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Romans chapter 8
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
You cannot read Romans as if it is about you. It's not. Romans is about us. Welcome to the commons cast. We're glad to have you here.
Speaker 1:We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jeremy. I'm part of the team here, and it's great to have you here with us. And whether you are here for the very first time or you are part of our community on a regular basis, we really don't take it for granted that you come and worship with us.
Speaker 1:So thanks for being here today. However, before we jump into things, there are a couple things I'd like to mention. So first of all, baptisms are coming up. We've been talking about this, and they are actually happening next week. Now there is still time to jump in, pun absolutely intended, and there is a class happening this week.
Speaker 1:You can head over to commons.life on your phone to register if you haven't already. We would love to talk with you about that. Second, we have a film screening that's happening here at the church on Friday night. It's called The Mask You Live In, and this is all about male stereotypes that young boys are often feel like they need to live into and live up to. And there's gonna be a brief discussion panel to follow on that.
Speaker 1:Really important conversation for us to have as parents in society. Warning however, there is some graphic language and content in the film as it tries to tackle those issues. So just be aware of that. And then finally, as you can see, we are in a bit of construction right now. And so the old movable wall that was falling apart is gone.
Speaker 1:The new wall is arriving next week and so it should be installed by Sunday. The carpet will then be replaced on the main floor next month and hopefully we'll get a door back on that wall over there in the next little bit. So keep your eyes for that. However, today we are finishing up our series in the book of Romans. And there is a lot in this letter.
Speaker 1:And so what we have done is take a chunk of this book every year to work our way through with the hope that over the course of about five years, we can make our way through the whole thing. And part of the reason we've done it that way is because we really want to have a balanced diet over the course of a year. We wanna be in the old testament. We wanna be looking at the words of Jesus. And we want to engage letters like Romans.
Speaker 1:But doing thirty or forty weeks straight in one book makes it hard to balance out the year. And so we've broken it up this way. Or that brings up a second point because I really hope that as we work through a series like this, you can see that the way that we teach changes depending on the text. So for example, the way that I approach a series like Lonely earlier this year, or the way I teach from the words of Jesus in a series like One Last Thing This Spring is very different from how I approach teaching through a letter like Romans. And, that's actually really important for us.
Speaker 1:That we learn how to come to the text on its terms. If Jesus is gonna give us a parable, then we need to be ready for a story. And if Paul's gonna give us an argument, then we need to be ready to track with his thinking throughout his logic there. And so I hope that you get a sense of those sorts of rhythms throughout our year, and that actually helps to keep things engaging for you as we go through these different types of series. But speaking of rhythms, also today is Pentecost.
Speaker 1:And we mentioned this during Eucharist, but just quickly here. Pentecost means that we are now fifty days removed from Easter. That's the penta part. And so this is the climax of Eastertide, our fifty day celebration of resurrection. And this is really important that the climax of resurrection is where we remember the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:That is very significant. That resurrection was always meant to bring something new into the world. The biblical motif of resurrection is not resuscitation. So you don't just go back to the life that you had. You don't just pick up where you left off.
Speaker 1:You become something new in resurrection. You are giving something new in resurrection. You have the opportunity to add something new to the story of the world in the story of resurrection. And this is what the spirit brings to us at Pentecost, new breath, new life, new courage to change the world around us. And so as we emerge from the season of Eastertide and we enter into the ordinary time together, I pray that you may find your new ordinary filled with new breath and life this season.
Speaker 1:And that you may discover the spirit flowing in and through you to the world in all kinds of new ways as we do. Now, let's pray. And then today, we'll take one last look at Romans for the year. Gracious God, may the gifts of the Holy Spirit bring new fire to the earth. So that the presence of grace may be seen in a new light, in new places, and new ways.
Speaker 1:May our own hearts burst into flame so that no obstacle, no matter how great, would ever obstruct the message of the spirit present within us. May we come to trust the word in our heart, to speak it with courage, to follow it faithfully, and to fan it into flame in those around us. May you give us, great God, a sense of the breath of your spirit within us as we continue toward you. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.
Speaker 1:Alright. Last week was chapter seven. And Paul's big point there was that rules and guidelines and laws for living can be good. In fact, they can be holy, but only if they serve a larger purpose. And, this is one of Paul's big struggles as he comes to faith in Jesus.
Speaker 1:He has had all these rules all his life, but now he sees in Jesus that the rules were only a precursor to something bigger. They sketched out the contours of life, and they pointed people in a good holy direction, but the rules were always meant to fall away and to give way to the rule of love. Paul's gonna say it this way later in chapter 13 that the one who loves has fulfilled the law. And so what Paul is saying here is that the law wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a failed attempt.
