Why Trying Harder Isn't Working // Romans 7:1-13

All right, well, good morning and welcome to Two Cities Church, everyone. Glad to have you here. If you're in Winston or if you're in Lexington, our Multiply campus, and welcome to the men of Butner. We're glad to have you all here. My name is Caleb Adubik. I'm one of the pastors here at Two Cities Church. And if you don't know me, you're gonna get to know me a little bit better today. And so one of the things my best friends would say about me is I'm as well known for the things that I hate as I am known for the things that I love. And so I'm gonna be honest and vulnerable with you about some of these things. I realize I'm giving you some ammo this morning, and so please don't abuse it. All right? So what do I hate? I hate bananas. I hate the taste of them. I hate the smell of them. I hate everything about them. Man, for me, there are certain athletes that we just can't stand, all right? I know I'm not the only one. For me, that's Matt Leinart. You don't even know who he is. I do. The ex-Chicago Cub, Milton Bradley. He was the worst, all right? I hate internet ads. You know, for some reason, I just want to read my article or watch my YouTube video, and the internet thinks, instead, I want to sell my house for cash, or I want to meet single grandmothers in my area, all right? Just for the record, not interested, all right?

But here's the thing I hate about internet ads the most. I am a sucker for some of them, all right? You guys know this. Like, yes, I am interested in the six things high-performing men do before 6 a.m. I am weirdly interested in the ancient diet that the Aztecs used to get shredded, right? I'm just so curious about it because, you know, it's speaking to something that I want to experience myself. And underlying each of these messages is this message, right? If you follow these simple rules, you'll become the person that you want to be. And so we're hooked, right? What do we do? We buy the mouth tape. We buy the fat-burning pills, the cold plunge. We buy the productivity apps, the whole self-improvement machine. And I know I'm not the only one because Americans spend $13 billion a year on all these kinds of things. And what happens? How does that work out? It doesn't work. How do we know that? Exhibit A, all right? We also know this because when's the time of year when everybody's getting on all of these different, you know, regimens and things? New Year. And studies have shown 92% of people never meet their New Year's resolution. Why is that? Why can't we take these simple rules and see success? You see, the problem is not knowing the rules. It's having the power to actually do them, all right? And the Apostle Paul, he understood this 2,000 years before the self-help industry

even emerged. And what we're going to see here in this passage, he's not talking about a diet. He's talking about how we as Christians and people trying to follow Jesus, we run into the exact same wall when it comes to God's perfect law. And if you have your Bibles, you can go up to Romans 7. That's where we're going to be today, Romans 7. And in this passage, Paul is going to be grappling with this question. What do we do with the law? What do we do with these perfect commands and rules that God gave to his people back in the Old Testament? Because what we see is whenever we run into this wall of the law, we tend to topple over into one of two ditches. We can topple over into license, and that's where we say, well, these laws don't work. And so we're just going to throw them off and do whatever we want. Or we can run into the law and then topple over into ditch two, which is legalism, where we're saying, you know what? We're just going to keep trying that even harder. You know, we're going to keep going after that. We're going to keep trying to do this. And if we can do that, we're finally going to get what we want. And what Paul is going to show us here in this passage today is, listen, we don't want to completely cast off the law, but we don't want to become enslaved to it either. What Paul is going to show us is the gospel gives us a third way of understanding and relating to the law. And here's the big idea. As followers of Jesus, if you want to experience freedom, if you want to be free, you need to have a new way of understanding and relating to the law.

And so Paul is going to walk us through this passage. He's going to show us three things, that we are diagnosed by the law. Number two, that we're deceived by sin. And number three, we're delivered to another. And so I'm going to take us through this passage. I'm actually going to start in the second half of my scripture chunk today because that's where we're going to see the problem. And then we're going to go back up to the top because that's where Paul gives us the solution. And so if you would, look with me at verse 7, and we're going to look at what Paul says about how we are diagnosed by the law. Verse 7 says this. 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, for I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet. So, the law...verse 12, so the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good. Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means. It was sin producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment, might become sinful beyond measure. Okay, so I know there's a lot here in just these three verses about the law and sin, but before we go anywhere, I want you to understand something that Paul considers crucial. He wants you and I to understand the law is holy, and righteous, and altogether good. The law is a great thing.

