A New Nature: Romans 8 (April 6, 2008)
Romans 8 M2
Title: A New Nature
Text: Romans 8:1-4
Big Idea: We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
Change or Die, what if you were given that choice for real?
What if a well-informed, trusted figure said you had to make difficult, lasting changes in the way you think and act? And if you didn't, your life would end soon. Could you change when it mattered most?
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die. The scientifically studied odds are: nine to one. That's nine to one against you.
Dr. Edward Miller, who has served as the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University has said that patients with heart disease is so severe that they must undergo heart bypass surgery, temporarily relieve chest pains but rarely prevent heart attacks or prolong lives. About half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years… the angioplasties, in a few months.
According to Dr. Miller many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat the surgery and arrest the course of their disease before it kills them--by switching to healthier lifestyles. But, very few do. Dr. Millers says, "If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle… Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't."
Alan Deutschman, citing studies from medicine, business, and social service sectors says that 90% of the time people will not change. Markus Buckingham the author of the popular book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, asserts that people don’t change at all.
This community seems to be an exception to that general rule. I’ve been encouraged coming out of our recent series on Sabbath and giving to hear a number of people tell me, “I’m starting to take a Sabbath—a 24 hour block of time off work each week or I’m going to start tithing, I’ll give the first 10 percent of my income to God…these are signs that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, but also a sign you are willing to change your life so that it is aligned to God’s will for you. This morning we’re going to look at the dynamic of how a person can change through a work of God in their life… but let me first take a moment to set up the context.
Part of the reason why it is difficult for people to change is that we are born, as I said last week, according the Scriptures, natural born sinners. We born as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, our ancient forebears who sinned in the Garden of Eden and because we are their offspring we carry the sin virus. We human beings have the capacity to do good, but the propensity to do evil. We are told in Romans 3:9 that we are under the power of sin, and in Romans 7 that we are slaves of sin and therefore, under God’s judgment and condemnation.
In Romans 8, Paul describes a person who has been brought into a new realm. The person is in the no longer in the “realm of Adam and Eve, but in the realm of Jesus Christ; no longer under the power of sin, but set free.” So Paul says of this person “therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8:
Life Through the Spirit
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.
If we are transferred out of the category of being in Adam and Eve’s family, and adopted into Christ’s family, we are set free (use chain as prop).
Paul writes in vs. 2 through the work of Christ Jesus and His Spirit we are set us free from the power of sin…
Then in verse 3, Paul says, “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 form of sinful humanity to be a sin offering… And so he condemned sin in human flesh, 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.”
In verse 3, Paul talks about the fact that the law was powerless to change us.
Why? Because there was something deficient with God’s law? No. As Paul points out in Romans 7:12, the law of God is holy, just, and true. The law of God was powerless to change us because, as Paul says, “It was weakened by our sinful nature.” A law may be perfect, but it may have no effect on us because it is seeking to influence a person who does not have the character and the will to obey that law. We have all had experience--where we’ve known what the right thing to do is, but haven’t done it because had the will to do it…
So what did God do? God became a human being in Jesus Christ to become a sin offering on our behalf.
God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus Christ as he died on the cross. When that happened…when Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and sin was condemned in his flesh… Jesus was crucified, mysteriously sin itself received a death blow.
In a boxing match, when two fighters are fighting, there may come a turning point in the fight when one boxer lands a crushing blow. It may not completely finish his opponent, but it in effect weakens the opponent so that the battle is essentially over.
When the then heavy weight champion of the world, George Foreman fought Mohammad Ali in Zaire, in 1974, Foreman dominated Ali (slide 1), pounding him with punches while Ali’s back was against the ropes. In round eighth round Foreman, though tired, continued taking the fight to Ali. Ali went to the ropes as he had in the rounds before. At the end of the eighth round, Ali caught an overextended Foreman with a combination followed by another stinging one two (show slides 2) the last punch a straight right to Foreman's jaw sent him to the canvas (show slides 3 and 4).
