Sunday Sermon - 12 July
If you were in church last week you heard Paul say that he is a mystery to himself. That he does not do the things he wants to do and the things he doesn’t want to do, he does.
We don’t live up to the expectations we have of ourselves, let alone the expectations others have of us. This is the human condition and it is the situation Christians find themselves in. While it is true that coming to faith in Christ touches all of life – our relationships with others, with ourselves, with our possessions, how we spend our money and our time – yet we still find that we fall short of the life Jesus calls us into. I don’t want to overstate the problem but I also don’t want to give the impression that when we say “yes” to Jesus everything is smooth sailing as we move from one victory to another. We all know that that is not true either. There is an inner battle.
While the battle is ongoing, we know that there is always hope in Jesus. We are not destined to remain stuck with an affliction or undesirable behaviour, like a hamster in a hamster wheel, for the rest of our earthly life. There is hope. Things can be different. There is growth in the Christian life.
What are we to do? Who will rescue us? Paul’s answer to that is, ‘Jesus will rescue us.’ In fact, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8: 1-11)
Do you know what it is like to be judged and condemned? Have you ever had the sense that someone is judging you? It is as though you will never quite measure up, that you are always falling short and doing or saying the wrong thing. It is a terrible feeling. This is particularly difficult if it is a parent who gives his or her child the message that they don’t measure up. Some people spend their entire lives trying to prove to their parents that they are acceptable.
After I stumbled out of high school and before I dared to enter an academic institution I went to France to work as an au pair – looking after a 5-year-old girl first and then an 8-year-old boy. I distinctly recall having conversations with locals (in French) where I would surprise myself with how the words just came tripping off my tongue (almost like the Day of Pentecost). Then, at other times, I stumbled and stammered. A big part of the difference was the person I was talking to. If I felt that I was being judged and not making the grade it just went from bad to worse, but if I felt I was accepted, I did much better.
Of course, there is true judgement and appropriate, healthy guilt, but that is about something we have done or left undone. It might be hard to face but it is not earthshattering. However, to be condemned is not only to be found guilty but it is to be written off altogether. This goes to core of our being, calls into question our value, and crushes our soul.
Paul tells us that, “there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”. This freedom from condemnation is not far off in the future, at the last judgement, it is here and now. God wants us to know this freedom from condemnation today.
Who is it for? Paul tells us God’s protection from condemnation is for those “in Christ Jesus”. Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” about 160 times in his letters.
“Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:11)
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23)
“I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor 1:14)
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come”: (2 Cor 5:17)
In short, we can say that those who have been baptised (that is baptised into Jesus’ death and resurrection) and are trusting in him for life and salvation are “in Christ.”
Being “in Christ” means that we have been brought into this new sphere so that we are protected from condemnation. Of course, other people might condemn us. We live in a broken world with broken people who act out of their own brokenness. It is just that God does not condemn us and, at the end of the day, that is the declaration that really matters.
Do you remember the woman who was caught in adultery and brought to Jesus? Jesus said to the religious leaders who brought her, “let any who is without sin to throw the first stone.” They all walk away, one by one. Jesus turns to her and says, “neither do I condemn you.” In the same Gospel we are told that “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17).
“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Or as we have it in The Message translation: “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.”
We have protection from condemnation.
But that is not all. God does not only declare us “not guilty”. That in itself is wonderful but we are not merely let off the hook, so to speak, so that we can go merrily on our way. God has more in mind for us. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.”
The Spirit-inspired law (written on our hearts) has set us free from the law of sin and death. The word “law” has many meanings in Paul’s letters but one of the meanings of the “law of sin and death” is that this law, like the law of gravity, is a law we cannot escape. It is this foreboding sense that we are guilty and that we never quite measure up, that we are not quite smart enough, fast enough, strong enough or good enough. A bit earlier in Romans, Paul, referring to Adam says, “… one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all” (5:18). We are all implicated in the law of sin and death.
But thanks be to God, God has acted “…by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Paul alludes here to the very heart of the Christian faith – Jesus’ sacrificial death on the Cross to deal with the problem of sin and death. Of course, in other places he is more explicit (“But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” Rom 5:8). There are Anglican clergy who reject this doctrine (I am not, of course, referring to John!). It is true that some presentations of the cross misrepresent it and make a caricature of it. For example: the angry father who must take his anger out on someone, so he takes it out on his son, Jesus. That is not classical, orthodox Christian theology.
A far better understanding is to acknowledge that on the cross God offers himself. “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” We do well to reject the caricature but to reject the doctrine of God’s saving work through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ is, in my opinion, a massive mistake. If we remove all references to Jesus’ death as a sacrifice, we remove a lot and don’t have much left. It is like taking the engine out of a car. From the outside it looks fine, but it is not going to take us anywhere, except, perhaps, downhill.
The truth is, not only does Jesus not condemn us but in addition we are set free to live a new God-honouring life.
The English Anglican minister Augustus Toplady (I know, it is an odd last name) referred to this as “the double cure” in his hymn, Rock of Ages.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, / let me hide myself in thee; / let the water and the blood,/ from thy wounded side which flowed,/ be of sin the double cure; /cleanse me from its guilt and power.
What is the ‘double cure’? It is that through the cross of Christ are we delivered from the guilt of sin (no condemnation) and we are delivered from the power of sin (through Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life has set us free from the law of sin and death). This second part of the cure, being “set free from the law of sin and death” speaks to the hope of transformation and growth in the Christian life.
Things can change. There is a way off the hamster wheel. We don’t have to stay stuck in debilitating patterns. There is hope for change and growth here and now. Yes, it is typically slow and like all growth imperceptible at any one moment but it is nevertheless real. Paul goes on to say, that just as God raised Jesus from the dead, he will give us his resurrection life.
Friends, here is a word that we can take to the bank. Here is a word that is a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path. Here is the word of God that when sown in the soil of our hearts will take deep root and produce a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free/ from the law of sin and death.”
Thanks be to God.