Free at Last (March 30, 2008)
Romans 8 M1
Free at Last
Big idea: Jesus has died to free us from sin and shame…
Text: Romans 8: 1-4
Big Idea: In Christ, we can be free of guilt and shame
Did you see the article a week ago in the Vancouver Sun about why millions of young people will congregate on sunny beaches in Florida or Mexico for spring break?
The reporter, Meghan Daum, was hoping to arrive at some great psychological reason as to why so many of today's college women are driven during spring break to beaches in Florida and Mexico.
She concluded that young people today, especially women, are deciding that the way to measure their readiness for the adult world is not in terms of education or emotional maturity but their sexual desirability.She talked about how these students she had talked to had logged hours at the gym, in tanning booths and how, they'd save up money for breast implants and then timed their surgery so they'd be healed by spring break.
A lot of the women the reporter spoke to talked of wanting to raise their confidence level. "If I can be considered hot here, said rather morose woman sitting on a bar stool in a bikini and high heels told me. I'll be hot anywhere." "I'm here to get confident."The reporter said “The more women I talked to, the more it became clear that hotness—more than their education or future job--was, for them, the largest factor in the equation of their self-worth.”
A lot women--not just college age women—assess their self-worth in terms their physical attractiveness. And a lot don’t feel they measure up. The beautiful actress Keira Knightly talked recently about how horrible she feels at times about the way she looks.
For a lot of us men… our self-esteem is tied to whether we can do something well. A guy maybe a really great guy, in terms of niceness, but if he can’t deliver in terms of some kind of work--chances are he’ll feel like he doesn’t measure up. There’s a part of us that yearns for perfection and we know we haven’t reached it…
Even if we say, “Well, I’m rejecting the superficial standards of this world” there’s still a part of us that feels like we don’t quite measure up to a standard we were meant to live up… we experience this low or high grade shame—that we can’t fully shake off…
There are many reasons we could put forward as to why we feel this way…
This morning (evening) I want to unpack a theological reason as to why there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel up to standard….
In the book of Romans, the Bible teaches that we are (please excuse the offensive sounding phrase) are natural born sinners… with capacity to do good, but the propensity to do evil. We are to use the Apostle Paul’s language born in “Adam” or we might say born in “Adam and Eve”—i.e. we the offspring of those who sinned in Garden of Eden.
What does this mean? Part of what this means is that each of us is born with the sin virus. Because we born with the sin virus, according to Romans 3, we are born under the power of sin (you may say but I was so cute as baby… yes--and so self-centered).
In fact, according to Romans 7, we born “in adam” as slaves to sin.
Now, most people--most of us—would not consider ourselves to be slaves to sin. We might respond by saying, “But I am not addicted to drugs, alcohol, or sex.”
Or, we might say, “But I don’t steal, commit adultery or murder people.” If we define sin in these dramatic ways, we may not see ourselves as under the power of sin.
But as the philosopher Kierkegaard, points in his book, Sickness unto Death, sin is “putting our identity in some thing or some one other than God.” By this standard, I think all of us could see ourselves as under the power of sin. Intuitively, we know that God ought to be the centre of our solar system, the one in whom we place our identity and security…. but we tend to place our security in some thing other than God. It might be money. It might be achievement, our work. It might be a relationship…a particular human being. It might be family.
Or we’ll find that if we’re honest… that we are a walking set of contradictions… sometimes, we can be so giving and at other times so self-centered… at times we can be so magnanimous and forgiving and at other times vindictive and cruel… At times we be courageous, daring… at other we can just be so cowardly and cave….
Each of us at times have prayed or felt in our hearts God “Don’t pay attention to what I’m doing.” “Look away.”
Each of us has violated our code, God’s code and we have felt alienated from God, ourselves, and other people.
The Book of Romans in the Bible teaches us we born in Adam and in Even, under the power of sin, and therefore under God’s judgment (Romans 2:3).
This is part of the reason why whether we are on a beach on Florida at spring break or whether under an umbrella in Vancouver… there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel like it quite measures up…. We feel this existential shame…
There’s a part that feels like we’re condemned by our own standards… and knows we’ve fallen short of God’s standard…
But Paul says in Romans *:1
1 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, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. 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.