And so it was when Jesus Christ died on the cross. He did not completely obliterate evil in our lives (we know that from experience), but he dealt sin and evil a lethal blow.
When our lives are joined to Christ, evil no longer has the same power over us that it once did.
We can change because Jesus’ death on the cross breaks the power of sin.
Through his death on the cross, Jesus dealt sin a lethal blow, and he also opened the door for us to become people in whom the Spirit of God dwells.
The two are related…
Before the Spirit of the living God can blow through us, the power of sin evil in us first needs to be broken in us. That is exactly what happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross. Sin was dealt a death blow in us and the door swung open for the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow through us.
We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin in us and breaths His spirit into us.
What Paul is describes in Romans 8 is the new covenant, or the new way in which God now relates to his people. This new covenant is described in Ezekiel 36:24-27 (slide):
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.
Ezekiel prophesizes there will come a day when God would sprinkle us with clean water and that we would be clean. The day when we will be cleansed from all our impurities and idols; when God would put a new heart and a new spirit in us, and he would move us to follow his decrees and be careful to keep his laws.
The reason that we can become new is two-fold:
Jesus’ work on the cross breaks the power of sin by absorbing our sin into himself and He breaths His spirit into us.
As a result according to vs. 4, we become people in whom the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met, who live not according old way of the Adam and Eve, the way of the old “flesh” but who live according the Holy Spirit.
Augustine, the great theologian of the church, said that “law was given, that grace might be sought. Grace was given, that the law might be fulfilled.” Law was given…and we couldn’t keep the law so we would seek God’s mercy and grace. Grace (God’s favour) is given so that we might be able to fulfill the law.
The church Father Athanasius said, “Christ became what we are, so that we might become what He is” (2x).
By becoming a human being and taking in his body the condemnation we deserved for our sin, Jesus breaks the power of sin and then breaths His spirit into us so that we become like Jesus, people who naturally, or rather supernaturally fulfill the law because we have been given a new heart and a new Spirit. This process is something that theologians describe as regeneration.
What happens when the power of sin is broken in us and the Holy Spirit is breathed upon us?
When the Spirit of God comes upon us, like the sun shining on a garden, we can see things that we could not see before. When the sun shines upon a garden, a person can see the color of the flowers, the radiance of a green lawn. In the same way, when the Spirit of God comes upon us, we can see things that we never saw before.
John Newton put it in his hymn, Amazing Grace: “I once was blind but now I see, was lost but now I’m found.” “I was blind but now I see.” When a person experiences the life of the Spirit, their eyes are opened and they see new things….they see nature in a new way, as God’s creation…
They also see new things in Scripture—the Scripture becomes a book that is alive and there is a new desire to know and to worship God.
Before I became a Christian as teenager, I really didn’t read at all. But, suddenly parts of Scripture became this living reality to me. The Matthew 5 sermon of Mount, 1 John….
When I first experienced the Spirit indwelling me, my life began to change, it was not complete change overnight but there were some marked differences. For example, as a high school student I swore a lot, but when Christ came into my heart, one of my younger sisters noticed that I had stopped swearing (for the most part), and instead, for the first time in my life, I was singing, singing songs of praise. I was not a good singer then, and I am not now, but that was evidence (somewhat embarrassing for a guy from North Surrey trying really hard maintain a tough guy persona) that something was changing in me.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest theologians that North America has ever produced, notes that when a person is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they experience a new sense of love for God that is qualitatively different from they have experienced before. Edwards compares the two kinds of love, that kind of love the person had before and after conversion, to the loves that different people might have for a certain fruit (Use prop.)
Theologian Gerald McDermott extrapolates on this by asking us consider a person who is born without the sense of taste, and the second person very much enjoys sense of taste.
