Romans 8:1-4
Chapter 8 beings with the word therefore and as I heard when I was first a Christian, when you read in the Bible the word therefore you have to ask yourself the question, âWhat is the therefore there for?â
There are three great therefores in Romans. We looked at the first one in Romans 5:1 in February 2004.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
We are looking at the second of these today in Romans 8:1
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
and I would imagine that we will get to the third of these in Romans 12:1 about 2010 or 2011.
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of Godâs mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to Godâthis is your spiritual act of worship.
Something to look forward to.
Each of these therefores sums up the discussion that has preceded it and then discusses the implications of what has been discussed. So when you see a therefore, you need to figure out what discussion that has taken place is being referred to.
In this case, in Romans 8:1, the therefore is a comprehensive therefore and refers not just to the preceding paragraph or even chapter, but to the whole of the discussion that has taken place thus far. This therefore is a summary conclusion of Romans 1-7.
I know I preached a summary of Romans just a couple weeks ago, but sometimes good news is so spectacular that it bears repeating. This after all is news that was the turning point for the entire human civilization. It is not just that it describes the turning point in my life or your life, but it is the turning point available to all of the human race. So bear with me if I am a bit repetitious in presenting again the good news.
In the first seven chapters of Romans, Paul has presented two sticking points, two dilemmas; what I called a couple weeks ago two tight spots where there is no wiggle room, and these two dilemmas concern the questions of how we are to be saved when we deserve the wrath of God and how we are to grow in being made righteous when we are trapped by our human, sinful nature. These two tight spots concern our justification and sanctification, the two stages of salvation on which Paul has thus far focused.
Romans 1-5 has focused on justification, our salvation that comes to us freely, without our effort, that allows us to be drawn into Godâs presence without fear. Romans 6-7 has focused on the second stage of salvation, sanctification, the process by which we are made to be actually, in real life, in this life, more holy.
The therefore statement in Romans 8:1 refers to the discussion of both of these stages of salvation.
Paul made a forceful argument in Romans 1, 2 and the first part of 3 that we are sinners deserving the wrath of God. We deserve to be condemned but Paul announces in Romans 8 that
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
and he goes on to present the gospel of Jesus in the next three verses. If you are ever stuck in trying to explain to someone what it means to be saved or why we need to be saved, pull out your Bible and explain these four verses.
The law is good. The law was given by God to Moses. Because of our New Testament perspective, we can sometimes be negative about the law because of how it was used by the Pharisees and Sadducees against Jesus. But the law was not the problem. Our sinful human nature is the problem and this is why the Jewish leaders were not able to see the truth of Jesus. Their human nature twisted their understanding so they saw Jesus as a threat rather than as a savior.
The law serves us well because it points out to us how we sin. But Paul refers to the law of sin and death because it reveals to us our sinfulness and condemns us because of our sin.
So we are stuck. We are condemned by the law and are unable to save ourselves by obedience to the law. As hard as we try, as much as we know, as devout as we can be, we are helpless and stand under the condemnation of the law.
But what the law was powerless to do because of the limitations of our sinful human nature, God did for us.
When we were helpless, defeated by the ineffectiveness of our nature, God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful man. God became flesh. God became Emmanuel, God with us. God became flesh not just so he could be with us and pat us on the back to encourage us to keep going. God became flesh for the expressed purpose of being a sin offering. Jesus came to die for us, to take the condemnation that belongs to us.
We stand under the condemnation that we deserve and Jesus came to take that condemnation off of us and put it on himself.
And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4 in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation.
The now implies that there was a time when there was condemnation. When a teacher says to the class, âNow you can go,â it means that before she said. âNow you can go,â the class was not permitted to go.
There was condemnation but now there is no longer condemnation. The prisoner was in his cell facing a death sentence but now is out in the open air, a free man, liberated, no longer under his death sentence because someone else came to take his place, to die in his place.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
Paul did not write simply, Therefore, there is now no condemnation. Condemnation still exists. But it is those who are in Christ Jesus who are not now condemned.
