Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Cleansing of the Spirit

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

We’re looking at what it means to experience God. To be a Christian is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Not just to be helped by the Holy Spirit, not just to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, but to be indwelt.  Today, we’re going to look at how we increase spiritual dynamics in our lives. What are the basic dynamics which, when they’re heightened, heighten spiritual vitality? If we are to walk in the Spirit, we will be involved in two processes: 1) mortification, which is putting to death the deeds of the sinful nature, and 2) aspiration, which is setting your heart and mind on the things of the Spirit. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 23, 1997. Series: Lessons in Drawing Near. Scripture: Romans 8:1-14. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

What is the key to experiencing, really experiencing the presence of God? The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit dwelling within us is the key to experiencing God in our lives. In fact, it's the Holy Spirit's job to convince Christians that nothing can separate us from God's love. Today on Gospel and Life, Tim Keller helps us understand the Holy Spirit's transformative role in the life of a Christian. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email

updates. When you sign up, you'll start receiving our quarterly newsletter with articles from Dr. Keller as well as other great Gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandLife.com. Romans 8, verses 1 to 14. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering, and so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature, but according to the spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the spirit

have their mindset on what the spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law nor can it do so. So, as controlled by the sinful nature, cannot please God. You however, are controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit. The Spirit of God lives in you.

And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, it is not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the sinful nature to live

according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die. But if the spirit, by the spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. And that's God's word. Now we have spent the whole year, actually, the school year, since September, here in the evening services, looking at the subject of what it means to experience God. And we've been finally coming here to Romans 8,

and we're looking each week at Romans 8, because Romans 8 is maybe the preeminent single chapter in the Bible on what the Holy Spirit is, what the Holy Spirit does, on the work of the Holy Spirit. And bottom line, the reason that Christianity says that you really can't be a Christian, you aren't a Christian unless you are actually experiencing God is because to be a Christian, as we see over and over again in this passage, is to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit, not just

to be helped by the Holy Spirit, not just to be inspired or illumined by the Holy Spirit, but indwelt over and over again. The spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead, as a great Easter verse, is living in you. And that's what it means to become a Christian. It means it means much more than just conforming to a set of rules. It means much more than just conforming the mind to a set of beliefs, but it means to really have spiritual union with God because the Holy Spirit, His Spirit, comes and lives in you permanently, takes up residence. And therefore, it's the Holy Spirit that brings us into a relationship with God.

Now, the reason we're looking at Romans 8, though, is because we want to know how do we increase spiritual dynamics in our lives? How do we heighten them? How do we heighten them? How do we intensify them? One of the Kathy and I essentially met at Seminary. We kind of knew each other through a mutual friend, Kathy's sister, but we went off to Seminary together.

And the first course we found ourselves in the same class together was a course by Richard Lovelace. This is a Gordon Conwell seminary in Boston, 1975, fall 1975, and he was just starting to teach a course the first time, which he called NUMO Dynamics. You know, those professors, Greek professors, they love to take Greek words and turn them into technical sounding phrases.

NUMO Dynamics means the dynamics of NUMO, the spirit, spiritual dynamics. Eventually, he, out of that course, came a book called the Dynamics of Spiritual Life. And what it's all about, had a huge impact on me and on Kathy. I mean, it changed our lives. Around the same period of time, I read a little book by John Stott on Romans 5, 6, and 7, and 8, in which especially Romans 8, he said something, he analyzed it in a way that went right along with what Richard Lovel said. He says there's basically two spiritual dynamics, there are two basic dynamics to the degree they're happening, to that degree you experience God through

the Spirit. At the very, very same time I read a book, a long book, a hard-to-read book, a book written 300 and 36 years ago, I think. And it was all based on Romans 8.13. Now in the old authorized version, the Old King James Bible, this is how Romans 813 goes. It will look different than what we just read. It says, if ye do, mortify the deeds of the body by the Spirit, ye shall live. If you mortify the deeds of the body by the Spirit, you shall live. And I read that book.