The first person, let’s say, could love a mango because of its beautiful colour and rich fragrance, but the other person loves a mango because of its colour and fragrance but primarily because of its great taste. Their “loves” are qualitatively different. It’s not that the second person loves mango more than the first but the second person’s love for the mange is of qualitatively different kind from that of the first person. So it is for the love of a person who has been regenerated with the Holy Spirit. A person who has not been regenerated can have some admiration for God or for Jesus Christ, but their love for Jesus Christ will be qualitatively different…
One of the signs that we have experienced the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is we have new and qualitatively different love for God…
When the Spirit of God comes to indwell us, though some people say it’s impossible for human beings to change, we actually can experience change.
Dr. Gerald May, a respected psychiatrist who wrote the wise and beautifully written book, Addiction and Grace (hold up) says when he was a young doctor said, “With all the energy that might be expected of a young doctor, I applied my best psychiatric methods to the treatment of addictions. None of them worked.”
Then May did some informal research. He identified a few people who had overcome serious addictions to drugs and alcohol and asked them how they did it. “All of them described some sort of spiritual experience,” he reports. “They said that they had gotten some professional help, but this was not their source of healing. What had healed them was something spiritual. It had something to do with turning to God.”
All testified to a power that came from outside themselves. (It is interesting also to note that in AA one of the steps in breaking the addiction cycle is to seek help from a higher power.)
Sound what happened to Augustine? A voice that came to Augustine when he was sitting in his lawn garden in the summer of AD 386. Augustine had battled the demon of sexual lust for years. He knew in his heart that sexual purity was right, but he was afraid that life without sex would be unlivable. Some years before his conversion, he prayed, “God make me pure… but not yet.”
Then one day, through a child’s voice… (who was nowhere to be seen) Augustine heard the words, “Tolle Legge. Tolle Legge. Take and read. Take and read.” He picked up a New Testament lying nearby, and the first passages on which his eyes fell said, “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its lusts.” And through these words shone “a light of relief from all anxiety and all shadows of doubt were dispelled.” He became free through the grace of God that came to him outside himself. Augustine found the joy of freedom far outweighed the pain of sexual abstinence. For years, Augustine had tried to break on his own the power of sexual addiction but had failed. Only by God’s grace was he able to do it.
Our Cambodia vision team just came back to Vancouver. I was sharing how last year when I was on the vision trip from our church we had dinner with the staff of a Christian NGO called Food for the Hungry. One of the people we had dinner with that night was a Cambodian staff person who worked for Food for the Hungry.
Most people in Cambodia are not Christians; most are nominal Buddhists. How did this Cambodian staff member come to know Christ? The Cambodian staff member prior to joining Food for the Hungry had worked as a pimp. The young man described how he had been servicing a number of hotels as people working with the UN and a number of other NGOs had come into town. The pimp went around to each of the hotels, taking orders from people working with the UN and other NGOs for prostitutes. He was going door to door, asking people if they wanted someone working in the sex trade to service them. Pretty much everyone was saying “yes, yes. Bring me one tonight.”
He was doing a 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 kept saying no to the 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 Africa 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 a result of that testimony the pimp gave his life to Christ and is now serving Food for the Hungry in Cambodia, massive pay cut….
Though… not nearly as dramatic my story has some similarities… As a teen, like many teens, I used to like drinking, getting high, wanted to look at Penthouse Magazine… I remember I assigned one of my good friends and teammates of the football team to buy a Penthouse magazine at 7-11 while I guarded the door to watch out for his parents… But after giving my life to Christ—I didn’t want be seen as a stick in the mud,--but I didn’t to get drunk, get high on drugs, I didn’t want to look at those magazines… I didn’t know anything about the Bible, but I intuitively knew these would compromise my new relationship with God.
Sometimes the evidence of the Spirit’s life is doesn’t deal with such a dramatic sin.
My wife, before becoming a follower of Christ, was a journalist with Newsweek. I find this hard to imagine, but according to her she had the ability and the tendency occasionally to eviscerate and take people down through her words (like some journalists do). Sometimes she used that skill in the context of a news story and at other times in the context inter-personal interactions. When Sakiko gave her life to Christ, her mom and sister who were then not Christians, noticed she stopped doing that and became kinder and gentler in her use of words.
