Romans 8:1–4
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 1st August 2021
Today we begin a series of studies on the eighth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. I am calling the series “Dust to Destiny, which it the title of a book on the whole of the letter. But this eighth chapter most fits this title; it takes us from a place of degradation to the heights of happiness. Many of you will have watched someone going down—alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness— and wondered how low will they go, and whether there is any way up. Well, this chapter is a gutter-to-glory story, and it is about the world too, not just about us.
We need to start with some close Bible Study. There are parts of the Bible that are so dense with important ideas that it pays to tease them apart carefully. The first few verses of chapter 8 tell us truths that can catch us, even at the bottom, and start us on the road back to happiness.
We start with a literal translation of the first verse:
There is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set you free from the law of sin and death.
The first word in Greek is “nothing”. Greek puts the emphasis on the first word: “Nothing!”
The second word is “therefore”. This word tells us that what he is about to say follows on from what he has said before. The first seven chapters of the letter lead up to this conclusion.
The third word is “now”: “Nothing-therefore-now …” “Now” signals change. Something is different now to what it used to be. The change we will see is Jesus.
The fourth word is “condemnation”. Here is the change. Once there was condemnation, now there is no condemnation. There is now nothing—I repeat, nothing— nothing that condemns us. Paul couldn’t be more emphatic.
“Nothing-therefore-now-condemnation – to those in Christ Jesus.”
Here we come to a limitation. For whom is it true that there is now no condemnation? It is for those who are in King Jesus. That is what Paul means when he says “Christ Jesus”.
We need to pull up here and ask ourselves some questions. Theological truths are nothing until they come home to us personally. How do we feel about this word, “condemnation”? I learned from a recent experience that people are very sensitive to being condemned; some see the church as a place of condemnation. You may have experienced condemnation in your life; it is not pleasant. Paul puts a great “Nothing” sign over the church: “No condemnation!” That is good news if you are feeling condemned. But perhaps you don’t, and never have; then this will leave you cold. But it’s not our feelings that are being spoken of here, but our real situation with God, before the great change that has made it possible for those who formerly were condemned, rejected, and shut out, to move to a place of “no condemnation”, acceptance, and inclusion. Condemnation was the position of the human race with God—you and me included—before Christ; it is still the situation of those who remain apart from Christ. But let me state categorically before I go on: wherever you have been, whatever you have done, whatever state you may be in now, it is possible to come into that place of “no condemnation” and stay there forever. No one who wishes to come is excluded from membership in Jesus’ kingdom. All are invited. Indeed, all are commanded to come: “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” But who will take the cure, if they do not recognize that they are sick? If you think you are not in any danger, you will hardly take seriously the escape that is now possible.
Four hundred years ago people were easily convinced that they were condemned. They believed in God. They believed in his law. They believed he was coming to judge the world. They believed that they would stand before him. And they knew they were guilty. So, when their eyes were opened to their sins, they were crushed and despaired. Jonathan Edwards, the founder of Yale University preached one of the most famous—infamous—sermons ever. It was called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes, as the most hateful and venomous snake is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.
Google it! It is a remarkably clear and logical sermon. Today it meets only with laughter. Why? Because today, four hundred years later, people barely believe in God. And although they believe in scientific law, they have abandoned belief in the law of God. And they think if he is real, he will be loving and forgive anything. And there can be no judgement nor hell, because both would be awful and surely God wouldn’t be like that.
So, if I preached like Jonathan Edwards, I would be condemned! I would be doing psychological damage to vulnerable people, and that is a great sin, and surely there should be a law against that sort of thing, and I should be punished if I preach that way. Do you see that there is a contradiction in modern thinking: there is no judgement, but we are always judging.
So, which was right, the way people thought 400 years ago or the way they think today? Psychologists tell us that guilt is a negative and destructive illness. We must accept ourselves, even our dark side, and see that that poor wretch was conditioned and programed by his upbringing to be like he is; it is not his fault. This is what our culture says. But every day as we open our newspapers we find an incessant crusade to find who is responsible: who is guilty—for this financial collapse, or this mistake, or that politically incorrect statement?
It is not just the media, it is the voice of our culture again. It is not saying, “You are breaking society’s rules,” or “You are offending certain people’s sensitivities,” but implicit in the whole condemnatory tone is an appeal to absolute good and evil. “You are doing wrong because you are evil! You should be punished.” So, at the same time as we appeal to a real law of good and evil, we also deny it. We are confused. It was not our forefathers, but we who are confused.
Now let me turn to the Bible, for we will never cease being confused until we turn to God’s Word and hear from him what is true and false.
