1. "Discovering that the problem is worse than you think throws you off balance. Think fast. Will you shield yourself with denial? Will you try to wipe the inconvenient truth from your memory and live as if nothing happened?"

2. "The Bible's teaching on the fall of man reveals that the problem is worse than you think. And this doctrine is also illuminating. Why is the world the way it is? Why is it that the more noble our ideals, the farther we fall short of them?"

3. "Neutrality is a myth. No one is neutral toward God. We are born into this world with our minds set against him."

4. "What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. We like to think that we govern our lives by reason. But the reality is more nearly the reverse. What we want is the engine and our conscious mind is the caboose."

5. "The fallen human heart instinctively resists having someone else's will imposed on it. It doesn't matter who's commanding or what the command is. If someone says, you must, your natural reflex is to say, No, I won't and you can't make me."

6. "Our problem with God is not that we lack information. It's not that he hasn't made himself clear whether his existence or his requirements. Our problem with God is that we don't want him to tell us what to do."

7. "We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners."

8. "When we strive merely to change or improve ourselves, our efforts fail because they founder against our hard hearts. We cannot fix ourselves. We lack the power to fundamentally change ourselves. Christianity is not a religion of self-improvement. It is a religion of death and resurrection."

9. "God has not only made us in his image, he has remade us in his image, and he has given us his Spirit to enable us to live as his beloved and now obedient children."

10. "We could not liberate ourselves from slavery to sin. We could never atone for our sins. We could never have made peace with God. But Christ did all of that by giving his body to be broken for us and his blood to be shed for us."

Observation Questions

1. According to Romans 8:7a, what is the relationship between "the mind that is set on the flesh" and God?

2. In Romans 8:7b, what does Paul say the mind set on the flesh does not do in relation to God's law?

3. What two-fold inability does Paul describe in Romans 8:7c-8 regarding those who are "in the flesh"?

4. According to Romans 8:1, what is now true for "those who are in Christ Jesus"?

5. In Romans 8:2-3, what has God done that the law could not do, and how did He accomplish it?

6. According to Romans 8:4, what is the result for those who "walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit"?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Paul describe the natural human condition as "hostile to God" rather than simply "distant from God" or "ignorant of God"? What does this stronger language reveal about the depth of humanity's problem?

2. The sermon explained that "we sin because we are sinners" rather than "we are sinners because we sin." How does this distinction change our understanding of the human condition and our need for salvation?

3. Paul says those in the flesh "cannot" submit to God's law and "cannot" please God. What is the significance of this inability, and why does it mean that self-improvement efforts are ultimately futile?

4. How does Romans 8:3 explain the relationship between what the law could not accomplish and what God accomplished through Christ? Why was sending His Son "in the likeness of sinful flesh" necessary?

5. What is the connection between being "set free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2) and having "the righteous requirement of the law fulfilled in us" (Romans 8:4)? How do these two realities work together in the believer's life?

Application Questions

1. The sermon noted that "what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies." In what specific area of your life do you recognize this pattern operating—where your desires are driving your decisions and your reasoning is simply justifying what you already want to do?

2. If valid arguments often fail to persuade people because "the problem is in their minds," how should this change the way you pray for and engage with non-Christian friends or family members? What specific person might you commit to praying for differently this week?

3. The sermon described Christianity as "a religion of death and resurrection, not self-improvement." In what area of your life are you still trying to "fix" yourself rather than surrendering to the Spirit's transforming work? What would it look like to stop striving and instead depend on God's power?

4. Knowing that the "root of goodness is worship," how might you evaluate whether your good deeds and service flow from genuine worship of God or from other motivations (such as reputation, guilt, or self-righteousness)? What practices might help you root your actions more deeply in worship?

5. The passage promises that believers are "no longer dominated by sinful desires, but indwelt by God's own Spirit." What is one specific sinful pattern or desire that you have felt dominated by, and how might you practically rely on the Spirit's power this week to walk in freedom rather than defeat?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Genesis 3:1–19 — This passage recounts the original fall of humanity into sin, providing the historical foundation for the doctrine of original sin and our inherited corrupt nature that Paul addresses in Romans 8.

2. Romans 1:18–32 — Here Paul expands on humanity's suppression of the truth and refusal to honor God, showing how the hostility toward God described in Romans 8:7 manifests in human history and behavior.

3. Romans 6:15–23 — This passage explains the contrast between slavery to sin and slavery to righteousness, reinforcing the sermon's point that believers have been set free from sin's tyranny to freely submit to God.

4. Ephesians 2:1–10 — Paul describes humanity as "dead in trespasses and sins" and explains how God made us alive together with Christ, paralleling the death-and-resurrection transformation emphasized in the sermon.

