Before I pray once more, I just want to reaffirm something that John said about the relationship between music and the devil. My first year in ministry, the Lord put me to the test by having the phone ring at 10:30 p.m. one night. It was a group of college students who had cornered a demonically possessed young woman in an apartment room. They said, “Pastor John, there’s a woman here who’s demon possessed and we want you to come do something, and we won’t let her out until you get here.” So I called Tom Steller, my associate, who lived upstairs and said, “Go with me. Jesus said, ‘Go two by two.’”

So we went and it was a really remarkable scene. They said, “This is not her. It’s a different face. It’s a different voice. We know this girl and it’s just not her.” She had this little pen knife that she was going around threatening these students with, and it was incredible. They wouldn’t budge at the door when she threatened them. So I knew God had already arrived. To make about a three-hour story short, with all my efforts, I knew nothing about this. I knew nothing. I have no experience in this whatsoever. That’s to encourage you. You may be called into situations where you have no experience. I tried reading the Bible. She would come over and smash the Bible out of my hand, and I would try to recite Scripture. All I knew is to use the Bible.

Then suddenly, someone began to sing the old chorus that says, “Hallelujah, hallelujah,” and she went absolutely berserk and flopped around on the floor like a fish. We just kept singing that song by adding our own words to it. The Lord would give us words that would relate, and for about 10 minutes, she was in convulsions on the floor, screaming at the top of her lungs for Satan not to leave her. And then she went limp. And when she came to about five or 10 minutes later, she looked totally different. Her voice was different. I handed her my Bible and said, “Read Romans 8.” She read Romans 8 and I went home.

So what I couldn’t do in my own efforts to think of proper text and whatnot, God did with the simplest little ditty that anybody’s ever written. I mean, how could it get any simpler than “hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,” with words. So it’s true. It’s true. And I commend you to singing and praising your way into liberty in all kinds of situations, whether you’re a singer or not. The devil is not impressed with anybody’s quality of voice. He’s very frightened at people’s earnestness of praise.

Never Debtors to the Flesh

There’s a big “therefore” at the beginning of Romans 8:12. Actually, it’s translated, “so,” but it’s the same word. Since the Spirit of God dwells in you, since you are in the sway of the Spirit, since you belong to Jesus Christ by virtue of his homesteading in you and purchasing you, and since your life is alive or you are alive or the Spirit is your life though your body is dead, and since your body one day will be raised from the dead because of the Spirit — since the Spirit has done all that for you — therefore, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh. He has contrasted this by saying, “You are not in the flesh. You are in the Spirit. And look what he does for you. Therefore you’re a debtor, yes indeed, but not to your murderer. Don’t be complicit with the one that would kill you in the wrong way.”

The reason I wasn’t nodding when John looked at me and said, “God is not trying to change me, he’s trying to kill me” — I like that, I’m going to use that — is because I’m a theologian that has to have everything exactly right. I was thinking, “I want to say it, but I have been crucified with Christ. He killed me when I believed and he united me to Jesus and I died. I died a real death. Every Christian in this room’s a dead man or a dead woman. However, he’s in the process now of bringing us into the full proper reckoning of ourselves as dead.” And that’s what he means, I’m sure, since his head is nodding right now. So I think I’ve interpreted him faithfully. But I had to do all that in my head before I could feel free to nod, and I didn’t have time.

Now we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. Why? Would that be a terrible, stupid, awful, suicidal thing to do? He says, “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die” (Romans 8:13). Now, he never comes back to say, “We are debtors to the Spirit.” He never finishes the parallel, but I think it’s implicit. What he does say is, “But if by the Spirit you put to death (kill) the deeds of the body, you will live.”

What is at Stake?

Now, I want to dwell on this for a few minutes. The first thing I want to ask is, is this threat real? If you live according to the flesh, you’ll die. That does not mean die bodily. Everybody dies bodily. So you can’t say if you live according to the flesh you’ll die, because everybody dies. It means hell. It means spiritual death. So here he is threatening the Roman church-going professing believers with hell. I wonder if the pastors in this room do that on Sunday morning?

