The Holy Spirit Changes Our Nature

1. Since Christ is In You….

a. 1st class condition
b. What is your hope of Glory?
(1) The hope of Glory is in a relationship.
(2) Col 1:26-27 “… Christ in you, the hope of glory:"

c. The question: “Is Christ IN you now?”

(1) Is there evidence of a changed life?
(2) Is God working in your life?
(3) Do you see the fruit of spiritual life working in you, or do you see other, rotten, fruit? Gal 5:19-24
(4) Christ In You—the answer to a mystery

(a) The OT predicted the coming of the messiah and that the Gentiles would partake of salvation….but it did not reveal that the Messiah would actually live in each member of His redeemed church, made up mostly of Gentiles. That believers, both Jew and Gentile, now possess the surpassing riches of the indwelling Christ is the glorious revealed mystery (MacArthur, page 1834)

(b) Eph 3:8- 11

d. Christ in you—the heart of the Christian life.

(1) John 14:23 "Jesus answered and said to him, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him."
(2) Gal 2:20 ""I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

(3) Eph 3:16-19 "that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height; 19 to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God."

e. Christ in you—the definitive evidence of real salvation.

2. The Body is Dead

a. The Greek has the sense of, “…on the one hand…” and “…on the other hand…”
(1) If Christ is in you, on the one hand, the body is dead; on the other hand, the Spirit is life.
(2) The two concepts are linked absolutely.

b. The Body is dead.
(1) Not “flesh.” Previously, Paul has been talking about “flesh,” but that refers to our fallen human nature, and is a different Greek word than “body.”
(2) Here, Paul is referring to our body, our physical frame. He says our body is dead.
(3) Not “put to death,” or “being put to death,” but DEAD.
(4) The body is, as it were, the seat of death; there is a principle of decay and of death in the bodies of all of us, and the process of decay is increasing and growing. Ever since the Fall, the moment we enter into this world and begin to live we also begin to die. You first breath is one of the last you will ever take!…Man’s body is not what is was when God created him at the beginning…Ever since the Fall, we are born with the seeds of illness, weakness, decay, and death in us. The moment we are born we are beginning to die! The process of decay becomes obvious after a certain age; by the age of twenty-five we have all developed as much as we ever shall develop, and from then on the elements of decay become more and more obvious. And not only is all this true of us, but the body is dead also in a moral sense. The body is the instrument that sin most readily uses; it is, as it were, the seat of sin. The body gives sin its chance and it opportunity, and it remains there in the body.

c. We are NOT saying that no good can come of the body—that would be gnosticism. We are not saying that the body is inherently evil, but that the body is inherently corruptible, the seat of decay and corruption, and as such, the body must be controlled by spiritual discipline.

(1) Illustration of physical conditioning. The mind must tell the body what to do.


3. The Body is Dead Because of Sin

a. Sin is the cause of all decay, corruption, evil, misery, and death. Sin is the answer to the problem of evil.

b. The Effects of Sin

(1) Sin brought death into the world. Rom 5:12
(2) Sin even corrupted the creation—Rom 8:18-22
(3) The first animal blood shed was because of man’s sin—Gen 3:21
(4) Creation was not intended to be as it is now—Is 11:1-9

c. And the death of the human body, the deadness of our physical bodies, their propensity to sin, is because of sin.

d. Three types of sin—

(1) Imputed sin—Rom 5:12
(2) Inherited sin—our body, soul, and spirit inherited sinfulness from our fathers. We were “…conceived in sin, shapen in iniquity…”, as David said (Ps 51:5)
(3) Personal Sin—because we are born sinners, we begin to sin as soon as we are able—even little babies sin. Psa 58:3 "The wicked are estranged from the womb; They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies."

e. The Pulse test—Take your pulse; if you have one, you are a sinner!

(1) We are all sinners here.
(2) Therefore, we all have bodies that are dead, that are the seat of death, that are corruptible, that are liable to sin, and that is because of sin. We should hate sin.

4. The Spirit is Life
a. Not referring to the Holy Spirit, but to the spirit within man.

b. If I belong to Christ, if He lives in me, my spirit is alive. John 5:24, John 11:25-26 , Eph 2:1, Col 3:1-2

5. The Spirit is Life Because of Righteousness.

a. Righteousness imputed (justification)

(1) Deals with the guilt of sin
(2) Propitiation and Redemption
(3) Justification
(4) Imputation (account closed).

b. Righteousness imparted (sanctification)

(1) Deals with the power of sin
(2) Rom 6:12-14
(3) Fight sin—you can!
(4) Resist Satan—You can!

c. Righteousness completed (glorification)

(1) Deals with the final absence of sin.
(2) The goal of our Christian life—to be conformed to the image of Christ and share His glory (Jn 17)
(3) The Golden chain…Rom 8:28-30

6. The culmination—Resurrection to life—1 Cor 15:51-58, 1 Thes 4:16-18