So, how is it that Christ has broken the power of sin for us and lifted the weight of judgment off our shoulders? To go further back again into the Bible, the Bible teaches that God raised up the nation of Israel, as we see in Genesis and following, to be a light to the whole world…
How was Israel to be a light to the whole world? Was it to be light to the whole world by providing a kind of excellent moral light to the whole world? By waving the flag of the Ten Commandments? Yes, that was part of it. But Israel was also called to be a light to the world by dealing with the “problem of sin” in the world. Israel for centuries failed to do this… but 2000 years ago Israel did deal with the sin of the world, how? Through it’s representative Israel….Jesus Christ.
The “sin” of the world was transferred to Israel and the sin of Israel was transferred to its representative Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53 is a famous passage about how the sins of the world were laid upon a sacrificial servant. The sacrificial “servant” in Isaiah 53 refers to the nation of Israel and specifically to Israel’s representative Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53:6 we read, “All we, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his or her own way and the Lord has laid on Him (that is on Jesus Christ) the iniquity of us all.”
Let me illustrate this more graphically. If the sin of the world were represented in debt (and the Bible does speak of sin metaphorically as debt before God) and all of the debts of the entire world were transferred onto Jesus Christ and Jesus absorbed those sins in his body (use prop)--we can be cleared of our debts before God. That is why, when we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, God declares that our sins have been forgiven through the work of Jesus Christ, and that through the work of Jesus Christ, as Paul says we are set free from sin and death. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
In his work on the cross Jesus clears our guilt and our shame…
What is the difference between guilt and shame?
When commit a sin we feel guilt…. guilt is feeling bad because we have crossed some kind of line… we feel bad because something we have done… shame on the other hand is about feeling bad about what who we are--sometimes that’s directly related to who we have done and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we feel shame because we don’t have something… we feel we ought to have… it could be virtue, an experience. Sometimes we feel shame because of something done to us.
How does Jesus deal with shame? In a guilt based culture, if a person breaks a law or principle, they are blamed and they or someone has to pay. In a shame-based culture, like the one I come from originally, Japan, if a person commits some kind of shameful act, they are excluded in some way from the society. To use a somewhat extreme example, when a person in Japan commits a serious crime, they are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society…
In Japan or in an Asian country, if a person fails to meet their own expectations or the expectations of society… they bring shame upon not just upon themselves, but on their family or group.
I discovered this when as teenager I was caught shoplifting and later discovered by my parents’ response that what I had done had not just shamed me, but shamed them and our family…
When a person does not live up to their own expectations or the expectations of their society they exclude themselves and their family.
How can this shamed be atoned for in shame based society?
In Japan, suicide can be considered a kind of act of atonement. In North America we see suicide to be a sad act of escapism. But in the Japanese culture as is hinted at in the movies like The Last Samurai committing suicide can be seen an act of honour…
If I commit some kind of horribly shameful act as a Japanese person and bring shame on our my family, then if I commit suicide it is considered a kind of atonement for my sin so that our family will not be ashamed and excluded…
By my allowing myself to be excluded in the ultimate way, I can work to ensure my family is not excluded.
BTW, I am not valorizing suicide—suicide is not God’s will for you.
Whether we are Asian or not we have experienced shame vis-à-vis God, ourselves and each another…
If you look deep inside you, you know that you haven’t met your own expectations.
You and I haven’t embodied our own ideals.
There’s a part of us that yearns for perfection… and we know you haven’t reached it…
We have experienced both shame and guilt because of something we’ve done or not done… or because we’re not who we long to be… some of that shame is illegitimate, some legitimate…
Jesus Christ hung on that Roman cross and he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He experienced the ultimate act of exclusion from God and by his being excluded, he was opening the way for us to be included, for us to be embraced by the one person in the universe who matters.
And when we are received by him, we are healed of our guilt and shame.
You see the gospel involves more than our sins being forgiven. It also involves reconciliation with our true Father, the one whom for whom we made to know.
Do you feel guilt or shame about something?
We had 2 baptisms in the first service today.
