Romans 8:1-13October 2, 2016
Pastor Lori Broschat
NOT GUILTY
Two years ago the longest wrongful conviction in the United States was overturned. Ricky Jackson spent 39 years in a county prison in Ohio for a murder he did not commit. He was convicted on the testimony of a 12-year-old boy who later confessed he had made the whole thing up. Unfortunately, eyewitness testimony may be enough to put someone away, guilty or not. It’s not like on television where crimes have to be solved and the guilty punished in under an hour.
The judicial system still may hold us in its sway, but we are freed from fear of conviction by God. There is no sentence we can serve from God if we serve Christ. He said as much in John’s gospel, “I assure you that whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and won’t come under judgment but has passed from death into life.”This is what Paul has been trying to say to us through seven chapters of Romans. Granted, he had to move slowly in order help us understand what brought us to the necessity of Christ’s death.
After crying out for rescue from the body of death that plagues us when we cannot turn from sin and live completely in the grace of God, now Paul begins a chapter where everything comes into focus. It is a chapter of great power and hope and one worth reading and re-reading until we have come to so strong a belief that whatever we allow our conscience in the words of our enemy to say to us will fade away like a whisper.
“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”I asked some people to give me their understanding of no condemnation and I heard a lot about forgiveness and repentance and freedom. One friend said, “Your job is to love. That’s it. If you don’t get it right, you can’t be condemned. You are loved. Always have been. Always will be. Regardless of how you stumble, mumble or fall.”
I think that says it about as well as Paul did. No longer are we faced with a conviction. To be condemned means to be prone to being taken down, like a property no longer fit for living. It places us under the authority of someone who can destroy us or force us into a life we did not choose. Does that sound like anything God would do to us?
No. God had the opportunity to place us under a sentence of death and remove us from His presence, but instead He offered us a substitute. He gave His Son to die and to destroy the effect of sin on the cross so that we could be set free to live within a new relationship with God and with others. We are emerging from the darkness of sin and judgment into the prospect of the glory of God which some day we are to share.
This is the power of the Holy Spirit at work. A new era has opened and what used to be true is no longer relevant. If Christ is the dynamic of the life lived in union with Him, it is impossible for us to remain where we are. Experience becomes the record of progress. Our life in Christ is such that our true lreationship with God is never irrevocably broken. We may fall, but we are less likely to utterly fail.[1]
We have to acknowledge, however, that this process of being freed from the law through the death of Christ and the acceptance by God has more to it than can be summed up in a few sentences of Scripture. Paul needs us to realize that we play a big part in how the result of Christ’s death looks to the world. We are the proof that God’s defeat of sin was and is real and still standing to this day. How we do this depends on what we chose to believe.
As one source says, “There is little possibility of holiness until one has the joyful assurance that his sins have been forgiven and that he has peace with God. Many Christians, however, need to be assured that guilt no longer rests upon them because of the sinful nature of which they are so painfully conscious.”[2]
When Paul writes that the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death, it is because Christ did what was impossible for the law to accomplish because it was weak due to our selfishness. We trade one type of law for another, another way of life for another. We trade the law of the Spirit of life for the law of sin and death. Believe it or not, some people would prefer sin and death because they can wrap their minds around that. Spiritual matters are beyond what most people are comfortable with.
The effects of this declaration of freedom from condemnation only last until we get to verses five and six, because then Paul begins to comment on what happens when we allow ourselves to be distinguished by our behavior. “People whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things, but people whose lives are based on the Spirit think about things that are related to the Spirit. The attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death, but the attitude that comes from the Spirit leads to life and peace.”
On what do we base our lives? Is it the self or is it the Spirit? Basing our lives on something is crucial to correct behavior, to enable discipline and obedience. We can’t flip flop back and forth at any time we want. Our will, thoughts, and our emotions team up with our assumptions, our values, our desires and our purposes to manufacture a life that is either deeply indulgent or deeply devoted.
This is very important because we might be more influenced by those things on which we base our lives than by the leading of God. I’m going to take a chance and say we are often more influenced by earthly things. That’s why advertising works so well. They know how to use our desires and values even to the detriment of our own thoughts. Just like sin does. Sin knows what you want and it knows how to make you get it!
This gets even more compelling as you read in different versions of the Bible. Truthfully they should be accurate enough to the original text that the meaning is not lost, but sometimes it takes a few comparisons to really turn the lightbulb on. Case in point is this paraphrase printed in the 1960s. “Because the old sinful nature within us is against God. It never did obey God’s laws and it never will.”It was a vicious circle, going around and around. Why would we want to hang on to something that takes us nowhere?
