10-24-10 No Condemnation

We ended our study of the book of Romans two weeks ago

at a place where it was difficult for me to stop.

The three chapters we are studying,

chapters 6, 7, and 8,

all work together as a single unit,

leading the Christian through a series of statements,

and then principles based upon those statements,

that are given to us by our God

for the purpose of equipping us

with the truth

and the tools we need for defeating sin in our lives.

I know what happens with these book studies,

especially with the way I approach them.

Because it takes us literally months

to move through a book,

it is simply impossible to keep a clear, overall view of where we’ve been

and how we got there.

It is one of the chronic hazzards

of the structure of our lives.

But let me take just a few minutes to drop this section of Romans we are currently studying

back into its proper context in the book.

Paul wrote the book

to offer his readers

the answers to 4 crucial questions

about the message of Jesus Christ.

1. Why was Christ needed at all? Why did God choose to take on human form

and allow His creation to crucify Him?

He answered that question for us

in the first two and a half chapters of the book.

Those of you who were here for that part of the study

will remember that

all he did was to confront us

with a picture of us and our world

without Christ.

It was a terrifying picture,

a hopeless picture,

a picture in which,

on the basis of even the very best of all human performance,

every human being stood justifiably condemned before God.

Then, having used the truth of the way things are

to force us into a desperate hope

for some other way,

some other answer,

when we reached Romans 3:21

he suddenly turned the spotlight of the universe

onto Jesus Christ

with the words, “But now, apart from the Law...”

and with those words

he went on to share with us

God’s alternative for us,

the offer of entering into an eternal love relationship with God Himself,

simply on the basis

of our faith in Jesus Christ,

our faith in God’s assurance

that, when Christ died upon that cross,

He was doing it in order to offer Himself

as the perfect, eternal payment

for all of our sins.

Then, from there,

Paul moves on to the second question,

the one he answers in Chapters 4-8.

2. What is a Christian?

What are the ground-rules for a human being

who enters into a relationship with God

through the Person and work of Jesus Christ?

This is the section we are in right now,

and even though it may seem rather complicated and intricate,

given the time we’ve spent in studying it so far,

the structure of this section is very straightforward.

Paul begins by sharing with us

the foundation principles that now govern our walk with God through Christ.

Do you remember...

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have...”

And do you remember some of those things we have?

Peace with God!

This grace in which we stand!

The Holy Spirit given to each of us for the specific purpose of pouring out within our hearts

the knowledge of the love of God for us.

Freedom forever from the wrath of God,

and a number of other remarkable gifts as well.

All the rules have changed,

changed for us by God Himself,

in response to our faith in Christ

simply because He loves us.

Then, having shared with us

the new ground-rules

for this life in Christ,

Paul moves into the section we are now studying,

the section in which he runs full force

into the great sticky issue facing every child of God -

“If I am really a new creation in Christ,

with a new heart that loves God and longs to please Him,

then WHY, WHY, WHY do I still struggle with sinful impulses within me,

how should I view those impulses,

how does God view them,

and how can I find victory over them?

This is where we were two weeks ago,

and this is where we’ll pick up our study again this morning.

But just so I don’t leave the picture incomplete,

let me remind you of the last two questions Paul answers in this letter.

3. The third question, dealt with in chapters 9-11,

concerns what happens with the nation of Israel now that God has established the Church.

Has God’s special relationship with the Jews ended?

If not, what happens to it?

4. And then, in chapters 12 through the end of the letter,

Paul answers his 4^th question,

“What is the church and how does it operate?”

And in that final section he lays out for us

the basic principles that govern

life within the family of God.

But now I want us to drop back into our study

where we left it in Romans chapter 8.

If you were with us for that study

you will remember that Paul takes the last half of the 7^th chapter

to share with us why sin impulses

continue to exert themselves in the life of the believer.

He talked about the way in which our inner man,

that new heart created in us by God,

longs to please and serve God.

But then he went on to say that he sees a different law at work

in what he called “the members of my body”,

and those members waged war

against his inner man.

And as we moved through Paul’s comments

we heard him telling us

that, even though the new spirit within us

does love God and long to follow His leadership in our lives,

that new spirit

has taken up residence in a physical body

that was totally trained

under the leadership of our old spirit,

a spirit that was in absolute rebellion against God.

All of our reasoning processes

were programed into us

with the assumption that we had both the right

and the ability to be the center of our own world.

