Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Splitness

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

How does change really happen in somebody’s life? And how does faith in Christ concretely and practically lead to change?  In Romans 7 we see, in very starkly and shockingly realistic terms, a depiction of the human heart. And what we really see is the very heart that any principles about change have to be applied to. When we look at Romans 7, I think we learn three things: 1) what our biggest problem is, 2) what won’t address that problem, and 3) what will. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on November 26, 2006. Series: In Christ Jesus: How the Spirit Transforms Us. Scripture: Romans 7:1-9, 18-25. 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.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. Are you longing to see real change in your life, in your habits, your relationships, your heart? Today, Tim Keller explores how lasting change actually happens in the life of a Christian and why the gospel offers a radically different process of transformation than anything else. tonight's scripture reading is on page nine in your bulletin and it comes from Romans chapter 7 verses 1 through 9 and then 18 through 25 or do you not know brothers for I am speaking to those who know the law that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives

thus a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to

that which held us captive, so that we serve not under the old written code, but in the new life of the spirit. What then shall we say that the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.

Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members, another law, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is God's word. He said last week that when I first became a Christian, there were some things in my life that profoundly needed changing, that they weren't changing. And then I read two authors, John Owen,

and John Stott, and in their books, they, as it were, led me to Romans 6, 7, and 8. And when I began to grasp what was taught there, that's when change, real change began in my own life. And so I want to take you there for this brief series on Romans 6, 7, and 8, and ask the question, how does change really happen in somebody's life? How does Christ, how does faith in Christ, very concretely, and practically lead to change. Last week, we looked at Romans 6 as a whole, and we saw some principles. This week we looked at Romans 7 as a whole, in which we have in very starkly, shockingly

realistic terms, a depiction of the human heart, what we really have here. And then when we get to Romans 8, Romans 6 is the principles. Romans 7 is the heart that principles have to be applied to. In Romans 8, will take two or three weeks looking. at the more practical aspects of how do you apply the principles to the heart so as to bring about change. Now, tonight, I'm going to move from the end to the beginning. We're going to look at the last part of the passage, the middle part of the passage, and then the first part of the passage. And when we look at Romans 7 like that, I think we'll learn three things. What our biggest

problem is, what won't work against it, and what will. What our biggest problem is, what will not address or solve that problem and what will. Number one, what's our biggest problem? And Paul very classically puts it in verse 18 and 19 when he says, I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. There it is. I can aspire and envision the right, but I don't find in myself the power to actually execute and do it.

why the answer is what we'll call here the deep splitness of the human heart the splitness because in verse 20 he says now if i do what i do not want it is no longer i who do it but sin that dwells within me what a statement he says there's me and then there's something in me and he says it's sin in fact notice a minute in verse 19 he talks about evil there's evil and sin residing in in him, residing in us. Notice that word dwell. Very, very important. Evil and sin is not something that just acts upon us from the outside,

nor is it something that comes into us temporarily and camps out, and if you know what you're doing, you can shoo it away. It is at home in us. It dwells in us. It resides in us. It's deeply rooted in us. And as a result, there's this deep splitness about us of good and evil. Now, the classic depiction of this in literature is Robert Lewis Stevenson's book, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Now, have you ever really read the book? I bet you haven't because what we do is we see movies and plays, and I like to work off the book. And it's not very long. It's like 80 pages. It's a pretty short book. But a fascinating book, and you know basically the narrative. Dr. Jekyll came to realize that he was, well, he called, quote, unquote, an incongruous compound of good and evil, of conscience and

coveting. And he felt that because of this, his bad nature held his good nature back. And so he could aspire to do things, but he could never follow through on them, just like Roman 7. But he comes up with an idea, a potion. He's going to concoct a potion that will separate the two nature's out from each other and he intends to drink the potion at night to let his bad side out but during the day when he's doing his work he'll be his good self and his good self will now be unencumbered it will be free from the influence of the evil and will be able to realize all of its goals nice theory but when he takes the potion and his bad nature side comes out to his shock he's far more evil than he ever dared believe he was. That's the problem. And he says in the narrative in the book,