It was a book by John Owen written in the 1660s called the mortification of the flesh. And it literally saved my life, I think, at the time. And all this was happening around the same time. And therefore, Romans 8 and the dynamics of spiritual life became very important to me. The first two evening services we ever had every day, once we went to morning and evening service right at the very beginning, the first two Sunday nights, I preached on each of these two dynamics.

One night, one other night. When we first started our, what it's now called, our M-C-M meeting. M-C-M is once a month, Ministry community meeting. We get all the small group leaders, all the ministry leaders together, usually M- our MCM meeting. MCM is once a month, ministry community meeting. We get all the small group leaders,

all the ministry leaders together, usually anywhere from 100 to 200 people. And they come together and we do training and we do fellowship and mutual support and accountability. When we first started that meeting, we had a different name for it at the time. The very first thing I did was I came up with a paper called the Dynamics Asperger Life.

On these two, the two basic dynamics that are here in this passage. Drew Field eventually turned that into a paper and he's got a nice little manual on it and I'm very sorry even mentioned that Drew because now you will be inundated with requests, people will say, I want that. And whoops, I'm sorry Drew, I didn't mean to do that, but there I did it. Oh, I wasn't suggesting that you called Drew or anything like that. Anyhow, in the history of the church,

there have always been times in which people can tell that the church wakes up spiritually. Very often they're called revivals. There have, in every part of the world, in every time and every century, there are these times of tremendous revivals. Every so often, I'll do some teaching on them here, and this isn't the night to do it.

But you may have heard me mention that there was a large revival in Britain and America, for example, in the late 1850s, 1857, 1859, in the city of New York, about an eighth of the entire population of the city of New York, about an eighth of the entire population of the city of New York in an eighth month period, in other words, about 12% of the population, picked up, converted, and joined all the churches. It was a huge influx.

During the very, very same period of time, in Northern Ireland, there were about 300,000 people in the counties of Northern Ireland in that time. A hundred thousand of them became Christians in about a two or three year period. These are times a revival, and when you walk into a church during a time like that, you just know that spiritual dynamics are high.

You sense the vitality, you sense the reality. Now, how do you get that? That's the question. And there are various approaches to how do you develop spiritual reality in your life or, you know, in the life of a church. In New York City, I find that this happens fairly often that churches start to say, we need vitality. Our service is on interesting. Our congregation is dwindling. We're eating into the endowment. What are we going to do? And, you know,, usually happens, they say, we just, we need to invigorate our service.

And so let's smile, let's have guitars instead of organs. Let's have praise songs. Now listen, as you know, you know, you're in the evening service here, I'm all for praise songs. I'm all for guitars. See, I preach next to one almost every Sunday night. It's me and Jeff's guitar.

I'm all for it, but that's the wrong end of the stick, of course. There's another approach to spiritual vitality that goes in a different direction. And there is the emphasis, well, if you're really going to have spiritual dynamics, spiritual life, you need to put emphasis on miracles and great actions of God and healing and so on. Again, we're not against healing here. In fact, I'm not sure maybe I should be telling you this anyway, but our monthly prayer meeting that we have up at the 7th day Adventist Church, 111-177th Street, the last Monday or the 4th Monday, or the last Monday, I guess it is every of every month, we always have officers there,

we pastors, elders, others who are ready to a night with oil and pray for healing, lay on hands and pray for healing, we do that every month. So we're absolutely not against that either. It's just, that's just the wrong and the stick again. What are, what is the secret? What are the basic dynamics, which, when they're heightened, heightened spiritual vitality in an individual life or in a corporate life?

And the answer is, it's here, but it's actually all through the New Testament. Let me read you John Stott's little statement that helped me so much years ago in his commentary on Romans 8. He says that when he reads Romans 8, when he reads Colossians 3, when you read Galatians 5, when you read Ephesians, when you read Hebrews 12, all through the New Testament. Whenever Paul or the author

is trying to give you a little thumbnail sketch of what it means not to become a Christian, but to live a Christian life, not to receive the Spirit, but to grow and walk in the Spirit, like here in verse four, it says, we have to walk according to the Spirit. How do you do that?