A pastor who served at a church I attended while I was a student was leading a baptism service. He told people before they came up to the platform to be baptized to take a piece of paper, write down a few of the sins they've committed, and fold the paper. When they come up to the platform, there was a large wooden cross on the stage. The baptismal candidates to take that piece of paper, take a pin, and pin it to the cross, because the Bible says our sins are nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ, and fully paid for by his death. Then turn and come to the pastor to be baptized…
The pastors said, I want to read you a letter a woman wrote who was baptized in one of those services (I’m sure he had permission). She said:
I remember my fear. In fact, it was the most fear I remember in my life. I wrote as tiny as I could on that piece of paper the word ________. I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium during the service, the guilt and fear were that strong.
When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there. I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long. But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It's okay. You've been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It's the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and unconditional love. It was unbelievable, indescribable.
Do you have inside of you a secret sin that you wouldn't even want to write down on a piece of paper out of fear somebody might open it up and find out? Let me tell you something about the Jesus. Not only does he want to adopt you as his child, he wants to lift the weight of guilt and shame off your shoulders.
If you are in Christ, your debts are paid; he was excluded, so you could be included.
For her it was abortion.
For you it might something else….
It might something that is known….
It might be a secret…
Something you feel guilt over. Something you feel shame over…
Jesus Died for our sin and shame….
There is a wonderful image of what God did for us in Jesus Christ in the movie, The Mission
In movie the Mission Spanish slave trader Rodrico Mendoza (played by Robert De Niro) is part of the thriving South American slave business. He hunts natives for slaves and kills some in the process. Rodrico is caught up in a tragic love triangle—his lady is in love with his younger brother. When she confesses her passion to Rodrico he flies into a jealous rage, eventually murdering his own brother. Stricken by grief and remorse, he engages a penance day after day climbing a cliff near a steep waterfall, dragging behind him a net filled with a heavy weight of armor….
Show scene from movie…
The Gospels tells us that because of Jesus Christ’s work on the cross, we can be free of our guilt and shame… free, free at last… So Paul says therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
Prayer….
Gospel tells us… our sin is far great than we ever dared believe, but God’s love for us is far greater than we ever dared hoped…
Face your sin, but also embrace your forgiveness and live as forgiven person.
The prophet Ezekiel (36:24-27) in speaking of the new covenant said:
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
(The sermon can be heard on line : www/tenth.ca/audio)
Free at Last
Big idea: Jesus has died to free us from sin and shame…
Text: Romans 8: 1-4
Big Idea: In Christ, we can be free of guilt and shame
Did you see the article a week ago in the Vancouver Sun about why millions of young people will congregate on sunny beaches in Florida or Mexico for spring break?
The reporter, Meghan Daum, was hoping to arrive at some great psychological reason as to why so many of today's college women are driven during spring break to beaches in Florida and Mexico.
She concluded that young people today, especially women, are deciding that the way to measure their readiness for the adult world is not in terms of education or emotional maturity but their sexual desirability.She talked about how these students she had talked to had logged hours at the gym, in tanning booths and how, they'd save up money for breast implants and then timed their surgery so they'd be healed by spring break.
A lot of the women the reporter spoke to talked of wanting to raise their confidence level. "If I can be considered hot here, said rather morose woman sitting on a bar stool in a bikini and high heels told me. I'll be hot anywhere." "I'm here to get confident."The reporter said “The more women I talked to, the more it became clear that hotness—more than their education or future job--was, for them, the largest factor in the equation of their self-worth.”
A lot women--not just college age women—assess their self-worth in terms their physical attractiveness. And a lot don’t feel they measure up. The beautiful actress Keira Knightly talked recently about how horrible she feels at times about the way she looks.
For a lot of us men… our self-esteem is tied to whether we can do something well. A guy maybe a really great guy, in terms of niceness, but if he can’t deliver in terms of some kind of work--chances are he’ll feel like he doesn’t measure up. There’s a part of us that yearns for perfection and we know we haven’t reached it…
Even if we say, “Well, I’m rejecting the superficial standards of this world” there’s still a part of us that feels like we don’t quite measure up to a standard we were meant to live up… we experience this low or high grade shame—that we can’t fully shake off…
There are many reasons we could put forward as to why we feel this way…
This morning (evening) I want to unpack a theological reason as to why there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel up to standard….
In the book of Romans, the Bible teaches that we are (please excuse the offensive sounding phrase) are natural born sinners… with capacity to do good, but the propensity to do evil. We are to use the Apostle Paul’s language born in “Adam” or we might say born in “Adam and Eve”—i.e. we the offspring of those who sinned in Garden of Eden.