The reason we know that is because, here, he unpacks three things that it does for us. Three ways the law helps us. It reveals our sin, it names our sin, and it exposes the depths of our sin. And I want to unpack that a little bit more with you, and I'll give you this picture that may help you guys. I want you guys to think about an MRI machine. An MRI machine is to the body as the law is to our souls, okay? So, let's look at how the law reveals our sin first. A little ways into verse 7, it says, yet, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. And so, the law reveals sin by waking us up to the fact that something inside of us is wrong. Before the law even names it or categorizes for us, the law breaks through for us. It's like turning on lights in a room that we didn't know was dark. Because before the law speaks, sin can reside in our lives, hidden, ignored, and unnoticed. Really, I mean, you guys can probably understand that. We have been all blind to certain sins in our life, or maybe it's just been around so long that we feel numb to it. There's a lot of reasons for this. You know, part of it is maybe that we live in a culture that celebrates sin rather than condemns it, right? And as long as those sins go unnamed, man, we just are blind to it, right? And then the law comes in and then wakes you up to that reality. And some of you know this, like, maybe you've been reading through your Bible before and something jumps off the page at you and it just hits you right there. Or maybe your friend says something and it makes you feel unsettled and uneasy.

That's the law doing its work. It's doing its first job of revealing something that's in you. It's waking you up to the reality that something is just not quite right in us. And so what do we do with that? That's the moment when you say, I think I need some help. I think something might be wrong. You know, I know one thing about us. I've never woken up in the morning and said, you know what sounds great today? Lying perfectly still in a metal tube, that sounds like a transformer having a panic attack, right? But that's what prompts us to go into the MRI machine. It's the reality, man, I think something is not right. And so the doctor puts us in there and then when we get out, he puts up the scan and says, there's something there. There's something there that you didn't know was there. And that's what the law does. That's the first purpose of the law. It reveals there is something in us that is wrong. The next thing that it does is it names it. And so it goes beyond just revealing that something's there. It actually puts a name to it. It helps us identify what exactly our sin is. Look at verse 7, it says, yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin for I would not have known what it is to covet. If the law had not said, you shall not covet. And so Paul is saying, listen, the law didn't just point out some inner wrongness in me, it gave me a name, a name to what was wrong in me. In his specific case, it was coveting. And one of the things that we do instead of giving it names is we use euphemisms to our sin, right?

Because as long as we don't put the name on it, it's easily tolerated. We're experts at using all these euphemisms. We have all this dictionary worth of things that we can use instead of the actual name of a sin, right? You know, instead of calling it lust, we call it just looking. Instead of calling it gossip, we call it a prayer request. Instead of calling it anger, we say, well, I'm just being Italian, right? Instead of calling it pride, we call it confidence. Listen, because as long as we can keep the euphemism, you don't have to deal with your sin. But what the law does is it walks in, it rips that label off and says, no, that thing has a name and it's sin. Back to the MRI. This is the moment when the doctor points at... the screen, it says, you see that right there? It has a name, it's cancer. And the moment that it's labeled like that, you can't minimize it anymore. It demands a response. And so the law reveals our sins and names our sins, but it also exposes the depths of our sin. Look with me at the end of verse 13, it says, in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. You see, the law exposes sin by helping us see how serious, how deep, and how deadly our sin really is. It goes right down to the twistedness of our heart, our motivations, our desires, the things that drive us, that nobody else is looking, that nobody else

can really see what's underneath the surface. It shows us our sin in high definition. This is when the doctor says, listen, that's not just cancer, it's aggressive, it's advanced, it's life-threatening. Because it's one thing to know that you have a tumor, it's another to know that it is wreaking havoc all throughout your body, right? And this is where Paul gives us a specific example of what this looks like. Of all the 10 commandments that he could have chosen, he chooses covening. Why does he use the example of covening here? Well, for one, it's one that he deals with personally, but of all the other commandments, it's the one that gets underneath the surface, right? It exposes what's going on in here at the heart level. And covening isn't just wanting what other people have. Here's what covening really is. It's looking at other people's lives and saying, not only do I want that, I deserve that. It reveals our twisted desires. It reveals, man, our discontentment, and no religious performance can cover that up. Because this commandment, it shows us that obedience is not just what we do with our hands, it's what's happening in our hearts. I want to ask some of you a really uncomfortable question that may help bring some more concreteness to this. Okay, is your social media habit really a covening habit?

