Sermon from 15th November 2009
Today, our Vicar, Cameron Barker, preaches based on the reading from Romans 8 verses 1 - 11.
There was once a young man who, in his youthful enthusiasm professed a desire to become a great writer.
When asked to define 'great,' he said: “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read; stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level; stuff that will make them scream in disbelief, cry in despair, howl in pain, and vent their anger in ways they've never dreamed of!”
This wasn't the apostle Paul speaking – though (with the exception of that last desire) it could easily have been. Mind you, I don't think that Paul set out to achieve such lofty aims when he wrote this letter to Christians in ancient Rome. All he was trying to do was to pave the way to visit a church that he hadn't founded or ever been to before. But in the process, as we've been seeing here over the past three months, Paul did so much more than that.
Yes, this is a letter that's been read by people all over the world, for centuries. Those people have, like us, reacted to it on a truly emotional level. It has made some scream in disbelief, others cry in despair, and yet others howl in pain. But this is a letter that also has rich veins of hope and joy, freedom, light and life running all the way through it. And so it is that we've come to this most wonderful statement of hope that we end our series with today: 'There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!'
It's quite a place to conclude in – and even more so when we unpack Paul's explanation of how this amazing state of affairs has come about. But before we do, though, I'd best invite you to decide if that nameless young man achieved his own ambitious literary aims. By all accounts, he now works for Microsoft, writing computer error messages!
Be that as it may, in this series we have had the rare privilege of being able to engage with a great writer on top form. Many see Romans as the pinnacle of Paul's writing, and his theology – and we surely can't disagree with them after what we've experienced. It began with that awesome opening statement, which we thought about in terms of being like rocket science. Not only did it launch us into a stellar voyage of adventure and discovery. It also set the lofty agenda for how we'd get to see and understand God's purposes, from before the start of the world until after its ending! Those were bold claims at the time – the validity of which I'll leave you to decide on for yourself as we end.
No less bold was how, from the very start, Paul claimed to be nothing less than a slave of Jesus. That may have been less shocking to us than to his original readers; but that was the only way that Paul could respond to what God had done in Christ. He CHOSE slavery, because of God's gifts to him, of freedom and life. And his joyful obedience to God gave Paul the task of sharing this good news with everyone – no matter what the cost. It was, and is, all about God's Son, Jesus – who he is, and what he's done. So next we saw how Paul explained the problem and the consequences, of sin. Crucially he set out too how Jesus' death in our place was, and is, God's solution to that fundamental human problem.
That meant needing to stare deep into the self-centred and selfish darkness that lies within all of us. It wasn't, and isn't, a pretty sight – but until we admit that we each have got a problem then we can't see the need to accept God's offer of a solution. The language got a bit technical at that point – 'justification' picking up many crucial Old Testament themes and ideas – but, thank God, there was no escaping from the central issue. All of us are subject to God's judgement, however much we may dislike or want to contest that fact. Even so, God has opened the way for us to stop being his enemies, and to be at peace with Him instead; again, all through Jesus' death, as Paul explained. He wrote, even more amazingly, how this had been God's plan since before He made the world!
That then brought us to that magnificent sunrise moment, in chapter 5. Having first explained our problem in full gory detail, and offered God's solution to it, Paul then set out the consequence of God's glorious grace in all its fullness. It's so beyond-words stunning that we can, and must, rejoice even in our human sufferings, Paul said. That's how transcendent, how eternity-transforming, the good news of Jesus is. It makes even the seemingly impossible become possible, by the power of God's Spirit at work in us. But there are other, equally important consequences of the good news too. So Paul then turned to his next technical term – sanctification: in other words, becoming like Jesus.
