Category: Studies in Romans

Sermon: Sunday, 23rd February, 2025
Speaker: Geoff Murray
Scripture: Romans 8:28-30

‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’   (Romans 8:28)

How can we have confidence that God really is working all things for our good? God is the author of salvation therefore we know where we’re headed and what the end result will be.

R C Sproul : The foundation for the comfort and certainty of future joy is God’s plan of redemption.

1. God Initiates our Salvation

We have grounds to believe God is working all things together for our eternal good ‘…For those God foreknew.’ How do we understand that? Is it simply a knowing of the future? Is it simply a knowing who will believe in Jesus and then predestining on that basis?

Well, I don’t think that for two reasons:

1. It wouldn’t make sense of the fact that everything in Romans 8:29-30 is God’s doing; ‘he foreknew, he predestined, he called, he justified, he glorified.’ If there was a sense with foreknowledge that God saw ahead of time that so and so was going to believe, this passage wouldn’t be so dominated with God’s actions. It wouldn’t make sense of the calling either. If foreknowledge is God looking into the future and seeing who would believe in him, the calling wouldn’t be necessary and would be redundant if they were going to do all the believing themselves anyway.

2. There is a way of foreknowing being used in the Bible which speaks about God’s active choosing of people. One such example is Amos 3:2 ‘You only have I chosen of all the families of the earth;’ Does God not know all about the nations? Of course he does. There is another knowing at play here. And it is a choosing, a calling out from among the world those who will be his.

As is the case of Jeremiah 1:5 ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;’ Before the foundation of the world, before you existed, God chose you to be his. Predestined – not only foreknown but this led to us being predestined.

Predestination is that, if you’re a Christian, before the foundation of the world God so authored and ordered your life in such a way to lead you to faith in Jesus and to be made like Jesus. For all those in Christ, God’s plan for you is to be conformed into the image of his Son, to be made like his Son. We are made in God’s image, sin distorts that image and in Christ we are being remade into his image, renewed after the likeness of our creator.

What is God’s will for my life you might ask? God’s primary will for your life Christian is that you live like and look like Jesus. And so what is God’s will for my life especially in suffering? It’s that you would be like Jesus.This means that the every moment, every millisecond of your life, the good, the bad, the ugly isn’t a matter of indifference, it isn’t a matter of non-importance, it isn’t coincidence, it isn’t happenstance, it is God pushing you and directing you to the end for which you were saved to be made like Jesus. So God is not only choosing you before the foundation of the world but is so authoring your story to lead you to put your faith in Jesus and be so made like him!

Then we have this peculiar language ‘… that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.’

What Paul means is that Jesus is eternally the Son of God and through faith in him we are adopted into his family and we have the immense privilege of being sons and daughters of God and as we are brought in through faith in the Son of God. That as we’re adopted and brought in, Jesus then has countless brothers and sisters.

This concept of firstborn is very common in the Bible where among brothers you’d have the firstborn which wasn’t always necessarily how we’d use it as a literal firstborn but rather meaning supreme, above all, greatest. And as we are brought into the family of God, welcomed in through Jesus and Jesus alone, of course Jesus is supreme among us, of course he is most worthy among us! It is only through him that any of us are children of God and therefore what is left except worship and praise?

Then there are those who are ‘called’. Known as that effectual call of God whereby he convinced us of our sin, our need of Christ and enabled us to embrace Christ by faith. That moment we believed on Jesus there was a stirring of our souls, a drawing to himself was that moment we were called unto him to believe on him. We didn’t just wake up one day and decide, ‘Do you know what? I think I’ll be a Christian.” No, we were drawn to him to believe in him.

‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them…’ (John 6:44)

We didn’t wise up and put our trust in Jesus, we didn’t drum up faith within ourselves, no we were drawn, we were called by the Father, it was him who called us!

Those whom he called he also ‘justified’. Justified is one we hear often, but what does it mean?Well, it’s a statement God makes of us, it’s a position we stand in whereby we are declared righteous in his sight as if we hadn’t sinned at all and in fact as if we had kept the law entirely. When we put our faith in Jesus our sins and the record attached to it are cancelled out and the righteousness which belongs to Jesus is given to our account.

It is to say, having been called and thus enabled to put our faith in Jesus we are then justified, we are declared righteous in God’s sight as if we had kept the law perfectly. You and I whose faith is in Jesus stand before God today justified, declared righteous through faith in Jesus and our union with him.

Friends, who got the ball rolling in the story of your salvation? God! How does this apply to our live? It results in humility.

‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.’   (Ephesians 2:8-9)

2. God Completes our Salvation

Now there is much we don’t know about our glorified bodies and life when Jesus comes again, but if we just stick to what is in our passage, we read in verse that we will be ‘… conformed to the image of his son.’ So we can focus on one aspect – being made like Jesus.

‘Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, e shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’   (1 John 3:2)

Here it is spoken of in the past tense as if it has already happened. We see it in Isaiah 9 and the promise of the wonderful counsellor; ‘…the people walking in darkness have seen a great light.’ it was ultimately a future event but it was spoken of in the past because its coming about was so certain.

We have promises like the one in 1 John 3, we have the promise of Philippians 1:6 which assure us of our destination, we will be like Christ, he who began a good work in us is going to see it through right to the very end.

What is that end? To be like Christ. To be made like him. To love God completely, wholly and perfectly as we always ought to have. To spend eternity serving him gladly. No sin to trip us up, no temptations to lead us astray, no selfishness or pride, no greed or malice, no lust or anger, we will love him as we always have wanted to, as we always ought to, as we often fail to do now.

We will be like Jesus and it will be glorious! Jesus said, ‘If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.’   (John 14:9) In other words, he is the perfect representation of what God is like to the world. Friends, in glory we will be like Jesus, in glory we will perfectly represent the Father’s beauty and goodness.

The longer I’m a Christian, the more I long for the new creation for more than just what God is going to do out there, though that will be glorious, but for what God is going to do in here as in a flicker I will be changed, in a flicker you will be changed. We will be made like Jesus and it will be glorious.

