Romans: Under the Law or Under Grace? Mar 25, 2007

ROMANS M7… Under the Law or Under Grace?… March 25, 2007

When our team from Tenth was visiting a village Cambodia earlier this month, a staff member with Food for the Hungry Cambodia told us that the villagers could significantly reduce their incidence of disease by washing their hands before meals, but that it was very difficult to get the villages to make that change.

I mentioned that we in North America are not that different… Studies coming out of Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical schools note that 90% do not follow our doctors counsel, if that counsel requires any change of habit.

According to Dr. Edward Miller dean of the Medical School at Johns Hopkins University (whom I cited last Sunday) says 90% of who have such a serious heart disease that they require very expensive heart surgery are told in order to stop your heart from killing you, you’ve got change your lifestyle… you drink less, eat less, exercise more, etc. After a year according to Dr. Miller 90% have not changed their life style.

A study of 37,000 patients with serious heart diseases were told you need to take a pill a statin for the rest of your life, “in order to save your life.” The study found that found that in 2 months, half had stopped taking the pill and in one year 80% had stopped taking the pill that they were told to keep taking the rest of their lives.

Alan Duestschman the author of Change or Die says the only way people will change is if they establish a relationship with a person or a community that inspires hope and helps a person to establish a new set of habits and a new way of seeing the world.

Change occurs through a relationship, that helps us set new habits and that gives us a new perspective.

Last Sunday we looked at Romans chapter 6. We saw how a person can change if they establish a relationship with Jesus Christ, and out of that relationship establish a new set of habits we talked how a person is not only changed from the inside, outside but by the outside in… through what we do, and finally out of that relationship a new way of seeing ourselves and the world..

We also talked how through our relationship with Christ we can form a new set of habits and a new way of being in the world

In Romans 6 Paul explains our new way of being through the illustration of baptism—and Paul says it is through our baptism we have died with Christ and been raised to a newness of life with Christ… (a new Christian in our community is going to be baptism is next service).

He also explains how in Romans 6 as we saw last Sunday if we are “in Christ” we are no longer slaves to the old “landlord” sin, but that we belong to Christ…

Then in Romans 7 Paul talks about how if we are in Christ, we have a new identity we have a new relationship to the law of God as given through Moses.

This morning we’re going to see the old way of trying to relate to God through the law cannot effect real change in us and how the new way of relating to the law can effect change us...

If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 7.

(please focus, this of the most one difficult passages in the book of Romans)

In Romans 7:1-6
In this passage Paul says a married person is bound to their spouse as long as their spouse is alive… but if their spouses dies… they are free to re-marry…

What does Paul mean when he uses this seemingly strange illustration?

What Paul is teaching here is that people who know Christ experience a kind of death in their relationship to the law of God as given through Moses…
4 So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
What does this mean?

Paul points out in Romans 7:4 that because of Christ died a sacrificial death for our sins on the cross, we don’t need to be “under the law” of Moses, but instead we belong to Christ.

What does Paul mean when he says we don’t need to be “under the law of Moses” if we are in Christ?

First of all, when Paul says we don’t need to be under the law he does not mean that we are to disregard the Ten Commandments or to not use God’s law given as an ethical guide.

When Paul says here and in Romans 6:14 we are not “under the law” he is saying that because we under Christ, we are no longer under the power of the law to condemn us before God for failing (as we have) to perfectly keep it.2x.


When Paul talks about how we no longer belong to the law, but to Christ, Paul is aware that certain people will conclude that the law must be there sinful.

So, in Romans 7:7, Paul explains isn’t sinful.

7 What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet."

But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead.


Then in verses 7-12, describes how the law helps us to see what sin really is.

We know from experience that a law, rather than inducing us to do good, can actually tempt us to do evil. In Augustine’s Confessions, Augustine talks about how before coming to know God, he enjoyed stealing pears, not because he wanted to eat them, but because he wanted to experience the pleasure of breaking the law against stealing. So Augustine would steal the pears and then just throw them to the pigs. I can relate to that. As an adolescent, I enjoyed stealing, not so much because I needed, or even wanted things, but simply to experience the pleasure of breaking the law.

The staff at hotel beside a bay of water in Florida were frustrated because their guests were not obeying the prohibition that the hotel had against fishing off the balcony. There were clear signs on the hotel balconies NO FISHING OFF THE BALCONY. The staff didn’t know what to do or how to enforce it. Then someone suggested that they remove the signs. Once they removed the signs, people no longer fished off. The reason people were fishing off the balcony at this hotel in Florida was because there was a sign that said NO FISHING. Paul says in Romans 7:5 that the law can arouse sinful passions that are at work inus…

Paul, in Romans 7:13 explains that one of the purposes of the law is to help people understand how sinful they really are…

If we have the law of God, we feel at some level obligated to keep and if we try to keep it we discover how very hard it is to keep the law of God.

C.S. Lewis the Oxford Scholar says in Mere Christianity
No person knows how bad they is till he has tried very hard to be good (or to keep God’s law). A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.
This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is…

It as we try to keep God’s law and fail that we recognize how sinful we are.

In Romans 7:14-25 Paul shows how law on its own is powerless to transforms us in our battle with sin.

Romans 7: 14-25 is one of the most controversial passages in all of Scripture, as people disagree on how to interpret this text where Paul describes a person’s battle with sin…

13 Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! Nevertheless, in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it used what is good to bring about my death, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. [c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in my sinful nature [d] a slave to the law of sin.
Many people believe that when Paul describes this battle with sin, he is speaking about his own battle with sin as one who knows Christ. People who hold to this view argue that Paul’s battle as a Christian demonstrates that even people who are truly Christians will battle with sin. It is certainly true that people who are truly in Christ battle with sin, but is this the correct interpretation of this passage?

