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I keep coming across people who are struggling
with whether their faith is real. People whose Christian
experience is something like what Paul describes at the
end of Romans 7. They struggle to believe that they could
be truly God's children when their life is so full of
sin. If you're one of those people then I hope today's
passage may be of some help to you. You see, we come
today to the culmination of Paul's explanation of the
basis of the Christian faith. He's just finished
describing the dilemma he finds himself in as a Christian
who tries and tries to keep God's law but who finds
himself failing time and time again. And his conclusion
is that the only hope he has is if God does something to
help him overcome his own weakness. By himself he can't
meet his own standards let alone those of God in
heaven. And so he cries out from the heart, "Who
will rescue me from this body of death?" And the
answer comes from what he's already explained; from the
gospel. It's Jesus Christ who will rescue him, indeed who
has rescued him, and all those who call on his name. And
so he goes on in chapter eight to explain how this all
works. |
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As I
said, there are still people around who see themselves as
failures because of their apparent lack of godliness,
their apparent lack of spirituality. They feel that
there's nothing they can do to match up to the standard
they understand a Christian needing to meet. They look at
others, they compare themselves to their Christian
friends and they think there must be something wrong,
something that they're missing. If you're one of those
people who think like that at times, then you need to pay
special attention to this passage. |
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You see
the conclusion that comes from all that we've discovered
so far in this letter to the Romans is this: "There
is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus." Not "there is not much
condemnation." No, "There is now no
condemnation." Those people, you see, who compare
themselves with others, who ask whether they're good
enough for God, are asking the wrong question. The
question can never be, "Am I good enough." The
moment we ask that question we're sunk. Of course we're
not good enough! The greatest saint who ever lived wasn't
good enough. So what hope do I have? |
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No, the
question we need to ask is "Am I in Christ
Jesus?" "Am I one of his followers?"
"Do I have his Holy Spirit within me?" That's
the important question because if I'm in Christ Jesus,
then, we're told, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and of death.
The results of that inevitable tendency to disobey that
we talked about last time are removed by God's Spirit
coming to dwell within us, purifying us, making us
acceptable to God. |
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Here's
how it works. V3: "God has done what the law,
weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with
sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that
the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not according to the flesh but according to the
Spirit." |
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God, in
all his wisdom, saw what was needed to make us acceptable
to himself. He knew that we could never meet his
standards by our own efforts. What was needed was a human
being who was without sin and who would obey God in every
way. But more than that. What we needed was someone, one
of us, to take the penalty for sin on himself, by dying a
human death on our behalf; to satisfy the just
requirements of the law and thus silence its demands
forever. And then we needed that person's life to be
given to us. |
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Well,
that's exactly what's happened with Jesus Christ coming
to live and die as a human being, and then, having
ascended to heaven, giving us his Holy Spirit to dwell
within us. So that, now, we no longer walk according to
the flesh, but according to the Spirit. |
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Well,
that's all very well. It's nice theory if you can get
your head around it, but how does it work in practice?
How do we know whether we're in Christ? How do we know
whether we have God's Holy Spirit dwelling within us? How
do we know whether we're walking no longer by the flesh,
but according to the Spirit? |
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Well, can
I say at the outset, that there are all sorts of people
around who'll want to give you a definitive answer on
this. They'll point to the gifts of the Spirit; they'll
ask you whether you're experiencing renewal in your life;
some will ask whether you can speak in tongues; others
will ask whether your life is exhibiting the sort of
holiness that you might expect in someone who was filled
with God's Spirit. But the danger in all of those sorts
of approaches is that our natural tendency is to revert
to legalism, to performance based assessment, to
judgement, based on feelings of success or failure in obeying!
In other words we simply turn back to law. Oh, we
mightn't compare ourselves on the basis of obedience to
the law. But we do compare ourselves. We do the exact
thing we're trying to get away from. We look at others
who seem to be "filled with the Spirit" and we
make comparisons. Do we pray as much or as long as them?
Are we as joyful as them? Are we as demonstrative in our
expression of our faith in God as them? Are we as excited
by our faith as much as them? And inevitably we fail to
match up. We come to the same conclusion that we came to
when we were thinking about our obedience to the law.
