Romans 8:
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Here we Go! Romans 8:1-11.
Let’s start with a game this morning.
This is my version of the game jacks.
Here is how the game works. I have a bouncy ball. You will bounce the ball on the table and after you bounce it you will pick up as many nuts as you can before the ball bounces again. If you drop the ball it does not count. We will go until they are all picked up and the person with the most will win. After each round you put them in your pocket.
You go first.
(Go until we are out of nuts)
Ok now that we are finished let’s count them up.
How many do you have?
Let me count mine up. (Count out loud)
I won!
I won before the game even started because I had more in my pocket than was available to collect. I had 8 on the table and 9 in my pocket before the game started. I had won the game before it even started.
Let’s give them a hand for helping out this morning and here is a simple prize for playing the game.
This picture of winning before getting started helps me understand Romans 7 and Romans 8.
Some read through these chapters and read them as this is struggle of the Christian life. The things I want to do, I don’t and the things I don’t want to do that I do. Later in Chapter 8, if you feed the flesh it will result in death and if you feed the spirit it will give you life. So it is a game.
This so far from the point that Paul is sharing with us and the truth of the Gospel message.
1 Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus,
condemnation n. — a legal decision of guilty in a criminal case; often with the ensuing punishment understood.
8:1 makes this dense statement and then Paul begins to unpack it in the rest of the chapter.
1 Therefore, no condemnation now exists for those in Christ Jesus,
For those in Christ Jesus there is no legal decision of guilty and no punishment will follow because you are in Christ Jesus.
The decision has been made and you are in Christ Jesus so you are Not Guilty!
So he uses the next verses to unpack this dense statement.
2 because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
There is no legal decision for those in Christ Jesus because the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has set you free.
The intention of the law was to give life. The law wanted to give moral life in the present and resurrection life in the future.
The goal of the law was to draw us closer to the Father
I believe there is a common misconception about the Father. The misconception is that the Father put all these laws in place to make us His followers miserable. It’s the picture of a son or daughter who don’t like all the rules in the house and they believe the goal of the rules is to make their life miserable.
We often approach God in this manner. If I become a Christian, then I can’t have any more fun in life because of all the rules.
You are missing the point. The goal of the law was not to make your life miserable but to draw you closer to the Father.
I was able to take a Genesis class with Dr. Bolger at College of the Ozarks and I loved loved loved it because we spent the entire class looking at the goal of the first 5 books of the Bible and how it was written. He shared with us that the goal of the first 5 books and the law was to bring God’s people back to Genesis or back to the garden of Eden.
So the goal of the law was to bring us closer to the Father.
Notice the liberation language here as well that through the Spirit’s law of life in Christ Jesus has SET YOU FREE from the law of sin and death.
3 What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering,
The law wanted to bring us closer to the father but it was limited by the flesh.
This refers back to chapter 7. In the flesh, the things I want to do I don’t do. The things I don’t want to do that I do. What a wretched man I am.
The law wanted to draw us closer to the Father but it was limited by the flesh.
More Good News!
God Did
How?
He condemned Sin (Circle and point back to condemned)
He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in the flesh like ours under sin’s domain
2 things that I think are extremely valuable for us today.
Notice that he doesn’t say He condemned his Son. What did the Father Condemn? He condemned Sin.
Why is this important? It continues to formulate what we believe about the Father. It would be easy for some to look at the Father and say that he Condemned his own Son then why shouldn’t I believe that this God is capable of condemning me.
This often comes out when something in our life does not go the way we think it should and our thinking shifts and starts to blame God for that which has went wrong. We formulate a belief that God is not good and it is the Father’s fault everything is going wrong.
Notice that in the Son what did the Father condemn? He condemned Sin. Not the Son but Sin.
The second thing I think is extremely valuable for us today is that He sent His own Son in the flesh like ours under Sin’s domain.
Like ours means that Jesus in the flesh was fully capable of sinning.
What did Jesus do? Jesus kept the entire law.
21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The Goal of the law was to draw us closer to the Father. Jesus kept the law and was drawn closer to the Father. Jesus without sin had sin condemned in His flesh for our sake.
Sin has recieved its Judgement. GUILTY
3 What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering,
Paul for Everyone, Romans Part 1: Chapters 1–8 God’s Action in Messiah and Spirit (Romans 8:1–4)
But sin has received its death-wound. Before the spirit can be unleashed to blow like a spring gale through the dead wood of the world, the power of evil needs to be broken. The way that needs to happen is for sin to be condemned—not just the passing of sentence, but its execution. Paul declares that this is precisely what has happened in the death of God’s son, the Messiah. This is one of the points where we hear echoes of almost every chapter in the book, not least of the opening statement of the gospel in 1:3–4.
Sin offering
In the Old Testament, the sin-offering is the sacrifice used when someone has committed sin unwittingly (not knowing it was wrong) or unwillingly (knowing it was wrong but not intending to do it). Paul has analysed the plight of Israel under the law in such a way that it falls exactly into these categories. ‘The good I want to do, I don’t do; the evil I don’t want is what I do.’ The ‘miserable person’ of 7:24 is answered by God’s provision of the sin-offering in 8:3, just as, at a more general level, the condemned sinner of 1:18–3:20 is promised that there is ‘no condemnation’ for those who are ‘in the Messiah’, because the condemnation of sin has already taken place in him.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 138.
4 in order that the law’s requirement would be accomplished in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh think about the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, about the things of the Spirit.
6 For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind-set of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit itself to God’s law, for it is unable to do so.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
v.4
So the great reversal is that we were enemies of God, powerless to save ourselves, but God sent His Son to be sin for us to liberate us.
It’s easy to treat this set of verses much like chapter 7 and describe the Christian walk as are you feeding the mindset of the flesh or the mindset of the Spirit.
I would continue to argue that the game is over for those who are in the Messiah. The focus becomes on us fixating on the mindset of the Spirit. What does it mean for us to have the mindset of the Spirit.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.
Philippians 2 describes having the mind of the Messiah. One of Humility, gratitude, service, and love. It is a different kind of thinking. It is a new mindset.
The church at times fixates itself on behavior modification. What I mean by this is constantly teaching what not to do. Acting as though the game is between the flesh and the spirit.
Keep reading in these verses
The mindset of the Spirit is life and peace
Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
This verse implies that those who are in the Spirit please God. We please God with our actions, our lives, our work, our families, and the whole of our lives please God.
It is not just checking the boxes but now those who are in the Spirit please God.
9 You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God lives in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him.
10 Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Body is dead because of sin
Resurrection Hope
the Spirit is life because of righteousness
11 And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then He who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through His Spirit who lives in you.
N.T. Wright draws out the temple language that is used here.
“lives in you”
Dwell in you. This is the same language that is used Exodus 40 and the tabernacle in the wilderness
Solomon in 1 Kings 8 when God’s Spirit Dwells in the temple
By His Spirit he is saying you are His new Temple people.
The indwelling of the Spirit generates a further idea.
The Jews long for the temple to rebuilt to be reconstructed and cleansed so that God would dwell there.
On the last day the power of the Spirit will raise you from the dead
as it were.
Rebuilds the temple. How does he rebuild the temple?
He raises us from the dead.