Freed from the Law of Sin and Death
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Salvation through Grace

The means of receiving God's grace gift of salvation is, of course, one's personal belief in God's promise to save, depending on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. To those who trust this final Lamb of God for salvation, without any attempt to pay for sin on their own, God says that He will take them into heaven. Since salvation is entirely the work of God, there is nothing that the believer can do to undo what God has provided.

The Security of Salvation

In Romans 8:1, we have read that astounding statement that: "There is now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus." This verse declares unequivocally that there is no condemnation before God for those who are in Christ. Condemnation, as you remember, means not only there is no moral guilt held against you, but also there is no scheduled punishment in hell. Those of the human race who are in Christ were placed there by the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the point at which they trusted in Jesus Christ as personal Savior. It happens automatically.

One cannot be placed into Christ on the basis of religious rituals which he may have performed, such as infant baptism, or being reared in some denominational program where he learns the catechism, and then experiences a confirmation, or by birth into a Christian family, or by even participating in what are called sacraments of various kinds which are dispensed by a priest or a preacher. Sacraments are things that you participate in as a means to get the grace of God to help you to heaven. None of those things will cause you to be placed into Christ. Only the baptism of the Holy Spirit will do that. You only receive that upon your personal faith in the Savior. No one is born again, apart from the exercise of his own volition in trusting in Jesus Christ as personal Savior.

The Mosaic Law expressed the standard of divine righteousness which is required for entrance into heaven. No one has ever achieved the standard because everybody has a sin nature that keeps him from complying with all the requirements that God has expressed in that Law. The principle of eternal life through Jesus Christ has broken the condemning power of the sin nature in the believer.

So, no one has to spend eternity in the agony of hell. Only his deliberate, volitional rejection of Jesus Christ as Savior closes the door. So, we Christians go around explaining the gospel of the grace of God to the lost people. Beyond our telling them how God has set this up, there is little we can do. We cannot force people into heaven. We teach them the gospel, and then we pray that God the Holy Spirit will bring appropriate conviction to that sinner, and will lead him to believe the offer that God has made. That is Christian witnessing.

Churches cannot even keep their hands off of that simple procedure that God has elected. So, you can hardly find a church where you can go in to hear the gospel explained without having something added to it, like: "Will all of you, please raise your hand who want to be saved? Will some of you come forward down to the front who want to be saved?" Some human action is interjected, and the sin nature loves it because it rises up and says, "Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and walk forward and sign a card, and you shall be saved. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and raise your hand, and you shall be saved. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, and stand up and confess Him before men, and you shall we saved. All of those things will take you directly into hell.

The Gospel

Romans 8:2

For example, in Romans 8 eleven, we read, "But if the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He (that raised up Christ from the dead; that is, God the Father) shall also give life to your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you. The reason that you and I will someday be resurrected from death, if we pass through death, is because God the Holy Spirit is going to come on the scene and restore us to life. He is the source of physical life. Thus He is called the Spirit of life.

Another verse, 2 Corinthians 3:6, tells us, "Who also has made us able ministers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. There is more than just the dead letter of the Law. There is the quality of spiritual life that is secured through the obedience to the Word of God.

Then we have one more. Galatians 6:8 also identifies God the Holy Spirit as the source of life: "For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. But he that sows to the spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." So, it is very clear in the Bible that this is an appropriate way to refer to God the Holy Spirit – as the spirit of life, because He is the source of physical and of spiritual life. The reference here, of course, is to eternal life, which is provided by God the Holy Spirit at the point of gospel faith (gospel believing).

The Baptism of the Holy Spirit

So, we would translate the first part of Romans 8:2 in this way: "For in Christ Jesus, the principle of the Spirit of life." The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8:9. He is the agent of the Son: "But we are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, is so be that the spirit of Christ dwell in you. Now if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His." So, God the Holy Spirit is the agent of God the Son in giving light. The light giving capacity, in other words, of the Holy Spirit, is only operational in the Son.

Jesus Christ

Acts 4:12, for example, explicitly states this: "Neither is there salvation in any other. For there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved." Now what does that mean for all the Christ rejectors? Immediately, there are some people who are doomed. There are great, large groups of people who are doomed because they have rejected Jesus Christ as the means for the Spirit of God to give them eternal life.