he says, I knew myself at the first breath of this new life to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked than I had thought. And the thought braced and delighted me like wine. This being, Edward Hyde, was inherently malign. His every act and thought centered on self. His every act and thought centered on the self. Why is his bad side named Edward Hyde? Do you know why? First of all, because he was hideous. It's the hideousness, but also because he was hidden. He was hidden, even from Dr. Jekyll, had no idea he was this evil. And so when Edward Hyde, here's how the narrative goes on, Edward Hyde comes out, he's far more evil than Dr. Jekyll ever thought he would be, and he starts doing terrible things, including murder. And finally, we'll get back

this in a second. Dr. Jekyll says, I'm going to try to stop it then. I'm going to try to repress this evil side. But Edward Hyde more and more gets the upper hand and more and more is in control. And when Dr. Jekyll realizes he's about to lose complete control and not even become Dr. Jekyll anymore, but permanently become Edward Hyde, he kills himself. Very, very disturbing narrative. But right out of Roman 7. Because Roman 7 is saying, and what Robert Lewis Stevenson are saying are the same thing. And that is, number one, Even the best people, even the most brilliant and decent, Dr. Jekylls, or Apostle Pauls, see. Even the best people have at the core of their being a hideousness, an evil, a capacity for incredible self-centeredness.

Because notice Robert Louis Stevenson actually, in a very biblical way, defines what was so hide. Absolute centering of every thought on the self. and it's that self-absorption and that self-centeredness and it's me, me, and my needs and my interests and my desires, that incredible ability to center on the self is what leads to the evil. So even in the very best people, there's a core of evil, a capacity for doing terrible things

way beyond what you believe it to be. Far greater, far worse than you ever imagine. It's hidden from you. But sometimes there are certain situations that act as a potion. stress temptation marriage to a difficult person and the real wickedness the real capacity for evil

that incredible hideousness that enormous almost endless capacity for self-centeredness self-absorption self-will self-indulgence comes out and then you're dead do you believe this that the very best person is capable of such awfulness

and that you almost certainly, no matter what we're being taught here, is your assessment of your own capacity for evil and sin is way too small. Way too small. Sufjohn Stevens, he's an indie rock artist, some of you know, has a song called John Wayne Gasey. It's a song about a serial killer. John Wayne Gasey who killed 30 people and hid them under the floorboards of his house. and Sifian sings about this serial killer

and the last two lines of the song are absolutely astounding in fact even the village voice was blown away by the art critic the music critic there because at the very very end he's singing about this serial killer how awful what a terrible person incredible serial killer and the very last lines go like this but in my best behavior I am really just like him look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have it. He says, look beneath the floorboards of my life and you will see the capacity to do

terrible things. Do you believe that? Do you really? Do you believe what Stevenson is saying, what Sifian Stevens is saying, Robert Lewis Stevenson, what Paul is saying? That in you, you've got a capacity for hideousness and selfishness and evil way beyond what you really think you're capable of. But at some point, you might find some situation bringing it out and then you're dead. So if that's the case, and it's important to understand, and that is the case, what do we do about it? Point two, the main solution that most people try to bring to bear on it, Paul says, doesn't work. What is that? It has to do with the moral law. Now, when we see in here, Paul talking about turning to the law and turning to the moral law, he's thinking of the mosaic law.

He's a Jew, and he's thinking about the Ten Commandments in the Mosaic law. But what he says, is here really fits, it really holds true across all the cultures. At the very end of C.S. Lewis's book, The Abolition of Man, he has an appendix, which is incredibly valuable. And in that appendix, he compares the moral law of Confucianism and Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam and Islam and Christianity and Judaism. And he shows a remarkable convergence and a remarkable consensus about what the basic requirements that God has of us, what the basic requirements are of a moral life. And the moral law, therefore, we do understand, we do know what it is. And across all of the cultures and across all of the religions, what most people do about

the fact that we have a bad nature is we take the moral law and with an enormous exercise of willpower, we apply that moral law to our bad nature. In other words, we try to, wipe out our hide with our jekyll. We try to deal with our Edward Hyde by just being incredibly jekyll, incredibly good, incredibly obedient. We form moral communities in which we read the moral law and every week and we applaud it and we obey it and we instruct our children in it and we say by applying the moral law of God to people's lives, that is how we're going to overcome our hideousness. That selfishness, that pride, that self-centeredness that destroys people. That that's how we're going to overcome it. And Paul says, it won't work. In fact, Paul says in verse