But we hear all that and for many of you here, I know it can be for me sometimes, it feels a million miles away and it can be hard to see how my life now can get to my life in glory. For now, we live in the tension spoken of of present suffering and future hope throughout this section of Romans 8, for the believer it is felt most keenly when it comes to being made like Jesus.

You and I walk in the days of the now and the not yet. We are declared righteous in Christ though the reality of our lives is often a mixed bag of the good Christ is working in us and the remnant of our sinful nature. We are sanctified, made holy but we’re also progressively being made holy. So much of our lives is marked by living up to the reality of our new identity all the while experiencing the tension that we don’t presently live up to it.

Do you find yourself despondent as you have a pattern of sin you’re all too aware of that won’t seem to budge?
Do you find yourself dismayed that after 30 years as a Christian, 40 years as a Christian you have still so long to go in your path of becoming more like Jesus?
Do you find yourself discouraged by what is often your knee-jerk reaction to things? Prone to flare up in anger? Prone to gossip? Prone to pride?

And you look at your life and you’re hanging onto these promises of future glory by the skin of your teeth wondering if you’ll get there.

Friends, your eternal future is a certainty that if you’re following after Jesus in repentance and faith no matter how ineffective you find your repenting, no matter how small your faith why? Because the certainty of your salvation is not found in you. The certainty of your salvation is found in God and in God alone.

As you look to to verses 29 and 30 who is the only actor? Is it you? Is it your perseverance and Godliness? Is it your faithfulness? NO! It is all to do with God. God foreknew, God predestined, God called, God justified, God glorified.

Your salvation is secure because your salvation is not based upon you and anything you ultimately bring to the table. It is based entirely upon God. And God never changes that includes his commitment to his promises, that includes his faithfulness to his people. That includes his commitment to you if you are his.

If your salvation is dependent upon you it is a very precarious position to be in. You are forced into the ‘He loves me, he loves me not’ pattern and you can never truly experience the rest God offers and provides. But as it is, your salvation is certain and sure if you are in Christ, why? Because it is God who is from beginning to end the author of your salvation.

It is secure, not simply because God is the author of salvation but, because of what is known as the golden chain. These are all like links in a chain and that chain is not broken. God foreknowing necessitates his predestining, necessitates his calling, necessitates his justifying, necessitates his glorifying.

There are not some Christians who have been foreknown but not predestined, there are not some Christians who have been called but not justified.

R Kent Hughes : All who begin will finish.

I don’t know about you, I often find myself starting things I don’t finish. Books, to-do lists, the text I meant to send 2 days ago. But God, God never starts something he never sees through.

Therefore as you stand in the place of having been foreknown, predestined, called, and justified, there is no doubt that you will also one day be glorified. And so as you wrestle with your own shortcomings, as you struggle to even imagine being perfected into the likeness of Christ, as you can’t see it currently, the invitation is to behold that reality by faith.

And to think of the context of this passage: present suffering, future glory that’s why we can count it all joy when we face trials of various kinds. Why? Because every grief you experience, every tear you cry, every unexpected and unwanted illness, every difficult relationship is producing something glorious, namely Christ in you.

You are tried and tempted in this life and you suffer why? Is this one big practical joke from a sick and twisted God? No friends, far from it. It is the fire he uses to refine you to purify you, to make you like Christ.

So as you suffer, as you grieve, as you mourn not only can you can sing with confidence and with hope as you look to the certainty of your eternal future, you can also look to your future hope in great joy and anticipation because you know where that future includes! You will be like Christ.

Friends, press on with confidence and hope though weighed down by your sin and your suffering, look to Christ and know that he is speaking hope to you even now. God is using your painful experiences now to shape and mould you into the likeness of Christ. And know this, what God starts he finishes. He isn’t giving up on you, he who began a good work in you will see it through to completion on the day of Christ. And on that day, we will be changed for we will be like him.

With tears in your eyes, with grief in your heart you can sing and live joyfully and triumphantly today, holding fast to the hope that we have for he who promised is faithful, he will surely do it.

Sermon: Sunday, 16th February, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:28

There are times in our lives when we wonder what on earth God is doing. I remember a Christian lady I knew who got cancer. Shortly after that she tragically lost her son. And not long after that she was brutally attacked. I don’t understand why all of these things happened to her. There’s great mystery in these events. There is no easy explanation to this level of suffering. I also remember my friend taking early retirement in order to get involved in a mission in central Europe. On his first trip he was in a car accident and died. This made no sense to me. Why had God allowed this to happen? To this day I do not know. There are a lot of things we don’t know the answers to. Satan wants us to focus on these things and have them drown out the things God has revealed to us!

We all have experienced suffering to one degree or another. We experience physical and mental ill health. Life can be full of disappointments, not working out as we had hoped. We face unemployment, addiction, bereavement, being mistreated by others, difficulties in our families and problems at work. Life as a Christian is never easy. We battle against sin and temptation and we fail on a daily basis. Have I cheered you up yet? It is no wonder that we groan (Romans 8:23), longing to be free from living in this fallen world, full of its pain and suffering.

When Christians go through times of suffering, we don’t always react in a godly way.
We might become bitter – feeling that life is just cruel.
We might feel distant from God – and feel that carrying on communicating with God is pointless.
Our prayer lives dry up.
We might feel that God doesn’t care. The disciples felt like that in the boat during the storm: – ‘Don’t you care if we drown?’ they ask Jesus. (See Mark 4:38)

What can keep us from doubting God’s love and goodness during our times of suffering? What’s the antidote to becoming disillusioned with God?

Well, God does not usually answer our ‘why’ questions. Why has this happened to me? Why has life worked out this way? Most of the time, we don’t know. But there is a reason to continue to trust our heavenly Father, even when things go wrong. Why should we trust Him? We trust him because of the magnificent promise he gives us here: ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’   (Romans 8:28)

1. How Powerful is God?

This verse teaches us about the providence of God, one of the most helpful teachings God has given us to help us to trust in him.

Shorter Catechism
Q11: What are God’s works of providence?
A: God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions.