No Man Comes to the Father but by Jesus Christ

Born Again

So, in John 3:3, the Lord Jesus made this clear to Nicodemus: "Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.'"

John 3:6-7: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, 'You must be born again.'" Yes, you had a first birth. You had that physical birth, and that's all you've had. It's just a physical birth. You have to be born again a second time, anew, from above. And that is the spiritual birth. And that is accomplished by receiving life from the only life-giver in the universe, God the Holy Spirit, and He functions only through Jesus Christ. Do you see the connection? That's why you must make this clear to people – that if they have an indifference or a rejection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope for them. They have doomed themselves. And I don't care how small they are; how completely dedicated to God they are; how much they praise Him; how much they support Him; or, how much they finance Him. It is all for naught. Any religious system is false which rejects Jesus Christ as the God-Man, through Whose sacrifice alone, one can secure eternal life in heaven. God's justice must reject any other system.

So, it's amazing how many people we find who bristle at the statement that you must be born again spiritually to go to heaven. Those people are in for a horrible surprise. Our old friend Donahue, on the program where he was interviewing Norman Vincent Peale, was up to his old tricks again, in reiterating a thing that he has said several times. He said again to Mr. Peale, "You know, I really do like to think about God as just coming and taking a look at me, and looking at me for a moment, and smiling and say, "Ah, come on in, Phil." He thinks that that's all it's going to take, and he's going to make it. And he is encouraging that kind of thinking because Norman Vincent Peale sat there, and just a few minutes before that, in response to the lady's question about the reality of hell, said that the only hell he found was up here, and he pointed to his head, meaning lack of positive thinking, which is the thing that he's so big on.

Is it any wonder that there is such confusion, and deception, and such foolish antagonism to the concept of being born again as if the Bible did not say that. Well, when the Bible speaks, it has communicated to us the mind of God. And if you do not understand that, then you will sluff off, with indifference, the fact that there is no life apart from Jesus Christ via the ministry of God the Holy Spirit.

It would be well for people to read again Luke 16:19-31, the report of Lazarus and the rich man, to find how real hell is. It is the arrogance of the sin nature that confidently declares that God would not send nice moral people to hell just because they are not born again. But the Bible says that that God cannot do otherwise. He would compromise His own integrity if he did so.

Romans 8:2 says, "For the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free." And here is the great result: "Made me free." The Greek word looks like this: "eleutheroo." "Eleutheroo" means "to release from subjection or enslavement." The believer has been released from the control of Satan, and from enslavement to the sin nature. The issue here is freedom from the destiny of eternal death in hell. And the thing that has done this for us is the Spirit of God through Christ Jesus. This is in the aorist tense, which means it's a point action. And aorist tells us that it happens once and for all. In the beautiful Greek language, I have been made free, and I can never be enslaved again. If you come along, and say you can fall from your salvation, and you can be headed for hell again, then you are making up something that the very Greek grammar condemns and denies. It is once and for all. It is active because God the Holy Spirit does the freeing based on the payment of Christ on the cross. You don't do it. He does it. It's indicative. It's a statement of fact.

The Holy Spirit

In 2 Corinthians 3:17, we read, "Now the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Holy Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." You can be born again, but carnal. That will cut you off from freedom and from liberty. You can be ignorant of Bible doctrine, and that will lead you to destruction of your freedom.

So, that's one Law – the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That one has brought us freedom from enslavement to another law – the terrible law called the law of sin and death. This says that: "We have been made freed from." This is the great preposition "apo," which means "major separation" – the separation with internal consequences. One law here is superseding another. That is what Paul is saying. The Law of the Spirit of life supersedes its opposite – the Law of Moses. That "Law" is the word "nomos". In the Greek, it has "the Law," indicating the Mosaic Law as the standard of God's righteousness.

The Mosaic Law

So, the apostle Paul here is saying, "There is a Law that expresses God's absolute righteousness. The Mosaic Law was an expression of that righteousness, and only the most naive and unrealistic person thinks that he can obey this standard." This is called, therefore, the law of sin. And it's this word for sin: "hamartia," which is the word for evil as missing the mark of God's righteousness. Furthermore, the Mosaic Law was not only an agency of sin, it not only led to more sin, but it was the agency of the death: "thanatos;" that is, the absence of life. The demands of the Mosaic Law makes people angry. Just look how angry people get when God's principles demand that you must be born again to go to heaven.