Warn your church members who in the judgment of charity you are crediting with new birth, salvation. Warn them that if they live according to the flesh, they will go to hell. I do. I tell my people that. A lot of the questions have dealt with assurance here and security that I read on the piece of paper. If you believe that and you preach that, that that’s a real warning, then can you believe in the security that I said I believe in from Romans 8:30, where it says, “Those whom he justified, he also glorified.” If you’re justified by faith alone apart from works of the law, you’re going to be glorified some day, which is what the next paragraph is all about. And my answer is absolutely yes, you can believe both of those.

Now, how can you believe both of those? You can believe both of those if putting to death the deeds of the body is the necessary evidence of justification. If putting to death the deeds of the body necessarily follows being truly justified, there’s no contradiction between saying that the justified will most definitely be glorified, nobody will drop out, you will be preserved, and if you live according to the flesh, you will go to hell. Both of those are true because you will not live according to the flesh if you are justified. God will see to it.

Somebody asked me early on, “Do you believe that God will work sovereignly and effectually to keep justified people safe for eternal salvation?” I absolutely believe that because I think that’s what this chapter is all about. This chapter is about giving saints encouragement that if they made a good start with God, he’ll keep them. That’s what this chapter is about, which makes this statement all the more remarkable here in the middle of the chapter that if you live according to the flesh, you’ll die.

So I just want to say you can believe both of these things. They may feel like they are in tension. I remember the first sermon I ever preached at the Baptist General Conference in Omaha in 1980. I was a brand new pastor and I got to preach on Hebrews, and I said things like that. One guy took me aside and said, “Now, young man, you might have a little trouble with your Arminianism in this conference.” Well, number one, I’m not an Arminian. I’m a five-point Calvinist. And number two, you don’t have trouble with being an Arminian in my conference. I wish you did, but that’s not a problem. That’s a real warning and we should take it seriously. Pastors should preach that way and small group leaders and everybody else should warn their small groups in those words.

Be Killing Sin

Now, let’s talk about killing the deeds of the body. I began yesterday with that and I want to come back to it now. What does it mean to put to death the deeds of the body?

If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live (Romans 8:13).

I want to rehearse what I said and expand it. How do you kill or put to death the deeds of the body? I take the deeds of the body to be the same thing as Romans 6:12–13, where the body is made the instrument of sin. Don’t let your bodies be the instruments of sin. So the deeds of the body here are not all the deeds of the body, obviously. There are righteous deeds of the body. Make your body instruments of righteousness or make your body instruments of sin. But if you make them instruments of sin, that’s the sense in which you kill the deeds of the body and I think you kill them before they happen.

You don’t punch somebody in the nose and say, “Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to kill. Now, I’ll kill it. It’s over.” You can’t kill, it just happened. So you kill the deeds of the body before the body responds to the impulses of the flesh and the sin. So the battle is not in the body, it’s in the root, in the flesh. The battle is at that deeper prior level and by the Spirit we’re to kill the deeds of the body before they happen, which means we get at those impulses — the law of sin and death — and we somehow kill them. John Owen said, “Be killing sin or sin will be killing you.” It’s a great little phrase to summarize this verse. So how do you, by the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body? Let me try to sketch an argument for you for how I understand that.

Set Your Mind on the Things of the Spirit

Romans 8:5 has in it a key phrase: “Those who live according to the flesh (which will kill you), set their minds on the things of the flesh. Those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit.” So my first step in explaining how you kill the deeds of the body by the Spirit is to notice that if you live by the Spirit, you’re going to set your mind on the things of the Spirit. That’s step one. You’re going to set your mind on the things of the Spirit, which now has to be explained. What are the things of the Spirit, what do you set your mind on that are the things of the Spirit?

That phrase, “the things of the Spirit” is used one other time in the New Testament, namely 1 Corinthians 2:13–14, where Paul says:

We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him . . .