What does this mean? Part of what this means is that each of us is born with the sin virus. Because we born with the sin virus, according to Romans 3, we are born under the power of sin (you may say but I was so cute as baby… yes--and so self-centered).
In fact, according to Romans 7, we born “in adam” as slaves to sin.
Now, most people--most of us—would not consider ourselves to be slaves to sin. We might respond by saying, “But I am not addicted to drugs, alcohol, or sex.”
Or, we might say, “But I don’t steal, commit adultery or murder people.” If we define sin in these dramatic ways, we may not see ourselves as under the power of sin.
But as the philosopher Kierkegaard, points in his book, Sickness unto Death, sin is “putting our identity in some thing or some one other than God.” By this standard, I think all of us could see ourselves as under the power of sin. Intuitively, we know that God ought to be the centre of our solar system, the one in whom we place our identity and security…. but we tend to place our security in some thing other than God. It might be money. It might be achievement, our work. It might be a relationship…a particular human being. It might be family.
Or we’ll find that if we’re honest… that we are a walking set of contradictions… sometimes, we can be so giving and at other times so self-centered… at times we can be so magnanimous and forgiving and at other times vindictive and cruel… At times we be courageous, daring… at other we can just be so cowardly and cave….
Each of us at times have prayed or felt in our hearts God “Don’t pay attention to what I’m doing.” “Look away.”
Each of us has violated our code, God’s code and we have felt alienated from God, ourselves, and other people.
The Book of Romans in the Bible teaches us we born in Adam and in Even, under the power of sin, and therefore under God’s judgment (Romans 2:3).
This is part of the reason why whether we are on a beach on Florida at spring break or whether under an umbrella in Vancouver… there’s a part of us that doesn’t feel like it quite measures up…. We feel this existential shame…
There’s a part that feels like we’re condemned by our own standards… and knows we’ve fallen short of God’s standard…
But Paul says in Romans *:1
1 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, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. 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.
So, how is it that Christ has broken the power of sin for us and lifted the weight of judgment off our shoulders? To go further back again into the Bible, the Bible teaches that God raised up the nation of Israel, as we see in Genesis and following, to be a light to the whole world…
How was Israel to be a light to the whole world? Was it to be light to the whole world by providing a kind of excellent moral light to the whole world? By waving the flag of the Ten Commandments? Yes, that was part of it. But Israel was also called to be a light to the world by dealing with the “problem of sin” in the world. Israel for centuries failed to do this… but 2000 years ago Israel did deal with the sin of the world, how? Through it’s representative Israel….Jesus Christ.
The “sin” of the world was transferred to Israel and the sin of Israel was transferred to its representative Jesus Christ.
Isaiah 53 is a famous passage about how the sins of the world were laid upon a sacrificial servant. The sacrificial “servant” in Isaiah 53 refers to the nation of Israel and specifically to Israel’s representative Jesus Christ. In Isaiah 53:6 we read, “All we, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to his or her own way and the Lord has laid on Him (that is on Jesus Christ) the iniquity of us all.”
Let me illustrate this more graphically. If the sin of the world were represented in debt (and the Bible does speak of sin metaphorically as debt before God) and all of the debts of the entire world were transferred onto Jesus Christ and Jesus absorbed those sins in his body (use prop)--we can be cleared of our debts before God. That is why, when we enter into a relationship with Jesus Christ, God declares that our sins have been forgiven through the work of Jesus Christ, and that through the work of Jesus Christ, as Paul says we are set free from sin and death. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
In his work on the cross Jesus clears our guilt and our shame…
What is the difference between guilt and shame?
When commit a sin we feel guilt…. guilt is feeling bad because we have crossed some kind of line… we feel bad because something we have done… shame on the other hand is about feeling bad about what who we are--sometimes that’s directly related to who we have done and sometimes it’s not. Sometimes we feel shame because we don’t have something… we feel we ought to have… it could be virtue, an experience. Sometimes we feel shame because of something done to us.
How does Jesus deal with shame? In a guilt based culture, if a person breaks a law or principle, they are blamed and they or someone has to pay. In a shame-based culture, like the one I come from originally, Japan, if a person commits some kind of shameful act, they are excluded in some way from the society. To use a somewhat extreme example, when a person in Japan commits a serious crime, they are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society…
In Japan or in an Asian country, if a person fails to meet their own expectations or the expectations of society… they bring shame upon not just upon themselves, but on their family or group.
