Romans 8:14–17
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 15th August 2021
For all who are led by the Spirit of God these are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs (co-heirs) with Christ, provided we suffer with him (co-suffer) in order that we may also be glorified with him (co-glorified).
Imagine you are a slave sitting in the villa of a wealthy Roman citizen. Your name is Rufus. You’re not one of the household slaves—they are there too—you have been invited. That is unusual. The household head is a Christian, and Christians are known to do unusual things. You joined this community a while back and have been finding your way. You’re now convinced Jesus is the promised Saviour; you have pledged yourself to him as your king. You are learning more about what this means. The word has gone around that a woman named Phoebe has arrived from Greece. She is carrying a letter from Paul. This evening she will read it to this mixed gathering of slaves, family, and friends. Paul is an ambassador of Jesus, so there is some excitement.
Phoebe has read the first half of the letter; they have paused for refreshments. She begins the second half. You are identifying with what she reads.
There is now therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
It’s like you have just been released from prison into a new life of walking with the Spirit of God. She goes on to read about the Spirit. You learn that as a Spirit-person it is your nature to resist the enticements of your godless human nature. The Spirit in you struggles against your evil tendencies, which lead to death. The Spirit has brought you to life. One day he will raise your dead body and give you eternal life. Phoebe continues:
So, all who are led by the Spirit of God—these are the sons of God.
“Can that be true,” you ask. “Could this slave become a son of Almighty God?”
If I were to ask you, “What is the greatest truth of the Letter to the Romans,” what would you answer? If you are one of those Christians who looks with gratitude to the Reformation of the sixteenth-century you would probably say “justification by faith” – there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because of what Jesus has done for us our guilt is cancelled. We can now relate to God in the freedom of full forgiveness. But there is a greater truth to be learned about our relationship with God.
Those who have been touched by the charismatic movement will probably say it is the truth that God comes to dwell in us by his Holy Spirit:
The spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you…
We now have an intimate relationship with God. It is hard to think that we could go beyond this. But we can. Jim Packer, in his book, Knowing God, says that great as the truth of our justification is, and great as our being led by the Spirit of God is, even more wonderful is the truth that God makes us his sons and daughters:
As many as are led by the Spirit of God—these are the sons of God.
How was it that I did not see that this is the ultimate truth of our relationship with God, to which everything else leads? One reason is over-familiarity; the other is sinful presumption.
“Sure, we are sons of God. Everyone is a son of God! Isn’t it true that God is the heavenly Father? Everyone who knows anything about God knows that.” And yet if you think about it for a moment, you will see that this is the most incredible presumption, quite apart from being totally false. There is no other religion in the world which dreams of teaching that human beings are or could be sons of God—certainly not Islam. Who are we that we should think he could be so closely connected with God that we could be called a son or a daughter? Yes, we are God’s creatures, but that doesn’t make us his children. We might as well claim that sheep and pigs are God’s children too. And if we’re going to say that, then we might as well include our pets among our own children. I think you would find it a bit strange if I invited you home to meet my son Billy, the cockroach who lives in a box on my dressing table. The distance between me and God is infinitely greater than that between me and a cockroach.
We are created by God, but the Bible nowhere teaches that because we are his creatures, we are his sons; by rights we should be his servants—that Taliban fighter we heard boasting that they would not stop until they have captured the world for Islam, believes himself to be a servant of God; he would not dare to think of himself as a son. He regards it as blasphemy when Christians claim that privilege—but we have failed even at being servants. We are more like runaway slaves.
Yet God in his mercy has pitied and forgiven us. He has justified us and given us a place in his kingdom. If we could see a fraction of the glory of the future, we would regard ourselves as the most privileged people in the world to have been forgiven and reinstated as a servant of God—the least servant of God.
The son in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, when he came to his senses, did not lift his mind beyond the thought that perhaps, just perhaps, his father whom he had disowned, might give him a job as a hired hand. After a season with the pigs he would have been pleased for a steady job and three meals a day. In other words, justification was as far as he could look. But God has taken us further than that. He has adopted you as his children. I think Rufus must have pondered this. For a slave to be adopted into a good Roman family was the ultimate good fortune—but to be adopted into the family of God!
When I was a student one of my married friends adopted a twelve-year old boy. We all had church placements, and he worked in the red-light district of Sydney. The kid had no home and was roaming the streets. My friends took him in, and eventually adopted him. At the time he was in all sorts of trouble with the police. Before he was free for adoption, there were debts to clear and court appearances to be made on his behalf. That is pretty much what God does with us: he clears us with the law by laying all our debts on Jesus. In the case of my friends, I’m sad to say the adoption never worked. The kid was a seasoned thug and was never out of trouble. They were always in court bailing him out. What he didn’t have, and what they couldn’t give him, was their spirit. He was legally part of the family; but in character he was a different animal.