In that context, “the things of the Spirit” are the words inspired by the Holy Spirit. So now I’ve got a connection with words. These are Spirit-taught words spoken by the authoritative apostle. Set your mind on my gospel, my Spirit-taught words. That would be “the things of the Spirit” according to 1 Corinthians 2:13–14, which links with the text I mentioned yesterday. The sword of the Spirit is the one piece of weapon with which you can kill somebody, and it’s the word of God.

So I have got two evidences now. I have a little train of thought that runs from Romans 8:13 to Romans 8:5 to 1 Corinthians 2:13–14, which lands me on, “Set your mind on the words inspired by God.” And then, I have this other little train of argument coming from Ephesians 6:17 which says that the one weapon of the Spirit that can kill is the sword, and the sword happens to be the word,” and we’re talking about killing here. So I have two lines of evidence now that incline me to think the way you put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit is by means of the word of God. However, that doesn’t quite flesh out how. It just kind of gives you the contents. The “how” comes from Galatians 3:5. Galatians 3:5 is a tremendously important verse in my spiritual warfare and it goes like this:

Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law (answer, no), or by hearing with faith . . .

Now I have a link with faith and something heard. And of course, what’s heard is the gospel, the word of God. So the Spirit flows into a life and becomes miracle-working energetic when a person takes the word of God, hears it, and believes it. That’s the way you put to death the deeds of the body.

Killing Anxiety

Let’s get really specific. I mean, this is huge. I wrote a whole book, a fat book on this. It’s called Future Grace. It’s maybe the most important thing I’ve ever written because it outlines how to do this. It’s called The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in Future Grace. And that’s what I’m talking about here. Let me give you several examples of deeds of the body or sins you may be tempted to do before you leave here. Here’s the first one: anxiety. Now, anxiety produces all kinds of bodily behaviors like walking away from something you should be doing because you’re scared to do it or whatever. Suppose the sin is anxiety. Jesus says, “Don’t be anxious.” So it’s a sin to be anxious. What do you do if you find anxiety rising in your body? The feelings of anxiety are rising and they’re tending to make you be disinclined to some act of obedience that you know you need to do and you’re too anxious to do it. It’s starting to get control, starting to mount up. What do you do? How do you kill it?

Here’s the way I kill it. This is why memorizing Scripture is so important. I call to mind a promise of Scripture:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7).

Here’s an example. I was sitting over there last night knowing that I wanted to recite for you Romans 8. My heart was pounding out of my chest. I was so nervous. That’s hard. I can preach easily. This is easy right now. I say whatever I want, but to say only what is in those 39 verses by heart with my Bible shut is hard. Do you know what I did? The devil told me about a half an hour to put this marker in Romans 8 just in case. You know what? I threw it out. I threw my Bible. And I said, “If I blow it, I blow it.” But the point is, I sat there thinking I’d have to do Philippians 4:6 and I didn’t. I did Psalm 46:10. You did it for me. God gave me that. He said, “Relax, be at peace, be still, I’m your God, I’ll help you up there,” and I was able to do it. Don’t think I don’t fight with anxiety about that and a lot of other things. So it’s the word of God believed.

Killing Covetousness

Here’s another example: covetousness. That might incline you to lie on your tax reports or fudge on some honorarium report back at home or whatever you’re supposed to do to be honest and you covet more money. What do you do to kill covetousness? You take a promise like Hebrews 13:5, and say:

Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5–6).

And you believe that and keep your life free from the love of money. You think, “I’m with you. I’m all you need.” You believe that, you preach that yourself and you act the root of covetousness with the word of God.

