08-28-11Freedom and Rules

We return this morning to our study of the Book of Romans.

Paul wrote his letter to the Christians at Rome

to provide them with the answers

to 4 crucial questions concerning Christianity.

1. He begins his letter by explaining to them why it was necessary for Christ to come,

why it was necessary for God to place Himself into a human body,

live among His creation for a time,

and then allow us to crucify Him.

And Paul answers that question

in the first two and a half chapters of Romans

by painting for us

a vivid picture of what the human race looks like without Christ.

It is a painful passage to read,

a passage that leaves us with nothing but our own efforts as the means by which we can attempt to reach God,

a passage that forces every thinking reader

to the logical conclusion that,

left to our own efforts,

the entire human race stands justifiably condemned before God

on the basis of our inability to keep the moral law of God.

2. Then, beginning with Romans 3:21,

and running through the end of Romans chapter 8,

Paul answers the second question,

“What does it mean to live with God

on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ?”

It is a glorious passage,

a passage that shouts freedom and victory,

a passage that begins with the words,

“But now APART FROM THE LAW...”,

and ends with Paul’s great culminating statement proclaiming,

ROM 8:38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,

ROM 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

3. Then, in the next three chapters,

Romans 9, 10, and 11,

Paul answers his third question,

“What happens to the Nation of Israel in the light of the fact that God has now established His Church,

made up of people from every people-group in the world?”

Does the Church replace God’s chosen people?

Does Israel’s rejection of Christ as the promised Messiah

cause them to forfeit the promises made to them by God?

And in those 3 chapters

Paul reveals to us both His plan for the Church,

and His future final redemptive plan for Israel.

4. And then, in the final 5 chapters of the letter

Paul answers his 4^th question,

“What are the basic principles

that govern life within the Church, the Body of Christ?”

And in this section

Paul offers us the 6 principles

that govern life within the family of God.

This is the section we are currently studying,

and in recent weeks we have studied our way through 5 of those 6 principles.

And just to complete our brief survey of the book,

let me remind you of the 5 principles we’ve seen so far.

The first, found in Romans 12:1-2,

called each of us to accept the daily battle

of bringing our mistrained physical bodies

under the leadership of the new spirits God has created within us

by continually renewing our minds through the truth.

The second principle,

found in 12:3-21,

talked with us about the way in which

God has equipped each one of us

with our own unique contribution to the Body of Christ.

In the third principle,

found in Romans 13:1-7,

Paul calls us to live our Christian lives

in subjection to the governing authorities He has placed us under,

assuring us that He will accomplish His will in our lives

through those authorities.

The fourth principle, found in Romans 13:8-10,

called us to love one another,

and then revealed to us just exactly what that means.

And then the fifth principle,

found in Romans 13:11-14,

called us to clothe ourselves in what Paul called “the armor of light”,

and explained to us how we do that.

Which brings us, then, to the sixth and final principle Paul shares with us

for life within the family of God.

It is a principle that talks with us

about the proper use of our freedom within the Body of Christ.

And before we move into our study of that principle,

I want to prepare you for what happens here

because, by the very nature of what Paul discusses,

this principle also brings up another huge area in man’s relationship with God.

It brings up the whole area of rules -

moral rules,

religious rules,

devotional rules,

rules governing our lifestyles,

and where and how those rules fit into the healthy Christian life.

When correctly understood,

the message of Jesus Christ

is the most freeing truth a person can ever receive.

In perfect clarity and simplicity

Christ Himself summed up the kind of effect His message would have

on those who understood it correctly.

He said, “... and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."John 8:32

Free from religion,

free from sin,

free from fear,

free from hatred and bitterness,

free from doubts,

free from anything that has the power to bind the human spirit,

free to be the people God designed us to be

to the fullest possible degree.

What God offers us through Christ

is not a religious system.

It is not a set of rules by which we are called to live.

What He offers us,

as He stated it so perfectly in Colossians,

is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

It’s like this.

When we come to Christ and place our lives into His hands

by trusting that His death was a full and eternal payment for our sins,

He then places His Holy Spirit within us,

creating within us a new heart,

a heart that loves Him and longs to please Him.

He then tells us that we are not to try to live for Him,

but rather we are to allow Him to live His life out through us,

as He changes us from the inside out.

GAL 2:20 "... it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me...”

The author of Hebrews puts it this way.