In other words, God is in control of all of the events in our lives – good and bad. Life is not just down to chance. Our lives are not out of control. If we can believe the promise of this verse, it will transform the way we look at our suffering. It is a precious promise.

Let’s be careful we don’t misunderstand this verse. Paul is not saying that everything that happens to Christians is good. Many bad things happen to us. We are hurt by others and we experience much pain. What is he saying then? He’s saying something profound – all things, including bad things which happen to us, are ultimately working for our good. That means that although it seldom feels like it at the time, it is good that they have happened to us.

RC Sproul: ‘The bad that we experience is redeemed in the providence of God. This means that God brings good out of the evil we experience… These bad things are truly bad things. But they are only proximately bad things; they are not ultimately bad things. They are blessings in disguise.’

Many bad things happened to Joseph. He was hated by his brothers and sold into slavery. In one act of evil, he lost his freedom, his culture, his language, his family, and almost everything he had ever known. Whilst in Egypt, he was falsely accused and imprisoned. For years, he endured enormous suffering and pain. But Joseph did not become bitter towards God. He did not become disillusioned. Why not?

In Genesis 50, when Joseph considers all the suffering and pain he experienced at the hands of his brothers, he is able to see the providence of God in it all. He can see that God has been orchestrating everything that happened. ‘But Joseph said to them, ‘Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’   (Genesis 50:19-20)

In Joseph’s life, God bends evil to accomplish his good purposes. Joseph’s family are saved from the famine. This is the family from which the Lord Jesus would come. Our view of what is happening in our lives is so limited. But God sees the whole of history and oversees all the details of the lives of his children.

Cancer is not good. Death is not good. The evil actions of others which hurt us are not good. But God is so powerful that even these things result in our good ultimately. Friends, this is God’s superintendence over your lives. His providence. His control. Nothing ever takes him by surprise and nothing can thwart his eternal purposes for us.

The best example of God working all things for the good of his own is found in the life of Christ himself. Many bad things happened to him. He is lied about. He is rejected and falsely accused and sentenced to death in a kangaroo court and mocked and flogged and brutally killed on the cross. Were those who handed Jesus over to be crucified responsible for his death? Of course they were. Their actions were wicked. However, we must also ask: was God in control? Did the crucifixion have a purpose? ‘This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.’   (Acts 2:23)

God worked the evil actions of Judas and Herod and Pilate and the Sanhedrin for good, resulting in the salvation of millions upon millions of people- as many as the stars in the sky. How powerful is God? So powerful that he bends evil for good. Yes, this is mysterious. Is this a God we can worship? A God who is that powerful? It certainly is.

Let’s spend the rest of our time focusing on Romans 8:28.

2. God is working for good

Imagine for a moment that there is no God. What could we say when going through pain and suffering? There would be no reason for the suffering. There would be no order to it. The events of our lives would just be random. We would be victims of chance. We would be without hope. Imagine that there is a God but that he is not sovereign and that he is not good. Again, our suffering would just be meaningless at best, or cruel at worst.

However, this truth is wonderful. God is not only involved in the details of those in the Bible, like Joseph and Moses and Jesus, but he is involved in the details of our lives too. God is working in your life. And because he is a good and compassionate and wise and all-powerful God, logically, he is working for our good. He promises this to be the case. God is very much ‘hands on’ in our lives.

However, we must be careful not to misuse or misunderstand this verse, thinking that everything that happens to us is good, especially with a narrow understanding of ‘good’. Our good is not the same thing as our pleasure or our happiness or our comfort.

Douglas Moo: ‘What God promises us in Romans 8:28 is not that every difficult experience will lead to something good in this life. The ‘good’ God may have in mind may involve the next life entirely. He may take us out of a secure, well-paying job in order to shake us out of a materialistic lifestyle that does not honour biblical priorities and we may never have a good job again’.

I believe Moo is right. It will not be until eternity that we will understand many of the things which happened to us in this life. Joseph was blessed enough to see some of the reasons why God has allowed him to suffer; but remember that for years and years, he had no idea why. And many of us will not know why in this lifetime.

What is the ‘good’ God ultimately has in mind for us? It is not health and wealth in this life. The purpose is given as follows: ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.’   (Romans 8:29) God’s plan for us is to mould our characters into the character of Jesus. He wants to make you more like Jesus. Making us more like Jesus will involve massive work on God’s part, and suffering is one of the tools he uses for that. ‘… we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.’   (Romans 5:3-4) God is like a master sculptor, chipping away at all that is amiss in our lives.

Sometimes as children we are asked, ‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’ We might want to be a vet or a nurse or an engineer or a painter and decorator. But when we ‘grow up’ spiritually, we will all be like Jesus. And we will be part of a great family gathering in Heaven, where we will all be the people God intended us to be. (See Romans 8:29) And Jesus will be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters, including us if we love Jesus. That’s what things are working towards. That the ultimate ‘good’ God is working towards, and it will be for His glory.

3. God is working all things together for good.

The word ‘all’ is both a challenging and comforting word. ‘All’, of course, includes the good and the bad experiences in our lives. It even includes our sins. He can work them for good.

David’s sin of murder and adultery was a great evil. But did God work it for good? I believe he did.

What about Peter’s denial of Jesus? Peter learned many tough lessons through that sin, resulting in his spiritual maturity.

Robert Haldane: ‘It is not sin in itself that works the good, but God who overrules its effects to His children, shows them, by means of it, what is in their hearts, as well as their entire dependence on Himself, and the necessity of walking with him more closely. Their falls lead them to humiliation, to the acknowledgement of their weakness and depravity, to prayer for the guidance and overpowering influence of the Holy Spirit, to vigilance and caution against all carnal security, and to reliance on that righteousness provided for their appearance before God.’

Of course, this truth should never cause us to take sin lightly. We must always battle against sin. But what a wonderful thing to know that God’s promise here is so powerful that nothing in our lives is wasted with God, not even our sins. We don’t say ‘everything happens for a reason’ just to make ourselves feel better, but because it is the truth, even if we cannot understand how this could possibly be so until we are in Heaven.