Again as we heard, it would be easy to warp the message of the gospel along these lines. 'God likes putting us right with him; so let's keep on doing wrong, and so give him plenty more chances to forgive us'. That, of course, is the last thing that Christian are meant to do! What God wants is for us to live in the light of who He is. Our slavery is to Him as Lord, Master; so we are to be set apart to live for Him – or to be holy, as it's known. So Paul urged us, in God's name, to give up our slavery to the old life, of self – to die to it. That way leads only to death, where His way leads to life. We're to put the right fuel in the tank, God's life-giving Spirit, and to live a life of complete, instant, joyful obedience to God.
There is a choice involved – and we all make one, one way or the other. To use the analogy that Adjoa did, you can't be a little bit pregnant: you are, or you aren't! Either we are living God's new life; or we're not. Of course it's not quite as simple as that. Last week John Itumu went on to help us to understand Paul's explanation of at least some of the complexities involved. It may have been quite tongue-twisting, but that's a fair reflection on the tangle that we so easily get ourselves into. We know what God wants us to do; we hopefully want to do it too – but we so often don't! We do instead what we don't want to do – which is what God doesn't want us to do either! As Paul pointed out, it's all a sorry mess, from which we can't extricate ourselves alone.
'Who will rescue me from this body that brings me death?' was Paul's anguished cry as he admitted this problem. He knew the answer of course, as we also heard last week: 'I thank God for saving me through Jesus Christ our Lord!' He knew that sin was still a problem – for him, just as it is for us. But God has dealt with that problem, as Paul said in today's closing passage. On the cross Jesus dealt sin its eternal death-wound – though we know, like Paul did, that it's not dead quite yet! But through the cross the Spirit was fully unleashed, and He now brings God's life instead of this death of sin. It's the realistic possibility of a Godly life in the present, and an eternal one in the future.
In his commentary Tom Wright describes this passage as being like a flower. It starts as a tight bud, but then unfolds to its full beauty – if we're patient enough to wait to see it. Of course it keeps on unfolding past where our series ends today. I'll encourage you to read through the rest of Romans, then – maybe as part of your Advent preparing to celebrate Jesus' birth at Christmas. But there's plenty here to keep us going for some while – far more than I have time to say now. The one thing above all to take away from today, though, is that what happened in the past not only guarantees the future: it also impacts the present.
That may sound like rather a mouthful, but at one level it's quite simple. Jesus died, and rose again, in the past. That has made it possible for people to enter God's kingdom – through Jesus. The eternal way that we do so is in the future, after our human death. But we enter God's kingdom in the present, at that moment when we accept that Jesus died for us personally. It's at THAT point that the Spirit comes to live in us; and God stops seeing us as guilty, or condemned. To give the technical, or theological term for it, this is the doctrine of the atonement.
Paul didn't invent it – but he certainly explained it rather well here! To put it simply, God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves, even with the help of His Law. In Jesus God became human, just as we are. But where we all fall short of being the people that God made us to be, Jesus did not. More than that, Jesus gave up his own life as an offering for sin – and so destroyed it. We can now be at-one-ment with God because of Jesus – and have his life instead of the eternal death that sin brings. The challenge to us, as we end this series, is how we live that out every day.
The title for today is 'Life through the Spirit' – because that IS what we now have if we are 'in Christ'. We have traded in the old, dead life of sin for this new life in Christ. It's the Spirit who now lives in us, and makes this all possible. So we must, as Paul said here, have our minds controlled, or set on, thinking about those things that the Spirit of God wants us to do. The other option (and we do have to choose one or the other!) is to set our minds on what WE want. It's a no-brainer which is the better option, after hearing all that we have about the one leading to death, and the other to life. But this is the place that Paul has led us to as we end.
I can't tell you what that's going to mean for you – but YOU know! What will it mean for you to set your mind on what God wants: after this service; the rest of today; when you get up tomorrow? How will you choose to spend your time, talents, and energy, throughout this week – and beyond? How will you respond, to good times, and to bad? By living for yourself? Or by choosing to be God's slave, with your mind set on Him, in response to His gifts to you, of His Son and Spirit? Death? Or life? The choice is ours to make. But praise God that we do now have one – all because of Jesus. So let's pray ...