Speaker 1:It was a necessary step in God's slow process of revealing God's self to us. Because remember for Paul, the issue is that knowing the rules may help you to know what's wrong, it just doesn't help you actually change. And for that, we need to be loved. For Paul, it's only once we open our eyes to the goodness of God. And, once we experience grace that we can really be changed.
Speaker 1:And, this is really important for us as followers of Christ. That we not slip back into thinking that telling people what's wrong with them will help them. We might not always admit it, but we all know that we need help. And our role as followers of Christ in the world is to speak good news to people. Precisely because we believe that love has already changed everything.
Speaker 1:Now, chapter eight today. And, once again, we have a lot to cover today. So, I have no jokes. Here we go. Verse one.
Speaker 1:Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. So, couple things here. Greek works very different from English. And, one of the benefits of Greek for a writer is that word order doesn't mean much in Greek.
Speaker 1:In English, I might say the dog ate the cat. You would understand the subject and the object based on how I put those words in an order. Greek just works differently. So I could say the dog ate the cat, the cat ate the dog, ate the cat the dog, and depending on how I inflect the words, you would still know exactly what I'm trying to say. Now, the benefit of that for a writer is that you can put your words together in whatever order you want in order to emphasize what you're trying to say.
Speaker 1:And, what Paul actually says here is that, no one, nobody, therefore now condemned in Christ. Now, remember last week in chapter seven. Paul was talking all about how deeply he struggled to be the man he wanted to be. The good I want to do, I do not do. And the evil I do not want, this I somehow find myself doing.
Speaker 1:That's verse 15. And if you remember last week, I said that this is not meant to be a heavy from Paul. It's actually about Paul saying, all of that heaviness and weight that you've been carrying around with you has been hurting you, and you need to let it go and lean into grace. Paul is saying, listen, we all struggle. But trying to live up to an artificial standard of perfection will kill you, And you need to learn to breathe in God's spirit instead.
Speaker 1:Well, now, he starts the next section and he makes sure that the first word he says is nothing, nobody, no one. There is now absolutely no condemnation in Christ. You see Paul has built this specifically to emphasize and maybe even to over correct how his last chapter may have come across. Paul does not want you reading about his struggles and coming away with the idea that the Christian life is all about beating yourself up over what you're not. Because that's what sin does to you, not what Jesus does.
Speaker 1:And watch what he does in the next verse here. He says, and so God condemned sin in the flesh. In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us. We who do not live according to the flesh but according to spirit. And look at what Paul's doing here.
Speaker 1:No one, nobody is condemned in Christ. What is condemned then? Sin is condemned. And where is it condemned? It is condemned even in you so that you might live according to spirit.
Speaker 1:In other words, the only thing that God turns away from in you is what hurts you and tears you and belittles your presence before God. Think about this for a second. When you go home and when you pray and when you stand before the divine, the only thing that is condemned in that moment is the voice that tells you you are unworthy of that moment. And yes, just the same as Paul, there are all kinds of things that you are working on in your life. You are learning to be more generous and you are working to become more kind.
Speaker 1:You are building in a reserve of grace and peace for every single person you encounter throughout your life. But when you stand in the presence of the divine and you hear the voice that tells you you are unwelcome or unworthy or unloved. That is the voice that God condemns. And when you stop listening to that voice, and you start listening to the one that tells you that you are so loved and that there is no condemnation, this according to Paul is your entrance into the life of the spirit. And that, in contrast to any set of rules or laws you might ever try to live by, is the only thing that will actually empower you to live the life that you are so desperately looking for.
Speaker 1:Now, Paul is gonna riff on this idea for a bit. But let's jump ahead here to verse 19 where he introduces a new concept into the conversation. He says, for the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. Now, this is interesting because all of a sudden Paul has brought not just humanity, but all of creation into his discussion. And he says that creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it.
Speaker 1:He even goes on to say that creation is in bondage now to decay because of that. So, couple things here. Notice here that sin doesn't just affect us. When we sin, it injures and it damages everything around us. We're gonna find ourselves coming back to this again today, but notice here, you cannot read Romans as if it is about you.
Speaker 1:It's not. Romans is about us. And, that's really important to Paul's arguments all throughout this letter that the story of Jesus is about all y'all. You know, we don't have a plural u in English and maybe southerners are onto something with that because we could really use one here in Romans. Paul is saying something really important about our interdependence as human beings.
Speaker 1:That's a theme that's come up a couple times already in this series, but notice here that creation is an unwilling innocent victim in the story. We'll talk about creation specifically here in a second, but first. Sometimes you will find yourself an unwilling victim of someone else's choices. And that's part of the world and it sucks, but you need to know that it's not your fault. For Paul, every ounce of hurt and injury and pain in the world is the result of sin.
