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  Sermon of the Week 

Look up the passage

  3/2/02  
  Salvation by Grace Alone Rom 8:1-4
     
  I feel a bit like we've just climbed on board a jet going from Melbourne to London, or we're just setting off to drive from Melbourne to Perth. There's a long journey before us, but there'll be lots of exciting things to see on the way; lots of varied scenery. And by the end of our journey I hope we'll have discovered a little more about the nature of the salvation that God has won for us through Jesus Christ, a salvation that comes by God's grace alone. I hope too that we'll be a bit more confident of the sure and certain hope of eternal life for all who love Jesus Christ, and that we'll be a little more confident about sharing our faith with others so they too can share in that salvation and hope.
  I thought what we might do today is to quickly go through Romans, looking at the main points of interest. If you like, I'll be your tour guide, getting you ready for the things you'll experience as we travel through the book.
  Martin Luther in his Preface to the Epistle to the Romans begins by saying that this letter "is in truth the chief part of the New Testament and the purest Gospel. It would be quite proper for a Christian, not only to know it by heart word for word, but also to study it daily, for it is the soul's daily bread. … The more thoroughly it is treated, the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes." Well, how can I do anything but agree with that sentiment. After all, it was the reading of Romans that became the catalyst for the whole Reformation. We can only pray that our study of it this year might act as a catalyst for our own reformation.
  As we read through this letter, one thing that becomes increasingly obvious is that this is a carefully structured and reasoned discourse. One of the distinctives of the logical nature of the letter is the way that every now and then a certain word pops up: the word "therefore". So as we read through it we need to stop whenever we see that word and think about what's gone before and how it might impact on what he's about to say. Well, let's do that now as we think about 8:1-4. What has he said so far and what does he then go on to say?
  He starts in the first 2 chapters by showing that the basic situation of all people is that they've suppressed the truth about God and substituted something of their own making. In other words they've done their own thing. Notice that this is not just a 20th or 21st century phenomenon. People have been doing it ever since the fall. And God's response in the first instance has been to let them do what they wanted; to give them up to the futility of their own minds. So if they chose to create gods in their own image, he let them. If they chose to indulge themselves in sexual immorality, he let them do that. If they chose to hate and to gossip and to lie and to slander, if they were insolent or proud or boastful, if they were disobedient, rebels against authority, he let them be. And when societies broke down, when relationships were spoilt, when marriages were ruined, they had only themselves to blame. Paul goes on to point out that even the Jewish people, those who had received God's law, failed to keep it. They too decided to do their own thing. So they were no better off. The fact is, he says, everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
  So what hope has anyone got of being found right with God? Well, he says, there is a way. Abraham found it some 4000 years ago - that is, through faith in God; by the goodness and mercy of God. (grace joke) In his Grace God has sent Jesus to make it possible for us to be brought back to life - spiritually that is - and so we can now have peace with God. How? Well, he says, just as spiritual death came through the failure of Adam to obey God, so now spiritual life comes to us through the total obedience of Jesus who is the new Adam, the new representative of humanity.
  Now this is the turning point of Paul's argument, do you see? And of course if you look at Rom 5:1, there's that word: "therefore". (Rom 5:1 NRSV) "Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Then he goes on to explain how it is that we can now have peace with God through Jesus' death on our behalf.
  Now Paul knows we all have a problem. He knows that the problem we all face in trying to obey God is that we're fallible, we all have this weakness, this tendency to sin. What we need is a new being, a new identity. It's what Jesus said to Nicodemus: "You must be born again." The Jews had God's law to show them how to live, but it was no use. No law-based system will ever be able to overcome our basic human failing. Only if we're new people, only if we're made all over again, will we ever be able to relate to God adequately. And that can happen only if someone outside ourselves does it for us. Only if God in his grace makes it possible. Well, Paul says, that's exactly what's happened with the coming of Jesus. There's a new humanity on the scene. With Jesus' death and resurrection a whole new set of possibilities have opened up. As a result of Jesus death on the cross those who are in Jesus Christ are now dead to sin but alive to Christ. And of course if through faith in Christ we too have been brought alive again then we'll no longer do the things that go with death, but rather we'll do what God expects of us - the things of life.
  He realises that some people take this idea of being a new person, of having died to sin, as a licence to do what they like, so he reminds them of the appropriate response to the fact that we have a new life in Christ. If our hope is that we'll one day live in eternity with God, then the only response is to live the way God wants right now.
