isn't done for us, it's done in us. It's interesting, requirement here, and in the Greek, too, is a singular word. You think about it, requirements. You think it would be requirements of the law, right? There's lots of law. No, he says, the requirement of the law, the unity of what God wants, righteousness, obedience, lifestyle, all this together, this requirement is being fulfilled in us. And that's when you begin to understand the second remedy for sin. The first remedy is he forgave us in a legalistic sense. According to the law, you no longer have the eternal death penalty over you. Irreconciled to God. So in this legalistic sense, okay, boom, we've dealt with that part of the law, the legal part. But now we have to deal with the other part, the part that is inside you and me, that we must face. And it's through his life that we're saved from that, what he's doing now. And the righteous requirement of the law, then, is being developed in us. This doesn't happen overnight. It can't. If it happened overnight, chapter 7 makes no sense. Why would a man 20 years into this process, among the greatest men of God in the entire Bible, be saying, Oh, what a wretched man I am! Because he wasn't there yet. That's why. He wasn't there yet. And he understood it. And he was so self-aware, he wrote it down so we could say, Oh yeah, I understand it now. That's where I am. That's where I am. He says, verse 5, For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. In other words, we're walking in a certain way. We're learning in a certain way. We're living in a certain way. And sometimes we fail and fail miserably because we still have weak flesh. And what does God do? He makes us get up and walk. Look how many times we're walking here. He doesn't let us stop. He doesn't let us give up. He picks us up and He makes us keep walking. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Now you can't read that and say He did away with the law. It's impossible. What He's saying is you can't keep the law in a carnal state. You may be able to keep part of it. You may be able to keep the letter of it. But you can't deal with the internal part. So you may not be dragged before courts and legally, okay, well, let's see, you were stealing and put you in jail. But it doesn't change the fact that inside of you, well, you could steal. You might be tempted to steal. Inside of you, something still messed up. That can't be dealt with through the law. So He says you have to understand, yes, we keep the law, but there's a point inside of us to actually have all righteousness.

To always do what is good, even though it's not a law, we do what is good. To fulfill all those definitions of sin, it takes something from God inside to do it. You and I can't. This is the thing about will. Until God reveals to you who He is, you don't have the will to have salvation.

Because your will is corrupted. Remember we talked about that? Your will is corrupted. So if God doesn't reveal Himself to us, we're doomed. That's what's so great about the understanding that there's... This isn't the only day of salvation, because God has to open someone's will for them to actually make a decision. If He doesn't open their eyes, they can't make a decision. We know that. So that means their will isn't capable until God opens their eyes.

God's opened your eyes. Your will is being healed, like the rest of us. Our reason, our creativity, our emotions. This is not in the process of being healed. Paul goes on. But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, He is not His. Now, you say, well, I'm not baptized. I don't have God's Spirit.

God's Spirit is with you. It's already with you. That's part of the agreement here. When you become, participate in the Church, God's Spirit is with you. So He's already drawing you in this process. Now notice verse 10. And if Christ is in you, we're talking about the Holy Spirit. You know, Christ is in us too. You know, the Holy Spirit is the mind of God. The Father is in us, and Christ is in us. And this is real important, because you know what we're about to do? At the Passover, we sit down and we become partakers of the New Covenant.

And we are given what? Bread and wine. And what did Jesus say? Why did we take it? Take this. Eat it. This is my body. This is my blood. Literally, Christ says, I must internally come into you for you to be a persistent in the New Covenant.

You know, Jesus had a whole lot more disciples. He lost most of them. You know when? Read in John, when He said, You must eat my flesh and drink my blood for salvation. And He said, this man's crazy. He wants us to be a cannibal. And it said, most of His disciples left. And now He sits down with the twelve, and He says, you must do this.

Here He says, Christ in you. This is real important in understanding what we're doing here. Christ in us is very important in understanding, returning to being the image of God. God is recreating every one of us. We may be a distorted, marred, beat-up image of God. But the great sculpture has chosen you, and now He's saying, we have a lot of work. And we say, but I sinned today. And He says, yep, we got a lot of work. But God, it wasn't good yesterday. I know, we have a lot of work.

Because God has put Christ in us. When the Holy Spirit comes into us, the mind of Christ comes into us too. He says, and if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. But the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Now, when does this process get finished? When does it all get finished? That we are finally the children of God. That we are finally done. We can say, oh good, the battle is gone. I don't have to fight this battle of Romans 7 anymore.