The context of Romans 7:14-25 is one where Paul is talking about the role of God’s law in a person life…

Stay with me as I get a little technical here, when Paul speaks about person being under the law as he does, e.g. Romans 6, he is talking about human beings who are people who are outside of relationship with Christ… Those outside of relationship with Christ are described by Paul as being under the law, i.e. the power of the law of God to condemn people for not keeping, but once a person enters a new relationship with God by trusting that God in Christ… absorbed our sin on the cross, Paul says we are not longer under the law (i.e. the power of the law to condemn, but under grace (Romans 6:13)…

We tend to think of people as being in one of three categories… people are really, really good—saints like Mother Teresa or Billy Graham… or their really, really evil like Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, or Robert Pickton… and then there are those in between, not really, really good, not really evil, most Canadians, most of put ourselves in the middle…

But the Bible doesn’t describes 3 categories, but 2 categories… those “outside of a relationship with God” and those who are “in a relationship with God.”

The Bible teaches you either…

Under the law or under grace…

In Adam or in Christ

Your in flesh in the Spirit

Paul in Romans is describing person’s relationship to the law and in Romans 7:14-25 Pauls seems to be describing who is living “under the law” rather under grace, a person is living in Adam rather in Christ, a person who is living in the flesh rather than by the Spirit.

Paul in Romans goes back and forth describing people who are under the law and therefore are enslaved to sin and those who under grace (forgiven by Christ and are therefore free from slavery to sin).

Most people who just pick the Bible and read Romans 7 believe that what Paul is describing in Romans 7:14-25 is a Christian who is battling with sin…. (partly they know from experience that even those who believe in Christ struggle with sin).

But a majority of Pauline scholars believe that what Paul is describing in 7:14-25 is Paul’s life as a Jewish person under the law, but not in relationship with Christ.

Prior to studying Romans for this series, I believed that Paul in Romans 7 is describing his battle with sin as a Christian person. As I have studied the passage in light of the larger context of the book of Romans and in the light of the context of Paul’s other writings in the New Testament, I have now come to the conclusion that Paul in Romans 7:14-25 is describing his experience as a Jewish person living under the law, but not connected to Christ (having said that, I want to freely acknowledge that there are many excellent teachers of the Bible whom I greatly respect who do not share this particular view).

Why I do I side with the Pauline scholars who take the view that Paul here is describing his life as a Jew under the law?

It seems to me that this view better fits the overall context of book of Romans better.

Paul’s description of the person in Romans 7:13-25 also clearly contradicts his description of a Christian in Chapters 6 and 8.

For example, Paul says in Romans 7:14, “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin,” but in Romans 6:18-22 says, “You have been set free from sin.”

In Romans 7:23, Paul says, “I am made a prisoner of the law of sin” but in Romans 8:2, Paul says, Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit set me free from the law of sin and death (Use in powerpoint).

In Romans 7:23, describes himself as a person, under the law of sin… and in Romans 3 Paul describes those “under sin” as who do not have a relationship with Christ…

So, Paul, in verses 13-25 of Romans, seems to be describing a person’s experience under the law rather that under grace. A person is still “in Adam” and not in Christ, a person in the flesh and not in the Spirit.

Paul implies here that even if that person is religiously devout and wants to do God’s law, that person can not in their in strength…

In verse 22.. Paul says, For in my inner being I delight in God's law (now some people say this phrase is evidence that Paul must have been a Christian, because he delights in God’s law, but we know from the Psalms it’s very common for devout Jewish person outside to delight in God’s law. We know also the Greek phrase of inner being can be used people who are and are not Christian).

What Paul seems to be describing here is that though he and many of his fellow Jews delighted in God’s law, they were unable to keep it. Paul is saying law itself and not even delighting in the law itself has the power to enable us to keep the law.

Paul in Romans 7 is describing his experience and the experience of his fellow Jews who sought to follow the law of God without the Spirit of God.

In contrast in Romans 8, Paul describes what’s like to not be not under the law, but under grace, not in Adam, but in Christ.

Paul says in Romans 8:1-4, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, [b] God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. [c] And so he condemned sin in human flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

And in verse 9, You, however, are not controlled by the sinful nature but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.

What Paul is saying then in Romans 8 is that those who are in Christ have been set free from the law of sin and death…those who are in Christ are no longer controlled by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit of God.

What are the implications of this?

One of the implications of Romans 7 is that we cannot change on our own.

Even if we have been given something as wonderful and as wise as the law of God, we cannot change on our own simply by trying to obey that law.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s story, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dr. Jekyll comes to the realization that every human being has two natures within him or her--good and evil, which constantly wage war with each other. In the story, Dr. Jekyll creates a potion that he hopes will separate his evil side from his good side. The potion does not work, however, as planned. The evil part of Dr. Jekyll known as Mr. Hyde begins to grow stronger beyond Jekyll’s ability to control it. One day Dr. Jekyll wakes up in bed to discover that he has turned into Mr. Hyde overnight. The evil Mr. Hyde does not just indulge himself, but he commits murder. Dr. Jekyll attempts to redeem himself for the actions of Hyde by being charitable. However, as a result of his vain, glorious pride in being charitable, Dr. Jekyll turns into Mr. Hyde in broad daylight.