Speaker 1:But that does not mean that you are at fault for someone else's choices anymore than creation can be blamed for ours. You get to choose how you respond to it. And, you get to choose what you'll do with that hurt. You get to decide how long you will carry that pain around with you. But, the fact that you hurt does not mean that you have done something wrong.
Speaker 1:Or that God is upset with you or that God is somehow punishing you in some way. It simply means that we are, all of us, deeply interconnected to each other. And that because of that, we all share this enormous responsibility to learn to care for each other well. So I know it's hard sometimes, but don't let someone else's mistakes harden you into the person you don't want to be. Now, from there Paul says, that we know that the whole of creation has been groaning as if in the pains of childbirth, right up to the present time.
Speaker 1:And, not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we await eagerly our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies for in this hope we are saved. Now, Robert Jewett in his famous commentary in Romans, at least as famous as commentaries in Romans go, says that in this powerful symbolization, Paul reminds us that humans trying to play at God end up ruining not only their relations with each other, but also their relation to the natural world. And, I think that we see this today with probably even more clarity than Paul ever did in his time. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't manipulate the world around us. This is not Paul arguing that humans should return to a hunter gatherer culture.
Speaker 1:He's not saying that all fossil fuels have to be left in the ground or the human progress is inherently a bad thing. He is saying however, that when we stop working with our world and when we start working against our planet and we start abusing our home, when we start discarding God's world as if it was disposable, What happens is that our sin is able to reach into parts of creation that God never imagined would be corrupted. And you have to remember that back in Genesis, when the bible talks about subduing and ruling over the earth. This is from an era when carving out a small space in the chaos of nature was about survival not domination. When Genesis is talking about subduing a plot of land to cultivate and plant and guide and work alongside the forces of creation in order to survive in a chaotic world.
Speaker 1:It's not talking about dominating or subjecting or punishing the world around us into submission. And so when Paul says that creation was subject to frustration, what he's saying is that when we forget our inherent interdependence, and we come to dominate each other, or we try to subject the world around us to our whims, we are damaging the interconnectivity that was intended in God's creation. And I think we see this all around us today when we look at the environmental issues we're facing as a planet. I mean, a plastic bag was found at the bottom of the Marianas Trench last week for goodness sake. Here's what's really important about Paul's perspective.
Speaker 1:Because Paul says that creation is longing to be repaired, but not only that, he says that God intends to repair all things including creation. You see Paul's eschatology, which is really just our fancy word for the way things end, is not an image of this world burned up and discarded and thrown away. It is an image of all things including this world made right. Again, Romans isn't about you, it's about us. And that's important because I can't really hurt creation on my own, but we certainly can.
Speaker 1:And that means that if we don't get our act together, then I don't get to say I'm blameless. And so this is why we try to be very conscious about our choices here at Commons. It's why when we bring in chocolates for Mother's Day, we look for local suppliers that source ethical chocolate beans. It's why we have installed new insulation and upgraded furnaces and thermostats and doors in the building. It's why we've switched now to all compostable supplies, which has dramatically cut our footprint when you imagine the amount of coffee that we serve across five services every Sunday all year.
Speaker 1:That absolutely does take a lot more planning and expense to do it. For some people that might sound like it has very little to do with the gospel. But if we actually intend to live on earth as it is in heaven, then thinking through how we live with our planet and not against it is an absolutely integral part of our faith. Paul says that Christian is groaning. It has been since the dawn of human sin.
Speaker 1:But when we understand that God has always been in the business of repairing, never discarding. That should inspire us to play our part in the repair of all things including the world that groans around us. Now, we have one more section today. And that's gonna wrap up this larger section of Romans for the year. And at first, it's going to feel like a pretty big swing away from this conversation around creation.
Speaker 1:But, my hope is that I can help to show how all this pulls together in Paul's mind as he writes. So, verse 28 he says, we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. Those who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of the son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Those he predestined, he also called.
Speaker 1:Those who called, he justified. Those who justified, he also glorified. What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, there are some big ideas packed into four short verses there.
Speaker 1:However, there are two main points here and there are two different ways to read each of them in this final section. So let's go back to the start. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. Now, that's the NIV and in this case I think they have it exactly right. But, for comparison, here's the King James.
Speaker 1:We know God works all things for those of the good who love him. Or for the good of those who love him. And those are two very similar but two very different interpretations of this pass. Passage. The first assumes that in everything God is present to you.
Speaker 1:The second assumes that everything that happens to you is somehow for your good. That does not work for me. And here's why. First, let's get technical. The Greek word vendored work together is an intransitive verb and that means that it rarely takes a direct object which in this sentence is all things.