five, something absolutely amazing. Look at verse five. He says, while we were in the flesh, our sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. Aroused by the law. Our sinful passions aroused by the law. Paul says the law has a greenhouse effect on what's wrong with us. It doesn't shrivel it. It doesn't shrivel it. It aggravates it, it prospers it, it grows it. You say, what? Now, how could that be? He's saying that applying the law of God through willpower, just insisting and bringing the law to God to bear on somebody's life and saying, this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do, this is what you have to do, doesn't make you a better person, it makes you worse. It brings out, it aggravates

what's wrong with you. How could that be? Well, at one level, nobody talks about this better than St. Augustine, by the way. St. Augustine in his famous book, The Confessions, reflects on an incident in his youth. In his youth at one point, he broke into a private orchard and stole some pears off a tree that weren't his, of course. And later on, he reflected theologically and very profoundly, actually, on that incident. And he thought back on it and he said, why did I steal the pears? A, I wasn't hungry. B, if I was hungry, I didn't like pears. After he stole the pears, he threw them the pigs.

He didn't even like pears, but he went and stole the pairs. So he said, why did I steal the pairs? I didn't even like pairs. And the answer is, I stole the pairs because somebody told me that they were forbidden. In other words, someone says, thou shalt not take those pairs. And he says, until someone said, thou shalt not, I had no interest in the pairs. But once they said, don't take those pairs. I wanted them.

There is something about the heart. Deep inside the heart, there's an aspect of our hideousness, of our self-centeredness, of that self-absorption that says, nobody tells me how to live. Now, there's a lot of people

that that is right on the surface of your life because there's a lot of people who walk around talking like that all the time. Nobody tells me how to live my life, you see. But the rest of us, a lot of us, oh, well, we don't say like, we're very nice, but deep inside us, deep inside you, Mr. Ms. Jekylls, is a part of our heart that absolutely hates being told how to live. That's part of what's wrong with us. And when you

bring the moral law to bear on a child or bring the moral law to bear on people, bring the moral law to bear on people, instead of it shriveling up that aspect of our beings, it actually aggravates it. And people do things because they're forbidden. But there's more to it than that. How does the law act as a greenhouse on what's wrong with this? Paul actually says in verses 8 and 9, or Paul actually gives us a little autobiographical sketch of how he moved from being a legalistic Pharisee into being a Christian. And it's not an easy sketch to grasp. It's very, very sketchy. Well, he says, I was alive apart from the law, but then one of the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not covet, came home and slew me.

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 365-day devotional, the songs of Jesus, you'll find daily readings through the Psalms with fresh biblical insight. If you don't have a regular devotional practice, this book is a wonderful way to start. And if you already spend time in study and prayer, then reading and praying through the Psalms can help you bring your deepest emotions and questions before God and discover a new level of intimacy with him. 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. Request your copy today at gospelandlife.com

slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. What's that mean? Now, here's what I think it means. Paul was saying, I was alive. Now, what does that mean? I was spiritually alive. What does it mean? Well, you know, we talk about a team is still alive if it's in the running for the pennant, you know. And what Paul was saying is when he looked at his life, he was a Pharisee, he was a pretty good person. And he felt like I'm in the running. I'm alive. spiritually alive, I'm a pretty good person. I've got a real chance to be saved. I got a real chance to get to heaven. I got a real chance for God's blessing. I'm really good. And the reason he felt alive and like a good person was because he tended to look at the law of God the way most of us do,

and that is he read the Ted Commandments in terms of external behavior only. So he would go down the list and he could tick it off. He said, okay, I don't bow down to any statues. Okay, that's good. I call my mother and father once a week from New York City. And so I'm honoring my parents, okay. And I'm not committing adultery and I'm not stealing and I don't kill anybody. At least I haven't killed anybody really important. You know, that's Paul. I killed a few Christians, but they had it coming. And so he goes down, he was alive. He said, hey, you know, I went, as long as he was looking at the law in terms of external behavior, he said, hey, I'm okay. But then the 10th commandment. And the problem with the 10th commandment is there's no way to read it in terms of