And John Stutt says, we are to walk in the Spirit, pardon me, if we are to walk in the Spirit in verse four, we shall be involved in two processes. The theological names for these are mortification and aspiration. Words which express the proper attitude toward our sin on the one hand and toward the spirit on the other.

We must put to death the deeds of the sinful nature which is mortification. And we must set our mind on the things of the spirit which is aspiration. Both mortification and aspiration, he says, are attitudes to be adopted and then constantly, unremittingly, maintained. In fact, they're mutually reinforcing, as I want to show you here, that you can't do one without the other. There's a certain sense in which they almost relate not so much as two different things, but as almost a downstroke and an upstroke of a piston.

It's almost like two sides of the same coin. You know how a piston works is, you know, in the upstroke, on the upstroke it pulls in, a mixture of air and a fuel. And because of the pressure, it ignites. That's particular in diesel engines. You don't even need, from what I can tell, if I remember correctly, once having a diesel, you don't even need a spark plug. So what happens is on the upstroke, it creates a pressure and there's an explosion and it

pushes it down to the downstroke and that's where, where you get the power and that's how the car moves. In the same way, mortification, aspiration are really not two things that you work on, two separate things, but they really like two wings of an airplane. They're really like two strokes of a piston. They mutually reinforce each other. They deepen each other. And these are the two spiritual dynamics. Mortification is putting to death the old nature, whatever that means. And aspiration is setting your heart and mind on the salvation of Christ, whatever that means.

Now, what does it mean? First of all, let me suggest that what I'm about to tell you, you couldn't get just out of Romans 8. The reason I'm mentioning this is because I'm trying to show you a pretty major view of things that came to me through a lot of good teaching and a lot of good people over the years. When you read Romans 8, when you read Galatians 3,

when you read Galatians 5, you see these same two things. For example, Galatians 3 says, set your mind, let me read it to you, says set your mind on things which are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Your life is now hidden with Christ in God and when Christ to his, your life appears, you will appear with him.

Set your mind on things which are above. That's up at verse 1, 2, and 3. But then he gets down to verse 4, 5, and 6. It says put the death that which is earthly. Just like here in Romans 8, Romans 5, where you see in verse 5, those who live according to the sinful nature of their mindset. But if you live in accordance with the spirit, you have your mindset on what the spirit yearns for.

What the spirit is passionate about. On the other hand, down to verse 13, by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body. Same thing. Look at Hebrews 12. In Hebrews 12, two things are told you in the very beginning. This comes up again and again in nut shell form. Do you know what it says in the bigger beginning of Hebrews 12? It says, Fix your eyes on Jesus.

The archa goes, the author and the finisher of our faith. And then it says, cast aside every weight and every sin that clings so close. There it is again. Fix your eyes on Jesus, throw off sin together. You can go over to Galatians 5. same thing. I won't keep on going here. In Galatians 5 it says, the Spirit works against the sinful nature. They both have desires. Set your mind on the desires of the nature of the Spirit, not the sinful nature. And that's the whole idea behind it.

So again and again these things come up, but now look, very carefully, I must tell you, this does not mean, this does not mean, this is not not at all mean, this is emphatic, by the way. This does not at all mean, I want you to remember what I'm about to say, you know, how many ways I have to signify. This does not mean, do a lot of good things, stop doing bad things. It's not what it's saying. Something much more profound than that. Something much deeper than that. See, to fix your eyes on Jesus, to set your mind on what the Spirit desires, to set your mind on things that you're above where your life is with God and Christ, are all the same thing.

Crucify the flesh, that's what you see in his desires, that's in Galatians 5. Put the death, mortify the deeds of the body, that's Romans 8, 13, and so on. Cast aside every weight, put the death at which is earthly within you, they're all the same thing. Okay, what are they? First of all, they almost always come in this order.

