Better Men 4: Sons of God Walking By The Spirit of God (Romans 8:1-18)
Good morning. This morning, we’re going to conclude our section on the healthy heart of a man.
For the last several weeks, we’ve been learning that we need to confess a better Lord. We’ve learned how to commune with God: that communion with God is a daily practice of syncing our lives with the will of the Father. And today, we get to uncover what the Bible teaches as the daily practice and the daily power for that journey.
I’ve titled this teaching “Sons of God Walking by the Spirit of God.”
Here is the big idea: you are a son, not a slave, so walk like one, and when you stumble, don’t hide.
To do this, I want to do three things:
Show you that you are a son and not a slave
Call you to walk like a son in the power of the Holy Spirit
Discuss what you do when you stumble
Let’s Pray
1. You Are a Son
The New Testament ties our sonship tightly with being indwelt by the Spirit.
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 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!’
Just a quick reminder, when we read sons in the Bible, we are not excluding women. Sons were the heirs, and in Christ every believer, daughters included, receives a son’s full inheritance (Gal. 3:26–29).
Sonship is also tied to our union with Jesus. To be full of the Holy Spirit is to have Christ in you, to be united to Him. And that union, that relationship, brings us into an inseparable family tie, where God becomes your Father, and you become His son and an heir of God.
Some theologians have argued that this is one of the primary points of the entire New Testament: not just that we have been forgiven, that the penalty has been paid, but that we have been reconciled to the Father, and adopted into His family through our faith in Jesus and our union with Him (J.I. Packer, Knowing God).
Why is this so important for us men? What does sonship have to do with healthy hearts?
We regularly find ourselves not walking the way we want as Christians. We respond out of two ways of thinking. 1) Like slaves 2) Like sons
Story: Hiding or running to Dad
One of the most tragic things for me as a dad is when my kids do something wrong and they hide from me. It happens all the time. There’s a potty mistake. They’ve done something they know they’re not supposed to do. They’ve broken something. And what do they do? They hide in shame. What’s so tragic about that for me is that as a dad, I recognize in that moment that they do not believe I will receive them. They’re fearful of my response.
Now, sometimes my son Shepherd will come to me with soiled pants in hand: “Daddy, I pooped.” Though I sadly sometimes get mad at him. I love that he’s confident to come to me, because he knows I’m going to receive him no matter what. I’m going to welcome him into my presence, and I’m going to help him with the problem.
In the story of the prodigal son, we get one of the most profound examples of the relationship God wants with us, but also see the sad way we often approach God.
At rock bottom, the younger son rehearses his reunion speech “treat me as one of your hired servants” (15:19).
The older son complains, “these many years I have served you” (15:29).
Both sons relate to their father like slaves, but the Father runs to one and goes out to plead with the other.
When we don’t believe and relate to God like that, we’re acting like slaves, in a spirit of fear. We’re acting like we need to earn the approval and love of our master, rather than living in the reality that we have been given this identity as children of God through Jesus who belong and have been received already and thus we are powerless.
Men, I think this is extremely common for us. For most of my childhood and teens, I struggled to believe that God received me as His child no matter what I did, that I could not earn His love, until he let me hit rock bottom and taught me to embrace my inability to win the war on my own, and that the way forward is not more of my work of earning, but rather more relationship with Him. It’s not to work for His approval, but to work from that place of approval, from that relationship with Him.
Slaves earn. Sons enjoy.
Slaves try harder. Sons abide.
Slaves hide. Sons run home.
I want to jump into Romans 8 and really try to unpack this identity as sons in Christ and how this Spirit-empowered battle really works.
Romans 8:1–2 “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.”
The law of sin and death was the principle that defined our lives. We were slaves under sin and death. Paul has just described that slavery in chapter 7: “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate… Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:15, 24).
But something set us free: the law of the Spirit of life, leading to no condemnation.
Get those three words: “in Christ Jesus.” In Jesus, through faith in Him, a transformation happens where we no longer operate under the law of sin and death, but under the Spirit of life.
There’s a new union, a new filling, a new identity, and so a new pattern to walk in the Spirit as sons. We’re no longer condemned, and we no longer need to try to earn our way into God’s favor. We are in Christ Jesus, and we operate now under the Spirit of life.
Romans 8:3–4 “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 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.”
This shows us the transaction that brought us into this relationship with Jesus. God did what the law could not do. The law could never accomplish this relationship with God for us, because we could never be righteous under the law. We couldn’t do it. Our flesh was weakened. We were all born with a sin nature in Adam. Sinful flesh means sin nature. The physical body is lead by our sin nature.