of behavior. It's about motives. It's about your heart. It's about your intentions. Thou shalt not covet. You know what the opposite of coveting is? Contentment. And he realized it was saying that if you really love God, if you really were resting in God, if you really had God, then the commandment is thou shalt love God enough to be content. But when he looked inside his heart, he saw all kinds of coveting. He saw all kinds of stuff. He saw anger because he was killing people who didn't agree with him, you know. He was persecuting the church. He saw fury and self-righteousness and envy and comparing himself to their people. He saw the inside. He was a mess. And he says, it slew me. And you know what that means? I realized I was a spiritually dead as the lawless people. That underneath all my

morality and underneath all my goodness, I realized that the law was actually creating something inside. It was creating all this insecurity, creating all of this problem, creating all this anger, creating all this envy. What is he talking about? Why would he say, I'm just as lost, I'm just as dead spiritually as the immoral people out there? Robert Louis Stevenson, in Jekyll Hyde, has a fascinating passage. When I read it, I was blown away by it, and I realized it never comes out in any of the kind of horror, you know, films and plays and things based on the story. When Dr. Jekyll realized that Edward Hyde was killing people, he made a resolution. First of all, he said, no more potion, okay?

I'm not taking that again. I'm never going to take the potion because that's how he became Edward Hyde. So I'm not taking the potion. And secondly, I'm going to live such a good life. I'm going to be more good, more moral, more generous, more kind, more upright than I've ever been than anyone's ever been. and I'm going to, with an act of my will, I'm going to obey the moral law, and I'm going to actually squeeze out and repress Edward Hyde so he never shows up again. And he does a very good job, but we're told

this, here's the passage. He says, I resolved in my future conduct to redeem the past, and my resolve was fruitful. You know how earnestly in the last few months of this last year I labored to relieve suffering. You know how I lived. You know how much was done for other people. But on one fine, clear January day, I was sitting in the sun in Regent's Park, and I reflected and smiled, comparing myself with other men, comparing my act of goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect of their fellow man,

and at the very moment of that vain, glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea and dreadful shuddering, and I looked down, and I was once more Edward Hyde, without the potion. And see, this is the turning point. this is the beginning of the end.

Because when he became Edward Hyde without the potion, he knew he was cooked. But why would he have become Edward Hyde without the potion? And the answer is not in spite of his goodness, but because of his goodness. Did you hear what he said? You hear what the passage said? It was as he was thinking about

how much better he was than everyone else. As he was thinking about how other people are cool, other people are living selfish lives, and I'm not, I'm living a very good life. I'm caring about everybody. At that moment he became Edward Hyde. Without the potion. Why? He became Edward Hyde through his goodness, not in spite of his goodness. Why? Because there's two ways to be self-centered, you know. One is by being very bad and breaking all the rules, but the other is by being very good and becoming a self-righteous Pharisee. There's two ways to be your own Savior and Lord rather than God and trample on other people. One is by saying, I'm going to live my own life. Nobody tells me how to live my life. I'm going to break all the moral laws of I want. So that's being your own God, right? But see, if you say, I'm going to be so good that God's going to have to bless me and take me to heaven, you're being your own savior, right?

You're not letting God be your savior. And even though there's all kinds of moral behavior in your life, inside you are filled with self-righteousness and cruelty and bigotry and you're miserable. Because you're always comparing yourself to other people and you never are sure you're good enough. See? And what does that mean? It means that you can't deal with your hideousness. You can't deal with that self-centeredness. You can't deal with that self-absorption by trying to be a good person

and by just bringing the moral law to bear so that you can say, now I'm going to be a really, really good person. That can just make you worse. You don't deal with your hideousness. With an act of the will, you need a complete transformation of the very motives of your heart. Or you're dead. So that's our problem, and that's what will not solve our problem,

but what will? Not just application of the will to the moral law. not just application of the moral law to your heart through an act of the will. What will? What will really solve it? And the answer is up in verses one to seven. The very beginning of this passage is kind of weird when you first read through it. Did you notice that? You really couldn't figure out what was going on in the beginning, and then his time went on, you sort of figured it out. That first part is very weird, and here's why. Paul is dealing with a question. He actually poses it in verse seven. He says, okay, then, considering all that we've been talking about, that the law doesn't really