We have no obligation to our old sinful nature. We do, however, have an obligation to God because if we have said yes to Him and welcome to Christ, then the Spirit of God has also come along to make our transformation and His purpose complete. In order to do that we have to believe what Paul is telling us about what God has made possible in our lives. One verse says it all for me, “People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God.”What he meant by that was that if you remain without a sense of guilt or repentance you can’t receive God’s blessing.
It helps to have a sense of your own ridiculousness when you are an adult, but as a child it is harder to get past the sense of fear caused by the presence of authority in your life. When I was in grade school, probably about 8 years old, a neighbor girl and I were at my house and for whatever childish reason we decided to get up to some what I would call innocent fun. Had it been my child I probably wouldn’t feel that way, but there you are!
We made what used to be called prank phone calls. You remember the type, calling up someone to ask if their refrigerator was running, then telling them they better go catch it. I guess it’s the thrill of getting away with something that makes kids do things they know they shouldn’t. On this occasion, though, we didn’t get away with it. Well, at least I didn’t because it was my house.
The last phone call we placed unknowingly connected us to the police station. The person who answered just kept the line open while we complained and told them to “stop hogging the phone line.” You know how police felt about the association with pigs in the 1970s. My friend felt a sense of doom and took off for home. I hide under the bed until I heard a knock at the door.
I want to specify that I was alone, both parents at work, and I did not answer the door, but the officers came in all the same. Now I know that was not legal, but as a kid what I did know was that I was scared, especially when they told me I could be charged with a felony and put in jail. Did I mention I was probably 8 years old? My parents were probably more upset with the police than with me once I explained what happened.
This experience left me frightened, guilty, and formed my negative opinion of law enforcement for a long time. The law and those promised to defend it literally became a source of fear for me. I have a healthy respect for the law but in our current social climate I have some lack of respect for those who are sworn to protect and serve.
If I had a fear of retribution from God as I had from the laws of this country I would never make it as a Christian. How could anyone live that way? We have been freed from our sinfulness and only we can choose to cling to it. No one can make us do that. At some point we have to agree that we have grown up and shaken off the old regrets of the past. There is only potential ahead of us.
A favorite television series of mine from a few years back dealt with the contrast of good versus evil on a regular basis. A lot of philosophy, theology, and psychology went into the writing of this series and its characters were anything from perfect. In fact, the more flawed they were, the more intrigued I was by them.
In an actual battle of good versus evil two brothers discussed what the nature of human kind was. The brother who personified evil said, “They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.” His brother, supposedly the one who represented good answered, “It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”
Maybe this is an apt description of what happens in our lives once we have grasped on to the salvation and forgiveness offered through Christ. Our life only ends once, the physical life we have been given. The time that we will come before the throne of God is unknown to us, so we have the choice of how we will spend that time. Is this what God wants us to be learning, that anyting that happens before we die is just progress?
We can choose the Spirit who wants to put to death the actions of the self, thereby bringing life, or we can choose to live to self and die to the Spirit. The choice is ours but once we’ve been declared not guilty why would we keep racking up offenses again? Why would we choose to venture into something as pointless and childish as placing a prank phone call that might lead not to punishment, but in our advanced technological world could lead to our demise if someone can find us?
If we live on the basis of selfishness we are going to die. But if by the Spirit we put to death the actions of the body, we will live. This is all spiritually speaking, of course, because our lives will end either way. The difference is how we live and what effect that has on the world versus how we die and what effect that has on us. Death is inevitable, but life eternal is optional.
If you know the story of Les Miserable you likely remember how the criminal once hardened by prison and persecution, Jean Valjean, received mercy at the hands of the bishop from whom he stole because that’s all the skills he had left in the world. When caught with the silver from the bishop’s residence and returned in handcuffs, instead of an accusation from the clergyman he received more silver to sell and a proposition to accept.
In the latest film version of this story, after the police are satisfied and leave, the bishop says to Jean Valjean, “And remember this, my brother, see in this some higher plan. You must use this precious silver to become an honest man. By the witness of the martyrs, by the Passion and the Blood, God has raised you out of darkness. I have bought your soul for God!”
God has bought our souls and He won’t let them go to waste. We aren’t guilty in God’s eyes unless we put ourselves right back in service to the law, a law which was weak when applied to our selfishness. The Spirit of God dwells in the Christian. All may not yield themselves in equal measure to the influence of the Spirit; some may more frequently grieve Him and disobey Him, but he never leaves the Christian.[3]
[1]The Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, pg. 506
[2]Erdman, Charles R., The Epistle of Paul to the Romans, pg. 83
[3]Ibid, pg. 85