5. Ezekiel 36:25–27 — God promises to give His people a new heart and put His Spirit within them, foreshadowing the Spirit-filled life that Romans 8 celebrates as the solution to our inability to please God in the flesh.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Problem Is Worse Than You Think

II. What We Are By Fallen Nature (Romans 8:7-8)

III. What We Are By God's Grace (Romans 8:1-4)

IV. The Joyful Message of the Lord's Supper

Detailed Sermon Outline

The problem is worse than you think. Your roommate has something she wants to discuss with you. As soon as she starts talking, you realize this is going to be a longer conversation than you thought. And the subject of conversation is not going to be her, but you.

You call in a plumber. He reports that the problem is not the sink, but the pipes under the house. The total cost to you is not going to be a couple hundred, but several thousand.

Discovering that the problem is worse than you think throws you off balance.

No more?

Throws you off balance, as I was saying. Think fast. Will you shield yourself with denial? Will you try to wipe the inconvenient truth from your memory and live as if nothing happened? As we confessed a few minutes ago, the Bible teaches that the human race was created in holiness, but we fell from that state by voluntary transgression.

Now all people are sinners by nature. All people are born into this world with hearts turned against God and set on evil. The most common shorthand for this doctrine is the label original sin. All that that phrase means is that all of us are born sinners. We inherit from our first parents both the guilt of sin and inwardly corrupt natures.

Among non-Christians, this is one of the most distasteful and despised Christian doctrines. In the 19th century, the English Duchess of Buckingham objected, It is monstrous to be told you have a heart as sinful as the common wretches that crawl on the earth. And today, many non-believers who hear about the fall and original sin shift the blame. Well, if I'm born sinful, then how is my sin my fault? But the biblical doctrine of the fall of man is also one of the most important and illuminating doctrines.

It's important because if we don't know we have a problem, we will not seek a solution. And if we get the problem wrong, we will look for the wrong solution. The Bible's teaching on the fall of man reveals that the problem is worse than you think. And this doctrine is also illuminating. Why is the world the way it is?

Why is it that the more noble our ideals, the farther we fall short of them? The doctrine of the fall sheds light on every corner of history, every nation, every war, every news story, every relational conflict, Every human heart. As G.K. Chesterton once quipped, Original sin is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.

As a way to study the abiding consequences of the fall, we're going to focus in this sermon on just two verses, Romans 8:7-8. Please turn there in your Bible. In the first four verses of Romans 8, Paul celebrates the salvation that we have in Christ. We've been freed from sin's condemnation and filled with the Spirit. Then in verses 5 to 8, Paul contrasts life in the Spirit with life in the flesh.

And his contrast here is not between more mature and less mature Christians. Instead, he is contrasting life lived in our fallen nature with the life that the Spirit gives by the new birth.

In verse six, Paul names the eternal consequences of living in the flesh versus living in the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. This brings us to verses seven and eight, which tell us why life in the flesh leads to eternal death. Verses seven and eight, For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law indeed, It cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

In the rest of this sermon, we will see in these two verses that the problem with humanity is worse than you think. I'll have two points each with three sub points. I'll say that again, two points each with three sub points. And we'll spend most of our time on point one. One, so point one, what we are by fallen nature.

Point one, what we are by fallen nature. Sub point one, God's enemies, God's enemies. Looking at the first half of verse seven, for the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God. This is humanity's fundamental problem. By inborn inclination, our minds are set against God.

We don't want God to rule us, we want to rule ourselves. We don't want God to tell us what to do, we want to do what we want. We don't want God to be God, we each want to be our own God, at least our own god of ourselves and maybe also a god of some other people too. Neutrality is a myth. No one is neutral toward God.

We are born into this world with our minds set against him. When Paul talks about our mind here, he's not referring to bare reason. He's referring to the whole inward cast of our being. He's talking about not just what we think, but what we want. And what we choose.

As Ashley Null has said, what the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies. We like to think that we govern our lives by reason. Our minds exercising critical reasoning decide what is good and right, and then they tell our bodies what to do. But the reality is more nearly the reverse.

What we want is the engine and our conscious mind is the caboose.

Paul is saying that by fallen nature, people are not open to God. They're not seeking God. They're not looking for God. Instead, we're his enemies because we are set against him. Sub point two, rebels.

Look at the second half of verse seven. For it does not submit to God's law. God's law is the holy and righteous expression of his character. God's law is a user's manual for creation written by the Creator himself. But the heart wants what it wants, and the heart doesn't want to be told what to want.

The fallen human heart instinctively resists having someone else's will imposed on it. It doesn't matter who's commanding or what the command is. If someone says, you must, your natural reflex is to say, No, I won't and you can't make me. Yet God's authority is ultimate and perfectly legitimate. It is never justified to rebel against God's rule.

Our problem with God is not that we lack information. It's not that he hasn't made himself clear whether his existence or his requirements. Our problem with God is that we don't want him to tell us what to do.

Sub point three, unable to please God. What are we by fallen nature? We are unable to please God. Look at the end of verse seven into verse eight. Speaking of the mind set on the flesh, For it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Here, Paul digs deeper into our problem. It's not just that we happen not to please God. It's not just that we don't please God. It's that we can't. As Article 3 of our Statement of Faith says, We are utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil.