Oh, He says it right here. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies, to His Spirit who dwells in you. In other words, in the resurrection, God says, He looks at the angels and says, boy, do I do good work. In the resurrection, we will take no sin with us. Understand that. How will we not sin when we are changed?

You will not be capable of sin. There will be no sin left. The last vestige of sin is removed from us at the resurrection, and God is in all things. God is all in all, right? So the Spirit of God is in us forever. We will have adapted to the Spirit of God, and therefore in doing so, we will be incapable of sin. Wow. Every time you take a piece of unleavened bread, think of that. Christ is coming into me. Okay? On that Passover, Christ is coming into me.

That's the point. I can teach you the Ten Commandments. I can't teach you how to not be selfish. I have to get in there and clean that out myself. That's what God says. I can't teach you not to be selfish, but I can do that. Oh, that bread and that wine is remarkable.

What's the standard then, our last scripture? What's the standard? Okay, well, okay. Christ comes into me. You know, as the Holy Spirit comes in, Christ comes into me. There's work being done here. What does that mean? How encompassing is this transformation? I mean, we have to be transformed, right? It's good to say Corinthians 3. Second Corinthians 3 is my favorite explanation of the difference between the Old and New Covenants. It's just a remarkable chapter. We're going to read one verse.

What Paul's doing here is telling the Corinthians, I want you to think of your Christianity as a spiritual mirror, okay? And you look into the spiritual mirror, and what do you see? He says, verse 18, but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord. So you look into the spiritual mirror, and what do you see? The shining image of Jesus Christ.

There he is. He's in the mirror. Wow. Now he's talking to them. So this next sentence only makes sense if you say, and we, okay, because he's talking to them looking into a mirror. So he says, are, but really it should, you know, he's talking to the people who are looking in the mirror, not to Christ.

And we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

When you look into that mirror and you see the perfect image of Jesus Christ, and you look at his life and you realize he came here to show us how this works, he was sacrificed for our sins, and through his life we are saved.

He's living now to teach us what it's like to be a child of God.

When you look in that mirror, you see the perfect image of Jesus Christ. Now what else do you see in a mirror by yourself? What are you?

I'm just distorted, sort of, I don't know, weird, sort of, what am I?

And he says, you see from glory to glory, every once in a while in this Christian journey that we're on, you look and you say, wow, for a second here, I sort of look like Jesus Christ.

That's what happens. Every once in a while there's part of me, oh wow, that part of me sort of look like Jesus Christ.

Because we're being changed, we're being transformed. I wouldn't know what it is to be the image of God. I'm too corrupted. But I know what Jesus Christ is, who he is and what he lived as a human being, who he is in heaven. And you know what? That image I can get. And he says, look at that image and realize that's what you're being transformed into. You're being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ, the image of God. But we can see what it looks like in a human sense. And this is what God has called us to do.

In other words, literal, literal children.

Literal children. And we know what the family looks like because we've seen the big brother and we're being transformed into an image of the big brother.

So, if sin at this time of year seems a little overwhelming, remember what this means. Christ died for you.

When you're throwing out leavening this year, don't get too caught up, well, I've got to go clean out and spend six hours cleaning out the attic, which nobody has eaten anything in for six years. That's not what this is all about. It's throwing out the leavening so that you can think about, I've got to get sin out of my life. And I can't completely. It's in me.

I don't have the power.

That Passover should make us acutely aware of the price paid to reconcile us to God. That's part of the remedy, to be reconciled to God.

You now have a relationship and direct, directly before the throne of God. God is actually with you all the time. God is in you. Right? His Spirit is in you all the time.

Christ is in you all the time.

That's why Pentecost is so important. It's part of the spring holy days.

Pentecost takes us to what the next step is. But we must take Christ inside of us. And whatever you eat, unleavened bread, think of that. Oh, yeah. It's not just a matter of being forgiven. It's a matter of something has to come in. Something has to go out, and something has to come in. And I can't do that. I can only walk. Right? What would you reread in Romans 8? You walk. That's all you can do. You fall down. You get scraped up. You get picked up. Now, sometimes you're walking because Christ has you by the back of the shirt dragging you along. That's how we walk sometimes. But that's how we get there. If you and I think we could do this ourselves, we're in real trouble. Because it's in here. But God has given us that remedy. This Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. Think about what it means. Think about what this really means. And realize that you are no longer a slave to sin. But you are being recreated into the image of God to become what you were intended to be. And that is to be a very child of Almighty God.