I have seldom seen such rage among people. Just watch a talk show some time where somebody brings this up and says, "This is what you must be," and the indignation that arises immediately. This is what the Mosaic Law does. It says, "Don't do this thing. And the person says, "I want to do it, and it makes me mad." You want to follow the Mosaic Law. You read the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law has led more people to sin than you can imagine, because it raises the anger of the sin nature, and when God says, "Don't do it," you say, "Yes, I'll do it."

Now you see that in all of your little children that we have running all over this place, don't you? Sooner or later, they will come to an age when you tell them don't do something, and what do they do? They do it. And right away, the mother's sin nature is right there working in these beautiful little children. You just wish they were like their fathers: nice; and, not like that. But here is this little character. You tell him, "Don't do it." And his sneaky little eyes look around left and right. And as soon as he doesn't think you're watching him, there he goes and does it. What is he doing? There is a quality within him that he inherited from his parents by natural birth of a sinful nature that rebels against the authority of right. That's what the Mosaic Law does. It makes us rebel against what is right.

So, it's a source of sin, and sin ends up with the penalty of death. The Mosaic Law had demands that stirred the rebellion of sin nature, and that proclaimed death upon the sinner who could never obey it completely. The Mosaic Law always produces condemnation under the divine wrath of God. And that's why it is so stupid when people try to argue that what we need to do is to live by the Mosaic Law. Nobody can live by it. Those who try to only bring themselves under condemnation.

Notice Romans 4:15: Paul says, "Because the Law works wrath, for where no Law is, there is no transgression." What Paul is saying there is that it used to be bad enough that people violated the principle, and the nature, and the character of God, but once God told you not to do something, and then you violated it, now it became a deliberate transgression, and your sin was multiplied in its responsibility, and its degree of punishment. So, trying to obey the Law made things even worse.

In 2 Corinthians 3, the divine wrath produced by the Law is reiterated again. Corinthians 3:7: "But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stone. What was written and engraven in stone. The Mosaic Law. It's a ministration of death, and yet that was glorious: "So, the children of God could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away with." Paul says, "Yes, the Mosaic Law was a glorious thing. When Moses received it, it caused his face to glow with the glory of God. So, he had to put a face mask on because people couldn't stand to look at him. The brilliance of God shining from his face. And this was just the Mosaic Law written on tables of stone.

Verse 9 says, "For if the administration of condemnation be glory, much more does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." He said, "If just the Mosaic Law could reflect such glory, just think what's going to happen with you people who are going to be the products of the ministration of God the Holy Spirit, and the glory that He brings through Jesus Christ. No one, please understand, has ever been justified by keeping the Mosaic Law. That's why it is so foolish to think that you can either be saved or maintain your salvation through keeping rules and regulations – the Mosaic Law, or any other kind.

Romans 3:20 says, "Therefore, by the deeds of the Law (the Mosaic Law system), there shall no flesh be justified in His sight. For by the Law is the knowledge of sin." Yes, the Mosaic Law will let you know how bad you are, but it cannot give you salvation.

Galatians 2:16 says, "Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, but by faith of Christ Jesus. Even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the Law. For by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified." Now how can you get any clearer than that? We are justified by believing in Christ. Through keeping the Law, you can never be justified. The Mosaic Law simply tells a person what God's holiness requires if he is to be saved from hell.

So, God makes it clear that everyone falls short of the absolute standard of righteousness in the Mosaic Law, even when they know what those righteous standards are. Romans 3:23 says, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." "The glory of God" is referring to this standard of absolute righteousness. Everybody has fallen short.

Galatians 3:10, furthermore, says, "For as many as are of the works of the Law are under the curse. For it written, 'Cursed is everyone that does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the Law to do them.'" Now there are 613 requirements – 613 regulations in the Law of Moses. And if you miss one of them, you're headed for hell. That's the system.

So this business of trying to make it on your own, and trying to make it by being good, is such a delusion, and yet that's what possesses the minds of the average person in our society. And I'm stressing this so that you know what it is that you are faced with as a witness of God. Knowing the Law of God and failing to execute it, which everyone does, silences you completely. You have nothing to say.