But God sent the Son, born in the flesh. He came into the world and lived like us, but He never sinned. He was born of a virgin, the second Adam without a sin nature, who could live differently than us.
From birth until death, Jesus lived the righteous requirement of the law, so that all of it could be fulfilled once and for all for us. He aligned his life fully to the will of his Father in the power of the Spirit.
And then He took our place, our death, our penalty on the cross so that the Law’s just consequences could be satisfied, the Father’s wrath appeased.
The substitutionary atonement of Jesus secured for us through our faith in Jesus, a righteous standing and record with God. We are justified, and made righteous. God’s righteous requirement is fulfilled in us. There is no more condemnation, because the righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us through Jesus, completely.
But notice: this is not just a past thing, but also a present thing. The righteous requirement of the law is fulfilled in us “who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
It’s been fulfilled once and for all in our relationship with Jesus.
And it enables us to walk in the power of the Spirit, so that we can actually fulfill the law, so that we can actually walk in sync with the Lord.
[warmly] It’s doubly true that there’s no condemnation for us in Jesus. We are set free from the penalty of sin, and we are set free from our slavery to sin to walk in newness of life in the power of the Spirit. This is the sanctification process.
Hear me: there is no sanctification without this union with Jesus and adoption into the family as children. This is what Paul goes on to explain. This is the way we increasingly sync our lives with God’s will. Paul makes it plain in verse 9: “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” The defining reality is no longer the old man, but the new man.
Romans 8:14–17 “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 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!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 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.”
[pause]
Do you see how clearly it shows us that we who are walking by the Spirit of God are sons of God?
This new identity that is ours means that we no longer walk in a spirit of slavery, falling back into fear, wondering if God approves of us, wondering if we can be enough for Him, and sending us into more try hard behavior.
Instead, it gives us a Spirit that cries out, “Abba! Father!”
So we have become sons of God through our faith in Jesus. And ultimately, we cannot obey God unless we have become adopted children of God, indwelt with His Holy Spirit, who enables us to become more like Jesus our older brother and thus like our heavenly Father.
Sons don’t obey to earn the Father’s love. Instead, we obey because we enjoy Him, because we want to be like Him, because we have been united to him like a tree planted by living streams of water or a branch to a grape vine. Slaves earn. Sons enjoy.
2. So Walk Like One
Now, the call for a son is to walk like one. How? In the power of the Spirit.
We just concluded with those words: “provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
There is coming a day when we will shed this mortal body of flesh. We will be glorified and renewed, unable to sin any longer, which is why with all creation, we groan as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:22–23). But Paul assures us as we enter the fight that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).
But now we suffer like Jesus. Being in Christ Jesus gives us access to His way of life and we enter into a process of suffering that He endured. There is a war we are in right now. The flesh, the old man, has been crucified with Christ. That’s already true.
Yet that old man wants to rear its head. There’s a war between the flesh and the new way of the Spirit.
So we still need to be charged in Scripture to walk by the Spirit.
Galatians 5:16–17: “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”
Ultimately, walking by the Spirit is a call to walk in step with the identity we’ve been given as sons of God.
Two ways to set your mind
In this battle we’ve entered into, we can either walk according to the flesh or according to the Spirit, and Paul describes both.
Romans 8:5 “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.”
Let’s talk about the things of the flesh we can set our minds on. Galatians 5:19–21 gives us a thorough list:
Sexual immorality: anything and everything immoral about sex. Taking pleasure where it’s not meant to be taken, like masturbation. Lustful thinking or fantasy, adulterous relationships, pornography, fornication, sex outside of marriage. You get more of this in words like impurity and sensuality.
Idolatry: the worship of false gods, and also of other gods like comfort, money, power, or the approval of man. Paul keeps on that idolatry thread with sorcery: giving yourself to spiritual activity that is not of God, but of the flesh.
Relational works of the flesh: enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy.
The list concludes with drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
Our flesh is extremely prone to take pleasure in its own way, and extremely prone to divisive relational behavior. Ultimately, the flesh welcomes you into all manner of activity that gives you pleasure, power, and influence whenever you want, without thought of God.
Think of the Venn diagram again. Instead of aligning your life to God’s will, walking by the flesh or setting your minds on things of the flesh is to resist God’s will. It’s hostile to God (Rom. 8:7). It is so unlike God that it is hostile to Him. It does not please Him. It is evil to Him because it is not like him.
[slow down]
Galatians 5:21 “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
This is the fruit of walking in the flesh: it’s death. “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:6).
Death in this world, and death eternally: greater and eternal separation from God, as our circles go further and further apart.
