Apr 15, '07: Romans 8:14-17: Fear to Freedom
ROMANS M 8
TEXT: ROMANS 8: 14-17 From Fear to Freedom
Big Idea: Move from fear to freedom through being a son or daughter of God.
Introduction
Peter Senge, the founder of the Centre for Organizational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the author of the book, The Fifth Discipline, tells a story about a woman who as a young child dreamed about doing something to further peace and harmony in the world. But as she grew up, her parents encouraged her to do something “practical” with her life, and so this person pursued a career in finance.
Even though she was very successful in her finance career, she felt an emptiness inside and continued to yearn to do something to further the cause of peace and harmony in the world. She left her secure position in the business world and ended up pursuing a career that would enable her to foster peace in the world. She became a special envoy to the United Nations under President Clinton.
Like that woman, each of us wants to live the kind of life where we are free to choose what we were meant to do. If at all possible, we want to avoid the kind of life that is lived by a script that someone else has written for us, but doesn’t reflect the ecology of our personhood.
One of the keys to becoming a truly free person is to know God and to know ourself, and the two are intimately related. John Calvin said in his opening to his great work The Institutes of the Christian Religion wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. As Augustine also affirmed the two are intimately related: in knowing God we know our self and in knowing our self we know God.
It is as we come to know our self, in light of God, we become people who understand who we are and, as a result of that, we become people who are able to discern and live out our true calling.
Romans 8: 14-17 offers us a very clear description of who we are, and who we become when we enter into God’s family and if we grasp this we can live with freedom:
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8: 14.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Review
Let me take a few moments to set up the context here. We are going through a series here at Tenth on the book of Romans.
In Romans 7 (as we saw a few weeks ago) we see a description of a person who at one level really wants to follow the way of God. This person has the law of God, and apparently a devout Jew. But the person described in Romans 7, as much as he tries, is not able to follow God’s way. He finds himself under condemnation. He is living a life dominated by what the Bible calls his “flesh,” the part of him that is in rebellion against God. As a result, he finds himself “under condemnation” because he cannot keep the way of God. So, he seems to be someone who is very religiously devout, but outside of Christ.
And, in contrast, in Romans 8 we read of a person who is not under condemnation (Romans 8:1).This person described in Romans is not under the condemnation of the law for failing to keep it, but is connected to Christ and therefore under the grace or favor of God. The person described in Romans 8 isn’t living primarily on the energy of his “human flesh,” but living by the energy of the Holy Spirit. This person is not so much tied as much to the legacy of Adam, who brought the “sin virus” into the world, but who instead is tied to Jesus Christ, who deals with “bad virus” of sin that came through Adam and who brings the “good virus” of God’s Spirit into the world.
Paul describes the person in Romans 8 who is under grace, in Christ, as one who walks in the Spirit, and thus fulfills the law of God.
In Romans 8 vss. 14-17, the apostle Paul describes this person as a son or the daughter of God. And Paul (in vs. 14) says that the children of God are led by the Spirit of God (vs.14).
Then in verse 15 Paul describes the work of the Spirit: 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship or daughter-ship. [h] And by him we cry, "Abba, [i] Father." Abba is most personal word a person can use for God.
Paul here is describing the identity of two kinds of people. One kind of person Paul describes in Romans 8:15 is the one who has the identity of a slave.
If you can imagine what it would like to be a slave (or servant), you might be able to picture yourself as someone who is living in fear (vs. 15). A slave (or servant) tends to have the mindset of fear because he or she does not have real security in the household (or in the organization) in which he or she works. If the slave screws up, doesn’t perform up to par, the slave is on the way out—sold, let go. So the slave lives with this fear.
Second, serves out of the sense of duty. They serve because they have to serve…it is their job…their livelihood depends on it.
Third, this slave, or the servant, serves out of self-interest… he/she knows that he or she must work in order to go on living, so the motivation is that of self-interest…survival!
In contrast, the son or the daughter in a healthy family does not serve out of fear. The son or the daughter in a healthy family knows that he or she is secure in their father’s and mother’s love.
They are not motivated by fear. They are secure.
So their life and work is not motivated out of duty, but out of gratitude.
The son or daughter who knows that he or she is loved doesn’t serve merely out of self-interest, but out of love for his or her parents.
Most of us have not been slaves or servants in the traditional sense, but many of us know what it is to have the mindset of a slave. Some of us here have been in families where our parents have had unrealistic expectations of us. They have written scripts for us that reflect their ambitions and their insecurities rather than the ecology of our personhood.