He said that Jesus our Lord “ equips you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” HEB 13:21

And when the Christian life is being lived as God designed,

His Spirit gives us the mind of Christ,

and the new heart He has created within us

gives us the desire to follow His leadership,

and we literally walk with God through life.

If a Christian was perfectly mature,

(and let me just say that no such Christian exists),

but if a Christian was perfectly mature,

he would have no rules whatsoever governing his life

because no rules would be needed.

He would simply know the voice of God within,

and follow the leadership of that voice perfectly.

But in practical reality

our ability to know and follow the voice of Christ

is very much of a growing process,

a process that goes on throughout our entire Christian lives.

And Paul makes it clear in the passage we are moving into

that in those areas where we are still less than mature,

we still need some rules.

When these rules grow out of the work of God’s Spirit within us

they are a healthy part of our walk with the King.

They serve as protective fences around weak or vulnerable areas in our lives.

Or perhaps it would be better to describe them

as serving very much the same role

as that of a cast

placed on a broken bone to protect it

until the bone is sufficiently strong so that the cast is no longer needed.

But these are not the only rules we bring with us into our Christian lives.

The truth is,

every one of us here this morning

have a whole mess of rules governing our lives and our behaviors,

rules that have entered our lives from all sorts of different sources.

Some of them are helpful,

some of them are neutral,

and some of them are really destructive to the work Christ is seeking to accomplish within us.

The passage we are moving into in our study of Romans

is a passage in which Paul talks with us

about these rules -

both our own personal rules,

and the rules of our fellow Christians.

He gives us instructions

both about how we should relate to our own rules,

and also about how we should relate to the rules of those around us,

especially when their rules differ from ours.

And to prepare us for what he’s talking about

I think it would be helpful if I offered us

just a brief survey of some of the places our rules come from.

I’ve mentioned two of them already.

1. First, of course, there is the written Word of God.

I like to call these rules the Moral Absolutes.

There are not many of them,

not nearly as many as most people think.

Don’t lie.

Don’t steal.

Don’t covet.

Don’t murder.

Don’t commit adultery.

Trust God to work through the human authorities He has placed you under.

Love those God places into your life.

There are a few more,

but that’s the heart of it.

2. For the Christian

there is another source of rules that grows out of this.

For each growing believer

God’s Spirit then takes those basic Moral Absolutes

and applies them to our lives

in very personal,

individual ways,

showing us what it actually means

for us to live a Godly life in a godless world.

This process is an active, fluid process,

one in which the Spirit of God

gives us different rules for different times,

different relationships,

different cultural settings,

different points in our own growth.

There was a time in my life

when the Spirit of God gave me the rule,

“Larry, you shouldn’t wear a watch.”

For the time and situation I was in

that rule was a healthy part of His work within me.

When my situation changed,

and I’d grown some in my walk with the King,

the rule was no longer needed and He removed it.

3. We also inherit a whole bunch of rules from our religious heritage.

Whatever church or religious environment we grew up in stamped them on us

and they remain an active part of our rules system

until or unless we consciously bring them up and examine their validity.

I’ll give you some examples of church rules people often inherit.

Good Christians go to church every week.

Great Christians go to church 3 times a week.

Good Christians read their Bibles every day.

Good Christians don’t go to movies.

Good Christians wear certain types of clothing,

and don’t wear certain other types of clothing.

There is an endless spectrum of such church rules.

Some groups will go so far as to tell their people that good Christians will let snakes bite them to prove their faith.

Most of us bring some inherited religious rules into our walk with Christ.

4. We also have rules recorded in us from our home environment.

What are the duties of a husband?

What are the duties of a wife?

What should be expected of children?

How should conflicts be handled in the home?

etc. etc. etc.

5. We have another set of rules handed to us by our local church.

You may think we present a rule-free environment here at PBF,

but it’s not true.

We have all sorts of unwritten rules.

How do we dress?

What do we talk about when we’re here?

What do we not talk about?

How do we relate to one another within the group?

What are the “correct” priorities for healthy Christian living?

What things matter, what thing do not?

6. We have another set of rules imposed on us by the popular cultural religion in which we live.

Would you like to hear some of the commandments of our cultural religion?

Thou shalt not discrimination on the basis of gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation.

Thou shalt protect mother earth.

Thou shalt not let friends drive drunk.

(It’s fine to let them get drunk,

but thou shalt not let them drive drunk.)