When we recognize who God is, and we experience his forgiveness, which is made possible through the cross of Christ, not only will we not fulfill the desires of the flesh, but we will become people whose transformed lives can only be explained by the presence of the Spirit of God in us.
We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
The change we can experience is not primarily about will power… though habit formations do matter as we’ll see later in the series, having a new nature….
Jonathan Edwards explained this new nature through the analogy of a pig. “A pig,” he said, “is filthy by nature. It loves to play and wallow in filth. A farmer may wash the pig one day and make it clean on the outside. He may even tie a fuchsia bow (show photo of pig) around its neck and make it look pretty, but that pig’s true inner nature is still to roll around in the nearest pile of mud getting as dirty as it can. Similarly we begin our lives pointing to Adam with a natural inclination to sin. We can try on our own efforts to avoid sin. In some areas of life we can achieve success. We can live outwardly moral lives and be well respected in the community, but no matter how much we are esteemed decency we know our identity and security in something other than God: achievement, money, people… But if the pig can experience a change of nature, there is hope for the pig. Put in a desire for cleanliness in that little pig’s heart and we’ll seek water rather than mud. And in the same way, when a person’s inner heart is transformed by the Holy Spirit, the outer life will change, as well.”
But this change does occur gradually. It doesn’t happen overnight. Even Augustine, the great theologian, admitted that, even as an older person, lust continued to be alluring to him. But we can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
Has this change happed for you? If not Seek God with all your heart… Imperfect as I am, as prone as I am occasionally to doubt, I know as surely as I stand it has happened for me—something from the outside has entered me and then changed me from the inside out…
One ways we seek God is by coming to his table and feeding on him in our hearts by faith….
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
Title: A New Nature
Text: Romans 8:1-4
Big Idea: We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
Change or Die, what if you were given that choice for real?
What if a well-informed, trusted figure said you had to make difficult, lasting changes in the way you think and act? And if you didn't, your life would end soon. Could you change when it mattered most?
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die. The scientifically studied odds are: nine to one. That's nine to one against you.
Dr. Edward Miller, who has served as the dean of the medical school and CEO of the hospital at Johns Hopkins University has said that patients with heart disease is so severe that they must undergo heart bypass surgery, temporarily relieve chest pains but rarely prevent heart attacks or prolong lives. About half of the time, the bypass grafts clog up in a few years… the angioplasties, in a few months.
According to Dr. Miller many patients could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat the surgery and arrest the course of their disease before it kills them--by switching to healthier lifestyles. But, very few do. Dr. Millers says, "If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle… Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can't."
Alan Deutschman, citing studies from medicine, business, and social service sectors says that 90% of the time people will not change. Markus Buckingham the author of the popular book, Go Put Your Strengths to Work, asserts that people don’t change at all.
This community seems to be an exception to that general rule. I’ve been encouraged coming out of our recent series on Sabbath and giving to hear a number of people tell me, “I’m starting to take a Sabbath—a 24 hour block of time off work each week or I’m going to start tithing, I’ll give the first 10 percent of my income to God…these are signs that the Holy Spirit is at work in you, but also a sign you are willing to change your life so that it is aligned to God’s will for you. This morning we’re going to look at the dynamic of how a person can change through a work of God in their life… but let me first take a moment to set up the context.
Part of the reason why it is difficult for people to change is that we are born, as I said last week, according the Scriptures, natural born sinners. We born as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, our ancient forebears who sinned in the Garden of Eden and because we are their offspring we carry the sin virus. We human beings have the capacity to do good, but the propensity to do evil. We are told in Romans 3:9 that we are under the power of sin, and in Romans 7 that we are slaves of sin and therefore, under God’s judgment and condemnation.
In Romans 8, Paul describes a person who has been brought into a new realm. The person is in the no longer in the “realm of Adam and Eve, but in the realm of Jesus Christ; no longer under the power of sin, but set free.” So Paul says of this person “therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans 8:
Life Through the Spirit
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.