But listen: those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. And what are the things of the Spirit?
Galatians 5:22–23 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
Notice the words the “fruit of the Spirit”. What kind of fruit comes from the tree of the Spirit? These things. These are the things that align with God’s will. It’s everything you see in Jesus who is the radiance of the glory of God. The Spirit of God highlights the character of the son of God who shows us the glory of the Father.
I want to show you how this good fruit answers the works of the flesh:
Self-control wars against sexual sensuality and immorality. It wars against drunkenness and gluttony.
Love and joy war against idolatry. Joy stirs up contentment with what God gives. It doesn’t seek idols outside of God. It seeks the contentment that comes from being found in Him.
Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness answer the relational works of the flesh. They look like God in how He interacts with us.
And Paul says, “against such things there is no law.” The Spirit of life doesn’t put you under a burden. Instead, as a Spirit-filled son we are called to walk out of an overflow of our identity and from the power of the Spirit as we align our hearts and our minds with God’s, Ultimately, God’s truth, goodness, and beauty, then, can overflow to others.
Hear this. A good tree never has to work super hard to bear good fruit, because the roots are good. A house built on the right foundation stands steady; the rooms don’t have to work to stand, because they’re set on a good foundation. Everything we’ve been talking about with a healthy heart begins with coming to God: coming to your Lord, your Master, and allowing Him to transform you from the inside out not working in your own strength to fix your problems. What this means is that:
We don’t have to strive to be more joyful people. As we meditate on the reality that we have been adopted into His family, joy will arise in our hearts.
You don’t have to keep gritting your teeth to be more patient as a parent. The more we meditate on who God is and who we are in Him, the more our hearts will be patient with others, the way He is with us.
You don’t have to lead alone. The more we depend on the Spirit’s leadership, the more we will follow and lead in his footsteps.
The harder we work in our own strength to be faithful, the more frustrating and shame-producing it’s going to be. But the more we meditate on God’s faithfulness, the more we will live in the freedom the Spirit of life has brought us into, overflowing His character and His light into the world around us.
Put to death
So then, here’s the call:
Romans 8:12–13 “So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
We are indebted not to the flesh, but to God, who gave His very life so that we could be set free.
[strong]
This isn’t fluffy language, to put to death the works of the flesh. This is go to war, put your armor on, get ready, stand firm. By the Spirit, put to death the deeds of the body.
Our mortal bodies are still marked by sin, and they’re going to constantly try to take on those same flesh patterns. But they won’t stay that way: the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead “will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11). But for now, we must fix our hearts and minds on God through daily communion, through daily aligning our hearts with Him, replacing the old ways of the flesh with the new ways of the Spirit, meditating on who God is, what He loves, and how He ordered the world, and what he created us to be. As we do, there will be a death to the old man, and a walking in increasing alignment with God’s will.
When the temptations come, and they will, choosing to walk in the Spirit looks like this.
Remember who you are (“I’m a son”).
Cry “Abba” (a one-line prayer for help).
Step toward the light (text a brother or remove yourself from the tempting situation).
So what are you going to allow to rule you? The flesh? Or the Spirit of God, who dwells in you and has given you new life? We must live by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25).
Check your pulse
[direct]
I want to encourage you here, men, to check your pulse.
Galatians 5:24 “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
When we say, “Jesus, You are Lord, and I’m going to obey You,” our old man went to the cross with Jesus, and we were raised to new life with Him.
Yes, we’ll have old habits, old thoughts, old memories, a world around us, and the devil tormenting and tempting us.
But brothers, we should be walking in increasing faithfulness. “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16). We grow increasingly to be like our Father. And that is our greatest joy.
But If you’re not growing in the likeness of God and increasingly putting to death the works of the flesh, then there’s a problem.
Either you are not truly in Christ and have not truly submitted to Him as Lord, or you’re still operating in your own flesh, trying to do things in your own strength. Slaves try harder. Sons abide.
If Christ is in you, there should be an increasing desire to look like our Father, to be transformed from one degree of glory to the next. And if that is not the passion of your heart, to become like Him, then there is a problem. You need to repent.
But hear this, brothers: the pulse you’re checking for isn’t perfection, but renewed passions and increasing transformation as you walk with God.
So this is the healthy heart, men: you confess Jesus as Lord. You commune with Him daily. You walk in step with His Spirit as a son. And when the Spirit convicts you, you repent, you believe the gospel again, and you receive forgiveness again, and ask God for strength to obey him in everything. This pattern will continue until we see Him face to face.
Why this matters for men
[build intensity]
Here’s why this matters so much for us, brothers. If we don’t walk by the Spirit, we are powerless.