Think of all the things you have gone through in your life. They have a reason and a purpose in God’s hands. Paul himself knew this to be true. He had a painful condition which he called his ‘thorn in the flesh’ but that too had a purpose, so that he would not become proud and so that he would experience even more of the grace and love of God. That did not mean it was easy for Paul. In fact, it was so painful that he begged and begged for the thorn to be removed. God is using your depression for good and your failures for good and the hurt in your family for good and the closed doors of opportunity for good. Do you believe that? That is the promise. Trust in it.

4. The qualification of this promise.

This promise is not for everyone – it is only for Christians.

‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’   (Romans 8:28)

Sometimes, people who aren’t Christians say, ‘Everything happens for a reason’. But the promise of God working for good is only for those who love Jesus. It’s an exclusive promise. Christians are not just those who believe in God. They are those who love God. We don’t love him perfectly, but we love him who gave his one and only Son to die on the cross for us. And the reason we love Him is because he first loved us and called us into the circle of his love.

Do you want to be able to claim this magnificent promise today? Then you need to be on the narrow road that leads to eternal life. You need to be able to say like the psalmist: in Psalm 116: ‘I love the Lord because He heard my voice; he listened when I cried to Him for aid.’   (Psalm 116:1)

Challenge: can you rest in this wonderful promise. If you can say that you love Jesus, there is great peace to found, even right in the middle of our suffering.

Sermon: Sunday, 9th February, 2025
Speaker: Alistair Donald
Scripture: Romans 8:18-30

A famous country music song starts with these words…
‘I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden
Along with the sunshine, there’s got to be a little rain sometimes…’

It’s a recognition that it’s unrealistic to expect a rose garden in all relationships, and then complain if there’s a little rain sometimes but sometimes we can have equally unrealistic expectations about the Christian life. We come to the Lord; submit our lives to Christ; get our lives smoothed out as the Lord changes us. We have more sense of purpose in our lives… a sense of joy and love and being accepted. But then when any sort of trouble comes our way, we can be quick to say, ‘Hang on! Surely it wasn’t meant to be this way? Why is God allowing this to happen to me?’

Well, I don’t suppose the Apostle Paul knew any country music songs, but he knew the sentiment of the song very well. He knew that for all the joys of being a believer in this life (and he’s very clear on those), there are also problems; sometimes really painful things to deal with, as many of us know only too well. So after all that Paul has said in the earlier part of this letter to the Romans – that we are all by nature alienated from God but when we put our faith in Christ we now have peace with God (chapter 5) and although we still struggle with sin (chapter 7), believers now have the Spirit inside us to help us overcome, for there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, as John laid out for us in recent weeks in the first part of chapter 8.

Yet Paul is very careful to say that, that while having the Holy Spirit in our lives is a wonderful privilege – by the Spirit we even get to call God Abba or ‘Dad’ – this does not mean that we get to live trouble-free lives ever afterwards. Paul’s ‘Big Point’ in our passage for today is this: when you compare the groanings of the present time, it’s nothing at all compared to the glory that will be revealed.

‘I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.’   (Romans 8:18)

Check out those last 2 words especially: ‘… the glory that will be revealed in us!’ As the apostle John writes: When Jesus appears, we shall be like him! (See 1 John 3:2) I wonder if we are really gripped by what God has in store for us?

C.S. Lewis reckons we don’t rate the glorious future highly enough. He writes this in the book ‘The Weight of Glory’: We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with [earthly pleasures] and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. [We’re] like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.

We need to lift our eyes to catch the wonderful vision of what God has in store for the Christian. But before moving though the passage from verses 18 to 30, I’d like first for us to look at verse 25, one of the most famous verses in the Bible: ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’ (Romans 8:28)

For years, as young Christian, I misunderstood this verse. An older translation (AV) renders it as, ‘All things work together for good.’   How does that work?

In my 30s in Wales, a visiting Free Church preacher explained: God is so great that he can turn round even bad things, even horrible things that happen to us for our long-term good. Now, that’s not to say that pain is any less painful at the time, but for the Christian who has God as their Father, it is (or certainly ought to be) different. Because, you see, it’s only for those who love God that this works. It’s only for those who’ve been called according to his purpose that this is in any way meaningful. For everyone else, it’s just stuff that happens. But for the Christian, God has a purpose in everything that happens to us.

‘What do you know about my pain, Mr Preacher?’ says someone. ‘Or what does Paul know about my suffering?’   Well, rather a lot actually. Paul lists some things in 2 Corinthians 6, not to boast, but to say that he gets it! Troubles, hardships, distresses, beatings, imprisonments, hard work, sleepless nights. That’s quite a list! Yes, Paul knows what he’s talking about when he writes this verse. But in that letter he also writes that ‘Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.’   (See 2 Corinthians 4:17)

So he knows that the groanings of this present age are nothing compared to the glory that will be revealed in us. Let’s look at all this in more detail as we move through the rest of the passage:

1. Groaning and glory in creation (verses 20-22)

First, we have creation as a character. That may seem strange, but the Scriptures do speak of the features of creation as if they were persons who speak. Psalm 114 talks poetically about mountains skipping like rams, hills like lambs, and the Sea which ‘ran away’ – as it did in the retreat of the Red Sea at the Exodus.

We read that, ‘The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.’   (Romans 8:19) The language used here is like someone craning their neck to get a better view, as if it was a child at a football match craning her neck to get a better view of the pitch! And, incredibly, that’s how the whole natural world is straining to get a view of what Christians will be in their glory in the world to come! Did you know that?

Paul goes on in verse 20: ‘For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it (that, is, God himself).’ To what purpose? ‘… in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.’

You see the cosmic panorama that is in view here? This is Big Picture stuff – to encourage us in our times of suffering! For this world, beautiful as it is, is not as it should be. We can see that with our own eyes. There are earthquakes. There are tsunamis. And much else that spoils life. Paul describes this in verse 22 as being like the pains of childbirth – painful now, but leading to something wonderful beyond description.