And actually, when I used to teach on this, I always put them in a reverse order, so I'm gonna try to rectify that tonight. The first, as always, fix your eyes, set your mind, which by the way, the word, in great that's used for mind, could just as easily be translated heart. Because the Bible does not make a big distinction

between mind and heart. The mind and the heart are essentially the same thing. Set your heart, put, you know, you're in most self. You're your greatest, highest priority, that's what it's saying. Set your mind on things, what you're above. Set your mind on that, which the spirit desires. That is first. That comes first. And so what is it? Well

Jesus Christ says, the job of the Spirit, He says this in John 16, is that when the Spirit comes, He will take of mine, He will take the things that I have told you, and He will glorify me. Now we made a reference to this last week when we were talking about the work of the Spirit in He will take the things that I have told you and he will glorify me. Now we made a reference this last week when we were talking about the work of the Spirit in general and I read you a passage from J.I. Packer on this. But here's the point. The Spirit of God is the celestial, according to J.I. Packer, the divine matchmaker. The job of the Holy Spirit is to get you to fall in love with Jesus. The job of

the Holy Spirit is to take concepts, things that Jesus has told you, things that you know about, atonement he died for you, adoption, you know, through him we now can be adopted into the family of God. Justification in him, we are just, we are righteous in God's sight. These are all concepts. What's the job of Holy Spirit? To knock you over the head with them. See what is, you know what glorify means? You know, in the Bible, especially the Hebrew version of it, the Hebrew word that's translated

glory is kabooth, which of course I always have translated as kaboom. It means weight. And when Jesus says, I want you to, the Holy Spirit to stop us to glorify me, it means to take concepts and to smack you with them, to show you their significance, to show you their weight,

to show you their power, to make them something that disturbed and thrilled and lift you up and so on, to push you now. What is it that the Spirit shows you? The Psalms can profoundly shape the way you approach God, even Jesus relied on the Psalms to face every situation, including death. In Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional book The Psalms of

Jesus, you'll find daily readings through the Psalms with fresh biblical insight. If you have no devotional life yet, this book is a wonderful way to start. And if you already spend time and study and prayer, reading and praying through every verse of the Psalms can help you discover a new level of intimacy with God. We'll send you Tim and Kathy Keller's devotional as our thanks for your gift to help gospel and life share the love of Jesus with more people. Just visit gospelenlife.com slash give. That's gospelenlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the remainder of today's teaching.

Now, Colossians has got a great way of putting it. Colossians says what you must continually see that your life is hidden with God in Christ. But actually that's here in Romans 8. Take a look at your passage again. In verse 5 it says, what is the spirit desire? Set your mind with the spirit desires.

What is the spirit you want to show us? Well, it's verses 1 to 4. Right there is what you've got to set your mind on. And you've got to pray and you've got to adore and you've got to seek the Holy Spirit help. To look at what is said there until it becomes glorious to you. Okay, this is the first step in spiritual dynamics. Not just, well, make me a better person, show me the rules,

what do I have to do? Oh no, no, no. You set your mind with the Spirit, desires. And here's the Spirit. Verse 1 to 4 is an absolutely, we mentioned this the first week, but let's go back here and let's take a look. Specifically, what it wants you to see, it gives you, the Spirit of God is arguing with you in verses 1 to 4, it gives you a claim, an incredible claim, and a proof of the claim. And what's the claim? The claim is,

there was no condemnation for those who were in Christ Jesus. Let's capsulate that. It does not say sometimes there is no condemnation when you're being very good, when you're praying. You're praying and you're being good, then there's no condemnation. But you know if you sin, then you go back into condemnation, then you have to ask us forgiveness, then you're out of condemnation. That's not what it says. It doesn't say condemnation, There's no condemnation now. Okay, now there is no condemnation. Means starting the minute you become a Christian from now on is what it means.