And now we discover that God has not only cleared our debts, but also gives us his Spirit. Romans 8:15 says:
You have not received a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption …
Think what that would mean to Rufus! “A spirit of slavery … fear”: he knew it well. A slave was there to serve—to obey. If you didn’t obey you were punished. The fear of crucifixion kept you in your place. Rufus had known that ever since he became a slave—his whole life, if he was born to it. For the children of a citizen family, however, it was different. They had security, safety, love, permanence—no cross looming in the background. Now Rufus learns that God has given him the spirit of adoption. We have a Spirit who causes us to cry “Abba, Father!” —my own dear Father.
When we began this series I said one way we could know we belonged to Christ was our new desire to do what pleases God, and our new dislike of the things that used to entice us. Here Paul gives us another way: when we find ourselves reaching out to God as our heavenly Father, it is the Holy Spirit doing that in us:
the Spirit bears witness—co-witnesses—with our spirit that we are children of God.
This is more than belief, it is existential—it is experience. You want tangible signs of God at work in your life? Here is one of them. God wants you to know he is real, and that you really belong to him, and are loved. So, I hope you will agree with me that the most precious truth of the Christian life is that God makes us his own sons and daughters.
But I have a last question for you: what if you believe God’s word, and also have this witness of the Holy Spirit in your life, so you know you are one of God’s beloved children—so what? What does it really mean? Is it just something to make you feel good about yourself—something to make you feel different from others—something to comfort you? Or does it have some cash value?
Paul answers this question in verse 17:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs …
“If children then heirs …” Rufus is lost in thought. True, a Roman father, if he had no children of his own, might adopt … even a slave, to become his heir. But that would only apply to a male, and Paul is talking like all of—men, women, and children—are now heirs. And being an heir—that usually means cash.
Let me tell you about a family in my last congregation who had an aging aunt; they couldn’t help wondering if they would be good for anything when she died. She eventually did, and they found she’d left everything to the cat home—every young couple’s fear! But they weren’t really expecting anything, so it didn’t make too much difference, and they got on with life—and with their prayers, because they had just got a big bill and didn’t know how they were going to pay it. Imagine their surprise when the lawyer came to the door. The aunt had left them the contents of her flat, and the lawyer had a brown-paper bag full of money that had been found in pockets and drawers and hidden under the mattress, and it was just what they had prayed for to meet their bill. I got to hear the story because they gave me some of it as a gift for the church. Anyway, I shouldn’t get carried away on stories of inheritances, because we all have one coming, if we are children of God, and it’s worth big bucks.
One of the questions I always had about the Parable of the Prodigal Son—he comes to his senses and comes home thinking his father might give him a job, but the father rushes out to greet him and takes him back into the family. But does he reinstate him as an heir? “Bring the best robe, and put a ring on his finger, and give him shoes,” may suggest he does. Is that why the other son was so angry? The parable doesn’t tell us, but it doesn’t need to, because we know that we are runaways who have wasted our inheritance in this world, and God has given us a new world. Nor do we have to wait for anyone to die to receive our inheritance.
Paul says we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. Behind this lies the truth that God is creating the coming new world for his Son, and Jesus wishes to share it with us.
But this part of the gospel has almost fallen from view. We tend to make our decision on whether to be a Christian on the basis of what it might be worth to us in this life: forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, having God batting for you now, peace of mind, safety, health, success, security. We try hard to convince people they will have a better life if they follow Jesus. They may or they may not, but what the first Christians looked to was the life of the age-to-come. Life was tough and precarious and becoming a Christian didn’t change that—maybe even added to it. But Jesus had announced the arrival of the kingdom of God, and every child of God would have a share. Whatever we say, the practically-minded of our own generation can see well enough that their chances of a good life now are less likely if they hitch their wagon to Jesus, so they stay away. But what do they forfeit?
I’m thinking of the story of Jacob and Esau. Esau came in from hunting, ravenously hungry, and wanted some of Jacob’s lentils. “Trade me your birthright!” Jacob said. Esau as the firstborn was due to inherit the promise God made to his grandfather Abraham. But what value was that— just useless religious talk? Esau was a practical man. If Jacob wanted to think there was some value in that stuff, well, let him have it. Esau happily did the deal. The Bible says Esau despised his birthright and never recovered it. (Genesis 25; Hebrews 12) We have heard stories of natives trading land for trinkets, but that was nothing compared with this. Esau gave away the world. Make sure you do not make the same mistake!
Next time we will look more carefully at the nature of our inheritance. For now, let’s just be reminded of what Paul says in verse 17:
We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
“Co-suffering” and “co-glorification”: these are the things we still need to unpack.