Because some of you might say, well, no, it's a distraction, or it's poor time management. But I want to invite some of you to start calling it what it really is. It is a violation of the 10th commandment on a massive scale. Because for some of you, when you open your phone, like, you're pulling up curated highlight reels of everybody else's best moments in life that make your life look worse by comparison. When you pull it out, you're looking at something that God never intended for you to have. You cove it, you cove it, and you cove it. Maybe it's not social media, maybe, guys, it's getting on Facebook Marketplace and seeing all these things that you just, you can't afford. Or maybe you don't struggle with porn, but some of you, man, you struggle with Zillow porn, right? Man, you're just looking around at all these things like, man, how does she have that house? And every time some of you pick up your phone, you're picking up a coveting machine. And instead of calling it sin, you call it scrolling. Some of you right now, it's like, man, it's a good thing I don't have social media. I'm coming for you next, don't worry. Listen, because Paul, you know, he was one of those guys, he wouldn't have had social media, he was a Pharisee. He was the best at keeping the law.

But what he tells us here and reveals in other parts of scripture is all that outward obedience that everybody thought was impressive, it was all inwardly twisted. Why was he doing it? It wasn't out of love for God. He's doing out of love for spiritual superiority, for people's praise, for people to look up to him. But inside his motivations were rotten to the core. Now I ask some of you guys like, man, is your religious devotion coveting in disguise like it was for Paul? Are you genuinely zealous for God? Or are you doing what you do so that God can be impressed with you? Or others can be impressed with you? Because listen, the most dangerous form of coveting is not necessarily the person who's struggling with Instagram. It's the person in church looking at the person next to them and saying, I'm sure glad I'm not as bad as you. And it's devotion dressed up like competition. It's competition dressed up like devotion, guys. And so Paul is saying, listen, he wants you to feel the weight of this. He wants you to see, man, the law, it reveals our sin. It names our sin. It exposes the depths of it. And I know some of you, and if you're like me, you don't like that.

And when the law comes in and starts pointing out how sinful how broken, how wrong we are, it's not a pleasant experience, I know. And some of us, the reaction that we have whenever we encounter that, the wrong reaction is to rail against the law, to wanna cast it off, to say, no, that's dumb. It doesn't understand me. My situation's different. Or listen, that was written for different people at a different time. And so we rail against the law, we try to cast it off. But listen, you know what that sounds like when we do that? It's like the person who just found out they have cancer and they start yelling at the MRI machine. They start smashing the MRI machine. Listen, the MRI machine was just doing its job. Its sole purpose is to point out the cancer that is there. It didn't cause the cancer itself. And that's what the law is. Man, there's nothing wrong with the law. It's simply pointing out what was already there. And we can't know what to do for treatment unless we have that diagnosis. So listen to me, man, Paul wants us to understand, verse 12, the law is holy. The commandment is holy and righteous and good. And so when you think of the law, I want you to think of it as God's mercy for you

because you have a God who's loving enough to be able to tell you the truth, even though it hurts sometimes. So the law is a good thing, but it does raise the question, why does it feel sometimes like the law is killing us? Why does it feel like the law is oppressive? Here's what you need to understand. The law was never the problem, sin is. The law is not the villain of the story. Our sin is the villain of the story, which leads us to the second thing that Paul wants us to see is that we have been deceived by sin. We've been deceived by sin. Look with me at verse 11, it says, for sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. Once you notice the language, sin seizes, it deceives, it kills. Paul is personifying sin as a predator with a strategy. And there's three things you need to see that sin does from this passage. The first thing that sin does in us is it seizes opportunity. Look in verse eight, it says, but sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness, for apart from the law, sin lies dead. And then again, in verse 11, it says, for sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me.