When sin entered the world by our first ancestors, not only were Adam and Eve’s own lives diminished, but the whole world of nature was as well. God’s curse on the world was wide-ranging. But that curse will be reversed in the new heavens and the new earth – in the glory that is to come.

There are still commentators who think the world will just get better if only humans follow certain ideologies: More capitalism? More socialism? More nationalism? More Net Zero? Perfect world? No! These things aren’t a magic bullet that will lead to a better world. Only the change in human nature brought about by the Christian Gospel can do that. This world is broken; it’s creaking.

But God has wonderful plans to turn this groaning world into a glorious world. We fist get glimpses of it in the Old Testament: ‘The heavens will wear out like a garment…’   (Psalm 102); Isaiah’s vision: new heavens and a new earth, where lion will lie down with the lamb. That’s what Paul is talking about here – the realisation of that vision. We don’t know much detail, but we know it will be wonderful, as the very creation itself is changed from groaning to glory.

But what about our own sufferings, as fragile humans living in the here and now? As we’ll now see, that, too, is a story of present groaning and future glory.

2. Groaning and glory in God’s children (verses 23-25)

The whole creation may be groaning as in the pains of childbirth. But not only that, we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Even we, who are reckoned to be no longer ‘in Adam’ but ‘in Christ’; we who have the firstfruits of the Spirit – even we continue to groan inside ourselves as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters.

But aren’t we already adopted into God’s family? Well yes, as soon as we believe in Christ, our sins are forgiven and we are adopted into God’s family. But there’s a future aspect as well. It’s a bit like how the Christian is described as ‘saved’. One aspect of that is Past Tense – such as here in verse 24: In this hope we were saved. But Paul has earlier said in chapter 5 that there’s a future aspect too: ‘Having been justified by Christ’s blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath at the Day of Judgment.’   (Romans 8:24)

And so it is, with our adoption into God’s family: The Christian has been adopted (when we first believed); we are adopted in the here and now; but we also will be fully adopted in the new creation. But is that really a practical help to you in our sufferings? We do sometimes go through real pain and distress, may physical, maybe emotional (which can wrench us up just as much as physical pain). Is what Paul says really a practical help to us in our sufferings?

Well, it should be, for God has given us that future hope to keep focussed on. We Christians ought to be able to show the world how to suffer and to be sad, by showing that we have a future hope.

Think of Psalm 13. That’s a model for us being sad when we’re in pain or distress:
How long will you forget me, Lord?
Will you forget always?
How long, Lord will you hide your face
And turn from me your gaze?

But the psalm doesn’t end there; the final 2 verses tell us what to do, if ever we feel like that:
But still I trust your constant love;
You save and set me free.
With joy I will extol the Lord
Who has been good to me.

Samuel Rutherford was a wonderful minister here in Scotland, hundreds of years ago. A book of his pastoral letters addressed to hurting people is still in print today. One lady was really struggling with pain and suffering and doubt, and he wrote this to her: ‘Your soul is like a castle that may besieged… but it cannot be taken [by the besieging armies].’ We really don’t face trials all alone. As Isaiah wrote, long before Jesus or Paul: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.’   (Isaiah 43:1)

The Apostle Peter in Acts chapter 3 tells the onlookers, agog at the healing of a lame beggar in the Temple grounds, that the risen Jesus will now remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore all things. That’s the future hope of the Christian. When everything will be made right. In this hope we were saved, writes Paul in verse 24. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

So we’re to wait eagerly for that hope (verse 23) – but also patiently (verse 25). That’s a hard combination for us! We’re not to be so eager that we lose sight of patience. And we’re not to be so patient that we forget to be eager for what it is we’re hoping for! Now, none of this is to say that this present life doesn’t matter. Of course it matters, since God placed us here for a time, and God is good. And much of our life here and now is very good. But whether we’re going through happy times or sad times, it does us good to remember: that this life is not by any means the whole story – and we do sometimes lose sight of that, especially in the hard times we sometimes experience. And whatever we go through, in this life – whatever we lose in this life – trust me, will seem as nothing… compared to the glory that will be revealed.

3. Groaning by the Spirit on our behalf (verses 26-30)

But as we see here it’s not just the creation that groans, waiting for glory. It’s not just we Christians who groan, waiting for glory. In a very mysterious way, the Holy Spirit himself groans. Do you sometimes feel your spiritual weakness? Do you ever feel a bit of a failure, not knowing even quite what to pray? If so, you’re in good company with the Apostle Paul. But help is at hand!

‘In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.’ (Romans 8:26)

Isn’t that wonderful? We read elsewhere that Jesus intercedes with the Father on our behalf. And here’s the Holy Spirit doing the same, with groans that cannot be put into words! Aren’t we blessed? The Spirit intercedes for us saints in accordance with God’s will. So next time you feel your spiritual weakness (and which of us doesn’t sometimes fell that?), remember that you’re not a hopeless case. Next time you don’t really know what to pray for – don’t just give up! Sit quietly, open a psalm or another passage of Scripture and let the Holy Spirit lead your thoughts and prayers.

In closing we go back to verse 28: ‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’

God’s unchanging love for his people means that even the bad stuff that happens to us can be taken up by him and moulded for our good. Joseph found that in Egypt after he’d been kidnapped and sold into slavery by his brothers. That was a wicked act – no question. But after Joseph’s rise to power in Egypt, when he saved many lives by storing up food to withstand the famine, he was able many years later to say to his brothers: ‘Yes, you intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.’ So yes, In all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.’

This isn’t for everyone, but rather it is a special privilege for those who love God, who have been called according to his purpose. When you come to know Christ as Saviour and Lord, then you will realise eventually (it may take time) that God’s knowledge of you and love for you stretches way back before the time you first believed before even you cried your first cry as a baby the day you were born and way back before the universe was even made.