What Paul is saying in Romans 7 is that through our human efforts apart from God we cannot do good consistently. And even when we “do good” without God, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde our good is tainted by evil in some way. The only way we can consistently do good is if we are in Christ, animated by the Spirit of God.

One of the clearest signs that we are under grace, in Christ is that God writes his law on our heart by Spirit and we feel compelled to do what right…
I gave my life over to Christ as a teenager. Theologically, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I did notice that I was experiencing something inside me. I remembering going home after committing my life to Christ and searching out for a pornographic magazine that I had hidden in our garage behind some logs for the fireplace. I had bought that magazine with a good friend of mine at 7-11… we both went together. When we got I said to my friend, I’m guard the door in case your parents show, you by the magazine (here’s 2 dollars). So, it was our magazine, but I made a unilateral executive decision to burn that magazine.
I also remember going into my bedroom and taking down posters of these rock groups that I didn’t feel would honor God and in burning them too. I just had a new desire to live in a new kind of way. That was an example of what the Holy Spirit was doing in me.
And then in time doing some positive things like studying for the first time in my life, as I came to realize that my mind to offer to God…
What Paul is saying is that through our giving our life to Christ and through our baptism in Christ we have been made new, we receive a new Spirit.
You’re experience might now be exactly like mine, but if you are in Christ… you sense a new force within you to do what’s right….
That does not mean you will not battle with sin and addiction… it doesn’t mean that you won’t need to make an effort to change… But it does mean if you in Christ, your nature will be Godward, rather than sinward…
If you’ve never that kind of force within, then you check your passport to see if you are really under grace, in Christ…
A second implication of this is that if you are in Christ, you will begin to understand that you are not just new as individual, but you are part of a spiritual new family whose nature is not to sin, but live for God… One of the most practical ways we can learn to become more like Christ, is to experience relationship and community with people who are also walking with Christ…

Craig Barnes for a number of years pastored in Washington, DC, and some of us here have like met him through connection to Regent College.

Craig says that when he was a child, his father, who was also a minister, brought home a 12-year-old boy named Roger. Roger’s parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so Craig’s parents decided that they would take Roger in and raise him as if he were one of their own sons.

Craig says that at first it was quite difficult for Roger to adjust to his new home, in an environment free of heroin-addicted adults! Every day, in fact several times a day, Craig said he hear his parents saying to Roger, “No, no, that is not how we behave in this family….no, no, you don’t have to scream or fight or hurt other people to get what you want…no, no, Roger, we expect you to show respect in this family.”

In time, Roger, began to change. Now, did Roger have to make all those changes in order to become part of the family? No, he was made part of the family simply by the grace of Craig’s father and mother. But then Roger did do a lot of hard work because he was in the family. It was tough for him to change and he had to work at it, but he was motivated by gratitude for the incredible love that he had received.

Do we have to do a lot of hard work, if we have been in Christ, under grace, adopted into God’s family and have the Spirit? Certainly, but not in order to become members of God’s family… we become part of God’s family simply because of God’s generosity to us. We make those changes not to become son and daughter of God, because we are sons and daughters of God. And from will revert back to the old habits, and addictions and the Holy Spirit will say to us, “No, no, that is now how we act in this family.”

Sakiko and I, Wayman, Dalen and Jennifer were in Cambodia. One night we had dinner with the staff of a Christian NGO called “Food for the Hungry.” One of the people we had dinner that night was a Cambodian staff person who works for Food for the Hungry. Most people in Cambodia are not Christians. Most of the people in Cambodia are nominal Buddhists.

How did this Cambodian staff member come to know Christ? The Cambodian staff, prior to becoming a staff member, had worked as a pimp. This young described how had been servicing a number of hotels as people working with the UN and other NGO’s had come into town. This pimp went around to each of the hotels, taking orders from people working with the UN and other NGO’s for prostitutes. He was going door to door, asking people if they wanted people working in the sex trade. Pretty much everyone was saying, “Yes, yes, bring one to me tonight.” He was doing a really good business.

But there was one man from Africa who declined. Night after night this man from Africa really stood out because he was the one person who was saying ‘no” to this pimp. The pimp was intrigued as to why this man from Africa would refuse a prostitute.

So he went back to the man’s room and asked him, “Why don’t you want a prostitute?”

The man said, “My God will not allow me to do that.”

The pimp asked him, “Who is your God?”

And the man from Africa described how he had come into a relationship with God through his son Jesus Christ. As result of that testimony this pimp gave his life to Christ and is now serving Christ through Food for the Hungry, Cambodia.

When we recognize who our God is, and when we walk in the Spirit, not only will we not fulfill the desires of the flesh, but we will become new people whose lives can
only be explained by the presence of living, loving and holy God.

(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)

Romans 6: Mar 18, 07

How We are made New, Romans 6, March 18, 2007

Change or die? What if you were given that choice for real? Could you make a change when it really mattered?

According to Alan Deutschman and the experts who have done scientific studies on change, the odds are 9 to 1 against you that you would be able to make a change.

As we know medical doctors are very respected in our society, but according to research done in places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard Medical Schools, 90 % of people do not follow their doctor’s counsel if it requires some kind of change in their lifestyle.

According to Dr. Edward Miller, Dean of the Medical School and Chief Executive Officer of the Hospital at Johns Hopkins University, patients with arteries that are so clogged that it hurts too much to take a long walk or to make love and who need to undergo coronary by-pass or angioplasty surgery are told if you want to stop the course of your heart disease before it kills you--you have to switch to a healthier lifestyle. You have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop overeating, start exercising, and relieve your stress—but very few do. According to Dr. Edward Miller, “If you look at people after coronary artery by-pass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle.”