This phrase, seize the opportunity, that's a military term in the Greek. It's like when an army sets up a beachhead on enemy territory. What you need to understand is sin doesn't create the battlefield. It takes a good thing and it twists it into its own use. It sets up camp inside of it. Sin is literally insidious because God gave us the law as a gift. And here's what sin did. It looks at that gift and says, I can use that. Sin can't create, it can only corrupt. You see this in so many different ways. God gave us sex, but sin weaponizes it, right? God gives us ambition, but sin twists it into greed. God gives us community and sin takes it and turns it into tribalism. Sin is like that one guy who can literally ruin any group project, you know? It's like, that's what it does. It just comes in and jacks everything up. And that word deceive that we see in verse 11, it's the same word that's in Genesis 3. When the serpent deceives Eve, sin pulled the same con on Paul that Satan pulled out in the garden. And the con is this, it's to deceive us, to trick us into thinking the law is the thing that's bad. If we could just get rid of the law,

then everything would be good. You'd be living the good life. But that's a lie. The problem was never the law, it's the sin. And sin weaponizes the law. You need to see this too. How does it do that? Sin provokes rebellion through prohibition. I'm gonna say it again. Sin provokes rebellion through prohibition. Where do I see this? Look at me in verse eight, it says, but sin seizing an opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For 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. And so do you see what happened? The commandment said, don't covet. And then something inside of Paul woke up and makes him say, I want all of it. You see, the prohibition doesn't kill the desire in Paul. What it does is it inflames it. Let me make this more concrete for you, because we do this all the time, almost on a daily basis. I told you you're going to get to know about me a little bit more today. I come from a town called Sandwich, Illinois. It's a true place, a real place. There is one theater in Sandwich, Illinois, and you know where it is? It's on Duvic Avenue, named after my family.

Whenever I walk into that theater, I'm already feeling like a big deal. But at Wild 7 Cinemas in Sandwich, Illinois, as in many other places, they have a rule that says no outside food and drinks in the theater. You know what that inflamed in me? I'm bringing outside foods and drinks. It started small. In middle school, it's like, all right, I've got my big coat, and I'm putting some pop and some snacks in there. But then as I got older, it gets pretty serious. Instead of sneaking in snacks, I'm catering for the entire whole theater, right? I'm brazen about it, too. I'm walking in with a 75-ounce cup of pop from Taco Bell and a bag of burritos, looking at the guy who's taking the tickets. I'm like, you got theater five? All right, I got it. But listen, you guys do this, too. Don't act like you don't. Come on. That's so silly. But we all do that in so many different ways, don't we? When the doctor tells you, hey, you need to stop eating that, you know that's the only thing you want to eat now. Or when your wife comes up to you or a roommate and says, hey, can you please stop doing that one thing? You know that they're right. But inside, you're like, darn it, I want to do that even more. And it's not just petty stuff. Man, for some of you, the affair was not just about the attraction. It was about the thrill of crossing that line. And for some of you, with a lie, it was not just about convenience.

It was about seeing if you could get away with it. Because listen, rules don't restrain us. Sin has made it so that it is a kindling for our rebellion. Because listen, it's not really about wanting freedom. What it is revealing in us is in our sinful nature, we want sovereignty. We want to be the ones who decide what's right, what's worth it, and what applies to us. We want to be the gods over our own life. And that's the oldest sin in the book. It's the sin of the garden, right? It's alive and well in every single one of us. So we need to see like sin, it's seizing opportunity. It's provoking rebellion in us. And here's the third thing that we see here is that sin uses what is good to kill us. Verse 10, it says, the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it, it killed me. Do you guys feel the weight of that? Like sin is so sinful that it can take God's holy, righteous, and perfect law and weaponize it into a death sentence for us. Sin is so sinful, it can take this good gift from God and turn it into a grave. And so how does it do it? It either pushes us into, like I said earlier, into license or legalism. It deceives us into convincing, hey, this law, it's not good for us. And so we're going to throw it off, we're going to live however we want. Instead of living in God's perfect and bright path and plan, and when we cast that off, it leads to all kinds of death, death after death after death. Or it's just as happy pushing us into legalism, which says, listen, the law is the cure. It convinces us into thinking that the MRI machine is somehow the treatment for the cancer instead of the thing that just reveals it.