Killing Vengeance

Here’s a third example: vengeance. You’re really angry at somebody. Man, you want to get back at them or somehow make them feel terrible. And this has its minor, minor expressions in marriage. People always laugh when I say that. There’s this verbal revenge when she says, “That was a proud thing to say.” Inside you say, “Me, proud?” And you’re thinking of all the ways you can say something back. What do you do then to kill that vengeance? I mean, there are big, ugly, dangerous, murderous ways of vengeance, but they’re little evil ways of vengeance. And what do you do? You go to Romans 12:19, which says:

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”

Now, that sounds unloving, like, “You’re going to get her.” But if you think about the theology of that through, there’s something really beautiful. You’re feeling vengeful for somebody in your church or your school or your business or your family and you say, “Lord, you said, you spoke a word, a thing of the Spirit. I’m to put to death by the Spirit this sin and the Spirit has given me a word now and I will trust in your power to take this word and kill that. And you said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ I trust you to do justice here because I’d blow it if I try. I am sure I will blow it if I try to make justice happen.” And since he loves our spouses more than we do, either they are a believer and he has put that sin on Jesus and executed it, or they’re not a believer and will go to hell and execute them there and you do not need to touch this. That is one of the most liberating thoughts in the world.

If you believe in a just universe, that justice must be done, and you see justice not being done, especially against you — and some of you have been abused in terrible ways and there still cries out in you that justice should have been done — one of the things that’ll help you sleep well at night is not to give up on the justice of the universe but to say there are two outcomes here, either hell or the cross. If I do vengeance and they go to hell, I’ve tried to do double jeopardy and take over the job of the executioner and I’ll do a bad job of it. If I try to do vengeance and they’re a Christian and their sins are on the cross, I’ve belittled the sacrifice of Jesus by trying to settle justice when he settled it. I’m going to let God handle this. It’s a free way to live. It’s not easy. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to remove vengeful thoughts from your life, and it’s a surprising kind of promise that can do it.

Killing Lust

I have others listed here. What are you going to do if lust prompts you to pornography or something? How are you going to kill lust? One way would be Matthew 5:8, which says:

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Do you want to see God? Don’t touch it. Don’t pursue the thought. Do you want to see God? Kill it for God, for the sake of seeing God. So trust the promise that you will see more of God and it will satisfy you a thousand times more than the brief, fleeting pleasure of sin. Preach that to yourself, believe it, and it severs the root of sin.

Killing Selfishness

The last one is selfishness. What do you do if you find yourself being so selfish you don’t want to serve anybody anymore, you just accumulate comforts. You take the word of God, like Acts 20:35 — Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” — and believe it. You yield to that and you sever the root of sin by the Spirit by looking to the things of the Spirit which are the word of God. That’s the way I live my life. That’s what I believe he means by “put to death the deeds of the body and you will live.” You’re giving evidence that you are justified. Life is made contingent on putting to death the deeds of the body, not because putting to death the deeds of the body is the ground of your acceptance, but it’s the evidence that you belong to Jesus who is your ground.

That’s the main point so far in these three talks. Sanctification is not the ground of justification. Jesus and his righteousness are the ground of justification. The outworking of our sanctification by the Spirit is the evidence that we’ve been delivered and given a verdict, not guilty, and we’re now living in the glory of that freedom as we put to death the deeds of the body.

Led by the Spirit of God

The next argument is from Romans 8:14, which says:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

Now, this is rich with implication regarding how this for supports what he just said. If you put to death the deeds of the body, by the Spirit, you live. Now, he says that the reason is because if you’re led by the Spirit, you’re a son of God. So evidently, being a son of God is what makes you live. No son of God will ever perish. And so that’s the ground of the “live” part. Being led by the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit of God, corresponds to putting to death the deeds of the body. It must, it must. Otherwise, the logic doesn’t make any sense.

If you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live because all who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God. Now, here’s the significance of that. If you took Romans 8:14 out of context and just plopped down in a college classroom or an InterVarsity group and said, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God,” my guess is that what would come to students’ minds is, “Led to choose the right school, led to choose the right spouse, or led to choose the right job.” It has nothing to do with that. Nothing. It is being led to kill sin. That’s the context. That’s why these little words are so important. The context here of “led” is not just kind of general being about where to live and what car to buy and where to go to school and who to marry. It’s being led to put to death sin, which is why you can know you’re a son of God.