We're not good enough. |
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I
remember a time when we were in a church that had a
strong group of Christians who'd been influenced by the
charismatic movement. These people were turned on for
God. We'd get to the point in the communion service where
we used to say "Christ has died, Christ has risen,
Christ will come again" and they'd shout it out with
great gusto. Now there wasn't anything wrong with their
enthusiasm. I think it'd be great if we were all that
enthusiastic about the thought that Jesus has conquered
death and is coming again to take us to be with him. But
what happened was that those who weren't caught up in
their enthusiasm, who couldn't share in their exuberance
began to question their own faith. People who'd been
strong Christians for 20 years or more began to wonder
whether they were really converted; whether there was
something wrong with their faith. Well, there wasn't
anything wrong with their faith. The only problem they
had was the criteria they were using for judging their
faith. |
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The
danger we always face in this sort of discussion is
judging our faith on the basis of performance. And when
we do that we ignore the fact that our salvation depends
in its entirety on the work of Jesus Christ, not on our
performance. And the presence of God's Holy Spirit within
us depends entirely on the work of Jesus Christ, on the
grace of God. |
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So how do
we know whether we have God's Holy Spirit within us? |
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The first
answer to that is that Jesus promised that he would give
his Holy Spirit to all who believe in him. So that's the
first test. Are you someone who believes in Jesus? Again,
that isn't a question of performance. The question isn't
have you got to the point where you're good enough for
Jesus? It's simply do you believe that he's the Son of
God? Do you believe that he died and rose again? Do you
believe that his death has made it possible for your sins
to be forgiven? Have you come to the point where you're
willing for him to be the Lord of your life? If you can
say yes to those sorts of questions, then you can be
confident that he's kept his promise. That his Spirit is
working within you already. Look at v9: "You are not
in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of
God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of
Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ
is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the
Spirit is life because of righteousness." In other
words, everyone who belongs to Christ has the Spirit of
Christ dwelling within them. Now there are 2 things we
might want to observe from that. First of all, it means
that anyone who suggests that some Christians are still
waiting to receive the Holy Spirit hasn't understood what
it means to be a Christian. But it also means that anyone
who has believed in Jesus Christ, who has given their
life over to him, has the Spirit within. And that means
that they're now living a life of righteousness through
his indwelling. |
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But let
me suggest a couple of more immediate ways to tell
whether we have the Spirit within. Look at v5.
"those who live according to the Spirit set their
minds on the things of the Spirit." Now I think this
is both an imperative, i.e. an encouragement to behave in
a certain way, and a description of how things are for
the Christian. I think it's true that those who are
followers of Christ have an inner desire to follow the
things of the Spirit, i.e. the things of God. So if
you're unsure whether you're really a follower of Christ,
whether you really have his Spirit within you, here's the
first test. Are you aware of an inner desire for the
things of God? Are you aware of being dissatisfied with
your failure to do what God desires? Do you resonate with
the frustration that Paul expresses in ch7 at his
inability to keep the law? Well, that inner desire to
obey God, that frustration at your inability to do so,
may well be the work of God's Holy Spirit shaping your
will to God's. |
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Or look
at v15: "When we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16it
is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that
we are children of God." I wonder who it is that you
pray to, when you pray. Are you praying to a remote,
inaccessible deity, far away from you? Up in heaven
looking down from afar? Or are you praying to one who's
like a father? One whom you can be confident in confiding
in, whom you look to for care and comfort? Even if you're
unsure whether you have enough faith or whether you're
good enough for God, when you bow your head to pray, if
you find yourself speaking to the one who's your father
in heaven, then that's a sign for you that you're already
a child of God. That's the Holy Spirit bearing witness
with our spirit that we are children of God. |
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So let's
give up the self examination, the sense of failure, of
unworthiness. See ourselves as God sees us: as his
beloved children. Then, having changed the way we see
ourselves in relation to God, we'll begin to see our
lives as an outworking of God's presence within us. |
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This is
the new life in the Spirit. Instead of our lives being
driven by sin, we're now under the control of the Holy
Spirit. Our minds are now set on the things of the
Spirit. Even when we fail to obey, we're brought back to
God in repentance by the Spirit who moves our minds along
spiritual lines rather than along fleshly lines. The
Spirit is constantly bringing us back to God, reminding
us of the things that God wants us to focus on. The
Spirit is constantly putting to death the deeds of our
old bodies, so that in the end we have life, not death. |
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In the
end, what matters isn't our ability or failure to keep
the law, what matters is that God has made us his
children. Children don't stop being children because they
disobey their parents. Good parents don't love their
children any less, just because they rebel against them.
In fact if they're teenage children that's almost a
given! No matter how much their children rebel, they
continue to love them. And as much as the children may
try to escape the influence of their parents, they remain
and will always remain their parents' children. That may
or may not be a good thing for human children, but it's
certainly a good thing for us who are children of God. It
means that we will always be his children; that he will
always love us and provide for us, even if we turn away
for a while. |
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And it
means that if we're children of God, then we're also
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Mind you Paul
points out that if I'm a joint-heir with Christ it may
mean that I'll join him in his suffering as well as in
his glory. But as we'll see next week, the small amount
of suffering we may experience in this life is nothing
compared to the glory that God will reveal in us at the
end, the glory that will be part of our inheritance. And
that glory will come, not through our ability to achieve
a particular level of godliness, or a particular level of
spirituality, but through the power of God's Holy Spirit
dwelling within us, through the new life he gives us and
through the righteousness won for us by Jesus Christ. |
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So here's
how it is. If we wonder whether we're truly followers of
Christ then this is one way we can tell: are our minds
set on the things of God, is our failure to obey
something we struggle with, do we relate to God as our
father, rather than someone distant and remote? |
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And if
we're truly followers of Christ, then are we setting our
minds on Jesus Christ? Are we calling on God our Father
to help us by his Holy Spirit? |
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And if we
believe in Jesus Christ, if we belong to him, then this
is the assurance we're given: that he's given us his own
Spirit to dwell within us, to fill us with his
righteousness, to change our minds so we'll focus on
pleasing God, not our sinful flesh; to testify to our
spirits that we are indeed children of God. |
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I pray
that everyone here will go away today knowing that God is
our Father, that we are his children and that his Holy
Spirit dwells within us bringing us the life, the
righteousness, we need to live in God's presence for
eternity. |