I discovered this when as teenager I was caught shoplifting and later discovered by my parents’ response that what I had done had not just shamed me, but shamed them and our family…
When a person does not live up to their own expectations or the expectations of their society they exclude themselves and their family.
How can this shamed be atoned for in shame based society?
In Japan, suicide can be considered a kind of act of atonement. In North America we see suicide to be a sad act of escapism. But in the Japanese culture as is hinted at in the movies like The Last Samurai committing suicide can be seen an act of honour…
If I commit some kind of horribly shameful act as a Japanese person and bring shame on our my family, then if I commit suicide it is considered a kind of atonement for my sin so that our family will not be ashamed and excluded…
By my allowing myself to be excluded in the ultimate way, I can work to ensure my family is not excluded.
BTW, I am not valorizing suicide—suicide is not God’s will for you.
Whether we are Asian or not we have experienced shame vis-à-vis God, ourselves and each another…
If you look deep inside you, you know that you haven’t met your own expectations.
You and I haven’t embodied our own ideals.
There’s a part of us that yearns for perfection… and we know you haven’t reached it…
We have experienced both shame and guilt because of something we’ve done or not done… or because we’re not who we long to be… some of that shame is illegitimate, some legitimate…
Jesus Christ hung on that Roman cross and he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He experienced the ultimate act of exclusion from God and by his being excluded, he was opening the way for us to be included, for us to be embraced by the one person in the universe who matters.
And when we are received by him, we are healed of our guilt and shame.
You see the gospel involves more than our sins being forgiven. It also involves reconciliation with our true Father, the one whom for whom we made to know.
Do you feel guilt or shame about something?
We had 2 baptisms in the first service today.
A pastor who served at a church I attended while I was a student was leading a baptism service. He told people before they came up to the platform to be baptized to take a piece of paper, write down a few of the sins they've committed, and fold the paper. When they come up to the platform, there was a large wooden cross on the stage. The baptismal candidates to take that piece of paper, take a pin, and pin it to the cross, because the Bible says our sins are nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ, and fully paid for by his death. Then turn and come to the pastor to be baptized…
The pastors said, I want to read you a letter a woman wrote who was baptized in one of those services (I’m sure he had permission). She said:
I remember my fear. In fact, it was the most fear I remember in my life. I wrote as tiny as I could on that piece of paper the word ________. I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium during the service, the guilt and fear were that strong.
When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there. I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long. But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It's okay. You've been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It's the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and unconditional love. It was unbelievable, indescribable.
Do you have inside of you a secret sin that you wouldn't even want to write down on a piece of paper out of fear somebody might open it up and find out? Let me tell you something about the Jesus. Not only does he want to adopt you as his child, he wants to lift the weight of guilt and shame off your shoulders.
If you are in Christ, your debts are paid; he was excluded, so you could be included.
For her it was abortion.
For you it might something else….
It might something that is known….
It might be a secret…
Something you feel guilt over. Something you feel shame over…
Jesus Died for our sin and shame….
There is a wonderful image of what God did for us in Jesus Christ in the movie, The Mission
In movie the Mission Spanish slave trader Rodrico Mendoza (played by Robert De Niro) is part of the thriving South American slave business. He hunts natives for slaves and kills some in the process. Rodrico is caught up in a tragic love triangle—his lady is in love with his younger brother. When she confesses her passion to Rodrico he flies into a jealous rage, eventually murdering his own brother. Stricken by grief and remorse, he engages a penance day after day climbing a cliff near a steep waterfall, dragging behind him a net filled with a heavy weight of armor….
Show scene from movie…
The Gospels tells us that because of Jesus Christ’s work on the cross, we can be free of our guilt and shame… free, free at last… So Paul says therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.
Prayer….
Gospel tells us… our sin is far great than we ever dared believe, but God’s love for us is far greater than we ever dared hoped…
Face your sin, but also embrace your forgiveness and live as forgiven person.
The prophet Ezekiel (36:24-27) in speaking of the new covenant said:
24 " 'For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
(The sermon can be heard on line : www/tenth.ca/audio)
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