Scaring people with the “facts,” and telling them to either change or die, does not cause people to change.

According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die, the only way a person can change is to have a relationship with a person or a community that inspires and sustains hope, a relationship that enables you to learn and practice and repeat a new set of habits, and a relationship to help you learn new ways of thinking about your life.

To put it succinctly, there are 3 ways to change according to Deutschman—relate, repeat, and reframe or New hope, new habits, new thinking.

As far as I know, Alan Deutschman is not a Christian, but his principles of change parallel the kinds of change a person can experience through a relationship with Jesus Christ. Someone has said all truth is God’s truth, no matter where it is found. If the principles of Christianity are true, then one would expect to find them in various sources that are not “Christian.”

Today we are going to look at a key passage of scripture that describes how change caqn occur for a person who has decided to follow Jesus Christ. If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Romans 6.

In Romans 6:1, Paul asks:
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

In Romans 1-2 Paul describes how the human race has turned from God and therefore are separated from God—the one true source of life.
In Romans 1-3 Paul has argued that a person cannot bridge the gap between them and God, simply by trying to comply to the law of God. No-one can perfectly live out God’s law in both letter and spirit… God’s as a perfect being, requires perfection. This is why Paul says in Romans 3:20 noone will be justified in God’s sight through the law and why Paul says in Romans 3:23 that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Paul says that the good news of the Gospel is this that god has provided another way for us to receive forgiveness of our sins and be restored to God.

Paul argues that if we put our faith in the faithfulness work of Jesus Christ who bore our sin and shame on the Cross, our sins can be forgiven, we can be restored to God.

There were many people in Paul’s day (and some in our own day) who object to this message that our sins can be forgiven and that they can be restored to God simply by putting their trust in what Jesus Christ has done. Those who object to this message say if you tell people they can simply be forgiven of their sins through the work of Christ, people will abuse that and they will say, “If God forgives me, why not sin?” And some of have likely thought, I’m tempted, I’ll sin and ask God to forgive me.

Or as Paul says in Romans 1 1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means!

Paul, while not backing away from the message that we can receive forgiveness of sins through the work of Jesus Christ, counters the argument that if we believe the Gospel that our sins can be forgiven by simply trusting in the work of Christ on the Cross…we can sin as we please.
Paul asks…

Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Paul says when we are baptized into Christ (which in Paul’s view was the practical beginning of the Christian life) a person dies and rises with Jesus Christ…

Some biblical scholars compare baptism to a marriage ceremony. It is common for a couple, of course, to be committed to each other before they are married.

If a couple makes a decision that they want to belong to each other for the rest of their lives, then may well decide to get married, exchange vows and weddings rings. They exchange their vows and wedding rings in the presence of God and before family and friends. Marriage becomes a kind of sign and seal for their relationship.

When I am officiating at a wedding, as some of you have likely heard me say, I will often say to the couple, “In a few minutes you will walk off this stage as husband and wife. You may not feel any different, but your lives will be different, because marriage has the power to change your lives as a whole.”

I have informally surveyed couples who have been together for some time (in some cases Christian, in some cases not Christian) and who then gotten married, and have asked the question, “Do you sense any difference in your relationship now that you are married?” In virtually case that I can recall, people have said, “We feel that our relationship is now secure now that we are married.”

Marriage is something instituted by God, so it would sense that a couple would now feel more secure as they commit themselves through the sacrament of marriage. And so it is in baptism. Though baptism, like marriage, may seem to be a simple, outward, public declaration of commitment, since it is a sacrament of God there is something very powerful about this act of obedience. Like a marriage ceremony does for a couple, baptism acts as a sign and seal of our salvation.

This is why the apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Paul looks back to his baptism and considers that the decisive point of change for him in relationship with God. And if you are here, and you know that you want to belong to God fully, and you want God to belong to you fully, and you have never made your own decision to follow Christ through the waters of baptism, I would invite to do so. I would invite you to do so, not only as an act of obedience to Christ and as way of following in his footsteps as Christ himself was baptized, but also so that more of the Spirit can be imparted to you. After Jesus was baptized, the Bible says the heavens opened and the Spirit came on him like a dove. If you want all of God and God to have all of you, and you want to have the Spirit powerfully active in your life, then follow Christ through the waters of baptism if you have never made that decision yourself.

Through following Christ and through baptism we can receive a new life and a new Spirit.

We have a new Spirit. Paul describes becoming new people (Romans 6:7-8).
I gave my life over to Christ as a teenager. Theologically, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I did notice that I was experiencing something inside me. I remembering going home after committing my life to Christ and searching out for a pornographic magazine that I had hidden in our garage behind some logs for the fireplace. I had bought that magazine with a good friend of mine at 7-11… we both went together. When we got I said to my friend, I’m guard the door in case your parents show, you by the magazine (here’s 2 dollars). So, it was our magazine, but I made a unilateral executive decision to burn that magazine.

I also remember going into my bedroom and taking down posters of these rock groups that I didn’t feel would honor God and in burning them too. I just had a new desire to live in a new kind of way. That was an example of what the Holy Spirit was doing in me.

What Paul is saying is that through our giving our life to Christ and our baptism in Christ we have been made new, we receive a new Spirit.

So Paul would respond say doesn’t the Gospel of Jesus that says our sins can be forgiven encourage to go on sinning and Paul would say, know because Gospel when we are united with Christ in baptism, we die to an old life, we receive a new life and new spirit that causes to want to follow the ways of God.