One of the evidences of being a child of God is that I hate sin. I fight sin. The children of God hate what God hates. They’re chips off the old block. The Spirit of the Father dwells in them. They hate what the Father hates. They love what the Father loves. One of the evidences that you’re a child of God and justified is that you make war on sin. I find that very freeing because you don’t always succeed. I’m not saying you always succeed because we are in process, but you make war. You hate it. And if you get defeated and you get knocked down and you cave into some temptation, if you’re a child of God, you’re going to hate that. You’re going to get up, you’re going to spit on that failure, you’re going to repent, you’re going to confess your sins, and you’re going to appropriate what is true about you in Christ. You’re going to fight again. And the evidence that you are a child of God is that you keep on doing that all your life. You just keep getting up, fighting back, getting up, and fighting back.

Given the Spirit of Adoption

The next argument is Romans 8:15, which says:

For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

Now, the connection there with the preceding seems to be that the way we are led to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit is that God gives us a spirit of, not slavery, but adoption. In other words, our experience of the Holy Spirit is not that he moves in and says, “All right, now I’m a master. I’m in charge,” and he gets out his whip and goes, “Crack, crack, crack! This is what you do.” That’s just not the atmosphere here. The atmosphere here is, “I didn’t give you a spirit like that. I gave you a spirit of sonship and I move you by the Spirit to cry out, ‘Abba! Father!” Get the next verse in here quickly:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God . . . (Romans 8:16).

The Witness of the Spirit

Now, we need to dwell on this for a minute about the witness of the Holy Spirit that we are the children of God. The way he moves and enables us to conquer sin is by quickening and awakening a sense that we’re a son and not a slave. I’m a son. You’d think it would be just the opposite, wouldn’t you? If you have a certain mindset you think, “Well, if I’m a good slave, I’ll always do what he says. If I’m a good slave, I’ll really make hash out of sin. I’ll just kill it all the time.” A good slave would do that. He says, “Well, a good slave would do that, but he’d still be living in the quarters out on the outskirts and the plantation and he wouldn’t be in the Father’s house. And what good would that do then? Who’d want to be out there being successful over sin. He’ll want to be in the house.” So he gives us the power to be victorious by adopting us into his family and he gives the Spirit to bear witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.

Here’s the way I think we need to think about that. The Spirit has a two-fold work. He works to transform my spirit so that my spirit trusts in Jesus Christ and his word and embraces the cross and loves the cross. And the Holy Spirit witnesses with my spirit that I am the child of God. What does he do? What’s that like? Could you, right now, identify the witness of the Spirit in your life? I venture to say that most Christians could not. It’s meant to be one of the most precious experiences that a Christian has, and every Christian has it. My guess is, if we just kind of took turns standing up and saying what it is in your life, we’d have lots of different answers because we haven’t, perhaps, been as clearly taught. I’m so thankful. Aren’t you thankful that our experience exceeds our theology?

You do not have to understand everything that God is doing in your life to enjoy it. I think he wrote the Bible to help us enjoy it and be solidified in it. So I’m not saying, well, blow away the Bible — all you need is experience. But I am saying, you can have been saved and hardly know how you got saved. In fact, I think most people do not know how they got saved because they’re Arminians. But hear that as very positive, if you can. What I’m saying is that I believe Arminians are saved. Isn’t that good? But God will get more glory if we really know how we got delivered from our bondage and our deadness. And he will get more glory, I think, if we live in the light of what it means to have the witness of the Spirit that we are the children of God.

