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We are continuing our study of Romans. Today and next Sunday we are going to be focusing on two aspects of the Christian faith. If Jesus is your Lord and Savior then number 1 your sin has been paid for and there is no condemnation upon you and number 2 you are now adopted into God's family and an heir with Christ. The story Les Miserables, has a scene where a man named Jean comes to a bishop seeking help because he is in trouble with the law. The bishop graciously accepts him, feeds him, and gives him a bed. While staying at the church he steals all the silver and runs away. Jean is caught and brought him before the bishop to return the silver. The bishop tells the police that Jean didn't steal the silver. He tells the police that the silver was a gift and in fact Jean forgot the candle sticks when he left. The police leave and the bishop tells the man to keep everything but instructs the man to use it to live a good life. When I hear the story it makes me think ‘yeah I was like Jean and God forgave me. God set me on a new path.' Amazingly, as we are going to see in Romans 8, we are much worse off than Jean and God's grace is more generously poured out than the grace of the bishop in the story. What do I mean? We are not on the run. We have stolen more than money can buy, are caught. We cannot plead, or get parole for good behavior. Our situation is unchangeable by anything we could try. Our expectation should be justice. Knowing that I have done the wrong and will suffer the consequence. Like Jean we expect to get what we deserve And God, God doesn't just suffer the inconvenience of robbery in order to give us a chance at a new life. God personally takes on all your sin, in order to give you a new life and make you a part of his family. I don't want to simply leave you with the truth that Jesus has made it so that you have no condemnation if you believe in him. The reason I don't want to leave you with that is because it is only half the truth. Not that it is a half-truth like a lie. But if I only tell you half of what God has done for you you will miss the whole thing. I remember when I was a young Christian I thought ‘boy, I am glad God saved me. Things could have been really bad for me.' A friend of mine would challenge me on this saying, "don't you know where you are headed?" And my reply was always, "I am just glad I don't have to worry about hell." And he would say, "you are going to go be with God and live where he lives and it will be amazing." At the time I wasn't able to wrap my mind around the whole thing, but I needed to hear it. I needed to be pointed to the goal. I was headed somewhere. And the life I lived was impacted by where I was going. God is at work in me leading me toward my destination. As he leads I am transformed and become more like the person I will be in the end. What does that look like? It looks like Jesus. We are becoming like him. And next week we will look at verses 16 and 17 which say, "we are the children of God, and if children then heirs-heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..." but before we get there we are going to begin where we left off last week, at Romans 8:1. You can turn with me to Romans 8. Can you please put up the slide of Romans 8:1? Thanks, let's all read together. And emphatically! Romans 8:1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Praise the Lord. Everyone loves to hear that there is now no condemnation because all is forgiven. Why? It is because we all need it. We all have burdens, we all have guilt, we all wish that at some point we could have gone back and done things differently than we did. Everyone has felt the effects sin has on us. Some don't label it sin but can certainly feel it and know that it is there. The thing that many people are not interested in hearing is that people find God's forgiveness in Christ alone. Why is that? Because they don't know this God. They don't know if he is trustworthy, they don't know if he kind or cruel, they don't know if he cares about us, they don't know if he is even there. Consider this, when oil was easy to get, it was sold cheaply and lots of people could afford to use it. Now oil is harder to get because of war and political unrest and resources and it is becoming expensive. Fewer people are able to afford to use it. If God is infinitely abundant why does it seem so few have Him working in their lives? People have a sense that if God is real He should have an impact on this world. And if He is good and He is working in this world in good ways we should see it. Thomas who believed in Jesus had to touch Jesus with his own hand to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. Doubt is a challenge for people who believe, so how much more of a challenge is it to believe in a God you don't know. So what is faith going to take? Is it simply that we need to walk around and convince people that God exists and that Jesus died on the cross for sins? No. God must be at work in us and in the world. People are not going to believe if you do all the work. People will believe when they see God at work in your life. I am talking about being a display for God's redemptive work. What do I mean? Look at verses 2-4. Romans 8:2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. This is our story. We are the people who were in bondage to sin and death. We didn't see the sin and death and say oo that's the one I want I will be enslaved to that. We were born into it. Stephen Curtis Chapman has a great song about remembering our chains are gone. It is talking about being bound in sin and then freed in Christ. The struggle is to not prefer the familiarity of the chains over the newness of the freedom. The hope the song talks about is the freedom Christ brings. Our lives are beautiful because of what Jesus does in us. Sometimes we confuse our story and talk about all the right things we did to get out of debt, or get back in