By fallen nature, no one can do what is pleasing to God. Can non-Christians perform actions that, in themselves, are morally unobjectionable? Certainly, a non-Christian firefighter risking their life to save someone is a good deed and it's a good deed we should celebrate and thank God for. But at the deepest level, despite good or even heroic deeds, that non-Christian's life as a whole is not pleasing to God and can't be. If we don't recognize God as God and worship Him as God, then nothing we do can ultimately please Him.

The root of goodness is worship. As Paul says in Romans 1:21, For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. If the roots are bad, the fruit will be bad. False worship will always produce bad fruit. A mind set on the flesh cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit.

So to sum up what these two verses teach us, our problem is not merely that we sin, but that we are enslaved to sin and unable to escape from sin's grasp.

Our problem is not merely that we do wrong things but that our hearts and minds are set on the wrong things. Our problem is not merely that we sin but that we are sinners. We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. The problem is worse than you think.

Three brief points of application from these verses. First, this is why true and valid arguments so often fail to persuade people to repent and believe. The problem isn't necessarily with your words. There is a deeper problem in their minds. The right words can never guarantee the right response.

Second, when we strive merely to change or improve ourselves, our efforts fail because they founder against our hard hearts. We cannot fix ourselves. We lack the power to fundamentally change ourselves. Christianity is not a religion of self-improvement. It is a religion of death and resurrection.

And it's a religion of death and resurrection as much of every individual Christian as it is of the death and resurrection of Christ. There comes a point at which every computer or phone passes beyond repair. You've replaced all the parts that can be replaced. You've done all that you can do to fix it. You bring it to the repair counter at the Apple store, or you bring it to an IT professional, and there's just nothing left for them to do.

That hard drive will not boot up again, the battery will not charge again. You need a new one. And the Bible teaches not that you need a new phone or a new computer, but that you need a new self. The problem is that radical and so is the solution.

Third, we need a solution that addresses our problem with God and our problem with ourselves. As we've just seen, we need a new nature. We need to be remade, slain and resurrected. We need to be rebuilt along whole new lines. We need to be filled with a power that we can't generate ourselves.

We need new desires implanted in us, desires whose seeds we could never find or buy or design. We need to be reprogrammed to have our whole operating system completely rewritten. We need someone outside ourselves to save us from ourselves. And we need a solution that addresses our problem with God. We can't please him.

We don't submit to him. We're at enmity with him. And there is nothing we can do to dig ourselves out of that hole.

Point two, much more briefly, What we are by God's grace. What we are by God's grace. These two verses we've just studied focus on the problem with fallen humanity, but the verses just before show us God's gracious solution. So this is what is now true of all who trust in Christ. Subpoint one, forgiven.

Look at verses one to three. And pardon me, I'm just going to get some water.

Romans 8:1-3, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.

By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. In his death on the cross, Jesus suffered the condemnation we deserved. By condemning Jesus to death, God condemned our sin in him. Jesus was sinless, but he suffered for our sin. Jesus died for our sin and rose again on the third day in order to make us new and to give us resurrection life with him.

All you need to do to receive this free gift of salvation is turn from sin and trust in Christ. If you're here today and you're not a follower of Christ, if you've never turned from sin and trusted in Him, repent of your sins and trust in Him to save you. Sub point two, freely submissive. What are we by God's grace? We are freely submissive.

Looking at Romans 8:2, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Freedom from earthly tyranny is a precious gift and a privilege that is worth celebrating and honoring with a holiday. It is worth laboring to preserve. It's worth laboring to extend. But it is far more precious to be set free from sin. By sending his Son to redeem us and then his Spirit to renew us, God has set us free from sin's inward tyranny.

He has enabled us to freely submit to him. As Paul says in Romans 6:17-18, But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness. Subpoint three, filled with the Spirit. What are we by God's grace? We're filled with the Spirit.

Look at verse four of Romans eight. God condemned sin in the flesh of Christ in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. By fallen nature, we can't please God, but by God's grace, through the gift of his Spirit, we can. God has not only forgiven our sins, he has transformed us so that we are not dominated by our sinful flesh, but filled with his Spirit. That sinful flesh has been crucified and we've been resurrected with Christ.

We're no longer dominated by sinful desires, but indwelt by God's own Spirit. God has not only made us in his image, he has remade us in his image, and he has given us his Spirit to enable us to live as his beloved and now obedient children. God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. That is the joyful message of the Lord's Supper, which we're about to celebrate. We could not liberate ourselves from slavery to sin.

We could never atone for our sins. We could never have made peace with God. But Christ did all of that by giving his body to be broken for us.

And His blood to be shed for us. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we thank youk that yout have not left us enslaved to sin and subject to condemnation, but yout have reconciled us to Yourself, forgiven our sins, and liberated us from slavery to sin. We pray now that you would be glorified and that we would be built up and encouraged as we commemorate Christ's dying love for us. In Jesus' name, Amen.