If we are transferred out of the category of being in Adam and Eve’s family, and adopted into Christ’s family, we are set free (use chain as prop).
Paul writes in vs. 2 through the work of Christ Jesus and His Spirit we are set us free from the power of sin…
Then in verse 3, Paul says, “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 form of sinful humanity to be a sin offering… And so he condemned sin in human flesh, 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.”
In verse 3, Paul talks about the fact that the law was powerless to change us.
Why? Because there was something deficient with God’s law? No. As Paul points out in Romans 7:12, the law of God is holy, just, and true. The law of God was powerless to change us because, as Paul says, “It was weakened by our sinful nature.” A law may be perfect, but it may have no effect on us because it is seeking to influence a person who does not have the character and the will to obey that law. We have all had experience--where we’ve known what the right thing to do is, but haven’t done it because had the will to do it…
So what did God do? God became a human being in Jesus Christ to become a sin offering on our behalf.
God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus Christ as he died on the cross. When that happened…when Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross and sin was condemned in his flesh… Jesus was crucified, mysteriously sin itself received a death blow.
In a boxing match, when two fighters are fighting, there may come a turning point in the fight when one boxer lands a crushing blow. It may not completely finish his opponent, but it in effect weakens the opponent so that the battle is essentially over.
When the then heavy weight champion of the world, George Foreman fought Mohammad Ali in Zaire, in 1974, Foreman dominated Ali (slide 1), pounding him with punches while Ali’s back was against the ropes. In round eighth round Foreman, though tired, continued taking the fight to Ali. Ali went to the ropes as he had in the rounds before. At the end of the eighth round, Ali caught an overextended Foreman with a combination followed by another stinging one two (show slides 2) the last punch a straight right to Foreman's jaw sent him to the canvas (show slides 3 and 4).
And so it was when Jesus Christ died on the cross. He did not completely obliterate evil in our lives (we know that from experience), but he dealt sin and evil a lethal blow.
When our lives are joined to Christ, evil no longer has the same power over us that it once did.
We can change because Jesus’ death on the cross breaks the power of sin.
Through his death on the cross, Jesus dealt sin a lethal blow, and he also opened the door for us to become people in whom the Spirit of God dwells.
The two are related…
Before the Spirit of the living God can blow through us, the power of sin evil in us first needs to be broken in us. That is exactly what happened when Jesus Christ died on the cross. Sin was dealt a death blow in us and the door swung open for the wind of the Holy Spirit to blow through us.
We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin in us and breaths His spirit into us.
What Paul is describes in Romans 8 is the new covenant, or the new way in which God now relates to his people. This new covenant is described in Ezekiel 36:24-27 (slide):
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.
Ezekiel prophesizes there will come a day when God would sprinkle us with clean water and that we would be clean. The day when we will be cleansed from all our impurities and idols; when God would put a new heart and a new spirit in us, and he would move us to follow his decrees and be careful to keep his laws.
The reason that we can become new is two-fold:
Jesus’ work on the cross breaks the power of sin by absorbing our sin into himself and He breaths His spirit into us.
As a result according to vs. 4, we become people in whom the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met, who live not according old way of the Adam and Eve, the way of the old “flesh” but who live according the Holy Spirit.
Augustine, the great theologian of the church, said that “law was given, that grace might be sought. Grace was given, that the law might be fulfilled.” Law was given…and we couldn’t keep the law so we would seek God’s mercy and grace. Grace (God’s favour) is given so that we might be able to fulfill the law.
The church Father Athanasius said, “Christ became what we are, so that we might become what He is” (2x).
By becoming a human being and taking in his body the condemnation we deserved for our sin, Jesus breaks the power of sin and then breaths His spirit into us so that we become like Jesus, people who naturally, or rather supernaturally fulfill the law because we have been given a new heart and a new Spirit. This process is something that theologians describe as regeneration.