There was once a young man who, in his youthful enthusiasm professed a desire to become a great writer.
When asked to define 'great,' he said: “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read; stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level; stuff that will make them scream in disbelief, cry in despair, howl in pain, and vent their anger in ways they've never dreamed of!”
This wasn't the apostle Paul speaking – though (with the exception of that last desire) it could easily have been. Mind you, I don't think that Paul set out to achieve such lofty aims when he wrote this letter to Christians in ancient Rome. All he was trying to do was to pave the way to visit a church that he hadn't founded or ever been to before. But in the process, as we've been seeing here over the past three months, Paul did so much more than that.
Yes, this is a letter that's been read by people all over the world, for centuries. Those people have, like us, reacted to it on a truly emotional level. It has made some scream in disbelief, others cry in despair, and yet others howl in pain. But this is a letter that also has rich veins of hope and joy, freedom, light and life running all the way through it. And so it is that we've come to this most wonderful statement of hope that we end our series with today: 'There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!'
It's quite a place to conclude in – and even more so when we unpack Paul's explanation of how this amazing state of affairs has come about. But before we do, though, I'd best invite you to decide if that nameless young man achieved his own ambitious literary aims. By all accounts, he now works for Microsoft, writing computer error messages!
Be that as it may, in this series we have had the rare privilege of being able to engage with a great writer on top form. Many see Romans as the pinnacle of Paul's writing, and his theology – and we surely can't disagree with them after what we've experienced. It began with that awesome opening statement, which we thought about in terms of being like rocket science. Not only did it launch us into a stellar voyage of adventure and discovery. It also set the lofty agenda for how we'd get to see and understand God's purposes, from before the start of the world until after its ending! Those were bold claims at the time – the validity of which I'll leave you to decide on for yourself as we end.
No less bold was how, from the very start, Paul claimed to be nothing less than a slave of Jesus. That may have been less shocking to us than to his original readers; but that was the only way that Paul could respond to what God had done in Christ. He CHOSE slavery, because of God's gifts to him, of freedom and life. And his joyful obedience to God gave Paul the task of sharing this good news with everyone – no matter what the cost. It was, and is, all about God's Son, Jesus – who he is, and what he's done. So next we saw how Paul explained the problem and the consequences, of sin. Crucially he set out too how Jesus' death in our place was, and is, God's solution to that fundamental human problem.
That meant needing to stare deep into the self-centred and selfish darkness that lies within all of us. It wasn't, and isn't, a pretty sight – but until we admit that we each have got a problem then we can't see the need to accept God's offer of a solution. The language got a bit technical at that point – 'justification' picking up many crucial Old Testament themes and ideas – but, thank God, there was no escaping from the central issue. All of us are subject to God's judgement, however much we may dislike or want to contest that fact. Even so, God has opened the way for us to stop being his enemies, and to be at peace with Him instead; again, all through Jesus' death, as Paul explained. He wrote, even more amazingly, how this had been God's plan since before He made the world!
That then brought us to that magnificent sunrise moment, in chapter 5. Having first explained our problem in full gory detail, and offered God's solution to it, Paul then set out the consequence of God's glorious grace in all its fullness. It's so beyond-words stunning that we can, and must, rejoice even in our human sufferings, Paul said. That's how transcendent, how eternity-transforming, the good news of Jesus is. It makes even the seemingly impossible become possible, by the power of God's Spirit at work in us. But there are other, equally important consequences of the good news too. So Paul then turned to his next technical term – sanctification: in other words, becoming like Jesus.
Again as we heard, it would be easy to warp the message of the gospel along these lines. 'God likes putting us right with him; so let's keep on doing wrong, and so give him plenty more chances to forgive us'. That, of course, is the last thing that Christian are meant to do! What God wants is for us to live in the light of who He is. Our slavery is to Him as Lord, Master; so we are to be set apart to live for Him – or to be holy, as it's known. So Paul urged us, in God's name, to give up our slavery to the old life, of self – to die to it. That way leads only to death, where His way leads to life. We're to put the right fuel in the tank, God's life-giving Spirit, and to live a life of complete, instant, joyful obedience to God.