In verse 5 and following:
5 If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, [a] that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

Paul says that once you give your life over to Jesus Christ, you not only have a new relationship with a new master, Jesus Christ,but you also have a new status.

I owe the following ideas and illustrations to New Testament scholar, Tom Wright and the esteemed late British minister, Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine someone is renting a house from a landlord who turns out to be a bully, always demanding extra payments, coming into your house without asking, threatening you with legal action or violence of you don’t give in to his demands. You get used to doing what he says out of fear. There does not seem to be any way out, but then to your relief, you find somewhere else to live. Someone else pays off your remaining rent and you can leave.

You move out and settle into your new place, but to your horror a few days later the old landlord shows up at your door and barges into the house. He is angry and demands more money. He threatens to take you to court. The old habit returns. You are strongly tempted to pay him what he demands, just to get him to leave , but you know you are not his tenant any more. You have seen the paper work. His final bill was paid. Nothing more is owing.

Trembling, you get up and tell him to leave. He has no claim over you.


What Paul is saying in Romans 6:11 is like this. He says remember who you are, remember that you are no longer a slave of sin, you are no longer in “Adam,” but that you are in Christ and you have a new landlord, you have a new master, Jesus Christ.

To use another illustration that is similar and then extends the metaphor, let me again rely on an image introduced to me by Tom Wright and Martin Lloyd Jones:
Imagine that you are a small landholder living out on the countryside about 1000 years ago. Your little farm sits on the border of two great estates, and for years the lord of the manor, on whose land you live, has had you completely under his thumb. Whenever he has wanted to fight a war, or even a little local skirmish, he has called you to join up and fight on his side, and has threatened you with all kinds of things—like burning your house down if you don’t participate. He has also more than once made you get all your farm implements, tools… nice peaceful things like hoes, spades and shovels…and take them down to the blacksmith to make them into swords and spears. So you go off to fight his wars when you would really rather to be looking after the farm.

Eventually, you see an opportunity that is very attractive. You move across the river to another great estate. You build a new house, bring all your stuff across and settle down. Unfortunately, your old landlord was away at the time or he would have tried to stop you. The new landlord, who is a wonderful and noble person, gives you a warm welcome and charges you a lot less rent than the other landlord. But from time to time, your old landlord comes down and threatens to send his henchmen across the river and do all kinds of unpleasant things if you don’t return to him. But he is secretly afraid of your new landlord. You get on with your and look after your farm. You master gets you to help with the work, which is quite different from the battles which your old landlord used to drag you into. Your new landlord is building schools and hospitals, especially for poor people and sometimes asks you to bring your tools and help with the work. If someone is in special need—a death in the family, a fire, animals are sick—he asks you to help out in that way or that way. Sometimes, of course, it takes effort, but you’ve got to do it, especially for him.

This is what is involved in becoming a Christian and living life under a new master.
The old landlord will threaten you by saying, “If you don’t do this, something terrible will happen to you. Or perhaps the old landlord will say, “If you serve your new landlord, you will miss out. You won’t really live.”

But you have a new landlord, a new status and a new way to live. I used the illustration the illustration of marriage. When you get married, you make promises to someone. You have a new status as husband or wife. You may not feel very different, but you have a new status. You may not fulfill your promises perfectly, particularly at the beginning to love, honour and cherish as this is an entirely new responsibility for you, but you have a new status…you have a new call. When you become a parent for the first time, you don’t have any experience as a new parent and you may feel out of your element as a new parent, but you have a new status…you are now a parent and you are called to love and care for and discipline your child. And when you become a child of God, you have a new status…you have a new call…you have a new way of being in the world. You may not feel differently right away, but you have a new status. When you are true to that new status, you find yourself becoming a new person.
I know someone, who’s with family in their family history who have been unfaithful to their wives. When this feels that maybe he too what TIME magazine has described as the unfaithful gene, i.e. a gene that may predispose someone to commit adultery. This person, I may have been born with the capacity to commit adultery and even the desire to so with a certain kind of person, but now I that am “in Christ” I am no longer that person… I have a new identity and so I will live in a way that is consistent with that new identity… When I am tempted I will say that is no longer me…

In Romans 6:13 Paul says don’t offer the parts of your body as instruments of sin, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life…

Paul teaches, what we do also effects change in us…
Do you know of the Delancey Street Foundation in San Franscisco. It is a remarkable residence where criminals live and work together as way to prepare to re-enter society after their sentences are complete. Most of them have been labeled psychopaths. They typically move to Delancey after committing felonies and having serious problems with addiction to heroin or alcohol. They are usually the third generation of families who have known only poverty, crime and drug addiction. They have never led lawful lives or understood the values and ideals of lawful society.

After staying at Delancey for 4 years, most of the residents “graduate” and go out on their own into greater society. Nearly 60% of the people, who enter the program and make it through, sustain productive lives on the outside. Compare this to the fact only 6% of their peers who didn’t go through Delancey but through the regular prison system turn into into lawful citizens.
Part of the way they foster change is through relationships and part of the way they get inmates to change is by getting the inmates to work in businesses owned by Delancey and volunteer work.
Delancey also stresses dressing in a certain way, walking in a certain way, speaking in a certain way, and through these practices becoming new from the outside in.

As Christianity often emphasizes, change from the inside out, but, it is also true as Paul points out, when we offer the parts of our body to God rather than to wickedness, we can also encourage change from the outside in.

Richard Rohr… emphasizing this says “We don’t think our self into news ways of living, we live our selves into new ways of thinking.”