And so we go back to the law thinking it's going to cure this problem that's killing us from the inside out. And you guys know exactly what that's like for some of you. Man, you have had the same spiritual New Year's resolution since 2014, and your game plan is always the same. Go back into more law, more rules, more accountability, and here's what happens. You fail every time. And when you feel that failure, you feel guilty. And because you feel guilty, you try harder, and you try harder, and you keep digging yourself more, and more, and more into this hole. And as you're spiraling down, at some point, I know you're thinking, why isn't this working? Why is it the harder I... Try, the further I feel away from God. You wanna know something sad? Not only do we do this to ourselves, sometimes we impose this on other people as well. Parents, some of you in this room, you are building a law-based home. You think that you are helping your kids, but the laws and the rules that you're imposing on your kids are actually pulling them further away from the faith that you're trying to instill on them. Not because the rules that you're trying to give them are bad, but because, hear this, sin wants to weaponize the rules that you have in place. And it turns it into something that your kids can never survive. Listen, a law-based home that does not account for grace upon grace, it's gonna do one

of two things to your kids. It's either gonna turn them into Pharisees or it's gonna turn them into rebels. Or maybe some of you are doing this with your spouse. You've put in heaps expectations on them that they could never live up to. And all you ever demand is perfection. You guys need to hear this, this is so important. The law has zero power to bring about real heart transformation. The law has zero power to bring real change in your life. If the law could have done it, it already would have done it by now. And so more effort, more rules, more accountability groups, they will not get you there. This is a failing strategy. And Paul is desperately trying to help us feel it. He wants you to feel the weight. I hope you feel the weight in this sermon. It's awfully quiet in here, that's good. Like, because listen, if you don't feel the weight of the diagnosis, you are never gonna be ready for the cure. Until you feel like you can no longer try harder to fix things, you're never gonna be ready for what's next. And so let me ask you this just as plainly as I can. Are you tired yet? Are you tired of living in that cycle? Are you tired of the voice in your head that's saying, do more, be more, try harder? Because if the answer is yes, you're finally ready

for the best news that you've ever heard. Because listen, if the law provokes sin, if the law makes things worse, if the law produces death, then the solution is not more law-keeping. We don't need better rules. Here's what we need. We need a better husband. And where do I get that? That sounds strange, but this is what Paul says. Look with me in verse one, where Paul is gonna show us that we have been delivered to another. Verse one says, 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. For a married woman is bound by her husband while he is alive, but if her husband dies, she's released from the law of the 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's free from that law. And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. So Paul doesn't pick marriage as a metaphor by accident. Because of all the human relationships that God gave us, marriage is the most binding. It's the most intimate, it's the most complete. It's not a contract, it's a covenant. It exists until death do us part. And Paul says, apart from Christ, that's your relationship to the law.

You're married to it, you're bound to it. And the only thing that can end your marriage to the law is death. I wanna paint a picture of what that marriage feels like. Imagine that your husband, their whole entire personality is just a list of demands. The first thing that happens in a marriage with the law, you wake up and the law is just standing there looking at you, a little creepy. But you just open your eyes and the first thing is, hey, are the dishes done? Have you taken care of the kids? Have you read your Bible yet? Have you read your Bible long enough? Before you even get to coffee, you're over four, right? And that's what it feels like. Whenever you knock those things out, waiting for you is another list of demands. And the standard is perfection. You never hear, good enough. Instead of someone waiting for you with flowers and a mom's morning out, it's just another list of things to do. And that's what it can feel like when we relate to God solely through the law. It's like a constant performance evaluation where God's our boss, we're an employee, and we're always being evaluated. And here's what's even sadder about that relationship. Look in verse five, it says,

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. Paul's saying it's. Same cycle here, the law shows up, sin's provoked, the result is death, and the fruit of this marriage, the only fruit it can bear, our marriage to the law, is death, it's exhaustion, it's shame, it's guilt, it's pride when we're doing well and despair when we're failing. That is the marriage that so many of you have been trying to make work. And you need to hear it again today, it can't work. Not because the husband's bad, in a sinful sense. Remember, the law is good, but the reason is because you and I are broken and we could never live up to that expectation. The fruit that we always wanna see out of our marriage, it is not possible. And Paul says that kind of marriage can only end in one way, it can only come through death. That's why I've been saving this verse for you, you need to hear verse four because this is the hinge of the whole passage. It is the good news that so many of us need to hear today. Look at me, 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.