What happens when the power of sin is broken in us and the Holy Spirit is breathed upon us?
When the Spirit of God comes upon us, like the sun shining on a garden, we can see things that we could not see before. When the sun shines upon a garden, a person can see the color of the flowers, the radiance of a green lawn. In the same way, when the Spirit of God comes upon us, we can see things that we never saw before.
John Newton put it in his hymn, Amazing Grace: “I once was blind but now I see, was lost but now I’m found.” “I was blind but now I see.” When a person experiences the life of the Spirit, their eyes are opened and they see new things….they see nature in a new way, as God’s creation…
They also see new things in Scripture—the Scripture becomes a book that is alive and there is a new desire to know and to worship God.
Before I became a Christian as teenager, I really didn’t read at all. But, suddenly parts of Scripture became this living reality to me. The Matthew 5 sermon of Mount, 1 John….
When I first experienced the Spirit indwelling me, my life began to change, it was not complete change overnight but there were some marked differences. For example, as a high school student I swore a lot, but when Christ came into my heart, one of my younger sisters noticed that I had stopped swearing (for the most part), and instead, for the first time in my life, I was singing, singing songs of praise. I was not a good singer then, and I am not now, but that was evidence (somewhat embarrassing for a guy from North Surrey trying really hard maintain a tough guy persona) that something was changing in me.
Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest theologians that North America has ever produced, notes that when a person is regenerated by the Holy Spirit, they experience a new sense of love for God that is qualitatively different from they have experienced before. Edwards compares the two kinds of love, that kind of love the person had before and after conversion, to the loves that different people might have for a certain fruit (Use prop.)
Theologian Gerald McDermott extrapolates on this by asking us consider a person who is born without the sense of taste, and the second person very much enjoys sense of taste.
The first person, let’s say, could love a mango because of its beautiful colour and rich fragrance, but the other person loves a mango because of its colour and fragrance but primarily because of its great taste. Their “loves” are qualitatively different. It’s not that the second person loves mango more than the first but the second person’s love for the mange is of qualitatively different kind from that of the first person. So it is for the love of a person who has been regenerated with the Holy Spirit. A person who has not been regenerated can have some admiration for God or for Jesus Christ, but their love for Jesus Christ will be qualitatively different…
One of the signs that we have experienced the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit is we have new and qualitatively different love for God…
When the Spirit of God comes to indwell us, though some people say it’s impossible for human beings to change, we actually can experience change.
Dr. Gerald May, a respected psychiatrist who wrote the wise and beautifully written book, Addiction and Grace (hold up) says when he was a young doctor said, “With all the energy that might be expected of a young doctor, I applied my best psychiatric methods to the treatment of addictions. None of them worked.”
Then May did some informal research. He identified a few people who had overcome serious addictions to drugs and alcohol and asked them how they did it. “All of them described some sort of spiritual experience,” he reports. “They said that they had gotten some professional help, but this was not their source of healing. What had healed them was something spiritual. It had something to do with turning to God.”
All testified to a power that came from outside themselves. (It is interesting also to note that in AA one of the steps in breaking the addiction cycle is to seek help from a higher power.)
Sound what happened to Augustine? A voice that came to Augustine when he was sitting in his lawn garden in the summer of AD 386. Augustine had battled the demon of sexual lust for years. He knew in his heart that sexual purity was right, but he was afraid that life without sex would be unlivable. Some years before his conversion, he prayed, “God make me pure… but not yet.”
Then one day, through a child’s voice… (who was nowhere to be seen) Augustine heard the words, “Tolle Legge. Tolle Legge. Take and read. Take and read.” He picked up a New Testament lying nearby, and the first passages on which his eyes fell said, “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its lusts.” And through these words shone “a light of relief from all anxiety and all shadows of doubt were dispelled.” He became free through the grace of God that came to him outside himself. Augustine found the joy of freedom far outweighed the pain of sexual abstinence. For years, Augustine had tried to break on his own the power of sexual addiction but had failed. Only by God’s grace was he able to do it.