That is what we do, transforms our thinking and being…

As we act in ways that are consistent with our new status, we can become new people.
As people with a new status in Christ, we are called to live in a new way.

Those who perhaps are family and social networks where there are a very few if any Christian may at times feel out of step with the people around. As you think about your vacation, you maybe I should commit to doing a mission.

From time to time, I have been self-conscious about the fact, that as far as I know, I am the only Christian minister in our family tree. My siblings and my cousins have chosen more mainstream careers like business or education, medicine or media But a few years ago, as part of the preparations our staff members were asked to do for a retreat, I explored the roots of my family tree.

I discovered that on my dad’s side that my ancestors had been Samurai, not so much people who had been engaged in direct combat (too bad), but Samurai who would give ethical counsel to the Samurai lord. They were Confucian scholars and teachers of literature and ethics, and they gave ethical and spiritual counsel to the lord of the Samurai clan. When I thought about that, I thought what I am doing is not so foreign to who I am. I felt more at peace about my “unusual” calling.

I doing who I am… I doing something that historically consistent with my family…
It may that when you respond to the call of Christ, not necessarily to become a minister but to become a certain kind of person, you may feel out of sorts relative to your family and friends. You are making lifestyle choices that are different from what your family and the people around you have been accustomed to.

If you realize that you are acting in a way that is consistent with your new family you can be at peace…
So can a person change… through a relationship as unite to him in faith signified in our baptism, as we recognize new Spirit and a new status, we live out status we can change…
Augustine, the famous theologian from Africa, had been a sexual addict as a young man and, after giving his life to Christ, was walking down the street and ended running up into one of his old mistresses whom he had been especially attracted to.
She approached him and said, “Hello.” He said “hello” back, but didn’t really respond much further than that. She thought that he didn’t recognize her. So she pursued him and re-introduced herself and said, “Augustine! Augustine! It is I. it is I.” Augustine replied, “I know. I know, but it is not I. It is not I.” and Augustine was aware of the new status and the new Spirit that he had because of his connection with Jesus Christ.

And as we become people related to a new Saviour and embrace our new status and our new Spirit, we will become people who are new, the children of God.

(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)

Romans 5: Suffering: Mar 3, 2007

The Role of suffering in the life of Hope March 3, 2007
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Big Idea: When we are sure of God’s love, suffering can make us more like Jesus.

Text: ROMANS 5:1-11

When I was about 16 years old, and a new Christian, I had heard that the fastest way to grow as a Christian was to experience “trials and tribulations.” I knew that I had far more character defects than the average person, I was also very competitive, so I earnestly prayed that God would send me many trials and many tribulations so that my growth as a Christian would be quickly accelerated…

I earnestly prayed this prayer a several times and not long thereafter I fell into the deepest depression that I had ever experienced up until, or since, that time. I was a carefree, kid growing up. I hardly ever studied, almost never felt guilt--even when I was doing “bad things.” My life was dominated by sports and friends and having fun. I had no idea what depression was. But after praying that God would send me trials and tribulations, I entered into this deep valley of despair. Nothing external had changed in my life, but I felt as though God had turned his face from me, and as a result I no longer felt the presence of God in my life. I was in great anguish.

Emotionally, it was the most difficult time of my life. I have suffered emotionally since then through the loss of a relationship, through failure, but I have never been as low as when I was 16 years old.

And during this time of deep inner suffering, someone who didn’t even know me sent me a card, and in that card were the words of Romans 5: 3-5, where Paul says…

3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

This morning I want us to look at this text and examine the role that suffering plays in the life of a child of God.

Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 5:

In verse 1 we read:
Peace and Hope
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we [a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
In Romans 1 and 2 Paul describes how we human beings have turned from the living God from whom they were made as a result experience confusion, despair and breakdown.
As we saw last week, in Romans 3 we see how God has intervened and bridged the gap between us and God through the faithful work of His son Jesus Christ, who, as we explored last Sunday, bore not only our sin but our shame on the cross, so we could live with out shame and enter the living room of our Father in heaven.
We saw how Christ allowed himself to be excluded from the his family, the Godhead, so that we could be included by God… and we become people who can walk into the living room of God, and experience the embrace of God… when we put our faith, our trust in Jesus Christ faithful work on the cross…
Paul says, 1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, wehave peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
Paul says through this trusting the faithful work of Jesus Christ on the cross we have peace with God.
Peace in this context means peace in the “objective” sense of being in harmony with God. As a result of being in harmony with God, we may experience subjective peace in our heart, but here Paul is talking about the fact the objective fact that if we in relationship with Christ we are no longer living in hostility with God; we have been reconciled to God and therefore have peace with God.
And Paul says:
And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope.
One of the most important themes in the book of Romans (as we see in chapter 4 and 8-11) is that God is raising up people to be part of his family, people who are the true spiritual seed of Abraham, the true children of God.
And one of the signs, according to Paul in this text and others is that if we really are children of God we will suffer…that’s Paul we rejoice in our suffering because it’s a sign that we are children of God… that God is at work in us… Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:12 that all who live a godly life in Christ Jesus will suffer…
There are some people who preach a “health and wealth” gospel. They preach that if you give your life to Jesus Christ you will become healthy, and you will become wealthy--and escape suffering. Preaching that kind of gospel may appeal to a lot of people, because most people want to be healthy and wealthy, but unfortunately that is not Gospel according to Jesus Christ.
People who promote the “health and wealth” gospel may say to you’re if you’re are sick and not experiencing healing, “The reason that you are sick and are not experiencing healing is because you do not have enough faith.” The “health and wealth” preachers people may say, “Just believe, just believe, just believe, just believe!”
Or if you are not financially prospering, the “health and wealth” gospel preachers may encourage you to muster up more faith and to name and claim whatever it is that you want and claim it.
I remember as a new Christian noticing that a Christian woman who was part of a family of modest means had a photograph of a Cadillac taped to her refrigerator at (level). I was curious and I asked her, “Why do you have this photo of a Cadillac taped to your refrigerator?”
She said, “I am naming and I am claiming it.”
And “health and wealth” gospel people will say, “If you are not healthy and wealthy, you just don’t have enough faith. If had you faith, you would be healthier and you would be wealthier.”
This false gospel, this “health and wealth” message, leaves some people feeling that if they are not healthy and wealthy, they must lack faith.
Paul, in contrast to this pseudo-gospel, says that one of the evidences that you are really trusting and following God is that you experience suffering. Paul says in Romans 5 we rejoice in our suffering because it’s a sign we’re children of God, 2 Timothy 3 “All who are godly in Christ Jesus will experience suffering.”
So suffering is not a sign that we don’t have enough faith, but suffering is a sign that we do have true faith in God. Abraham our spiritual ancestor, featured in Romans… suffered because of decision to follow God… he follows the call of God right into a land of land that is experiencing famine... as did Moses’ decision to follow God led to suffering as did Ruth’s and Esther’s Jesus.’ And at some level, every true follower of God will suffer. Paul says all who are godly in Christ Jesus will experience suffering.
And so part of the reason Paul says that we rejoice in our suffering is because if we suffer, it is a sign that we are the children of God.
Sometimes followers of Christ suffer because they find themselves out of synch with the values of the world. Paul in Romans 12 if you are a child of God, live like it. Don’t be conformed to the values of this world. And because we’re out of synch with the values of the world we may experience suffering.
A boss who pressures us to lie for him, or her, for the company, if we respectfully say we can’t do that. We may suffer. A partner that we are not married to urges to compromise our bodies sexually in ways that outside of God’s plan, and you say, I’m going to wait, I’m going to star over sexually and from her out I’m going to save my body till in a marriage covenant with someone… we may suffer in some way.
Also, as followers of God, we voluntarily give our lives to others in self-giving service.
Mother Teresa once responded when asked how much should I love, she said, “Love till it hurts.” And we can voluntarily suffer as we give our lives away in service.
The Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis was once asked by someone of how much money should I give away. I think the person was thinking professor will likely say tithe your money… give the first a tenth to God… Lewis said give until it hurts… which means the tenth is starting point… but if you up end making far more money that you need to live on, give until there are certain things you can’t, because you’re so generous…
Shane Claiborne in his book the Irresistible Revolution says,
· I know there are people out there who say, "My life was such a mess. I was drinking, partying, sleeping around ... and then I met Jesus and my whole life came together." But me, I had it together. I used to be cool. And then I met Jesus and he wrecked my life. The more I read the gospel, the more it messed me up, turning everything I believed in, valued, and hoped for upside-down. I am still recovering from my conversion. I know it's hard to imagine, but in high school, I was in the in-crowd, popular, ready to make lots of money and buy lots of stuff, on the upward track to success. I had been planning to go to med school. Like a lot of folks, I wanted to find a job where I could do as little work as possible for as much money as possible. I figured anesthesiology would work, just put folks to sleep with a little happy gas and let others do the dirty work. Then I could buy lots of stuff I didn't need. Mmm ...
But as I pursued that dream of upward mobility preparing for college, things just didn't fit together. As I read Scriptures about how the last will be first, I started wondering why I was working so hard to be first…
We are called to a life of service, compassion, and generosity. If we that we’re not born that way, if we meet Christ we are re-born that way… Even though I believe that the great life of service, compassion, and generosity is the greatest life in the world… it involves suffering…
The children of God will suffer because they march to the beat of different drummer; suffer because like Jesus we become people of self-giving sacrificial service to others…
And then we can involuntarily suffer because we experience some kind of loss… Followers of Christ don’t in some protective bubble… we suffer like others… we love someone who doesn’t love us back, we don’t accepted in grad school, or we don’t get a job we want, we lose a baby, a grandmother, a beloved pet… we get sick, we’re in conflict with some, we experience some kind financial reversal.
Paul says, “As followers of Christ, we glory in our suffering, we rejoice in our suffering.” Paul does not say, “We rejoice for our suffering.”
There are certain things we should not rejoice for: we should not rejoice for sickness, we should not rejoice for having our heart broken, we should not rejoice for getting laid off work…
But Paul is saying that we rejoice in the midst of our suffering, giving thanks to God in the midst of suffering and trust God in the midst of suffering… because our suffering may be a sign that we truly are the children of God…