I have a friend who comes from a family where her father had very high expectations for her and her sister (she’s OK with me sharing part of her story).
Her father and uncle won the Nobel prizes in physics. My friend’s father has very high expectations of her, as well as her sister. When her sister received her PhD in French, her father remarked, “Your dissertation isn’t good for anything, except perhaps to be used as toilet paper.”
And though my friend is very talented…very smart…went to one of the best universities in the world… is quite accomplished, but has never felt she’s lived up to her dad’s expectations…
When you start trying to live for someone else’s approval, when you live to try to honour someone else’s script for your life, when it doesn’t fit you, you start living outside of yourself. You experience this hollowness inside…you feel more like a human “doing”, than a human-being.
If you grow up in a healthy family, however, and you sense the family and you sense the love from your parents and you sense the security that comes from that, you are more likely set free to pursue that path that you feel called to pursue. In so doing, you can become your true self….
If I may say personally, though our family is far from perfect, I am very grateful to have had very loving, supportive parents.
Even though they are originally from Japan from families that really emphasized the importance of education and a certain kind of career track, they have really loved me and my four siblings unconditionally. Because of that we have felt the security that helps put on a path we believe we are supposed to be pursuing. When you feel deeply loved by a significant person, you become secure in that love and as a result you are free to become your true self.
If we are really God’s children, we will come to know that God is a Father who loves as Paul points out in vs. 15 that cries: “Abba! Father!” Abba is the most intimate word that a person could use to describe his or her dad. It was a word that Jesus used when he spoke to his father. In certain cultures (e.g. Hebrew culture, Indian culture, my Japanese culture), there is a certain word for “dad” that you can use to describe only your dad. E.g. in Japanese that personal word for dad is “chi-chi”. You can’t use it to describe someone else’s dad because it is too personal and familiar. And the word Jesus uses to describe our father in heaven is the kind of word you can only use if you are a son or a daughter of God. So it is a very personal word…a very intimate word…it is word that suggests that we are truly close and dear to God.
And if you can experience a sense of God’s love for you on your heart in a new way, it will free you in your relationship with God, and it will free you in your relationship with yourself, and it will free you in your relationship with other people.
I have a mentor in my life who’s been very successful in the ministry and accomplished in leadership…
When I first met this person through the Arrow Leadership Program, I felt as though I needed to earn this person’s approval by demonstrating that I was eager to learn, that like a good “stock” in a company was worthy of his and this program’s investment . But as I grew to know this person more deeply and came to understand that this person really cared for me (not because of what I could for him or for the brand of the leadership organization), but simply cared for and loved me as a human being, then my motivation changed. I no longer was motivated out of a sense that I needed to perform in order to be accepted. Then I was able to grow and serve and become out of a sense of gratitude.
When we realize that we are loved and accepted by our father in heaven, we don’t need to be motivated any more by fear, but we can be motivated from gratitude knowing that God loves you.
Are you motivated by the sense of gratitude that God loves you?
What does it look like to be motivated by the mentality of a slave who lives in fear vs. by the mentality of a son or daughter who’s loved?
The slave a slave’s security and significance based by what they do, what they’ve accomplished, and what others think of them.
The slave is motivated by fear.
It’s possible to motivate by fear not just in your so called “secular”, but in your “spiritual life”—and define your worth by what you do for God and by how people rate your spirituality.
The son or daughter’s security and significance is being rooted in being deeply loved by God.
The son or daughter is motivated by gratitude.
Which are you? Slave? Son or Daughter? Or part way in between? I am often part way in between…
So how do we become that this way?
The first step in becoming a person who really is able to receive Gods’ love as a son or daughter is to be born again into God’s family…
My wife is from Japan and was recently telling me a true story about a girl (7 or 8 years old with a slight mental disability) who was living in an orphanage in Japan.
Adoption is not very common in Japan, in general, but if a child has some kind of disability it is far less likely for that child to be adopted.
My wife was telling me about child in Japan who was 6 years old had who had been abandoned by her parents because of a slight mental disability she had and put in an orphanage. She had also been passed over by prospective adoptive parents because of her disability. (Prospective adoptive parents naturally prefer children who are healthy and preferably beautiful.) MiYuki, was neither of these so she had been passed over.