Here’s my statement. I think it’s really simple. There are different ways to link this up in translation. You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. He doesn’t want slavish fear driving the Christian life. It’ll never work. It just produces legalists. But you have received the Spirit of adoption of sons. That means the Spirit has moved in. And he says, “By whom we cry, Abba! Father!” When you cry Abba, Father, the Spirit of sonship is crying and that is the witness. I think the witness of the Spirit that you are a child of God is the spontaneous welling up in your heart of a heartfelt delight in God as your Father. It’s the Lord’s prayer meant with your heart. We pray, “Our Father who art in heaven.” We are saying, “Abba, Father.” The witness of the Holy Spirit is not a statement made by the Spirit to your brain from which you deduce a status of spiritual adoption. That’s not the way it works. Don’t listen for a voice. It is rather the inner work of the Spirit awakening a heartfelt, confident reaching out and taking God as our Father.

Multi-Rooted Assurance

So if somebody asked me, and several of you have, “Given what you’ve said, Piper, about the necessary evidence of putting to death the deeds of the body, how can we ever have assurance? Because all of us put to death the deeds of the body at different degrees of success and you’ve made putting to death the deeds of the body an evidence of our justification, and therefore, it seems to make our assurance and our security hang on our success. And yet, our success is so paltry, so whence comes assurance?” And my answer is that assurance is multi-rooted. I don’t want to be unbiblical and say, “Oh, it doesn’t really matter how much you obey. Sin to beat the band. You can have as much assurance as you want.” I don’t want to talk like that. And yet, I also don’t want to go to the other extreme and say that you can obey your way into perfect assurance. Rather, I think it’s both.

It’s a life of warfare against sin which has an effect of crediting the conscience. The conscience experiences that as, “I’m real.” And yet, doubts arise, do they not? I’ve been a Christian for 51 years and I still, in dark moments, say, “Could I be faking it? Because it feels good to get up in front of a group, to write books, can I be faking it?” Those are scary thoughts that I could wake up some day and say it’s over. And at those moments, you know what I ask? I say, “Oh God, by your Holy Spirit, awaken in me by his witness a sweet assurance that you are my Father.” That’s the way I fight. I do not neglect obedience. I strive to put to death the deeds of the body, but I also ask, “Oh God, in my doubts and my fears, do this on me, cause me to cry, ‘Abba, Father.”

Isn’t it interesting he uses the word “cry” here? It’s not “say” or “ask” or “call.” I think the word “cry” is intended to capture the heartfelt, “Father, Father!” And when the Holy Spirit has moved you to that level of earnestness, he’s witnessing with your spirit that he is your Father. He’s brought you up into embracing the Father by causing you to cry out with earnestness.

Now, a really troubled person would say, “But what if you still doubt?” I’ve dealt with people, and some are in this room, I’m sure, who because of background and the way your parents treated you or just the way you’re wired psychologically, you always second-guess yourself, always. It doesn’t matter what happens. You say, “Oh, that probably wasn’t real, and that probably wasn’t any good, and that probably won’t please the Lord.” And you just come to the end of every day without ever experiencing this. I have no little neat formula for people like that. That’s major spiritual warfare.

I don’t mean the devil is doing it, I just mean you have to fight that. You have to take texts like this, study them, memorize them, immerse yourself in them, and cry out that God would apply them to your life. And do you know what? I don’t think you have to have full assurance to be saved and go to heaven. Faith is necessary to be saved and go to heaven. Assurance, I think, is the rising and falling confidence that our faith is authentic. So don’t think that you’re dropping in and out of the kingdom as your assurance rises and falls. Always want it to rise, always pray that it will rise, and always take seriously the seasons of coldness in which you start not to care or even wonder if it’s worth it.

Heirs of God with Christ

Next comes Romans 8:17, which says:

And if children, then heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

So the Holy Spirit has come into your life, he’s beginning to give you the power to make war on sin, his testimony of the cry of God’s fatherhood rises at times the sweet, deep unshakable assurance. And if you have the assurance, if you are the children of God, then you are an heir of God. What do you inherit? Well, you’re an heir with Christ and you get God’s inheritance. And I wrote down four contextual answers to what you inherit.