And Paul says that we rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering can produce perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.
James and Peter also write that we rejoice in our suffering because suffering refines our character like gold in the fire…
Suffering can make us bitter, it can also make us more beautiful.
When the late well-known CBC television journalist, Barbara Frum was asked as her career was winding down “who are describe your favorite interviews?” Frum said the people who, I interviews that were most precious to me were the ones with people who had significant suffering. She listed some names of famous people like Nelson Mandela (27 years in prison), Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and then she named some people whom I did not recognize because they were not famous, but who had suffered. And Barbara Frum who far as I know was not religious said, “These people who had gone through suffering had this humility and this depth of soul about them.”
I was with someone recently who gave me permission to share part of his story. This has person has gone intense suffering which I won’t elaborate on… He said, it has been hard, but it has made me less focused on my “status”, my career and financial curve and more on God, it’s has made me less judgmental of other people…
There is something about suffering… that can deepen our character and opens us up to God.
Think of a time when your soul was deepened, when you were opened up in a new way to God, it may have been through beauty but it may have been through suffering…
Gerald Sittser, the author of the wise and sensitive book, A Grace Disguised, in a tragic accident lost three generations in his family (his mother, his wife, his daughter). Gerald Sittser knows what it is to experience catastrophic loss.
And based on his own experience of suffering and the observation of others, Sittser writes, “The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering. Suffering enlarges the largest capacity for anger and depression, despair and anguish, all natural and legitimate emotions when we experience loss. Once enlarged, the soul is capable of experiencing greater joy, strength, peace and love…” Suffering can deepen our character and expand our souls for God…
Paul says suffering leads to perseverance, perseverance to character, and then character to hope. And when we suffer, not only do we test and develop our perseverance and character, but we become people of hope…
Suffering can enable us to become people who trust in God more deeply and when that happens we become people of hope.
We can demonstrate hope by trusting for some kind of deliverance…
Sometimes when we suffer and we cry out to God, we are delivered miraculously. God can be glorified in his deliverance of us. I have a friend in Boston who in the past week was telling me about how her colleague who is not a Christian has been experiencing chronic back pain for a long time. For some months now she has been on medication to alleviate the pain in her back, but none of it has worked.
This friend was telling me recently by phone that she felt led to ask this colleague, not a Christian, if it would be okay if she prayed for healing for her. The colleague said that would be fine. My friend was praying in the quietness of her heart that God reveal yourself to my colleague by healing her. Then my friend prayed out loud for her that God would heal her back. The next morning her colleague said, “The pain in my back is completely gone. I believe that God has healed me. I want turn back to God.”
I find that God often dramatically answers prayers of people who are the verge of believing, or who are new in their faith, as way to bolster their hope…and that he often allows people of more mature faith to go through suffering and it gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their hope in the midst in suffering.
We can demonstrate our hope in God can by trusting God to deliver us we can also demonstrate our hope in God by trusting God to sustain us in the midst of their suffering.
Joni Erickson was an attractive teen-ager who grew up near Chesapeake Bay in the Baltimore area… One summers day as a high school student she dove off floating dock in Chesapeake Bay, not how shallow the water way. She hit her head on the sandy bottom of the bay, broke her neck and became up a quadriplegic, unable to use her hands and feet. She often prayed and had other “faith healers” pray that she would be healed. But she was not healed and Joni Erickson would later say that God could have done a miracle in healing me, but he has done another miracle—he has enabled me to fit in this wheel chair and smile.
Sometimes we can demonstrate our hope in God by trusting God to deliver us. At other times we can give testimony to God’s presence in our life by demonstrating that, even though God has not given us a certain kind of deliverance or provision that our heart longs for, we trusting to sustain us in our pain…
Perhaps some of you are saying in our heart God, “I’d prefer the deliverance thank you very much!”
I remember talking to someone in our home who was not a Christian and we were discussing how some times God allows a person to experience suffering to refine their character and make them better people… She I have no desire to become “A great person, I’d much be an ordinary person, but free from stress, suffering…
Paul would say as he does in 2 Cor 4 that our light and momentary suffering are working for us an eternal weight of glory that far outweighs them all… Light and momentary suffering meaning our suffering in this, eternal weight of glory being the life to come…
If our existence is simply a dot… simply this life… As serious as Paul can seem, Paul says eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die… (If this is there is, Paul would don’t sacrifice and invest in this church building with it’s eternal focus, buy yourself a time share or least watch the time-share presentation and take the free trip to Vegas… live for the dot)
But we are everlasting creatures… and if this case we will rejoice in our suffering because through God will make us more Jesus Christ in way that will not mark our life her e on earth, but our life to come… Live for the line and rejoice in your suffering…
5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Paul frames his discussion on suffering in the context of God’s love for. Why does some people become bitter in suffering and other become beautiful. I don’t know the full answer to that. But one the reason why some people become beautiful because they know someone, that God loves them and whether they Romans 8:28 or not they some God is mysteriously working out his loving plan through the suffering…
And so the basis of our hope in God in the midst of suffering comes partly through a subjective sense in our own heart that God loves us, as the Holy Spirit as Paul says in our text, pours out a sense of God’s love in our hearts.
But, not only do we have a subjective sense that God loves us, we have objective evidence. Paul says in verses 6 and 7:
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We have objective evidence that God loves us as we look at the cross, we have subjective evidence that God loves us as the Holy Spirit pours out in our heart a sense of God’s love for us.
God sent his Son to die for people who refuses to worship him which is the idea When Paul says, “While we were still sinners….,” Paul demonstrates the greatness of God’s love for us. ..
To make sure we don’t miss this point, Paul re-enforces this point in verse 7 with the analogy, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.”
A righteous person is a person that we might respect, but a good person is someone that we might love. Very rarely will a person give his or her life for someone they merely respect, but occasionally a person will die for someone they love. E.g. A parent might die for his or her child, a person might die for their spouse…
The extraordinary quality of God’s love is seen in that while we were sinners, i.e, still in rebellion against God, Christ died for us…
Does respect us all the time, I don’t know, maybe, we do some pretty stupid things… but I know… because we were still in rebellion against God, in Christ died for us…
We are reminded of God we come to table…
On the night Jesus was betrayed he took bread and broken…
From the cross I love you, I love you… and from don’t you that I love I am who says but demonstrates I can bring good, eternal good out of suffering…


(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)