All of us here this morning stand under the deserved condemnation of God. None of us are good enough or smart enough or righteous enough to escape the condemnation of God. Jonathan Edwards preached a famous sermon in which he said we are like spiders being dangled by the thin strand of our web over a hot fire. We are all in great eternal danger and only if we are in Christ Jesus do we have any hope of escaping that eternal destruction.
So let me call out to any of you who are holding back, unwilling to submit and commit to Jesus. I know some of you who are holding back. There may be others who are holding back who I do not know. It may be pride or stubbornness that holds you back. It may be hurt feelings or a long-standing prejudice that holds you back. Whatever it is that is holding you back, it is not worth it.
If we were on a sinking ship I would be going to each of you telling you to put on a life jacket so you would not drown. Maybe you would tell me you are a strong swimmer and do not need a life jacket. Maybe you would tell me you donât believe the boat is really sinking and at the last minute all this will be unnecessary. Maybe you would tell me that you are so confident another boat will come along you do not need to take this precaution.
But I would tell you that you will drown if you do not put on the life jacket and I tell you now that you face eternal condemnation if you do not put your trust in Jesus. You may have questions and doubts and reservations, but your ship is sinking and you will drown if you do not reach out and grab hold of Jesus.
Donât mess around. I am not saying this because I am a preacher and that is what preachers are supposed to do and say. I believe this down to the core of my being. I will be held responsible one day for whether or not I told the truth when I preached. I will be held accountable one day for whether or not I told the truth and warned people of the eternal reality that is coming. I will be held accountable one day for whether or not I told people how to be saved and so I tell you once again. The ship is sinking. You will drown. Only if you reach out to Jesus will you be saved and so stop playing emotional or intellectual games and reach out to the only one who can save you.
I hope you live a long life, but today may be your last day. This is not to strike fear in you. This is not to manipulate you. This is only to point out the reality of life. And if there is a tragic accident and you die today, why not grab on to what will save you before it is too late. There is no reason not to grab onto Jesus that will make any sense to you when it is too late to do anything about it. I guarantee that you will deeply regret not having reached out to Jesus when you had a chance.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because we have been saved and in the second aspect of this comprehensive therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because we are being saved.
Paulâs discussion in chapters 6 and 7 has focused on sanctification, the process by which we are being made holy.
But here again we are trapped. Paul has just talked at the end of chapter 7 about being trapped between his mind that wants to do what is right and his human nature that wants to do what is evil. This is the struggle of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde I talked about last week.
No matter how much Paul tried, he still found himself doing what he did not want to do and not doing what he wanted to do. In his desperation he called out,
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
The answer to his desperate question is that it is God who rescues us through Jesus. Listen to the Message translation of Romans 8:3-4
God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didnât deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.
The law always ended up being used as a band-aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldnât deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.
We continue to sin. We continue to struggle. We may face the same temptation over and over and over and over and over again and we may fail over and over again, but there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because you are in Christ, your failed efforts to live a Christian life do not condemn you.
This process of being made holy, being sanctified, will happen not just because of our efforts, although our efforts are required. We will be made holy because of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. Our salvation is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. This will be the focus of the next few sermons and I am eager to get to those sermons.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
This is a powerful message and we all need to hear it. We need to hear this over and over again. We need to be reminded of this over and over again because we so often feel that we are condemned.
The devil delights in whispering in our ear and reminding us of how imperfect we are. He tells us we are naive if we think that God will continue to put up with us when we so frequently stumble. The devil takes any doubt, any frustration we have with ourselves, any discouragement and magnifies it, trumpets it in our ear so that we feel condemned by our actions and thoughts.
But the devil is the father of lies and it is a lie that God will reject us when he has promised us life with him. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Listen to God, not to the lies of the devil.
When your conscience attacks you for what you have done, you need to know that if you have confessed those things to God then you are no longer condemned for them. The price has been paid for the wrong things you have done.