That's what Paul means in Romans 3:19, when he says, "Now we know that whatever things the Lord said, it said to them who are under the Law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Can you imagine what an eerie scene that is going to be at the great white throne judgment, when millions of human beings stand there ready to be judged by God, and sent into the lake of fire, and it is absolute silence? You could hear a pin drop. That is because at that point they'll stand there, their heads bowed, completely crushed, no defense, nothing that they can say, because God will say, "I told you what was required. The Law showed you the standard. I made it clear that you couldn't rise to it and keep it. But I gave you a way out. I did it for you. I sent My Son. He kept the Law. He bore your sin. You have a way out." With that, there'll be no excuse.

So, all these people who are raging against being born again are not going to be able to open their mouths then. They're just going to be in shock. Absolute righteousness has to be secured apart from the Mosaic Law, which is a law of sin and death. It has to be secured through the Law of the Holy Spirit, who gives eternal life to those who are in Christ Jesus, through believing the gospel.

Galatians 3:11 sums it up this way: "But that no man is justified by the Law in the sight of God, it is evident. For the just shall live by faith." It is the grace of God through the Lord Jesus which sets us free from the condemnation of the standards of the Mosaic Law.

Romans 5:20-21 have already taught us that, when Paul said, "Moreover, the Law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin has reigned until death, even so, my grace reigned through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. There is thus no condemnation to those who are in Christ because they have been freed by the gospel, which they believed, and which has brought them justification through the Holy Spirit."

We may translate Romans 8:2, therefore, in this way: "Because in Christ Jesus, the principle of the Holy Spirit of life freed me from the Mosaic Law of sin and death." That's why verse 1 is true. That's why there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, because the Law of the Spirit of life through Christ Jesus has freed me from the Mosaic Law's demands and standards that produce sin and death.

Romans 8:3

The apostle Paul wants us to understand that: "I want to live a godly holy life. How am I going to do that? Well, I'm going to learn all these rules that God has, and I'm going to systematically keep all those rules." But you won't. Yet, if you do, you will indeed live a godly life. Now that's the question: "How do I live according to what I know? How do I rise to my calling, and to the knowledge of that calling?" That's what Romans 8 is all about. No matter how much a person obeys the Mosaic Law, it will never qualify him for heaven.

It is impotent to do that. Why? Because it has a built-in weakness. And that word is "astheneo." "Astheneo" means "to lack strength," like when you're sick. It connotes an inability to accomplish something. Interestingly enough, it is in the Greek language in what we call the imperfect tense, which means that repeatedly in the past, the Mosaic Law has shown itself to be weak – not just here and there once in a while, but no, every time you came to the Mosaic Law, and you came to it relative to either going to heaven and escaping the lake of fire, or you tried to deal with the Mosaic Law so that you lived a decent godly life, it was impotent every time; every time; and, repeatedly. Imperfect means again and again. It demonstrated that. It is active. The Mosaic Law itself was too weak to do anything for a person relative to salvation or sanctification. Here we have a statement of faith.

Lusts

Self-Centered

Freedom from the Effects of the Sin Nature

God Did it

God Sent His Own Son

Adoption

Verse 15: "For you have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear." You don't have to go back to fear facing hell again, and God's wrath and condemnation. You've past that point: "But you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, 'Abba Father.'" "Abba" is a transliteration of the Hebrew words for "papa." We call Him our intimate "Daddy" or Father" – members of His family. But how? By adoption. Not that we were born into it. That's a very significant difference.

Notice Ephesians 1:5 that stresses that same point. Sure, we are sons of God: "Having predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will" – adoption of sons. He is a totally different Son than we are. He is in the eternal family relationship, and that relationship is described very simply as the One who is Only Begotten. There's no one else like Him. He has a relationship to the eternal God that is beyond human comprehension. But he was not adopted into the family of God. He was part of it by natural relationship.

Notice John 1:18: "No man has seen God at any time." The Only Begotten Son Who is in the bosom of the Father – He has declared Him. He is the only begotten. He is unique. There is no one like him.

John 3:16: For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son," the unique One.

John 10:30: "I and My Father are One." What does He mean? He means that he and the Father of One in essence. They are both deity.

John 17:21-22: "That they all may be one as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You have sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them that they may be one even as We are One." The Only Begotten Son is One identical with the Father.

Jesus Christ was not Adopted by God

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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