There is a choice involved – and we all make one, one way or the other. To use the analogy that Adjoa did, you can't be a little bit pregnant: you are, or you aren't! Either we are living God's new life; or we're not. Of course it's not quite as simple as that. Last week John Itumu went on to help us to understand Paul's explanation of at least some of the complexities involved. It may have been quite tongue-twisting, but that's a fair reflection on the tangle that we so easily get ourselves into. We know what God wants us to do; we hopefully want to do it too – but we so often don't! We do instead what we don't want to do – which is what God doesn't want us to do either! As Paul pointed out, it's all a sorry mess, from which we can't extricate ourselves alone.
'Who will rescue me from this body that brings me death?' was Paul's anguished cry as he admitted this problem. He knew the answer of course, as we also heard last week: 'I thank God for saving me through Jesus Christ our Lord!' He knew that sin was still a problem – for him, just as it is for us. But God has dealt with that problem, as Paul said in today's closing passage. On the cross Jesus dealt sin its eternal death-wound – though we know, like Paul did, that it's not dead quite yet! But through the cross the Spirit was fully unleashed, and He now brings God's life instead of this death of sin. It's the realistic possibility of a Godly life in the present, and an eternal one in the future.
In his commentary Tom Wright describes this passage as being like a flower. It starts as a tight bud, but then unfolds to its full beauty – if we're patient enough to wait to see it. Of course it keeps on unfolding past where our series ends today. I'll encourage you to read through the rest of Romans, then – maybe as part of your Advent preparing to celebrate Jesus' birth at Christmas. But there's plenty here to keep us going for some while – far more than I have time to say now. The one thing above all to take away from today, though, is that what happened in the past not only guarantees the future: it also impacts the present.
That may sound like rather a mouthful, but at one level it's quite simple. Jesus died, and rose again, in the past. That has made it possible for people to enter God's kingdom – through Jesus. The eternal way that we do so is in the future, after our human death. But we enter God's kingdom in the present, at that moment when we accept that Jesus died for us personally. It's at THAT point that the Spirit comes to live in us; and God stops seeing us as guilty, or condemned. To give the technical, or theological term for it, this is the doctrine of the atonement.
Paul didn't invent it – but he certainly explained it rather well here! To put it simply, God did for us what we couldn't do for ourselves, even with the help of His Law. In Jesus God became human, just as we are. But where we all fall short of being the people that God made us to be, Jesus did not. More than that, Jesus gave up his own life as an offering for sin – and so destroyed it. We can now be at-one-ment with God because of Jesus – and have his life instead of the eternal death that sin brings. The challenge to us, as we end this series, is how we live that out every day.
The title for today is 'Life through the Spirit' – because that IS what we now have if we are 'in Christ'. We have traded in the old, dead life of sin for this new life in Christ. It's the Spirit who now lives in us, and makes this all possible. So we must, as Paul said here, have our minds controlled, or set on, thinking about those things that the Spirit of God wants us to do. The other option (and we do have to choose one or the other!) is to set our minds on what WE want. It's a no-brainer which is the better option, after hearing all that we have about the one leading to death, and the other to life. But this is the place that Paul has led us to as we end.
I can't tell you what that's going to mean for you – but YOU know! What will it mean for you to set your mind on what God wants: after this service; the rest of today; when you get up tomorrow? How will you choose to spend your time, talents, and energy, throughout this week – and beyond? How will you respond, to good times, and to bad? By living for yourself? Or by choosing to be God's slave, with your mind set on Him, in response to His gifts to you, of His Son and Spirit? Death? Or life? The choice is ours to make. But praise God that we do now have one – all because of Jesus. So let's pray ...
posted by Parish Administrator at 12:18 pm
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