Paul signs off this section of his letter to us by spelling this out very clearly in a beautiful silver chain, laid out in verses 29-30, which we’ll now read in closing: ‘For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’ (Romans 8:29-30)

My former minister in Wales explained predestination this way. When we first believe in Jesus, we’re conscious of our own decision to follow him. But we don’t at first see the whole picture (he was an artist). When we stand back and view the whole canvas, yes there’s our decision in the foreground, the hour we first believed. But then we see the mighty backdrop – the wonderful, majestic mountains of God’s sovereignty in setting us apart from before the foundation of the world.

‘Those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.’   (Romans 8:30)

And did you notice something? The glory from which we finally escape our groaning does lie on the future but Paul puts it in the past tense, along with the other things listed. How come? Because for those who have been called by God who’ve been put in a right relationship with him (‘justified’ by faith) – the glorious future he has prepared for us is as certain as if it had already taken place.

Sermon: Sunday, 26th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:11-16

How can human beings experience lasting change? Think of communities in Scotland where there is high unemployment, widespread use of drugs and alcohol and high rates of crime. What will bring lasting change to these communities? Can politics alone deliver? A government could pump more money into the NHS and create more job opportunities and provide better care services and improve education, and in many cases that would be welcomed. It will bring about a certain kind of change. But people will only experience radical change if they come to know Jesus as Saviour and King. Why is that? Because only Jesus can change us from within. Only he can give us new hearts and new motivations. Only he can deal with our root problem of sin and provide a solution for that sin- his own blood shed on the cross.

I think self-help books have a place, as long as we recognise their limitations and are able to discern when they contradict Scripture or have an unhealthy worldview – and many of them sadly do. Nevertheless, we can learn a great deal from experts whether or not they are believers. For example, I keep on seeing the book by Robin Sharma called the 5 am club: own your morning and elevate your life. Sharma is described as one of the world’s premier speakers on leadership and personal mastery, and recently named one of the world’s top leadership gurus. I genuinely believe I could benefit from reading this book. Perhaps getting up earlier would help me to exercise more and become more productive. There might even be spiritual benefits, having more time with God. But this book will not change my heart or make me more loving or forgiving and it won’t give me peace with God.

I read an excellent article by Josh Maule on self-help books. He says: ‘Self-help books have one thing in common. They place you at the centre of your quest. You are the hero who must take charge of your life—thinking and acting better, starting your day smarter, finishing your day wiser — thus unlocking your full potential.’ He goes on to say something which is contrary to most self-help books, but which I believe to be true: ‘Christianity teaches universal brokenness. Worse, it teaches we are in active rebellion against our creator. Alcoholics Anonymous begins with a statement that: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’

Regular Christianity begins with a similar confession. We admit we are sinners —morally and spiritually bankrupt. We live ignoring God and his plan for us. And deep down, we like it a lot. I can’t help myself. The second step Christians have made is to acknowledge that we can’t do anything to help ourselves. Like an insect caught in a spider’s web, a sinner caught in sin can wriggle. But it only makes things worse. We can’t stop how we live. We can’t fix up past mistakes. We can’t make it up to God or others. We’re in what the English call ‘a right pickle’.’

Let’s continue to think about lasting change. The greatest change which happens is when we become Christians. This change is a work of God’s grace. He takes away our hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh. We are unable to pay the huge debt of sin we owe God, but God provides the payment in the death of his Son Jesus. Remember those words: ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3)

Do you think God would have sent Jesus to die such a shameful and cruel and painful death if we humans were able to save ourselves from Hell? Of course not! If you are not yet a Christian, you cannot save yourself. All you can do is cry out to God for mercy, based on the death of Jesus on the cross. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, once we receive Jesus as our Saviour and King, God does something wonderful – he sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us in a mysterious but real way. All Christians have God the Spirit living within. There is no such thing as a Christian without the Spirit as a constant presence. It is God’s Spirit who gives us new desires to live for God, rather than for ourselves. God’s Spirit alone brings lasting change.

For the rest of our time, let’s look at 3 things which the dwelling of God the Holy Spirit brings us: A new hope, a new enemy and a new relationship.

1. A new hope

The fact that all Christians are temples of the Spirit brings us enormous and certain hope as we face death – our own deaths and those of other Christians. ‘But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’   (Romans 8:10-11)

Here’s a question – how much power do we have as Christians to change? Well, the power we have within us is the same power which raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. This is incalculable power. With God’s help, we can indeed change and become more like Jesus (more of that later). But notice the logic Paul gives us here: just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, so the Holy Spirit will raise the bodies of believers from the grave. As Christians, our bodies will die because of sin, but that’s not the end of the story. Our bodies will be raised one day because the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

My friend Douglas died just a few weeks ago and his funeral is here on Wednesday. I only knew him as a man in a wheelchair due to his MS. However, now I’ve seen lots of photos of him before his illness, when he was in full control of his body and could ceilidh dance and play shinty. Latterly, Douglas couldn’t use his hands so couldn’t drink a cup of tea on his own. But here’s the truth – one day, because of the Holy Spirit, he will be given a brand-new body which will be an everlasting human body. It will pulsate with energy and never grow weary or sick or stop working. It will be more glorious than any body we know of on earth. How do we know this will happen? Because the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, the first fruits of what is to come.

Death is the separation of body and soul. What is our certain hope as God’s children? That we will be made perfect in body and soul and that body and soul will be united once again, this time for ever. Christ’s resurrection is the pledge and pattern of our resurrection.

John Stott: ‘The ultimate destiny of our body is not death but resurrection.’

Friends, we have so much to look forward to.

Robert Haldane: ‘Christ the first fruits will be followed by that great harvest, in which…the bodies of believers sown in the earth, after having died like grain cast into it, shall be revived and raised up. The life which has been communicated to our souls will, at the glorious resurrection, be also communicated to our bodies… Believers, then, may defy the grave and glory over death, being assured of this resurrection… On Jesus then, the sure foundation, is the whole of our salvation built.’

2. A new enemy

‘For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:15) What is our new enemy as Christians? It is sin! When we become Christians we are to wage an all-out war against sin in our lives. Sin is not something to be treated lightly or played down, or tolerated; rather, with the Spirit’s help it is something to be starved and smothered and slain. Is that your attitude to the sin in your heart? To help us focus on that personal question, I will ask, what particular sin have you been fighting against over the last few days? This must be a daily and constant fight. We cannot take our foot off the gas.