The staff of this orphanage realized MiYuki might not be picked by anyone and so she sought out some parents who had adopted children from their orphanage before. They were not wealthy people at all, but they were deeply loving people. These parents agreed to adopt Miyuki this girl with a slight mental disability. As the relationship developed between the adoptive mother and Miyuki, Miyuki began to act like a little baby. Even though she was 7 or 8 years old, she said, “I want to wear diapers.” Even though she was old enough to eat solid food, she asked to be able to drink milk from a bottle. And Miyuki had this strange habit of clinging on to her mother and sliding head first down her mother’s torso (stand up) and saying I was born of you.
MiYuki’s adoptive parents became concerned about her baby-like behaviour so they sought the counsel of a psychologist. As the psychologist observed Miyuki wearing diapers, drinking milk from a bottle and sliding down her mother’s body across her torso toward her womb, the psychologist pointed out that Miyuki was experiencing a phenomenon which in Japanese is described as “aka-chan gairi”, which translated into English means “the child is experiencing a kind of return to baby syndrome.” This apparently can happen to babies who have not gone through the normal passages of being a baby, an infant, a young child with loving parents. The psychologist explained to the adoptive mother, “As Miyuki sliding down your torso toward your womb, what she is expressing is a desire to be born through you. As she expresses desire to be in diapers and to have milk and as she slides down your body, she is saying she wants you, and not her natural mother, to be her real mother. She wants to be born through you . She wants to come through your womb.”
So the adoptive mother was very glad that her adoptive daughter wanted her to be her real mom. After a few months of Miyuki wearing diapers, drinking milk from a bottle and sliding down her mother’s body, she stopped doing that, as she felt that she had been mothered as a baby by her new mother and become her daughter.
People, perhaps not at a conscious level, but at a subconscious level, want to be adopted and received by the perfect father and mother, none of which, of course, exists, other than God.
We yearn that love of perfect father and mother… sometimes that shows in an ache to receive approval of some person, or through something we do, some we achieve..
But we can be born again into God’s family adopted by God and re-parented in a way that brings healing to our spirit. And as we are adopted unto God’s family, as the text says, we really do become God’s children…
Verses16-17 tell us: The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
If we become God’s children by being joined to Christ, we are not loved simply some warm, but intangible way, but we become beneficiaries of all of God’s riches.
In the Roman world, when you adopted someone, you typically adopted an adult child. And that child experienced all their debts being cancelled, as their adoptive parents would have paid off all those debts. And all the parents’ wealth would have become the wealth of the adoptive child. When we are adopted we experience forgiveness of our sins and receive God’s wealth as co-heirs with God’s son Christ and Paul says later in Romans we will inherit the very cosmos, the redeemed universes.
One of the ways that we can be freed from the fearful mentality of a slave is to become the adoptive son or daughter of God.
And if you have already taken that step and entered God’s family, do you
realize that you are an adoptive son or daughter of God?
If you are, have you take the 2nd step of realizing that you are loved unconditionally and you are immensely wealth in the most important ways because you are part of God’s family?
The priest Henri Nouwen has said the greatest temptation is not sex, money, power, or the even approval of others, but self rejection…
One of the ways that we can be healed of our compulsive need to perform is to realize whose child we are. In the powerful movie, Blood Diamond, with Leonardo Di Caprio, Solomon Vandy is a black African father who has a 9 or 10 year old son named Dia.
The son is captured by rebel soldiers and he is brain-washed into believing that his father and mother and family are enemies. Dia becomes a boy soldier and is re-programmed by these rebel mercenary soldiers. His father and character played by Di Caprio, Danny Archer, end up rescuing the son Dia who reluctantly goes with his dad and Archer
At one point in the movie as Solomon the father and Archer are looking for the enormous blood diamond that Solomon has hidden in the ground, Dia points his rifle at his father, then at Danny Archer, and back and forth, as if they are his enemies.
The father looks at his son who is holding a machine gun pointed to him and says, “Dia, look at me. You are Dia Vandy of the proud Mendee tribe. I know they made you do bad things, but you are a good boy. You are a boy who loves school and loves to play soccer. Your mother loves you and she waits by the fire, making stew with your sister and the new baby.”
And the father moves a little closer to Dia and says, “The cows wait for you. And the wild dog Babu who minds no one but you, waits for you.” And he steps even a little closer, and he says to his 9-year-old son, “And I am your father who loves you and you will go home with me and be my son.”
He walks right to his son, ignoring the gun, and he wraps his arms around his son. His son goes limp, begins to weep and falls into the embrace of his father.
And it is as we come to understand that we are God’s sons and daughters loved by God that we can discover what our true identity is, and we can live as free people.