God cares; he describes himself to Moses like this: “The Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and full of mercy and truth, keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin …” But he also cares about goodness and truth and justice; he goes not to say, “He will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the sins of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation’. (Exodus 33)
He hates evil and will judge and condemn evildoers. Jesus himself said: “The Son of man will send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that cause stumbling and those who do evil, and shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 13)
It is utter delusion for people to encourage themselves by the thought that God is too loving to condemn them, when God himself in earnest and passionate terms has warned us of the reality of the coming judgement—and given us a way out.
Anyone who does evil – and who doesn’t— should know for sure that without some great act of mercy, they face certain condemnation at the hands of the righteous judge. This is known in the Bible as “the law of sin and death”. “The soul that sins will die!” (Ezekiel 18) “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6) Each of us must decide whether we will believe God’s word, or float along with the confusion of our present-day culture. Then we have to decide whether we believe that something has now happened to change our situation.
Until recently people were clear enough about the judgement of God. What they found difficult to accept was that there could be any way out, other than an effort on their part to be good. The problem was, the more they tried, the more their own perverse nature would trip them up. They found themselves sinking in despair. But Paul tells us something has happened to change forever the bondage of a person to their guilt.
For the law of the spirit, of life in Christ Jesus, has set you free from the law of sin and death.
I used to go with my Dad to meet the aeroplanes that arrived from Sydney every day. We would wheel up the steps and let the passengers out, put the new passengers on and load their baggage, pull away the chocks, and give the pilot the thumbs up to leave. The old DC3’s would lumber to the end of the runway and sit for about two minutes, with their engines thundering to warm up. Then they would release the brakes and the aircraft would start to move forward. I was fascinated: this huge lump of machinery with all its passengers and their baggage, totally impossible that it should ever leave the ground—held fast by the law of gravity. But as it gathered pace and the air slipped across its wings a new law would come into operation, and it would rise into the air like a bird.
So now, says Paul, a new law has entered in, what he calls the law of the Spirit, which has overcome the downward drag of the law of sin and death, and lifted us into freedom and eternal life.
What is this new law? Paul defines it as the law of “life in Christ Jesus”. “The wages of sin is death”—that’s the old law—”but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”—that’s the new law. I’m quoting from Romans 6. Eternal life is given as a free gift to anyone who come into the safety of a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The next two verses tell us what has happened to bring this new law into operation. The words are difficult, but very precise – follow it carefully.
For what is impossible for the law …
What is impossible for the law?
Very simply, it is impossible for the law to make a person good. It can tell you what is good, and condemn you for doing evil, but it cannot make you good. In short it cannot save you, it cannot bring you to God, and it cannot give you eternal life.
Why not?
Because it was weakened by the flesh!
There is nothing wrong with the law. It is a true description of the will of God, and it sets out the rewards for keeping it, and the penalties for breaking it. The problem is in us. We have a twisted nature that refuses to do right. We all break God’s laws, which of course brings penalties rather than the blessing: condemnation! But now, says Paul, there is no condemnation for those who are in King Jesus. How is that?
God did what the law could not do, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us—who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Here we reach the heart of what has happened to change our situation. God has come to the rescue. He sent his own Son to become a human being and stand in for us. All God’s condemnation of human sin descended upon him as he hung on the cross. What the law demanded—the just requirement of the law was that the sinner should die—was accomplished in him. He died in our place. He satisfied the law’s demand, so that we might be discharged from the law, and now serve God in the new way of the Spirit. The great thing that has happened, which can change your condemnation and death into no condemnation and eternal life, is that Christ died in your place so that you might rise to newness of life with the Spirit of God.
That is very good news, provided you have the good sense to get yourself without delay into that place of safety. For it is not, “no condemnation,” full-stop!” but, “no condemnation to those who are in King Jesus”. How do we “into King Jesus”? We enter his kingdom by believing in him and speaking to him: “Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”
Imagine you are on an island. The warning goes out: a tsunami is approaching. It will reach you in less than one hour and sweep everything away.
But down in the harbour is a ship—about to set sail. Enter that ship, and it will head out to deep water, and carry you over the top of that wave of destruction to a new life in a new place.
Your life and mine—the fate of the world— hangs by a thread. It is true what Jonathan Edwards said: only the mercy of God stands between us and total ruin.
Will you not grab your loved ones and run for the safety of that ship?
Nothing! There is therefore now, no—repeat, no—condemnation for those who are in King Jesus. For the law of the Spirit, of life in King Jesus, has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh—the flesh of his own Son—in order that the just requirement of the law might be met in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Next week we will explore what it means to walk according to the Spirit.