First, you inherit the glory of God. Romans 8:18 says:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

Second, you inherit all things. Romans 8:32 says:

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Third, you could say that you inherit the world. Romans 4:13 says:

For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith.

Jesus says:

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).

I’ll just give you a little unsolicited comment on the Middle East. So many evangelicals in America are all worked up in their excessively zealous Zionist support for Israel because they are all committed to land issues. This is really going to ruffle feathers here. I just want to say I could care less about the land of Israel. I inherit the earth, including Israel, and you do too. And now, you wish I’d say a lot more about that and I’m not going to.

But inheriting the world is huge, and therefore, don’t worry too much about whether you or God’s redeemed Israel (not secular Israel), will one day inherit Israel, which they will, along with the world.

The fourth answer is being glorified. Romans 8:17 says:

Provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

So not only will glory be revealed to us (Romans 8:18), but we will be swept up into it and changed by it, and according to Jesus, we will shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. We will reflect the glory of God so amazingly that people, as C.S. Lewis said, will be tempted to bow down and worship us, and we them. That’s how gloriously glorified the children of God will be.

Sufferings of the Present Time

Question, what suffering must you experience in order to be glorified? See here, you have another one of these conditional statements. We are heirs with Christ, if (provided) we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified. So our glorification depends on our suffering with him, even though it says those whom he justified will be glorified. Now, he has another condition that he sticks in there. You’ve got to suffer with him. What suffering? The answer is in the next verse:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

The answer is all suffering that comes from this time of fallen, futile, decaying, broken, sinful humanity. It’s all suffering — cancer, persecution, loss of job, wayward children, broken marriages, collapsing balconies in churches or towers in New York. It’s any kind of suffering. In other words, the focus here on this contingency of “provided that we suffer” is not whether you’ll suffer or not, you will. You have. Everybody in this room has suffered and you will suffer more. You’re going to die. That will probably be preceded by suffering. The point is, will we suffer with him. All suffering of a Christian on the Calvary Road leading to heaven in the path of killing sin and obedience is suffering with Jesus. I will not restrict this to persecution. Clearly, persecution for the name of Christ is suffering with Jesus.

I was with a young man last night sitting out on the balcony here who came from another city to visit. Three years ago in the ministry, he lost his voice and now he talks with a raspy voice. That’s suffering. If I lost my voice, I’d be sad. That suffering is a suffering with Jesus if I trust Jesus to turn it for my good. If I hang onto Jesus, I’m suffering, whatever the source, with Jesus. So I think the condition there is that the sufferings of this present time are going to befall you. They are going to befall you. They’re all over the world. Will you endure them with Jesus rather than giving up on Jesus and getting mad at God and throwing the sufferings back in his face and saying, “If that’s the way you are, then I’ll have nothing to do with your Son.” If that comes true, then you’ll perish and you will not be glorified with him.

Helping the Saints to Suffer Well

Now comes Romans 8:18–25. This paragraph right here is amazing because it is clearly intended by the apostle Paul to help us suffer. It’s clearly intended that he wants to help us suffer. Now, how does he help us suffer? Let’s walk through it and get help as we go. There are some surprising ways. The reason I say he’s helping us suffer is because when you get to the next paragraph and he starts dealing with how the Holy Spirit helps us pray, look at what he begins with:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Like what? What’s he referring to? He is saying, “I’ve been helping you. I’ve been telling you all kinds of things in Romans 8:18–25 to help you. Likewise, now the Spirit helps you.” So how is he helping us get ready to suffer?