If we allow the flesh to rule us, we will have nothing to offer our families, nothing to offer our churches, or the lost world.
We’ll just continue the cycles we’ve always continued: snapping at our children, falling into the same impurity patterns that damage our marriages. Endless scrolling in bed, passivity with your wife, needing approval at work. No vision. No faithfulness. No hard work and productivity. When our hearts are unhealthy we just keep needing to go to others for shelter and can never become a shelter to others.
When our hearts are unhealthy because we are given to fleshly activity, we will not be salty and bright light in our communities. We’ll be just like them.
But God loves you too much for this. If you’re His child, He convicts you. He disciplines you. He draws you to Himself, because He’s a good Father.
[softer, turn to hope]
Satan ultimately wants to lead you men into seasons of shame that take the legs out from under you. He wants to make you a powerless man. But God wants to empower you to do what you truly want to do: to bear fruit for His name in this world, to daily die to yourself in your home, with your marriage, with your kids, and in your workplace, to live unto Him, and to find that His ways are right and good and true and beautiful.
3. When You Stumble, Don’t Hide
Our communion with God is not isolated. We are not in this alone. When we were united to Jesus, we were united to a body, a body who can help us when they see us in sin. Right after Paul speaks of ”keeping in step with the Spirit”, he writes in Galatians that if a brother is caught in sin, those who are spiritual should restore him gently and bear one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:1–2). And that’s what we need, men. We need the body of Christ to help when we fail.
[strong]
So, men, I want to call you to war: to make war on your sin that wants to entangle you, cripple you, and keep you from being powerful men in the Spirit. And I want to call you to that war in community.
When you stumble, don’t hide. Remember what Paul said: you “did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear” (Rom. 8:15).
A slave who fails hides, because he fears punishment. He doesn’t believe he is received and loved by his Father.
But a son runs to his Father, which enables us to get help in the community.
[pause]
Think back to my kids hiding after they’ve done something wrong. When they hide, they’re acting like slaves, afraid I won’t receive them. But they’re my kids, and I don’t want them to hide from me. I want them to come to me, like the prodigal son ran to his dad (Luke 15:20). That’s what your Father wants from you.
So when you fall, don’t fall back into fear. Cry out to God as Abba. Come into the light, and let your brothers help restore you. Slaves hide. Sons run home.
When we open our mouths and say, “This is not who I am, and yet I walked in it,” we bring it into the light. Christ shines on that area, and our brothers can come around us, help us, and bear our burdens in love.
What confession looks like
Specific. Not “I lusted this week,” but where, when, and what happened. Name the specific. Passivity? No. I was scared to lead and binged tv instead.
Quick. The longer you wait, the more you justify it in your mind, and the more it creates destructive patterns in your heart and life.
With an action plan. When a pattern emerges, cut off the inputs that lead you there (late-night TV, YouTube, the phone in bed) and replace them with inputs that help you walk by the Spirit. This goes back to communion and lordship: “Jesus, You are Lord of my entertainment, my private moments, all of it.” Sometimes this requires study, accountability, or something intensive like Freedom Road.
A simple pattern for confessing to a brother:
What did I do?
What was I believing or wanting?
What’s my next step?
[transition]
Tonight, we’re going to talk in depth about what that confession of sin looks like when we’re not keeping in step with the Spirit: how we get back onto the right path and keep in step with the Spirit.
So I’m going to close with this: you are a son, so walk like one, in the power of the Spirit He has given. And when you fall, which we all will, do not run or hide. Come back to your Father. Put yourself in relationship with Him, and allow Him to take you into deeper communion with Him and deeper dependence on His Spirit. We’re not doing it alone.
As you do that, you will change. You will get your heart back and get your heart healthy. You will grow. This is the power we’ve been given in order that we might build healthy lives, households, and churches in the cities and beyond.
[invite the men to pray]
Father, I pray that You would do this for my friends and for me: that these men would not be led by the flesh, but would walk in step with the Holy Spirit, out of an overflow of the approval You’ve given them and the identity as sons that belongs to them.
Renew our hearts and our minds as we say yes to Your lordship, as we surrender the things we cling to. Would You help us? In any areas where we’ve held back from You, lead us to repent of those things and give them to You.
Search us, and lead us in the way everlasting (Ps. 139:23–24). Show us if there is any grievous way in us, any area of the flesh that’s hindering us, stunting our growth, and hurting our families.
Father, mature us into Your image. Help us to keep in step with Your Spirit, and give us the boldness to come into the light when we fall, as sons and not as slaves. We need You. In Jesus’ name, amen.