Y'all, I want you to take that in. You have died to the law through Christ. Paul's saying, listen, the only way out of that old marriage was death and death has already happened. Jesus died on the cross and guess what? You died with him. When his body was broken, so was the bond of your marriage to the law. Listen, his death is your death. His life is your life. His freedom is your freedom. And look what Paul says next. He says that you died to the law so that you can now belong to another. That's marriage language. You didn't just get released from a bad covenant. You got remarried. Who did you get remarried to? To who? It says, to him who was raised from the dead. You have a marriage to Jesus Christ. Here's what the new husband did that the old one could never do. He fulfills the law's demands for us. Listen, when you wake up in the morning, Jesus is waiting there with the list, but it's already been completely checked off. You've not done a single thing, but he has done it for you. Let me show you what else this marriage looks like.

When I got married to my wife, Kelly, I didn't just get married to Kelly, right? I got everything that Kelly had. And for me, that was a pretty darn good deal because my wife, when I married her, she owned a condo. She had a savings account, a fully stock kitchen, a paid off Honda Civic. You know what I brought into our marriage? Student loans, a favorite mug, and a whole lot of potential. It's amazing. So listen, when we got married, her condo became our condo. Her savings account became our savings account. My student loans became our student loans. Those two things might've offset each other, the savings and the loans. But listen, that's not the point. The point is this, that exact same thing happens when we are married and united to Christ. Christ takes your debt, your sin, your failure, your record, and he makes it his. And you get all of his assets in return. The things that you could have never achieved in your marriage to the law. You get his righteousness. You get his obedience. You get his standing before his father and before the law. And in this picture, the bride wears not white, not because of her purity, but because of the purity of the groom.

Amen? And it goes even more. What we get, listen, at the end of verse four, it says, why did this happen? It happened in order that we may bear fruit for God. Here's what I want you to see. The old marriage led to fruit of death, but this new marriage leads to fruit for God. And what's interesting is that the fruit in both marriages was always the same. Both the law and Christ are pointing us to patience, kindness, self-control, love, holiness, all these different things. But what the law was aiming at, it could never produce those things in us. It could point at fruit all day, but it could never grow an orange. It could say, hey, love your neighbor, but could never actually help you love your neighbor. Right? But listen, the new marriage does the opposite. And here's how a good marriage works. It works through intimacy. Intimacy produces what the law could only demand. Another scenario. Picture my wife, Kelly. Man, if she, I wake up in the morning, she's sitting there with a list for me and saying, I want you to do these things or else I'm going to be disappointed.

disappointed in you. I'm going to do those things because I'm a God-fearing husband, right? But I'm not going to do those with any sort of fruit of the Spirit. My heart is not going to be in it. But listen, if I love my wife, if I cherish my wife, if I have beautiful intimacy in our marriage, I'm going to do those things, but for a completely different reason. I'm not going to do it because I have to. I'm going to do those things because I'm excited to. I want to. I get to. I genuinely see it that way. Listen, church, if you want to live rightly for the right motivations, with the right motivations, I think one of the biggest applications for you guys from this sermon is you need to find ways to experience more intimacy in your relationship with Christ. That is going to be the fuel for so much of what you want to see, and listen, I need you to hear this. I am not giving you a new list. I can feel some of you in your minds, you're already putting together a new spreadsheet for you to fill out. That's the old husband talking. Don't do it. What I'm pointing at is, listen, there are rhythms in marriage that lead to more intimacy, and I want us to imagine what that looks like for us in our marriage and relationship with Jesus Christ.

Maybe for some of you that it's finding, you know, time in the word again in a fresh way. Not so you can keep a streak alive in a Bible reading app or check off another thing in your list, but to simply sit and hear the voice of the God who loves you. You know, maybe for some of you that's sitting down and reading a psalm tomorrow, and instead of asking when you're done, what do I do with this? It's asking the question, what is my God trying to say to me? Or maybe for some of you, it's thinking about prayer in a new way, instead of you going and giving your list of demands to God, it's sitting and enjoying time with the one who loves you. It's not so much about the content of the conversation, it's about the time together. Or maybe for some of you, it's stepping into community and maybe sharing something with somebody that you've never shared before. Listen, because one of the ways that we grow intimacy with God is by growing intimacy with God's people. And so maybe it's confessing something, not like an accountability group where all you ever ask is, how have you sinned this week? No, it's being known and being pushed and lovingly encouraged to look more like Christ. Because listen, the way this works is not by trying harder to bear fruit. The way that we actually bear fruit is being rooted in good soil. It's being rooted in abiding with Christ and abiding in His