Prayer of confession and ask God to help us realize who we are.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
TEXT: ROMANS 8: 14-17 From Fear to Freedom
Big Idea: Move from fear to freedom through being a son or daughter of God.
Introduction
Peter Senge, the founder of the Centre for Organizational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the author of the book, The Fifth Discipline, tells a story about a woman who as a young child dreamed about doing something to further peace and harmony in the world. But as she grew up, her parents encouraged her to do something “practical” with her life, and so this person pursued a career in finance.
Even though she was very successful in her finance career, she felt an emptiness inside and continued to yearn to do something to further the cause of peace and harmony in the world. She left her secure position in the business world and ended up pursuing a career that would enable her to foster peace in the world. She became a special envoy to the United Nations under President Clinton.
Like that woman, each of us wants to live the kind of life where we are free to choose what we were meant to do. If at all possible, we want to avoid the kind of life that is lived by a script that someone else has written for us, but doesn’t reflect the ecology of our personhood.
One of the keys to becoming a truly free person is to know God and to know ourself, and the two are intimately related. John Calvin said in his opening to his great work The Institutes of the Christian Religion wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self. As Augustine also affirmed the two are intimately related: in knowing God we know our self and in knowing our self we know God.
It is as we come to know our self, in light of God, we become people who understand who we are and, as a result of that, we become people who are able to discern and live out our true calling.
Romans 8: 14-17 offers us a very clear description of who we are, and who we become when we enter into God’s family and if we grasp this we can live with freedom:
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8: 14.
14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
Review
Let me take a few moments to set up the context here. We are going through a series here at Tenth on the book of Romans.
In Romans 7 (as we saw a few weeks ago) we see a description of a person who at one level really wants to follow the way of God. This person has the law of God, and apparently a devout Jew. But the person described in Romans 7, as much as he tries, is not able to follow God’s way. He finds himself under condemnation. He is living a life dominated by what the Bible calls his “flesh,” the part of him that is in rebellion against God. As a result, he finds himself “under condemnation” because he cannot keep the way of God. So, he seems to be someone who is very religiously devout, but outside of Christ.
And, in contrast, in Romans 8 we read of a person who is not under condemnation (Romans 8:1).This person described in Romans is not under the condemnation of the law for failing to keep it, but is connected to Christ and therefore under the grace or favor of God. The person described in Romans 8 isn’t living primarily on the energy of his “human flesh,” but living by the energy of the Holy Spirit. This person is not so much tied as much to the legacy of Adam, who brought the “sin virus” into the world, but who instead is tied to Jesus Christ, who deals with “bad virus” of sin that came through Adam and who brings the “good virus” of God’s Spirit into the world.
Paul describes the person in Romans 8 who is under grace, in Christ, as one who walks in the Spirit, and thus fulfills the law of God.
In Romans 8 vss. 14-17, the apostle Paul describes this person as a son or the daughter of God. And Paul (in vs. 14) says that the children of God are led by the Spirit of God (vs.14).
Then in verse 15 Paul describes the work of the Spirit: 15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship or daughter-ship. [h] And by him we cry, "Abba, [i] Father." Abba is most personal word a person can use for God.
Paul here is describing the identity of two kinds of people. One kind of person Paul describes in Romans 8:15 is the one who has the identity of a slave.
If you can imagine what it would like to be a slave (or servant), you might be able to picture yourself as someone who is living in fear (vs. 15). A slave (or servant) tends to have the mindset of fear because he or she does not have real security in the household (or in the organization) in which he or she works. If the slave screws up, doesn’t perform up to par, the slave is on the way out—sold, let go. So the slave lives with this fear.
Second, serves out of the sense of duty. They serve because they have to serve…it is their job…their livelihood depends on it.
Third, this slave, or the servant, serves out of self-interest… he/she knows that he or she must work in order to go on living, so the motivation is that of self-interest…survival!
In contrast, the son or the daughter in a healthy family does not serve out of fear. The son or the daughter in a healthy family knows that he or she is secure in their father’s and mother’s love.
They are not motivated by fear. They are secure.
So their life and work is not motivated out of duty, but out of gratitude.
The son or daughter who knows that he or she is loved doesn’t serve merely out of self-interest, but out of love for his or her parents.
Most of us have not been slaves or servants in the traditional sense, but many of us know what it is to have the mindset of a slave. Some of us here have been in families where our parents have had unrealistic expectations of us. They have written scripts for us that reflect their ambitions and their insecurities rather than the ecology of our personhood.