Speaker 1:Now there are examples of intransitive verbs that take off transitive meanings in Greek but I'll quote Blas de Bruner and Funk here. There is little evidence that this ever occurred with the verb, and that would suggest that in all things God works, not that God works all things. Second, let's talk context. In the previous section, Paul has just been talking about creation groaning. He goes on to say that we are groaning as all of us await God's repair of all things.
Speaker 1:And Paul's point was that creation through no fault of its own against God's vision for the world had been drawn into the effects of our sin. But if the point here is that we all have this innate desire for all that is broken to be made right. Well, the only way this makes sense is if Paul is saying that even now in the midst of what is broken, God is at work bringing healing. So, it's not God that brings the pain, it's that God is present in and through and to everything that hurts us. The third and final reason I think the NIV has it right is the most important and it's pastoral.
Speaker 1:As I have seen far too many people try to believe that everything hard and painful and hurtful in their life is there because God wants to teach them something through it. That is toxic theology. Now, I'm not saying you can't learn from what hurts you, of course you can. And I'm not saying God ever leaves you alone in your pain, of course not. God is always there with you.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is that God is never the source of your injury. Because God is not about tough love. And all the things that you endure are not God's design. When kids are shot at school, this is not because God had a plan. When you suffer through a miscarriage, this is not because God had a purpose.
Speaker 1:When you lose someone that you love, this is not because God is trying to teach you something. This is because the world is not what it should be. And faith is about trusting that God is present in the midst of it all, in the mess working to bring something beautiful out of it. When you hurt, God hurts too. That's the very center of our theology.
Speaker 1:So please do not believe the lie that what hurts you came from God. And know instead that in all things God is present to you bringing healing in and through you to the world. But, what does it mean then that all things are predestined? And here's your teaser for next year. Because we're gonna explore this in a lot more detail in chapters nine, ten, and 11 in Romans.
Speaker 1:But the key here is something that we've already touched on today. Romans is not about you. It is about us. And Paul's big sweeping argument in Romans is that God's plan that started with a select chosen people was always intended to expand exponentially to include all people. And in fact, not just everyone, but all things.
Speaker 1:That's why Paul has brought creation into the story. And so when Paul talks in this way, you have to understand that in Paul's mind as a religious Jew, all things, all people means Jews and non Jews. Those are just the categories that Paul thinks in. Whenever Paul talks about those who are predestined, those who are elect or those who chosen, he's going to use all of those terms almost interchangeably in the next few chapters. What he's talking about are not individuals, you, you or you being chosen by God.
Speaker 1:What he's talking about are people groups. All of us now, Jews and Gentiles being chosen by God. Now, within those groups, there are always going to be those people who embrace God and those who reject God. Just as there always was within the chosen people of Israel. But the fact that an individual Jew rejected God never stopped Israel from being chosen.
Speaker 1:Just like the fact that an individual Gentile rejecting God doesn't mean that God hasn't predestined all of us to be saved. Because this isn't about you or me, this is about God's plan for all y'all. And that doesn't mean you don't have a choice. Paul's not saying your choices don't matter. In fact, he has just spent the whole last section talking about how much your choices do matter.
Speaker 1:What he's saying here is that Jew or Gentile, Roman or Barbarian, religious or otherwise, God has always been deeply invested in every single story. Whether we knew it or not, God has actually been working from the moment of creation to ensure that everyone, all people groups would have a path back to God. That's what's predestined. And so as we leave Romans for this year, let's do it with a quote from N. T.
Speaker 1:Wright. One of the most prolific writers on Romans. And he says this that here Paul uses call as a technical term for what happens when good news works powerfully in someone's life. Bringing them to faith, urging them to baptism, flooding their hearts with love of God by the spirit. And when the gospel produces faith in this way, God declares that person to be indeed a true member of God's family, and the word for that is justification.
Speaker 1:Because the purpose of it all, a purpose which is every bit as secure as those who have been chosen before us, is that we be glorified, which is to share in the Messiah's redeeming healing rule of all creation. This whole passage seems designed to remind us of both the sovereignty of God in the story, God wins, and the fact that this sovereignty is always expressed in mysterious love for all peoples. So, may you know today that you are chosen by God. And, may you then choose to respond to all that you have been predestined for. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:God, as we take Romans and pack it away for the year, we pray that all of these heady arguments that Paul gives us We'll be able to sink not just into our intellect and our ability to make sense of it, would somehow penetrate deeper into the core of who we are. That even in those moments where we can't articulate the thought, we can experience your grace and peace. That we might know that we are not condemned or judged, but we are welcomed and loved and this changes everything in us and for us. So might we then know that your great love has chosen all of us. That you have sought us out and brought us home and now as we go into this world, as we treat the world around us, as we engage in relationships with those we meet, as we move through this world, might we do it with our intent to heal all things and participate in your incredible story of redemption.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.