  But of course, as we all know, that's not as easy as it sounds. We still have the same dead body, the same sinful urges. He says it's like there's some natural law at work within him, as sure as the law of gravity, so that whenever he wants to do good, evil is close at hand. It's as though whenever he decides to do some work for God, Satan hands him a crooked tool, a chisel with a chip in it, a broom with half the bristles gone, so that he continues to fail, over and over and over again.
  So he cries out in despair "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" And the answer comes quietly and with a sense of relief, "Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." God in his grace has rescued us through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
  And again we have that word, in 8:1, "therefore". (Rom 8:1 NRSV) "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." What's happened, he says, is that God's Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us. God is changing us through the Holy Spirit's indwelling. Here's what he says: "You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ." This in fact is what Ezekiel and Jeremiah foretold: (Ezek 36:26-27) "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." (Jer 31:33-34) "But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." In his book about Judaism, "To Life", Rabbi Harold Kushner's points out that the reason God gave his law to the whole nation of Israel was that he wanted "to create a community where ordinary people … would reinforce each other's efforts to do the right thing." Well, that's an important principle that we need to continue to follow, as we'll see later, but it wasn't enough. The nation failed to reinforce good behaviour - in fact the opposite was the case; they actually tended to reinforce bad behaviour - and they ended up earning God's anger and judgement. So God decided to move to plan B. That is, he'd give us a new spirit, change our hearts of stone to hearts of flesh, so we could obey him.
  And so, Paul says, God now looks at our lives and counts them as righteous because of his own Spirit present within us. And not only that, but the presence of the Spirit in our lives means that in the end God will give new life even to our mortal bodies through his spirit who lives in us. And so he ends chapter 8 of Romans on the great heights of joy with the affirmation that if God is for us, who can be against us. If God loves us, who can separate us from that love. (Rom 8:37-39) "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."
  Then after spending some time in chs 9-11 addressing the issue of God's choice and continuing love of Israel as his chosen people, we come to chapter 12 and again we find that word, "Therefore". (Rom 12:1 NRSV): "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
  The appeal, notice, isn't to our desire to be found acceptable to God. It's to the fact that despite our unacceptable nature God has accepted us. It's to our realisation that God has changed us for all time; that his Spirit dwelling within us makes us different people, for whom to follow our evil desires would be a denial of who we are. It's an appeal to the fact that we're now children of God and therefore called to be like our Father. It's an appeal, not to return to law, but to live out the grace that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. Not that he expects this to be an instantaneous change. He says we're to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. That is, our minds are to be continually being renewed. It's an ongoing process by which our lives will be gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ and by which we'll come to know what God's will is and how to please him.
  And how will we facilitate that transformation? By living it out. He seems to group his advice here into three areas: how to serve in Christian Community, how to relate in Christian Community, and how to relate to the wider community.
  We serve in the Christian community through humility and by offering the gifts we have in service of others. We relate in Christian Community with love, patience and forgiveness, hating what's evil and loving what's good. We relate to the wider community as productive citizens, and as caring and supportive neighbours.
  Finally he gives them instructions about how a godly church should behave so as to promote the gospel and to be a support to one another. Here's where that old idea of the community reinforcing good behaviour comes in again. We're to relate to one another in such a way as will build each other up, support the weak and bring praise to God.
  Well, that's a very brief overview of what will take us the best part of the next ten months to cover properly.
  But the important things to remember at this stage are these: In the end our salvation comes through faith in Christ, by grace alone. Christ is the centre of our salvation and of our ongoing life. The law is given not to bring salvation. Being good will never work, even following Jesus' example will fail. Only faith in Christ will suffice. But having said that our new life in Christ does carry with it the onus to live a godly life as though we were in God's presence in eternity already.
  Well, I hope you'll all stay with us as we make this long pilgrimage through the letter to the Romans and that by the end we'll all understand our faith better and be able to explain it to others so they too can enjoy the salvation that Christ has won for us.
                       
 
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