shape, or work through a fight. Sometimes we think hey if people were more like me they could get through things too. They could turn their lives around if they just did what I tell them. But we are not the Savior. In verse 2 is says "through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free." Jesus is the Savior. Verse 3 says, "For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature," meaning that we cannot save ourselves. By pointing to all our efforts and our amazing wisdom we make ourselves the solution. But this is not the way we tell our story, because this is not our story. We have a God who saves, a God who redeems, a God who intercedes on our behalf. It continues, "God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering." God is the one who is doing the work. Scripture says God did; we didn't. How did he do it? He sent is Son, Jesus to be a sacrifice. And this next sentence is a little confusing, is says, "And so he condemned sin in sinful man." There is a footnote that says this could be translated, "in the flesh," which doesn't sound that helpful either. However, "in the flesh" might be a little easier to understand when we look at what Christ did. When he went to the cross he took on sin and died once for all sin. This passage is not saying that Jesus was a sinner, but that he took on sin when he died on the cross. So, "in the flesh" refers to Jesus on the cross in the flesh - taking on our sin. And the reason he did it was so that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us. This way God will deliver perfect justice and will be the one who saves. In Romans 3:26, Paul explained, Jesus was the sacrifice so that God could be both just and the justifier. This means that God does the work necessary to fulfill all righteousness, all justice and he is the one who provides the mercy, forgiveness, and righteousness for us. So what is our part in this? We are responsible to believe and repent, which means ask for forgiveness and turn from our sins. In 1 John, it says that, "if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). And we are responsible to live out the new life God is giving us. Verse 5 says, "Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires." This is how we live out the new life. We begin to look less to our own interests and more to God's interests. But what if we have the desire to do what God wants but don't know what that is? A couple of things can help, read the Bible, it's God's Word, it will tell you what he is like and will help you. It will not work like an encyclopedia but it will be a guide for you. And God has a church, which is a bunch of people He using to share his redemptive work. We all have stories of God working in our lives and we help remind each other of the gospel so that we can keep seeking him. Paul writes that the alternative to the life according to the Spirit is life according to sinful nature. He even describes what that life looks like. Romans 8:7 "the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. 8 Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." How can people be like this? How can there be only two options life by the Spirit or life by sinful nature, how can there be no gray area? Hostility or adoration Sinful man does not and cannot submit to God's law. Verse 8 says "those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God." What about Dahlia Lama? He doesn't seem like a very hostile man. If from verse 6, "the mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace," how can a peaceful man be considered hostile toward God? Who is this passage talking about? As we have seen throughout Romans, Paul only has to positions: in Christ or in sin. He makes that particularly clear when he compares Adam and Christ. The conclusion is that all are born into sin but if you are in Christ you are no longer enslaved to sin. So here in Romans 8 Paul again continues his examination of all humanity. The hardest thing about this passage is to keep God our ultimate reference point. It is very easy to simply look out and humanly judge whether someone is peaceful or hostile. But we don't always treat God like God when we judge. If the Dahlia Lama claims to be divine and promotes a way of life that leads people away from God then he would not be pleasing to God and would not have peace between himself and God. He could live peacefully with us but that would not change his relationship with God. Instead, our hope, our faith, our life is in Jesus. Paul concludes, 9 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. This is the gospel at work in our lives. When we read "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." This is not just a cancellation process. This is a transformative process. There is no condemnation, no death, no obligation to sinful nature. Through Christ's work we see our lives changed from death to life. Don't tell people that you got off drugs because you found out that they were bad for you and you thought it would be better to stop, when God took your life and gave you a new one. Tell people about the physical pain of quitting, the humility it took to trust others, the ridicule you received from old friends still in that way of life. And don't leave out how God has helped you. It won't make you look great. But hey our goal isn't to look great. Our lives are beautiful because of what Jesus does in us. I have a final story to read to you. It's about parents, a son, sin, sin, and redemption. The reason I am ending on this story is because I want you to take Romans 8:1 home knowing Jesus is your Savior who gives you life. I want you to instead of thinking of sin simply cancelled to realize you are transformed. And this very thing is the way we are going to live out our faith. We are not going to put ourselves forward as the saviors of the world. We are going to Christ forward. This story is about Christ's redemptive work in a family crisis. Read selection from War of Words. |