All of our emotional responses

grew out of our determination

to protect and defend and guard

our personal rights at all costs.

We built up a whole lifetime of memories

of what it was like

to live in separation from God,

to view Him as our enemy.

And all of those memories,

all of those emotional responses,

all of those reasoning processes

war against the truth

that now exists in our new spirit.

We heard Paul summarize our situation

in the last verse of chapter 7

when he said,

ROM 7:25 ... So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

We are not two people living in one body,

we are one new person

living in someone else’s body

and fighting the disastrous training process the first owner accomplished.

And it is in that context,

and, in fact, in direct response to that

new-spirit/old-body tension

that Paul then makes his affirmation in Romans 8:1,

ROM 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

In context,

Paul is saying that,

when we continue to see

all sorts of pagan impulses floating around in our emotions,

and in our memories,

and in our need-meeting techniques,

and in our reasoning processes,

we need to know

that God in no way condemns us

for their continued presence within us.

Given the fact that our new righteous spirit

has been placed within a fully mistrained physical body,

it simply cannot be any other way.

Now, obviously, when Paul says,

ROM 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,...

the purpose of the statement

is not to suggest our choices don’t matter,

it is to free us from both the fear

and the self-condemnation

that Satan works so hard to impose on the Christian.

The Christian is in some ways

such a very strange creature.

Is it Peter that calls us “...a peculiar people?”

Here we are,

on one hand, flooded with a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.

From the deepest core of our being

we find a love for our God,

and a hunger within ourselves

to live lives of honor and integrity,

lives that testify to the life of Christ within us.

And yet...

and yet, with all of this great good created by God Himself within us,

we also find within ourselves

impulses, desires, tendencies,

stubborn sin patterns

that are as inconsistent with our true heart longings

as anything could ever be.

It’s just a little bit like what happened to us

a few hours before we were to leave

for a trip outside over Christmas break some years ago.

There were several major things going on that day,

apart from the packing

and last minute preparations for the trip.

Somewhere in the chaos

Sandee had found the time to get the house all cleaned and tidy

so that it would be nice to come back to when we returned.

We’d just made a quick run to town

for some last minute needs,

and when we returned

we were greeted by the strangest odor.

It wasn’t one of those odors you could just ignore.

It seemed to be coming from the basement.

And when we entered our previously neat,

clean,

tidy laundry room,

we found the floor flooded with poop!

Something had gone terribly wrong

with the septic system.

And there are times in our Christian lives

when we will walk into some room of our life

that our Lord has cleansed and purified,

and, to our horror,

discover poop bubbling up from the floor.

There is a title given to Satan

in the 12^th chapter of the book of Revelation

that answers so many questions

about the true nature of the spiritual warfare we are now engaged in.

Revelation 12:10 calls Satan “the accuser of our brethren”.

I’m going to get just a little bit off track here,

but I want you to know

that the battle we are called to fight

is not the battle most of us think we are called to fight.

Most of us think we have been called to fight to become more like the people we should be.

That’s a lie.

That is Satan’s lie,

handed to the Christian

to blind us to the truth.

The real battle we have been called to fight

is the battle to discover

and then constantly reaffirm the truth

of who we really are - the holy ones of God.

And the heart of Satan’s warfare against us,

the chief weapon in his arsenal,

is that of accusation -

he attempts to keep us identifying ourselves

on the basis of those flesh impulses

that continue to exist within our bodies.

I mentioned two weeks ago,

and I want to repeat again today,

that I believe the great pivotal point of the 7^th chapter of Romans

comes in verse 21 where Paul says,

“I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.”

It is at that point,

in that single remarkable statement,

that the power of Satan’s accusations against Paul are defeated forever.

And it is at that same point,

that same discovery,

that we will find the same victory.

For, you see,

in that single statement,

Paul does two remarkable things.

1. He identifies himself correctly as God’s new creation in Christ - he IS the one who wishes to do good!

That is his true identity.

He is a saint, a holy one of God.

2. And yet at the same time

he looks honestly at his life

and he says, “There’s evil present within me.”

And do you see

how that has the power

to defeat the accuser of the brethren?

Satan comes along side Paul and says,

“Look at you! You think you’re some kind of chosen one of God,

you claim to be His child,

filled with His Spirit,

and yet look at you!

Look at this impulse within you!