sanctify us. The law doesn't really make us any better. The law, if anything, is a greenhouse effect on what's wrong with us? Then he says, what then shall we say that the law is bad? That the law is sin? Shall we just throw the law and say, oh, when you're a Christian, you don't have to listen to the law. Is that what he's saying? No. He says, by no means. He says, if it wasn't for the law, I wouldn't know what's wrong with me. I wouldn't know how I should live. And so every indication in verse 7 is, as a Christian, you should follow the law. You do need to obey it. You do need to let it sift through you and guide you as to how you should live your life.

You do. Well, then what is he saying? We shouldn't do. And that is he's saying, in verses 1 to 4, especially, we should obey the law, we should follow the law, but we mustn't be married to the law. Married to the law. Now, you miss that unless you read rather carefully, and the metaphor is a little bit odd. In verse 1, 2, and 3, he's talking about a woman who's married. And he is saying, well, you know, if you're married and there's a death, if you're married

and one of the spouses dies, you're free to remarry. Marriage is binding, he says, and you just can't go off and do anything you want. But if there's a death, see, if one spouse dies, then the other spouse is free to remarry, right? That's what he's saying in two, three, verses one, two, and three. Then he suddenly shows what the metaphor is all about. In verse four, he says, so you must die to the law to belong to another and then what he means by that is up to this point we're married to the law we're in the arms of the law what in the world would that mean why would he talk about being married spiritually speaking to the law of god how does it mean to be married to the law of god well marriage think about it when you first become married uh not only does your entire life revolve around your spouse

but so does your self-image and self-program. I mean, here's what I mean by that. Your self-appreciation, your self-regard, your self-understanding is massively reprogramed by your spouse. Your self-image is the product of what everybody says about you. You know, your parents have said things about you. Your siblings have said things about you. Your friends, your parents, your teachers, your coaches,

people have been saying things about you all your life. And they say you're good, they say you're bad. And, you know, you cull out of that, a feeling of who you are, what you're good at, what you're bad at. But when you get married, because of the power of the relationship of marriage, you can look into the face of your spouse, and your spouse can overturn what everybody's saying about you. In the face of your spouse, you can have your entire self-image reprogrammed. In other words, if everybody calls you ugly, but your spouse looks at you and says, you're beautiful. You feel beautiful. Your spouse has that kind of power to massively reprogram your self-understanding,

your self-image, your self-worth. What does it mean to be married to the law? It's not just you follow the law to please God. That's fine. You have to do that. Or you follow the law in order to serve your neighbor. That's fine. You have to do that.

To be married to the law means you're getting your very self from your performance. You're looking into the face of the law. And you're saying, because I'm good, because I'm obedient. because I'm moral, because I'm religious, because I read the Bible, because I pray, because I do all these good things. Now I know I'm a good person. You're trying to prove yourself to God or to other people or to yourself. By your moral performance, and if that's the case, you're married to the law, and verse 6 goes beyond that and says you're a captive to the law. You're a slave to the law. You know why? Because the dominant motive in your life is fear. You may be incredibly good. You may be incredibly moral. But the dominant,

motive, the dominant motivational structure of the heart is fear. So, for example, if you're married to the law and you're a very good person, you tell the truth, do you not? You tell the truth. You don't lie. Why do you tell the truth? Because you're scared. You tell the truth because you're scared God will get you, but he'll condemn you.

He'll send you to hell. Or maybe he went to Harvard Law School and you took an ethics course and you're scared because it'll ruin your profits. But see, everybody in this culture, everybody in this culture, whether it's inside the church or outside of the church, gets you to be good through fear. You don't want to be like those awful people. You don't want people to find out. You don't want, you know, to be caught. You don't want God to punish you.

