Romans 8:1-13 Holy Spirit Series

WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

 

We all struggle with our sins. The voices in our heads keep telling us that we are failures at this Christianity thing. You resolve to do better and then fall into the same pit of bad decisions. Do you feel that no matter how hard you try, you are just not good enough to be called “Christian”? At the end of each day, do you feel like you have a new list of sins to confess to God? Are you living under a weight of judgment?

            Martin Luther knew how you felt. He lived 500 years ago in Germany and felt a great sense of condemnation under God before discovering the writings of Paul in Romans. He wrote:

Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I also could not believe that I had pleased him with my works. Far from loving that righteous God who punished sinners, I actually loathed him. I was a good monk and kept my order so strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was that monk. All my companions in the monastery would confirm this . . .. And yet my conscience would not give me certainty, but I always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite enough. You left that out of your confession.” 

                  Luther spent an average of 6 hours a day confessing his sins to a priest. One of his confessors finally told him, “If you expect Christ to forgive you, come in with something to forgive – patricide, blasphemy, adultery—instead of all these peccadilloes.” 

            Do you feel guilt like Luther did? In one sense that’s good. You recognize that you need the cross of Jesus. But in another sense, your knowledge of Christ is incomplete. Or shall we say that your knowledge of what Christ has done for you is lacking the result of the cross. 

            Our struggle with sin is real. We need to deal with sin. But the truth of Romans 8 will set you free. God gives us freedom through Christ to live a new life. And God gives his Holy Spirit to live that new life. It has been said that Romans 8:1 is the greatest verse in the Bible; let’s see if that’s true.

 

Freedom in the Spirit (8:1-4)

 

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” (1). When someone like Paul was writing in Greek, the construction of a sentence was organized so that the most important word was first. What’s the first word in this sentence? “No.” And not just “no,” the word Paul used is a very strong “no.” You might say it like this: “There is no condemnation – none whatsoever – for the believer in Christ Jesus.” That doesn’t mean we don’t have cause for God to condemn us. But he won’t because of our faith in Christ.

            Let’s back up a bit. In Romans 7, Paul described the human experience of sin. God gave the law through Moses to Israel after the exodus so that they would know how God wanted them to live. But the law was unable to keep the Israelites on the path (Murray & me: My brother and I visited the historic site where Custer was overwhelmed by Sitting Bull's Lakota and Cheyenne warriors. Signs told visitors to stay on the path, but my brother wanted to explore. I told him to obey the signs. He balked at that. I said that I was not going to pay the $500 fine when the rangers caught him. He relented. The reason for the law was twofold: a) to prevent killing the fragile ecosystem of the grasslands, and b) to avoid being bitten by rattlers). Instead of maintaining a God-pleasing life, the law provoked them to sin. The “flesh” of Israel was overcome by sin and rebellion, and they could not respond to the law (7:18). 

            Paul did something interesting in Romans 7. He speaks in the first person “I,” but he’s speaking about Israel. He says, “I do not do what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate,” (7:15). It’s a very graphic picture of a man wrestling with sin and finding that he can’t win. He finally cries out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And then answers, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:24-25).

            Why? Because through Jesus Christ, God has solved the problem of sin. What we could not do, God did through Jesus. Paul explains what God did in five expressions:

“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,” (3-4). 

            The law of sin and death (2) is this: that all who sin must die. There is nothing you can do to escape this punishment. It is unpopular to say, be we deserved this death. But God found a way to rescue us by sending his Son Jesus. Jesus was given over to death as a sacrifice to end our struggle with sin. He was condemned in our place and there is therefore “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!” 

            Now we can walk according to the Spirit…

 

Set Your Mind on the Spirit (8:5-8 on slide)

 

There is no condemnation, but there is a conflict between the flesh and the Spirit. If you look at these verses, you see three words repeated: flesh, Spirit, and mind. What does Paul mean be these words? 

            The “flesh” is not the soft, muscular tissue which coats our bony skeleton, nor does it refer to our bodily instincts and appetites. When Paul uses “flesh” he refers to the whole of our humanness corrupted as it is by our fallen nature. 

            The Spirit is the Holy Spirit. We have a choice to make. Even though God has done an amazing thing in taking away our condemnation, we are responsible to choose how we will live in light of that grace. 

            To set our minds on something is to make that something the absorbing objects of our thoughts, interests, affections, and purpose. To have your mind set on something is what you seek or desire in life – your focus. 

            When you are learning to drive, the driving instructor tells you to look ahead or keep your eyes on the road. We have a tendency to drive towards what you look at. It’s like the excuse for an accident one fellow gave, “I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law, and headed over the embankment.” Keep your focus on the road.

            Focus on the things of the Spirit. The Spirit’s focus is Jesus. Our focus is living like Jesus lived. The enemy is the flesh. The mind set on the flesh is a life dominated by sinful human nature where the focus is “self.” It takes what it wants. It gives in to passion and pride and ambition. It is Christless. The mind set on the Spirit is dominated by Christ Jesus. The air this person breathes is Jesus. His or her mind has Christ in the center, and they have their feet aimed at his likeness. 

