Sunday, July 13th, 2008
Proper 10/ Ordinary 15 A/ Pentecost +9
Romans 8:1-11
Theme: The act of living in the Spirit
“1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3For 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 to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 5For 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. 6To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, 8and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
We continue this morning in Paul’s letter to the church at
The opening sentence of today’s passage – that first verse of chapter 8 – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” is one that we need to come back to time and again and again – if for no other reason than to remind us of just what it is that the Grace of God has done for us in the person of Jesus Christ. That single sentence sums up what the RESULT of accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ does for us on an individual level – “there is therefore now NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” He didn’t say you’ll only receive half the condemnation you deserve, or a quarter, or a tenth … there’s no room to waffle with this one. No condemnation is NO condemnation.
I happen to be one who believes that all our emotions are God-given, anger and guilt, grief and sorrow included. I believe there is an appropriate use – a necessary function – that those emotions play in our emotional health and in the healthy dynamics of our relationships. What I also believe is that in the brokenness of the world as it is, the challenge we face in putting those emotions IN those appropriate contexts and healthy dynamics is MUCH more difficult – not impossible, but much more difficult – to achieve than if the world weren’t so skewed.
Why am I saying that? Because the phrase ‘No condemnation’, in its absoluteness, COULD grow in us a sense of being able to live a consequence-free life, and that is FAR from what Paul is arguing.
Paul is speaking in spiritual terms, primarily. He does go on to continue to juxtapose – to contrast and compare – the spirit and the flesh – and further down in these verses he spells out in words what we saw so clearly … ACTED out in Judson’s baptism at the beginning of the service this morning. Dead to the body of sin, alive to life in Christ. Having the LIFE of God in us THROUGH the indwelling Holy Spirit, we truly do become new creations. Despite the fact that we still may sin, that is not what is counted when God looks at us. What is counted is whether or not we have taken on the presence of Christ in our lives. That supersedes every other measure that we or anyone else may try to impose on us through guilt, or shame, or coercion of any kind.
That is what I believe is fundamentally the greatest hurdle to people accepting the Gospel – and the reason Christ said we should be as children.
Have you ever received an extravagant gift from someone you hardly know? Say, someone just out of the blue pays off your mortgage, or sets a new car in your driveway, or maybe for these days, sends you a gift gas card for the car you already own – and the card never runs out, and you never see a bill.
Now, have you ever seen a child who had a problem receiving a gift? As we get older, it may come pretty quickly. But have you ever seen, say, a three, four, or five year old who turned down a gift that was offered to them?
That is the secret of the Gospel, if it has one. It is a gift so extravagant that the only way we may BEGIN to understand it is by accepting it as though we were just beyond our toddler years.
Because the gift of life and peace IS huge. It IS beyond our ability to grasp the depth of love that compelled it. And it IS again what we solemnly celebrate and proclaim when we gather at this table, with this bread and this wine.
(Communion)
Let’s pray.
No comments:
Post a Comment