I have a friend who comes from a family where her father had very high expectations for her and her sister (she’s OK with me sharing part of her story).
Her father and uncle won the Nobel prizes in physics. My friend’s father has very high expectations of her, as well as her sister. When her sister received her PhD in French, her father remarked, “Your dissertation isn’t good for anything, except perhaps to be used as toilet paper.”
And though my friend is very talented…very smart…went to one of the best universities in the world… is quite accomplished, but has never felt she’s lived up to her dad’s expectations…
When you start trying to live for someone else’s approval, when you live to try to honour someone else’s script for your life, when it doesn’t fit you, you start living outside of yourself. You experience this hollowness inside…you feel more like a human “doing”, than a human-being.
If you grow up in a healthy family, however, and you sense the family and you sense the love from your parents and you sense the security that comes from that, you are more likely set free to pursue that path that you feel called to pursue. In so doing, you can become your true self….
If I may say personally, though our family is far from perfect, I am very grateful to have had very loving, supportive parents.
Even though they are originally from Japan from families that really emphasized the importance of education and a certain kind of career track, they have really loved me and my four siblings unconditionally. Because of that we have felt the security that helps put on a path we believe we are supposed to be pursuing. When you feel deeply loved by a significant person, you become secure in that love and as a result you are free to become your true self.
If we are really God’s children, we will come to know that God is a Father who loves as Paul points out in vs. 15 that cries: “Abba! Father!” Abba is the most intimate word that a person could use to describe his or her dad. It was a word that Jesus used when he spoke to his father. In certain cultures (e.g. Hebrew culture, Indian culture, my Japanese culture), there is a certain word for “dad” that you can use to describe only your dad. E.g. in Japanese that personal word for dad is “chi-chi”. You can’t use it to describe someone else’s dad because it is too personal and familiar. And the word Jesus uses to describe our father in heaven is the kind of word you can only use if you are a son or a daughter of God. So it is a very personal word…a very intimate word…it is word that suggests that we are truly close and dear to God.
And if you can experience a sense of God’s love for you on your heart in a new way, it will free you in your relationship with God, and it will free you in your relationship with yourself, and it will free you in your relationship with other people.
I have a mentor in my life who’s been very successful in the ministry and accomplished in leadership…
When I first met this person through the Arrow Leadership Program, I felt as though I needed to earn this person’s approval by demonstrating that I was eager to learn, that like a good “stock” in a company was worthy of his and this program’s investment . But as I grew to know this person more deeply and came to understand that this person really cared for me (not because of what I could for him or for the brand of the leadership organization), but simply cared for and loved me as a human being, then my motivation changed. I no longer was motivated out of a sense that I needed to perform in order to be accepted. Then I was able to grow and serve and become out of a sense of gratitude.
When we realize that we are loved and accepted by our father in heaven, we don’t need to be motivated any more by fear, but we can be motivated from gratitude knowing that God loves you.
Are you motivated by the sense of gratitude that God loves you?
What does it look like to be motivated by the mentality of a slave who lives in fear vs. by the mentality of a son or daughter who’s loved?
The slave a slave’s security and significance based by what they do, what they’ve accomplished, and what others think of them.
The slave is motivated by fear.
It’s possible to motivate by fear not just in your so called “secular”, but in your “spiritual life”—and define your worth by what you do for God and by how people rate your spirituality.
The son or daughter’s security and significance is being rooted in being deeply loved by God.
The son or daughter is motivated by gratitude.
Which are you? Slave? Son or Daughter? Or part way in between? I am often part way in between…
So how do we become that this way?
The first step in becoming a person who really is able to receive Gods’ love as a son or daughter is to be born again into God’s family…
My wife is from Japan and was recently telling me a true story about a girl (7 or 8 years old with a slight mental disability) who was living in an orphanage in Japan.
Adoption is not very common in Japan, in general, but if a child has some kind of disability it is far less likely for that child to be adopted.
My wife was telling me about child in Japan who was 6 years old had who had been abandoned by her parents because of a slight mental disability she had and put in an orphanage. She had also been passed over by prospective adoptive parents because of her disability. (Prospective adoptive parents naturally prefer children who are healthy and preferably beautiful.) MiYuki, was neither of these so she had been passed over.