Incomparable Glory

The first thing he does is put suffering in a global context. Would you do that as the first thing? If somebody came to you struggling with their suffering, they had lost a loved one, or they’d gotten a terrible disease, or they had been in an accident, or they had lost their job, or their marriage had broken up? The first thing you do is say, “Let’s get this in a global context.” Isn’t Paul different? He’s just different because he’s inspired by God who’s very different and we should be aware and awake to the differences. So he puts it in a global context. Let’s just start here. He says:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18)

So his first piece of help is that no matter how bad it gets, it can’t compare to what’s coming. Be patient, hang in there. Listen to this quote from John Newton. I love John Newton. John Newton was one of the healthiest 18th century evangelicals there was, and he wrote “Amazing Grace.” He was the old slave trader on the boat. And he has this little picture of grumbling Christians. Grumbling about little pains in their lives and all pains are little compared to the glory to be revealed. Paul said that. He said, “This light, momentary affliction is working for us in eternal weight of glory.” And what he meant by light and momentary was lifelong and heavy, and he listed them for us. He was lashed five times on his back. Three times, he was beaten with rods. He was in prison all the time. He was in danger in the rivers, in danger on the road, and in danger on the seas. This man died every day and he called them light, momentary afflictions for one reason: Romans 8:18. Now here’s what Newton says about murmuring Christians like me:

Suppose a man was going to New York to take possession of a large estate and his carriage should break down a mile before he got to the city, which obliged him to walk the rest of the way. What a fool we should think him if we saw him wringing his hands and blubbering out all the remaining mile, “My carriage is broken, my carriage is broken.”

I mean, can you picture God looking down on us? He’s thinking, “You’re going to inherit the world! You are my son. Everything I have is yours. It’s just a matter of a few days. It’s a twinkling of an eye, two seconds of vaporous breath. It’s all yours. You grumble, grumble, grumble about your little difficulty.” Oh, I am so rebuked by Newton and by my inheritance. So the first thing he says is, “I’m going to help you by telling you what’s coming is infinitely better than anything you suffer here.” So whatever it is, no matter how bad it is — and it will be very bad for many Christians — keep looking to the reward.

The Global Context of Suffering

Romans 8:19 says:

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

What are you telling us? How does that help us? Two things are in that verse. One is that you don’t look like a son of God right now. You need to be revealed. I mean, do you look like a son of God? A son of God would be about 8,000 miles tall with muscles strong enough to fling planets around. That’s what a son of God would look like. You don’t look like one. So there must be a revealing of the sons of God. Oh, there are going to be a lot of surprises on that day. A little old lady with her back bent over is going to be like a magnificent, glorious being. That’s the first thing. There has to be a revealing and that’s coming, so don’t worry too much about your looks right now. I really mean that and I could say more things about that. In fact, I will say another thing about that.

I like the way you look. I like the fact that there are a lot of handsome gray-headed women in this crowd who dress simply and don’t wear too much makeup. I’m probably going to start saying too much if I go on here. I like simplicity. Ask my wife. We could tell you interesting stories about our first dates.

Here’s the second thing. The whole creation is deferring to your revelation. This is awesome. The global context of my suffering is that he says, “All creation is awaiting my coming out into sonship.” Until you are manifested, creation is holding back. And when you are manifested, creation will say, “All right, here we come,” and all the futility of the natural world will be removed. All the horrors of natural calamities will be taken away. But that’s all waiting until God does his redemptive work on you. That’s absolutely amazing.

Even though it may seem strange to you that if a person comes to you with suffering that you’d want to help them get into a global context, maybe do it at a better time. Right now, we’re doing it so that when you go and find some horrible thing has happened, you will be able, not just to deal with it in some little microcosm of your life and how God works everything together for your good, but that it’s part of something absolutely huge and you’re going to be revealed as a son of God someday and the creation is going to rise up and rejoice with you when that happens.

Creation Subjected to Futility

Romans 8:20 says:

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope

Now, I have so many things I want to say about that, and the next verses that I’m going to wait until tomorrow to say it because I’m not supposed to keep you any later than that. It’s all right. I know my limits and I have taken them and we will do that and we will get through this chapter. Believe it or not, we will touch on all the important things. So here’s a question for you to think about tonight: Who subjected the creation to futility? If it’s Satan, how do you know? If it’s God, how do you know? And if it’s God, what in the world did he do that for? Volcanoes and floods?