Thou shalt not impose thy religious beliefs or values on any other person.

Thou shalt recycle.

Thou shalt not judge another person’s chosen lifestyle.

Thou shalt not invade another person’s privacy.

Thou shalt not kill the whales.

Thou shalt not smoke in public.

7. In some situations we also receive rules from those in authority over us who impose those rules in order to dominate or manipulate the people under their control.

Some time ago I was talking with a good friend involved in a Christian organization

who is required to do push-ups

or memorize Bible verses

if he’s even 10 seconds late for a meeting.

And that’s just the short list of some of the types of rules we bring into our Christian walk.

Some of those rules are helpful.

Some of them are not.

Some are consistent with true Christian living,

while others are enemies of the faith

and war against true life in the Spirit.

But each person who comes into the family of God through faith in Christ

brings with him or her their own set of rules

with which they then define the Christian life.

And no two sets are ever identical.

Now, it is the nature of man-made religious systems

to seek to codify and enforce a single universal standard of rules on its followers.

This is one of the things religion does best.

It tells the followers

which rules apply and which ones don’t,

which ones matter and which ones can safely be set aside.

It provides the followers

with the sense of security that comes from knowing exactly what’s expected,

what’s permitted,

what’s not,

and what will be applauded as successful living.

And every place where man-made religious systems are active

it isn’t long before everyone in the group

dresses alike,

and talks alike,

and thinks alike,

and worships alike,

and prays alike,

and lives by the same basic set of rules.

That is not Christianity,

and it is not what Christ seeks to accomplish in the lives of those who come to Him.

Not only does He not seek uniformity,

but He delights in emphasizing our individual uniqueness and diversity.

Now, this passage we’re moving into in Romans

is given to us in order to share with us

how we are to relate to one another

given the fact that we will differ so widely in the rules that govern our individual walks with the Lord.

In these last few minutes

we won’t get far into the passage,

but I want to just get our feet wet

by reading the first few verses

and then I want to share with you

the first principle we’ll see there.

OK, this 6^th principle dealing with the use and abuse of our freedom in Christ

begins with Romans 14:1 and continues on through Chapter 15:13.

Having taken 35 verses to share with us the first 5 principles,

Paul now takes the next 36 verses to share with us the 6^th one.

Obviously this 6^th principle is a concept

that he considers to be of tremendous importance to the health of the body of Christ.

And just to get us into it,

I’ll read the first verses of the passage.

ROM 14:1-3 Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. One man has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. Let not him who eats regard with contempt him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him.

He begins in the very first verse of the passage

by presenting the principle:

those who are stronger in faith

and more mature in their walk with Christ

are to accept and encourage their weaker brothers and sisters.

And then he goes on in the next two verses

to define strength and weakness.

The weaker brother draws strength from his rules because they protect him in his weakness,

the stronger brother has grown in his or her ability to know and follow the mind and heart of Christ

so that the rules are no longer needed.

We don’t have time today to examine the issue itself,

which concerned buying and eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols,

but the one thing I want to point out before we close

is that the more we mature in Christ

the less we need religious rules in our lives.

The first time I saw what Paul was saying here

it seemed to contradict everything I’d come to believe from my religious past.

In so many churches

maturity is defined exactly opposite from what Paul is saying here.

The most mature,

the most devout,

the most faithful were viewed as the ones who had and keep the most rules.

I can remember many years ago,

attending a conference at which my then current favorite Christian idol was speaking.

Following his teaching

I clawed my way to the front,

and then hovered in the background,

listening to him field questions from others.

I didn’t want to loose a single crumb of wisdom from the great man.

And I remember hearing him respond to one question

by telling the person he was talking to

all of the things he had eliminated from his life as a Christian -

he’d eliminated TV,

and magazines,

and newspapers,

and the radio,

and movies,

and he fasted one day every week, and on and on...

And as I listened to him

I wondered if I would ever reach that level of maturity.

It is not at all uncommon

for the most “mature” in many religious groups

to be recognized by how many rules they have written for themselves

and how faithfully they keep them.

The truth is

with true maturity in Christ

we have less and less need for rules

because those rules are replaced more and more

by our ability to hear and respond to the voice of Christ Himself.

And any group in which maturity is viewed as more rules

is not presenting the true message of Christ,

it is presenting just one more form of man-made religion.

OK, we’re out of time and we’ve only begun,

but we’ll pick it up here next week

and see where Paul goes next.