love. Because when you're in that place, you're not going to be able to help it. You're going to grow a fruit on fruit on fruit that leads to God and goodness and all the things that He loves. Your fruit changes. And here's the other thing that's going to empower you. You look with me at verse 6, but now we are released from the law having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in a new way. What's this new way? In the new way of the Spirit and not the old way of the written code, listen, the law could never empower us or could even make us want to do the right things. But when you have a marriage with Christ and you are experiencing intimacy, the Spirit is going to be indwelling you, it's going to be working. And all those things the law could never do, the Spirit's going to empower you to. It's amazing. When you're intimate with Christ, He's going to grow your desire for Jesus more and more and more. You're going to love to do the things that Jesus loves, not out of performance, but as fruit. Guys, as we come to a close, I want to leave you with just one line that I hope ties this all together for you. I want you to write it down, I want you to put it on your fridge, I want you to tattoo it on your arm. Maybe try the fridge first, all right? But listen, remember this, we obey the law from salvation,

not for salvation. Some of you have been trying to do the exact opposite of that. You're trying to obey the law for salvation. You're trying to obey the law for God's acceptance. You're trying to get Him to love you by obeying the law. But listen, Jesus is saying, you've already got it. I have accepted you. I do love you. And so, we love and obey out of that relationship, not for it. Guys, that's so important. You guys need to hear today, again, the law is holy and righteous and good. It's beautiful because it shows us who God is like. It guides us in what we want to be. But listen, when we are married to Christ, here's what you can experience. You understand the law differently, and you relate to it differently. You understand the law can never cure you. It can only diagnose you. You understand the gospel is the only thing that can heal you. And when that law, when the gospel has healed you, listen, you no longer see the law as a judge. You see it as a guide. When you rightly understand and relate to the law, it's no longer your husband, but a friend that gets to come alongside you. Instead, you get to experience the most beautiful relationship

the universe has ever known, marriage with Jesus Christ. God is not some judge sitting and condemning you. He is not a boss who's constantly evaluating you as an employee. The way you get to relate to God is as bride and groom. And so as the band comes up, man, listen, I wanna invite you to respond today. The altar is gonna be open at all of our campuses. And for some of you, you need to respond. Some of you have never had a relationship with Jesus Christ. Listen, you know that there's something wrong inside of you. I hope that God's scripture today was like a scan for you. You saw the sin that's in your heart, and you need to know this. You will never be able to outwork it. No amount of rules, no amount of accountability, nothing that you can do can give you freedom, can bring you healing. The invitation for you today is to go to the healer who can do something about it. The person who can change and transform that thing in you, his name is Jesus, and he wants a relationship with you. And so I want you to come down here. We're gonna have elders and prayer team members on both sides of the stage that can walk with you through what that looks like to be in a relationship with you. Some of you, you have a sin that the scripture held up

and showed you its real name today. And you've been using euphemisms for a long time, but it's finally time for you to start calling that sin for what it is and repent of that. Come lay it down here at the altar. Some of you, you've been following Christ for a long time, but maybe somewhere over the last few minutes, you realize that you have been living with the old husband the whole time. You've been trying to work for that relationship, not from the relationship that you already have with Jesus Christ. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to come down here, and I want you to lay down that list of demands that you've been living by and pick up the freedom that Jesus Christ has purchased for you on the cross. Be free today. Listen, the old husband is dead, and the new one is calling you home. And so after we finish praying, I want you to come and respond. Pray with me. Jesus, man, we thank you that you loved us enough to give us your law that tells us the truth about ourself, that shows us our need. And Jesus, I thank you that you didn't give us a better set of rules. You gave us yourself. So we belong to you now and always.

God, I pray that we would rest there. Remind us, every one of us, that we obey from your love and never for it. We have all that we need in you. Jesus Christ, would you move us to whatever it is you're calling us to today. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.