And it doesn't say condemnation is put aside until you sin. What it says is for Christians there is now no more condemnation. It doesn't exist anymore. It's not there. And David Martin Lloyd-Jones and his commentary in Romans 8, and you know, he was not by any means as sanguine, you know, sweet talking preacher by any means. He wasn't always talking about love all the time, oh no. And yet he says, you know what this text means? This text means, if you're a Christian,

you must never let yourself feel condemned. You must never think you're condemned. You must never act like you're condemned. That's the whole idea here. You must never treat yourself as each of your condemns. If you're a Christian there's no condemnation for you. That's the reason why Paul says in Cosh 3, the first thing you've got to do is when you set your mind on things what you're above, what's up there? He says, your life is hidden with God in Christ.

What does that mean? He says, you died, and now your life is hidden with God in Christ, and Christ is your life. This is an astounding statement. What this is saying is that when God looks at you, He sees Christ. It means, for example, He treats you as if you died for your sins. You've paid for them all. He treats you as if you have been raised. He treats you as if you've done everything Jesus has done this morning.

I didn't bring this out. This morning I was preaching on the place where Jesus says, at the very end, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me when he's dying? And there's a great old sermon on that subject, on that text by a Scottish minister in which he says, Jesus doesn't just say, you have forsaken me. He says, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? And what he's actually saying is, though you forsaken me,

you are still my God. And what he's doing is he's clinging to the covenant and he's continuing to pray. And he's continuing to reach out. He doesn't just say, my God, he says, my God, my God, this intensity of affection and emotion. And this preacher said, Jesus is not just a dying savior, he's a doing savior.

He didn't come just to suffer everything we need to suffer. He came to obey, everything we need to obey. There has never been an act of obedience like this. Nobody has ever obeyed Jesus, God from hell. Nobody has ever been sent to hell God from hell. Nobody has ever been sent to hell like Jesus was on the cross, utterly for a second. No one ever had a quiet time in hell. And Jesus did. No one ever studied the Bible and Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 when he says, my God, my God. Nobody ever prayed from hell. Nobody ever did. Nobody's

ever obeyed like this. Nobody has ever been smashed by God in the midst of obeying and then continues to obey. God has only ever rejected people that reject him. God's never rejected people who are obeying him, never. Nobody's ever had to get that from God and yet he obeys, even though he's being sent to hell. though you damn me yet I will praise you now. Listen, it says in 2 Corinthians 5, 21, God made him sin, who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. That means on the cross he treated him as if he was a sinner, so that when you believe in him, you see, he treated him as if he'd done everything we'd ever done. So that when you believe in him, he can treat you as if you have done everything he did.

That's what it's got to mean. That's what Romans, that's what Colossians 3 is got to mean when it says, set your mind on things which are above. Because you died and your life is hidden with God in Christ, that's you up there. God treats you as if you've done everything that he's done. That's what it means here when it says the Spirit desires you to know that there is now no condemnation. Why, if you're in Christ Jesus, in, it's a legal solidarity, you're in Christ Jesus,

it's the status. This means God will treat you. He does treat you as if you obeyed from hell, as if you have done the greatest thing that anyone's ever done. I mean if someone does what Jesus has done, he didn't just die for you, he didn't just die and suffer everything you're supposed to suffer. He'll bait everything you're supposed to obey. And that means you're not just pardoned when you receive Christ. You don't just get the negative part of his record, you get the positive part. You don't just get, it doesn't just accrue to you the benefits of his suffering, also

the benefits of his obedience. If you don't believe that, now listen, therefore there is no condemnation. How could there be condemnation? What could you possibly do to lose God's pardon? And then you see, the proof of the argument is down in verse four. Three and four, it says, for what the law is powerless to do, God did by sending his son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering, and so he condemns sin in sinful man.

Now you see what's happening? When Jesus was a sin offering, he was condemned. You see the juxtaposition between verse one, there's no condemnation for you because there was condemnation for Jesus. Now here's the proof. Is there anybody out there saying, you're going too far?