If you have friends who are not Christian but know that you are a Christian, it may be that they watch you like a hawk to see any way in which you are inconsistent in your faith. This was the case with me when I had a company. The people who worked for me knew I had been a pastor, they knew I was a Christian and they watched me intently to see if I acted as they thought I should. When I had to fire someone, they watched how I did it. When I acted inconsistently with my faith, they were there to remind me.
Your friends will come to you and accuse you of living a false faith because you are not able to live it out perfectly. They will accuse you but when you mess up, you are still forgiven because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Memories of things we have done will haunt us. I still feel guilt from things I stole from stores thirty-five years ago. I remember shoplifting German beer steins from a department store in Hamburg. I remember stealing money from the collection plate of a church I attended in Boston a couple years before I became a Christian. I remember how I treated some of the women I dated. All of us have things we have done for which we are ashamed, but if we have confessed our sins to God we have been forgiven and there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Some of us suffer from low self-esteem or compulsions of some sort and we are so unhappy about how we act or feel that we believe we are condemned for what we do. We are not perfect. Our environment has shaped us in wrong ways. Our own genetic makeup carries imperfections that affect us but there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God does not wait for us to be perfect before he loves us and accepts us. God takes us as we are and begins to help us get cleaned up.
When we look around, we can always see Christians who live better lives than we do; at least from the outside they seem better than we are. But no matter how much better someone lives out the Christian life, they are in as much need of Godâs grace and mercy as we are. We are not judged on a relative scale. We are not loved more if we are better than someone else and we are not loved less if we are worse than someone else.
We are judged on an absolute scale and no matter how good or how badly we have lived, we are loved and are in need of Godâs help. For the best and worst of us, there is now no longer condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
This sermon is not an excuse to live a sloppy Christian life. We have to work at our faith. We have to struggle to grow in our relationship with God, to become more open to the work of God in our lives, to become more disciplined in our lives. We have so much we need to do.
If you are not working at growing in your Christian life, then get up off your butt and begin to work at growing. Donât be complacent. Donât be lazy. Read your Bible. Think about what you read. Pray. Journal. Reflect. Confess sin, ask for forgiveness. Put what you read and learn into practice.
When you see ways in which your Christian character needs work, get to work and improve your character. You need to make an effort, not a half-hearted effort, but a full-blown effort to develop as a Christian.
This sermon is meant to be an encouragement to you that when you make this effort and fail, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
This was more of a problem for me in my earlier years as a Christian. I have matured and am less likely to be discouraged by my growth as a Christian than I once was. I am very aware of my weaknesses. I am very aware of my sinful nature. But I am also holding more firmly onto Christ than I have in my earlier years. The reality of eternity is growing in me and my faith is stronger as a consequence.
In my early years as a Christian, I had an image that God had plucked me up out of the rapids of a river and set me on a rock. The rock was not always that stable. It was sometimes a bit slippery and I feared I would fall off. But over time the rock has grown and it is now large enough and stable enough that I can invite others to come stand beside me.
I do that this morning. Reach out to Jesus and grab his hand and be lifted out of the turmoil of the rapids of life and be set on a rock. I will stand with you and help you see that you are secure.
Stand on the rock with confidence because of what God has done for you in Christ Jesus. Grab on to the hand of Jesus and accept his help. Jesus will save you and he will work with you as you are being saved.
I asked Mike if we could sing again this week, And Can It Be? This is a great hymn that speaks of the incredible act of love Jesus gave to us. When you sing the verses, pay attention to the words.
Verse three is a great picture of our salvation. We were in prison, in chains. Sitting there in the darkness and dampness of prison it seemed we had no hope. But then
I woke the dungeon flamed with light!
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.
And the consequence of reaching out to the help Jesus brought us we sing in the fourth verse.
No condemnation now I dread:
Jesus, and all in him, is mine!
Alive in him, my living head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach the eternal throne,
And claim the crown, thru Christ my own.
Sing it with joy. Sing it with wonder. Sing it with delight.
Open your heart to Jesus and sing it as your experience.