 

Life in the Spirit (8:9-11)

 

Paul ceases to speak in the third person and now directs his words at his readers very personally. He wrote, “You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you…” (9a).

            John Stott commented on this truth saying, “…the Christian life is essentially life in the Spirit, that is to say, a life which is animated, sustained, directed, and enriched by the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit true Christian discipleship would be inconceivable, indeed impossible.” 

            You cannot follow Jesus if you don’t have the Holy Spirit. “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him,” (9b). Put positively, you have the Holy Spirit if you believe in Jesus. But Paul’s purpose is to say that God has put his Spirit in people who believe in Jesus and that Spirit is life.

            That may surprise you, especially if you or someone you love is a believer and they are facing illness or even death. If it is true that the life-giving Spirit dwells in us, why are our bodies still subject to decay and death. This condition is due to our sin. Our bodies are experiencing the effects of an old era, the old life dominated by sin. These bodies are contaminated by the sinful nature and sin leads to death.

            However, these bodies may die, but God will raise them up and transform them. Paul alludes to this when he wrote, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you,” (11). Paul would tell the Ephesians that the same power that worked to raise Jesus from the dead is (here the present tense) at work in you (1:19-20). Though your body is dying, yet the Spirit works life in you preparing you for the kingdom to come. 

 

So then…Live by the Spirit (8:12-13) 

 

Okay then, what does it matter? If you have the Spirit in you and God gave you the Spirit and you are not condemned…so what? Do we need to do anything? 

            Paul’s argument has been balanced in the essence of what God does for us and what we do in response. The first section (1-4) talked about God doing for us what we could not do in fulfilling the law; then Paul urged us to “set our minds on the Spirit” or to focus on pleasing God. (5-8); Paul turned again to the life that God gives to us through his Spirit (9-11); and now, Paul puts the responsibility back on us…

            “So then…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,” (12-13).

            For me, the key word is “debtors.” I read a Puritan prayer this week that said it so well: the more grace I enjoy, the more I owe to God. We have been so miraculously saved from the sinful nature, from a life headed for hell, from the tyranny of the law we could not obey, by our God who lavishly, extraordinarily, heaped on us love and grace in the giving of his Son, Jesus Christ, how could we not live a life of gratitude to our Heavenly Father? We are indeed debtors! 

            Our responsibility looks like this: 1) We need to put into effect the new life God gives us; 2) We need to allow the Holy Spirit to power that life – we cannot stop sinning on our own strength; and 3) Paul never suggests that we will immediately stop sinning, but that we engage in a process of killing sin in ourselves, becoming less like the world and more like Christ. 

            Do you see that? God has done all of this for us. Our response is to work at putting sin to death with the help of the Holy Spirit. Putting sin to death looks like this:

Recognizing evil as evil. This will lead to such a decisive and radical repudiation of it that it is essentially killing it. I think the dramatic imagery is fitting for what we need to do.

We are responsible for putting evil/sin to death. Jesus said to “take up your cross” and walk to the place of execution with him. It is deliberate and intentional in putting our selfishness to death. As Martin Lloyd-Jones said, “We have to pull it out, look at it, denounce it, hate it for what it is; then you have really dealt with it.” 

Fulfill our obligation. We have an obligation to the indwelling Holy Spirit who gives us life to live a life that corresponds to that life. Putting to death the deeds of the body leads to life.

 

Is the Christian life hard? No, it’s not hard. It’s impossible! It’s impossible to live the Christian life on your own. The Holy Spirit makes all the difference. He is your Paraclete, the One who comes alongside to help you live for Christ. 

            But life begins with this: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why is it so hard for us to feel like we’re free from condemnation? 

The New York Times featured a story about a 51-year-old ex-convict named Robert Salzman. After a horrific childhood, Salzman spent most of his adult life in prison. When he was released from prison in 2001, Salzman found it difficult to enjoy freedom outside prison walls, struggling to pay rent or doing stints in homeless shelters.

Finally, in June of 2010 Salzman had a grace-like experience. While he was riding a New York City subway car, he was “found” by Rashaad Ernesto Green, a writer and director who was searching for someone to play a tough-looking former convict for an upcoming film. After an audition, Green surprised nearly everyone when he gave Salzman a key role for the film.

On one occasion, while filming with Green on location in a Long Island penitentiary, an exhausted Salzman fell asleep on a cot in the prison cell. When he woke up, he became confused and thought he was still a prisoner. Salzman started weeping in despair … until it slowly dawned on him that he was now a free man. Salzman was overwhelmed by the joy of knowing that at any moment he could walk out of that cramped cell and through the prison doors. On the other side of the prison walls, he could enjoy his new life of freedom.

As those who trust in Christ, regardless of our past, we can leave our slavery to sin and condemnation as we joyfully step into our freedom in Christ. “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).

 

                                                                        AMEN