You can't mean that no matter what I do, the all my sins, once I become a Christian, all my sins passed, all my sins present, all my sins future, they're all gone, nothing can bring me into condemnation. I am complete. I'm accepted as if I obeyed and had a quiet time in hell. I obeyed from hell's heart. I had obeyed God that well. You're going too far. I had obeyed God that well. You're going too far. You can't mean that. This is too much. I mean, what incentive would I have to live a good life,

if I believe that? You know, you're out there. You're not arguing just with me. You're arguing with. You're arguing with the gospel, which the Holy Spirit wants you to see. And the Holy Spirit wants you to see this. And you know how it makes this case?

Jesus was condemned, so you wouldn't be condemned, which means. Here's the argument. Either Jesus was condemned for your sins and we're not. Or you can be condemned for your sins and Jesus wasn't. But they can't both happen. Do you see that? If Jesus was condemned for your sins, those sins can never bring you into combination because then God would get two payments. It's one or the other. If

Jesus was condemned for your sin and you believe in Him, set your mind on that. Now if anybody here is saying, I just can't believe that that's going too far, you haven't learned aspiration yet. You haven't learned what it means to set your mind on things which are above. Now it's not until in Colossians and in Romans and in all and in Galat, even in even in Hebrews 12 where it says, fix your eyes on Jesus. Before he says, cast off the weight. If you don't know who you are in Christ, you will do a lousy job of what's called mortification. Now I don't have much time to go into this too far except to say this, until you see aspiration you won't understand mortification,

mortification which is putting the death, the sins of the body. There are two major mistakes people make because they don't see this in relationship to aspiration. The first mistake they make is they think of mortification as simply setting your mind against sinful behavior period. It just means, in other words, you think of it just saying no. And frankly, that's part of it. I mean, if you want to sock somebody in the mouth and you know that that would be bad, that would be a sin, that would be illegal and so on, just say no. You know, if you can't, if you can't modify your heart with the spirit at that moment,

and all you can do is just say, I don't want to be put in jail and stick your fist in your pocket and walk away fine. That's not mortification, but that's all right. That's not mortification. That's not this. What this is doing is you always have aspiration and modification together because on the one hand, aspiration means until you see who you are in Christ, until your conscience and your heart is given that kind of emotional support and that kind of structure, you will not be able to admit the worst about yourself. In other words, there is a kind of repentance and a kind of confession and a kind of

self-examination and a kind of purifying and cleansing for sin that arises strictly out of the fear of punishment, strictly out of the fear that God's going to cast me off unless I do something about this. And there's another kind of repentance and mortification and another kind of cleansing that arises when you say, God will never cast me off. And look what He did so that He would never condemn me. And I want to be more like Him. There's a security, you can look at yourself

and you can look at your sin and you can look at the things that you've done and you can admit them. Because to admit your sinter is not death now as it was before you did your aspiration. And now you have a different motivation. The very thing that assures you, no condemnation, now convicts you. You say, how can I treat him this way who's done this for me? And when the very thing that assures you convicts you, then the conviction is actually very

sweet. It hurts in some ways, but you see the thing you do to yourself as you say, I cannot treat the one who had never cast me off like this. I'm going to change this. I'm going to obey. I'm going to put this aside. I'm going to forsake this in. When you do that, you see, that doesn't make you feel horrible. That makes you feel wonderful. There's an aspiration that leads to mortification. The other mistake, maybe I need to wait until we get back to this.

And it will have to be the week after Easter. But the other mistake generally is that you don't just simply repentant's mortification is not out of fear, it's out of love, but secondly, it's not just looking at the surface, it's not looking at the surface behavior, but it's looking at what is the cause of the sin. And this is really the bottom line in a sense. This is how aspiration, mortification work together. This, the Bible tells us over and over again

that the reason we sin usually is not just because in general, we're bad people. If you look carefully, you'll see that nobody obeys, nobody who disobeyes the 10 commandments symmetrically. Nobody disobeyes the 10 commandments symmetrically. Nobody disobeys the 10 commandments symmetrically. You know, we don't have 10 commandments and all disobeys them, you know, three times a day. We have every, we're all different. Some of us have more trouble with some than others.