Fear, fear, fear. And you know what? If you are, therefore, trying to, in a sense, earn your salvation, earn your self-image through your performance, you're driven. inside you're always comparing yourself to other people you're crushed by criticism you're furious and condescending toward people who don't have your beliefs you can't handle failure and if you try to deal with your fear and fear is basically self-absorption you know what fear is thinking of yourself fears what about me what about me what about me how am i doing how am i looking how are people treating me fear is incredibly self-absorbed and you cannot deal therefore with self-absorption

and fear by saying I'm going to be really good and then God will have to bless me and people will really see that I'm a good person. It just makes it worse. Oh, wretched people that we are, who will deliver us from this body of death? Thanks be. Verse four says, you can die to the law that you belong to another. Who? You need to become the spiritual spouses. You need to have someone else's love, you need to have someone else's face that you're looking into in order to find out who you are. You die, according to verse four, to the law, and you belong to another through the body of Jesus Christ, through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. See, at the end of Jekyll Hyde, Jekyll kills himself, and you know why? Because justice is at the door. Edward Hyde had

murdered people, but he was never having to pay for his sins because the police couldn't find him because he kept becoming Dr. Jekyll. But when Jekyll realized that he was becoming hide permanently, he realized that he was going to be caught by the police, he was going to have to pay for his sins. Judgment Day was at hand, so he killed himself anyway. And it's quite a metaphor, is it not, for judgment? No matter how hard you hide, no matter how often you put it off,

eventually your sins will find you out. There will be a judgment day. Your hideousness will be revealed. And there's nothing you can do to stop it. Judgment Day will come. Well, wait a minute. there is something. Isaiah 52 and 53 talk about Jesus Christ,

the suffering servant, who comes to save us, and this is what it says about him. They were appalled at him. His appearance was disfigured beyond that of a man and is formed marred beyond human likeness. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds, we are healed. Did you hear this?

We were appalled at him. He was so hideous we couldn't look upon him. We turned our faces from him. What does it mean when 2 Corinthians 521 said, God made him sin, who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God and Him? God made him sin, treated him as pure evil. Jesus Christ became the hideous one.

And he took our judgment day. And he died for us while we were hideous. Ephesians 5, husbands love your wives, as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us, that he could present us to himself pure, beautiful, without spot or blemish. The only thing that is going to silence that self-centeredness, that fear at the center of your life, that black hole that's making your life miserable and everybody else's,

that says, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, me, me, me. I've got to have this, I've got to do that. You know, there's a moral version of that. I'm afraid that God's going to get me, so I better be good. And there's an immoral version of that. I'm afraid that God's going to oppress me, so I've got to live the way I want to live.

But only Jesus Christ, as your new heavenly spouse, who has given himself for you unconditionally, when you were hideous to make you be, beautiful. Only Jesus Christ is looking at you in the face and saying, I love you. I love you unconditionally. I love you. Only that, if you look into his face and see that, only that will destroy eventually the fear in the heart of your being that is just driving you into the ground. That fear, I've got to do this. I've got to do that. Jesus Christ says, I got a new motive for you. gratitude, security, and love.

Tell the truth to resemble me and to please me and to delight me and to become like me. Out of gratitude, not because you'll be condemned because now there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus because of what he did. Tell the truth. Give your money to the poor.

Out of love, out of joy, out of gratitude. And that's the only motivation that won't drive you into the ground. Let the spousal love of Jesus Christ completely reconfigure the motivational structures of your heart. Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet, stand in him and him alone, gloriously complete. Let us pray. Thank you, Father, for giving us this very dark message. It's a dark chapter, but it ends on a note of joy.

man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death. Thanks be to Jesus Christ. Through him, we die to our old spouse, the law, and die to the fear because of your reassurance. And we look into the face of our new heavenly spouse, and we hear him say, I love you. And I died for you. And now there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And we ask that you would help us apply this to our own lives through your Holy Spirit. We ask it in Jesus. We ask it in Jesus. name. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. It's our prayer that you were encouraged by it and that it helps you apply the gospel to your life and to share it with others. For more biblical

resources from Tim Keller, visit gospelinlife.com. There, you can subscribe to The Life in the Gospel Quarterly Journal. When you do, you will also receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other great gospel-centered resources. Again, it's all at gospelandlife.com. You can also stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and X. Today's sermon was recorded in 2006. The sermons and talks you hear on the gospel and life podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. You know,