When we think of the work of the Holy Spirt, so often we think of Him guiding us in big decisions, like whether or not to take a new job or move to a new place. We talk about the Spirit leading us, or prompting us to speak to someone, and that happens. However, the ordinary yet vital work of the Spirit Paul speaks of here is to help us to put the sins in our lives to death. The fancy word for this is mortification. We need to rediscover this word. Mortification. It means that we must have a ruthless attitude to the sins in our lives. We must be radical in getting rid of them. After all, did not our Lord say, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off? That does not suggest a lax attitude to sin. That does not suggest pruning sin around the edges, like we often do, if we are honest. Before slabs were put down in our garden, I had to dig out an ivy which had been there for years. I dug a really deep hole, but it wasn’t deep enough. I pulled and yanked and tugged on the ivy with all my strength and managed to get a fair bit out, but not the roots. Often, we treat our sin like that – we try to get rid of it using our own strength, and it might seem like we are making progress. But what does Paul say in Romans 8: ‘…if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:8) So, if you have a problem with gossip, or internet porn, or pride, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Do you do that? You must. You have to ask Him in order to kill sin.

If we are honest, many of us probably have a peace-time mindset, as if there’s no war going on in our lives. Let’s be clear – the war only stops in Heaven. The whole of our lives is marked by a battle against sin. The wonderful news is that we are not on our own in this battle. The Holy Spirit is our Helper. If only we asked for his help more often.

Perhaps you are not taking your Christian faith seriously enough just now. Know this, whether you realise it or not, sin will be flourishing in your heart. Here’s a practical step we can all take- run through the ten commandments in our minds, and try and discern the different ways we are currently breaking these commands. Then take radical steps to pray for help and do all we can to eradicate them. For example, the first commandment is that God should have the first place in our lives. Ask yourself, what is really first just now? Then prayerfully, depending on the Spirit, and using the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, tear down that idol. We do not owe the flesh anything. We do not owe sin anything. Kill it! It promised us so much but failed to deliver time and time again. It promises life but leads to eternal death. This is serious.

3. A new relationship

‘The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.’   (Romans 8:15-16)

RC Sproul: ‘The greatest privilege of all is to be able to come before God and address him as Father. And we are not able to do that by nature, because by nature we are children of wrath.’

Do you realise that God is not everyone’s Father? It is only those who receive Jesus as Saviour and King who can call God their Father. In other words, very few people in Fife, a tiny fraction, are currently able to do this. That’s why we desperately need to share the good news of the gospel. For those of us who are Jesus’ disciples, do you realise the immense privilege you have?

What does it mean that God is our Father? I love the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith here.

XII ‘All those that are justified… receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him, as by a father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption; and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.’

Those are wonderful words – God pities, protects and provides for us. Satan wants us to cast a false image of God in our minds as a tightfisted, harsh, killjoy who makes unreasonable demands of us. This is nonsense.

Terry Johnson: ‘We pray not as we ought and live not as we ought. We stumble. We fall. We fail. How does God look at us? As a father does his children. He looks upon us with compassion. What could be more liberating that this? What could be more freeing and healing than to know that God is my Father? What could be more therapeutic than to know that He looks upon me with all my brokenness and strife with sympathy, with pity, with compassion?’

We ought also to be confident of our Father’s protection. If good earthly fathers protect their children, how much more with our heavenly Father? ‘… who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.’   (1 Peter 1:5)

When a young child falls and skins their knee, they will instinctively call out ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ We should have that same instinct in prayer when we are in trouble. Cry out to Abba Father for protection.

Because God is our Father, we can also be confident of his care in all areas of our lives. He provides. He knows what we need. He encourages us to ask him for all we need: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’   (Philippians 4 v6).

Once I was on a bus and sat next to a nun and we got chatting. I asked her if she knew she was going to Heaven when she died. She said, ‘I hope so but cannot be sure’. The thing is, God wants us to be sure that if we trust in Jesus, we have become his children. In fact, the Holy Spirit gives us the assurance that we are adopted as sons and one sign of it is that in times of great distress, we find ourselves just crying out, ‘Father..

‘And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’   (Romans 8:15) It is the Holy Spirit who brings to us the awareness that we are sons of God. This word ‘cry’ is used around 50 times in the New Testament and almost always in the context of someone crying out in deep distress. For example, blind Bartimaeus is said to ‘cry out’ in all his distress. There’s something really significant here – when as Christians we go through times of deep despair, depression, loneliness, pain or suffering, isn’t it true that we instinctively just cry out ‘Father’. Sometimes that’s all we can manage to say. This cry is itself a sign that we are sons of the living God. In our times of great need, the Spirit ministers to us and enables us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’.

When we do, this is the hallmark of a believer. This is the cry of the child of God.

Sermon: Sunday, 19th January, 2025
Speaker: Geoff Murray
Scripture: Romans 8:5-7

1. True freedom isn’t what you think

Now before we explore this point, we need to first understand what Paul means here by the ‘flesh’ because he uses it a lot here and if you’re unfamiliar with the Bible, you’ve probably never used flesh other than flesh which covers our human skeleton. Reading it that way would make no sense.

‘… those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires.’ (Romans 8:5)

So, what does Paul mean here? I think it’s something like what he is meaning in Galatians 5 where he speaks of the works of the flesh of being sinful acts and sinful ways which are in opposition to God’s ways. And I think we see that in how the way of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit is being contrasted with the works of the flesh. I don’t think it’s reading too much into it to read flesh as ‘sinful nature, sinful ways, sinful desires.’ It is essentially living to please yourself.