Look at that response pattern!

Look at this potential for evil,

for corruption.

You are not, and never will be a holy one of God...”.

And to that attack Paul responds by saying,

“No, Satan! Once again you lie!

Look here, look at the longings of my spirit.

Look at the hunger and thirst I have

for a life pleasing to my King.

THAT is who I am.

Certainly I agree

that evil impulses continue to dwell

within my physical body.

But those impulses are not who I am,

nor will they determine the course

of my walk with my Lord.”

Now, most of what we’ve done this morning

has been summary and review of where we’ve been,

but I do want us to take one more step into Romans 8 before we close.

We have seen Paul’s presentation of God’s perspective on this spirit-body battle,

presented to us in 8:1,

but now I want us to move on to 8:2

and see the basis upon which he makes that statement.

And let me read the two verses together for us.

ROM 8:1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

ROM 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

For that to make sense

we first of all need to understand

what Paul means by that term “law”.

You see, just as God has established

certain physical laws

that govern the operation of this physical world in which we live,

in the same way he has established

laws that govern our interaction with Him in the spirit world.

By the way,

I do hope,

when I say “spirit world”

you don’t think that means something that is in any way less real.

The only reason the spirit world

seems less real to us

is because we do not have the sensory system

that allows us to communicate with it

in the way we communicate with the physical world.

If you had no sense of taste,

or smell,

or sight,

or hearing,

or touch,

how would you relate to this physical world?

You wouldn’t even know it was there.

That is how we enter this life

in our relationship to the spirit world.

It is every bit as real,

in fact, more so.

But, even after we come to Christ,

our abilities to communicate directly with that spirit world

are severely limited.

And, just as there are laws that govern

our relationship to the physical world,

laws like the law of gravity,

so there are laws that govern our relationship to the spirit world,

and specifically to our relationship with God in that spirit world.

In this 2^nd verse of Romans 8

Paul talks about two of those laws.

One of them is the Law of sin and of death.

The other is the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

And Paul says that the second law

has set us free from the first.

Now, what I’m going to share with you

during these last few minutes

is just a tiny part of the whole,

but at least it may help start your thinking

about what Paul is talking about here.

OK, we have seen this Law of sin and of death already in our Romans study.

It began to surface way back in chapter 5:20

when we heard Paul telling us

that the Law came in so that sin would increase.

But then Paul laid it out more clearly for us

in Romans 7:5 when he said,

ROM 7:5 For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

sinful passions + the law = death

This is the governing principle

under which we live in our relationship with God

when we enter this world.

Our spirit is in rebellion against our Lord,

the Moral law of God incites that spirit to rebel,

and that rebellion is then recorded on what, in Colossians 2:14, Paul calls our “certificate of debt”,

the list of all of our moral offenses,

our sins against God.

But when we come to Christ

a dramatic change takes place.

In fact, an entirely new law takes over,

the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.

You probably know

my all-time favorite visual image

of what happens to that certificate of debt under this new Law of Life.

It’s given to us by Paul

in Colossians 2:13-14.

COL 2:13 When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,

COL 2:14 having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

So, if you are a Christian,

where is your certificate of debt,

listing all of your moral offenses?

Where is it right now?

It’s nailed to the cross with Christ,

blowing in the wind...

Now, what happens this afternoon,

if some old sin pattern from your past

blasts into your life

and you sin?

What happens to that sin?

It, like all the others,

is recorded on your certificate of debt.

But where is that certificate?

It’s is still nailed upon the cross of Christ.

And the truth is,

it doesn’t matter how many more moral offenses

we may continue to rack up in our lives,

every one of them goes onto that list

which is forever nailed to the cross of Christ.

And that is why Paul tells us

that there is therefore now no condemnation for us in Christ.

The Moral Law of God

no longer has the power to condemn us

because all the condemnation it can produce

has already been poured out on Christ Himself.

There is now no condemnation

because there is no longer anything to condemn.

Huh?

When you come to Christ

what do you do with your sins?

You give them to Christ.

You literally, absolutely, eternally give them to Christ.

They are no longer your sins,

they are His.

And because you have given your sins to Christ,

and He has accepted them,

received them,

and taken them as His own,

you are now sinless in spirit,

and there are no sins

for the Law to condemn.

And there is now no condemnation.

2CO 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Well, we’ll stop there,

and attack it again next week.