Our Cambodia vision team just came back to Vancouver. I was sharing how last year when I was on the vision trip from our church we had dinner with the staff of a Christian NGO called Food for the Hungry. One of the people we had dinner with that night was a Cambodian staff person who worked for Food for the Hungry.
Most people in Cambodia are not Christians; most are nominal Buddhists. How did this Cambodian staff member come to know Christ? The Cambodian staff member prior to joining Food for the Hungry had worked as a pimp. The young man described how he had been servicing a number of hotels as people working with the UN and a number of other NGOs had come into town. The pimp went around to each of the hotels, taking orders from people working with the UN and other NGOs for prostitutes. He was going door to door, asking people if they wanted someone working in the sex trade to service them. Pretty much everyone was saying “yes, yes. Bring me one tonight.”
He was doing a 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 kept saying no to the 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 Africa 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 a result of that testimony the pimp gave his life to Christ and is now serving Food for the Hungry in Cambodia, massive pay cut….
Though… not nearly as dramatic my story has some similarities… As a teen, like many teens, I used to like drinking, getting high, wanted to look at Penthouse Magazine… I remember I assigned one of my good friends and teammates of the football team to buy a Penthouse magazine at 7-11 while I guarded the door to watch out for his parents… But after giving my life to Christ—I didn’t want be seen as a stick in the mud,--but I didn’t to get drunk, get high on drugs, I didn’t want to look at those magazines… I didn’t know anything about the Bible, but I intuitively knew these would compromise my new relationship with God.
Sometimes the evidence of the Spirit’s life is doesn’t deal with such a dramatic sin.
My wife, before becoming a follower of Christ, was a journalist with Newsweek. I find this hard to imagine, but according to her she had the ability and the tendency occasionally to eviscerate and take people down through her words (like some journalists do). Sometimes she used that skill in the context of a news story and at other times in the context inter-personal interactions. When Sakiko gave her life to Christ, her mom and sister who were then not Christians, noticed she stopped doing that and became kinder and gentler in her use of words.
When we recognize who God is, and we experience his forgiveness, which is made possible through the cross of Christ, not only will we not fulfill the desires of the flesh, but we will become people whose transformed lives can only be explained by the presence of the Spirit of God in us.
We can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
The change we can experience is not primarily about will power… though habit formations do matter as we’ll see later in the series, having a new nature….
Jonathan Edwards explained this new nature through the analogy of a pig. “A pig,” he said, “is filthy by nature. It loves to play and wallow in filth. A farmer may wash the pig one day and make it clean on the outside. He may even tie a fuchsia bow (show photo of pig) around its neck and make it look pretty, but that pig’s true inner nature is still to roll around in the nearest pile of mud getting as dirty as it can. Similarly we begin our lives pointing to Adam with a natural inclination to sin. We can try on our own efforts to avoid sin. In some areas of life we can achieve success. We can live outwardly moral lives and be well respected in the community, but no matter how much we are esteemed decency we know our identity and security in something other than God: achievement, money, people… But if the pig can experience a change of nature, there is hope for the pig. Put in a desire for cleanliness in that little pig’s heart and we’ll seek water rather than mud. And in the same way, when a person’s inner heart is transformed by the Holy Spirit, the outer life will change, as well.”
But this change does occur gradually. It doesn’t happen overnight. Even Augustine, the great theologian, admitted that, even as an older person, lust continued to be alluring to him. But we can change because Jesus breaks the power of sin and breaths His spirit into us.
Has this change happed for you? If not Seek God with all your heart… Imperfect as I am, as prone as I am occasionally to doubt, I know as surely as I stand it has happened for me—something from the outside has entered me and then changed me from the inside out…
One ways we seek God is by coming to his table and feeding on him in our hearts by faith….
(The sermon can be heard on line at: www.tenth.ca/audio)
posted by Shigematsu at 3:53 PM
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