The staff of this orphanage realized MiYuki might not be picked by anyone and so she sought out some parents who had adopted children from their orphanage before. They were not wealthy people at all, but they were deeply loving people. These parents agreed to adopt Miyuki this girl with a slight mental disability. As the relationship developed between the adoptive mother and Miyuki, Miyuki began to act like a little baby. Even though she was 7 or 8 years old, she said, “I want to wear diapers.” Even though she was old enough to eat solid food, she asked to be able to drink milk from a bottle. And Miyuki had this strange habit of clinging on to her mother and sliding head first down her mother’s torso (stand up) and saying I was born of you.
MiYuki’s adoptive parents became concerned about her baby-like behaviour so they sought the counsel of a psychologist. As the psychologist observed Miyuki wearing diapers, drinking milk from a bottle and sliding down her mother’s body across her torso toward her womb, the psychologist pointed out that Miyuki was experiencing a phenomenon which in Japanese is described as “aka-chan gairi”, which translated into English means “the child is experiencing a kind of return to baby syndrome.” This apparently can happen to babies who have not gone through the normal passages of being a baby, an infant, a young child with loving parents. The psychologist explained to the adoptive mother, “As Miyuki sliding down your torso toward your womb, what she is expressing is a desire to be born through you. As she expresses desire to be in diapers and to have milk and as she slides down your body, she is saying she wants you, and not her natural mother, to be her real mother. She wants to be born through you . She wants to come through your womb.”
So the adoptive mother was very glad that her adoptive daughter wanted her to be her real mom. After a few months of Miyuki wearing diapers, drinking milk from a bottle and sliding down her mother’s body, she stopped doing that, as she felt that she had been mothered as a baby by her new mother and become her daughter.
People, perhaps not at a conscious level, but at a subconscious level, want to be adopted and received by the perfect father and mother, none of which, of course, exists, other than God.
We yearn that love of perfect father and mother… sometimes that shows in an ache to receive approval of some person, or through something we do, some we achieve..
But we can be born again into God’s family adopted by God and re-parented in a way that brings healing to our spirit. And as we are adopted unto God’s family, as the text says, we really do become God’s children…
Verses16-17 tell us: The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
If we become God’s children by being joined to Christ, we are not loved simply some warm, but intangible way, but we become beneficiaries of all of God’s riches.
In the Roman world, when you adopted someone, you typically adopted an adult child. And that child experienced all their debts being cancelled, as their adoptive parents would have paid off all those debts. And all the parents’ wealth would have become the wealth of the adoptive child. When we are adopted we experience forgiveness of our sins and receive God’s wealth as co-heirs with God’s son Christ and Paul says later in Romans we will inherit the very cosmos, the redeemed universes.
One of the ways that we can be freed from the fearful mentality of a slave is to become the adoptive son or daughter of God.
And if you have already taken that step and entered God’s family, do you
realize that you are an adoptive son or daughter of God?
If you are, have you take the 2nd step of realizing that you are loved unconditionally and you are immensely wealth in the most important ways because you are part of God’s family?
The priest Henri Nouwen has said the greatest temptation is not sex, money, power, or the even approval of others, but self rejection…
One of the ways that we can be healed of our compulsive need to perform is to realize whose child we are. In the powerful movie, Blood Diamond, with Leonardo Di Caprio, Solomon Vandy is a black African father who has a 9 or 10 year old son named Dia.
The son is captured by rebel soldiers and he is brain-washed into believing that his father and mother and family are enemies. Dia becomes a boy soldier and is re-programmed by these rebel mercenary soldiers. His father and character played by Di Caprio, Danny Archer, end up rescuing the son Dia who reluctantly goes with his dad and Archer
At one point in the movie as Solomon the father and Archer are looking for the enormous blood diamond that Solomon has hidden in the ground, Dia points his rifle at his father, then at Danny Archer, and back and forth, as if they are his enemies.
The father looks at his son who is holding a machine gun pointed to him and says, “Dia, look at me. You are Dia Vandy of the proud Mendee tribe. I know they made you do bad things, but you are a good boy. You are a boy who loves school and loves to play soccer. Your mother loves you and she waits by the fire, making stew with your sister and the new baby.”
And the father moves a little closer to Dia and says, “The cows wait for you. And the wild dog Babu who minds no one but you, waits for you.” And he steps even a little closer, and he says to his 9-year-old son, “And I am your father who loves you and you will go home with me and be my son.”
He walks right to his son, ignoring the gun, and he wraps his arms around his son. His son goes limp, begins to weep and falls into the embrace of his father.
And it is as we come to understand that we are God’s sons and daughters loved by God that we can discover what our true identity is, and we can live as free people.
Prayer of confession and ask God to help us realize who we are.
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio.htm)
posted by Shigematsu at 12:02 PM
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