Some of us have no trouble with lying. We tell the truth. We have a great deal of trouble with adultery. And other people have a great deal of trouble, no trouble with sexual, no problem with sexual temptation, but a tremendous amount of trouble with greed. I mean everybody's got different commandments that they disobey in different ways. Why? And the answer is because you know what the sinful nature really is? You know what the sinful nature really is? You know what the sinful nature really is? It is a semi-intact desire system.

You see what it says there? There's a desire system in you that's called the sinful nature, and then there's the spirit's desire system. And the old desire system says, the only way that you are going to escape condemnation is if you get this or if you get this or if you get this. In other words, the sinful nature is the old approach that says, you can save yourself if you have this, if you have this, if you have this. That desire, that semi-intact motivational structure is still with you. What does it mean to put the death?

What does it mean to put the death? What does it mean to put the death? The desires of the sinful nature. You have to look, why are you tempted? Why are you lying? Go underneath. Why are you driven? Why are you worried? Why are you afraid? It's not enough to say, stop being tempted. Don't do that. Don't lie. Don't hit.

Don't do this. Don't break this. It's not enough. You have to go underneath and say why? Why? And the answer is you think if you don't get this or if you don't get that or if you don't avoid this or if you don't Avoid that you will be condemned. In other words, the sinful nature is the part of your heart that doesn't believe. There's no condemnation. And when Paul says in Colossians 3, set your mind on things which are above, not on earthly things. Christ is your life, nothing down here.

I'll tell you what, it's very, very simple. You want to know how you do this? You aspire and you mortify at the same time when you're about to panic. And you say, how can I deal with this? Well, you're about to give an temptation. You're about, you're being driven or you're about, you're falling into temptation in some way and you don't want to do this.

What do you say? You say, there's something that I've made my life besides Jesus. There's something that I think will save me from condemnation when only Jesus has done it. And you look at that thing and you say, you are not my life. You are not my salvation. You are not what's going to save me from condemnation. Some of this sounds familiar, doesn't it? I told you this is seminal. Seminal to my understanding,

seminal I think to the New Testament, seminal to the Ministry of Redeemer. There is a modification that is nothing but a way of trying to make yourself a better person. There's a repentance that's nothing but self-flatulation. And I guess there's a sense in which there's an aspiration of sorts, which is nothing but a kind of, you know, God loves everybody, you know, think better about yourself. But the gospel says, when you put your mind on the fact, when you live out of the fact there's no condemnation, that leads to a kind of repentance, it leads to going under the surface, and leads to the destruction of the old, the old sinful nature, which still hates the idea

or doesn't believe that now there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. The gospel, haji, you know what, when you see the Grand Canyon, you know, no human being designed it. When you see the Atlantic Ocean, you know, no human being filled it. When you see the Himalayas or the Rocky Mountains, you know no human being raised it up. And when you hear the gospel, you know, that's from God. Nobody could have thought it out. Let's pray. We pray, Lord, that as the Spirit leads us to both aspire and mortify, we would find ourselves growing and find ourselves experiencing

more and more of your reality and most of all experiencing more and more of the Spirit's power in our lives. We see now that the Spirit of God does give us authority and does give us boldness and does give us power and all these things we want from the Spirit, but they're all secondary. They're all they're all consequences. They're all fruit. They're all byproducts of this by your Spirit. Show us what this by your Spirit, show us with this, by your spirit, show us the glory of your son and who we are in your son, until we can move out into the world, and we can even move in down into our heart, and with that great confidence, we can become more and more like your son,

putting to death the misdeeds of the body of flesh of this sinful nature and living more and more in righteousness. We pray this now in Jesus name. Amen. Thanks for listening to Gospel in Life and Dr. Keller's teaching on the Holy Spirit. You can get more content like today's teaching when you connect with Gospel in Life on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, or Twitter. This month's sermons were recorded in 1997 and 2013. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Vardema Presbyterian Church.

Thank you.