And Paul when he speaks about life in ‘the flesh’, in other words, life following your own sinful patterns and behaviours, he speaks about it in the following terms:

‘Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.’   (Romans 8:5-7)

It’s fair to say Paul doesn’t speak in glowing terms about all of this; so let’s break these three things down.

a) Living in the flesh doesn’t set us free but enslaves us
I think when we commonly think of freedom, it’s exactly what we think of: doing what I want to do when I want to do it, how I want to do it. But does that make you truly free? Is freedom possible just by doing everything and anything you want to do?

Well actually, it’s very limiting to simply live the way you want to live, you’re limited to your desires.

If we are ‘in the flesh’ as Paul says, we can only respond as the ‘flesh’ desires. ‘The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.’ (Romans 8:7)

Those in the flesh can only set their minds upon what the flesh desires. Indeed, those who live according to the flesh are incapable of doing anything but. Those who live according to the flesh have no option, no alternative but to want what they want and often times do what they want to do.

This deep-level heart change John was speaking of last week, this inner transformation of the will and the desires cannot happen if you are ‘in the flesh’. Why? Because you might try to fight it by sheer gritted teeth and hard work, yet you will be constantly frustrated because you will still want that thing that you are denying yourself of. And so you may try to change but have no power to change your desire for it.

You might do the self-talk thing and say to yourself, ‘But this thing I want is wrong, don’t do it, it’s wrong.’ Yet we cannot be convinced not to do something just by telling ourselves it is wrong. The heart wants what the heart wants.

You might even stifle it. Perhaps you are bitter towards someone. You may be able to stifle it by not exploding at them and giving them a piece of your mind and so it appears there are no problems. Yet, what is going on in your heart at that moment? Are you a spring of cheer and goodwill towards that person? No, you hate them and that bitterness is poisoning your heart. You are happy when something doesn’t go their way and you resent when things are going well for them.

You see, there’s a social code, there are things which you can’t say or can’t do that you’d like to do. Maybe it’s telling your boss to take a hike. Perhaps it’s a family tradition that you cannot be bothered with but everyone else loves. There are ways in which we can hide and conceal, but at the deepest internal places, you can only do what your heart wants.

The reality of life ‘in the flesh’ is you cannot change. You are stuck in the same old patterns. Rules of any kind, whether man-made or whether from God have no power to change your heart, have no power to change your desires, have no power to give you a new direction and a new purpose in life.

Because the heart wants what the heart wants, those ‘in the flesh’ are unable to change allegiances to God, they are unable to follow Jesus in faith and obedience and they are unable to change at that deep heart level.

Let’s talk about anger. You know you shouldn’t be so angry, you know you’re getting way too wound up about things that don’t really matter, you know it’s affecting those around you. You know the way you’re responding isn’t helpful but harmful. You know you need to change. Yet does simply the knowledge you need to change make you change? Does the knowledge that your anger is wrong make you change? There needs to be a change of heart.

There are times we’re faced with the conflict of knowing what is the right thing to do and what we want to do. And often times our hearts give in to what our hearts want. And even if we do swallow our pride and do the right thing over the thing we really want to do, it is begrudging. Like a child saying, ‘Fine! I’ll tidy my room.’ The room is tidy, but the heart is bitter. So, even if we can change outwardly, that deeper change is hard to come by.

b) Living by the flesh sets us at loggerheads with God

‘The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.’ (Romans 8:7) You may say, ‘Hostile to God? No way! I’m not really that fussed about him? How can I be hostile?’

But putting things in their context. If God is creator of the universe which he is, if we as his creation owe him love, worship and obedience which we do, yet if we do not and cannot do that, what is that except rebellion against him? What is that except hostility towards one in authority over you? How does that hostility show?

The flesh doesn’t submit: it’s a willing choice. even the word submit perhaps make your toes curl, submit means to be under and as a society, that is an unpalatable thought. Submitting to anything or anyone is contrary to our understanding of freedom.

Those walking in line with the flesh don’t submit to God’s law; neither the letter or the spirit.

• The letter of the law – if we’ve broken one of God’s laws we’ve broken them all (James 2:10), so all of us have been unable to submit to God’s law. The typical thing would be to look to the Ten Commandments and reel them off and see how we have loved people and things more than God, how we haven’t honoured our parents like we should, how we have envied our neighbour and wanted what they had that wasn’t ours.

• The spirit of the law – Jesus summarises God’s law, not in terms of the letter but in terms of the Spirit, love God with all you are and love your neighbour as yourself. You have neither loved God with all your heart nor have you loved your neighbour as yourself. Going back to the Ten Commandments you may think, ‘Murder, that’s easy!’ But Jesus said, ‘If you are angry with a brother you have murdered him in your heart.’

And so, because the one living “in the flesh” living simply to please themselves can’t change outside of what they want, they therefore won’t and can’t submit to God which puts them at loggerheads with God and brings us to our final point.

c) Living ‘in the flesh’ is short-sighted

‘The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.’   (Romans 8:6)

Of course, it’s not implied that if you follow through with your sinful deed, boom that’s you on the spot. But what is saying is that if you continue on living in the flesh, it heads in a certain trajectory. If you head down the path of sin, it only goes in one direction and that is the path of death. (See Proverbs 1:1-5)

Of course due to the first human, Adam, we all due to sin head to a physical death. Even Christians. Yet, there is another death in view. A spiritual and eternal death. Earlier in Romans 6, we saw ‘the wages of sin is death’. The end result is not just a physical death, not just a descent into nothingness, but actually an eternity in hell separated from God forever.

And because of what we looked at before, namely, that those in the flesh can only do what they want to do, sinners are sleepwalking into a lost eternity and they couldn’t care less. Little by little as they are simultaneously charmed and disenfranchised with the world around them and themselves, they become desensitised to their need for God, they become more and more numb to eternal things.

Until eventually in a moment, they’ll know exactly what’s up. Either when Jesus comes again or they die and go to hell. It’ll hit them like a ton of bricks. And they will be separated from God forever.

And so living ‘in the flesh’ is incredibly short-sighted because when you simply live to please yourself, you aren’t thinking of the unintended consequences of what is to come, choosing to live in the moment.

And so given all of this, freedom isn’t what you think it is, it isn’t simply doing what you want to do and in fact that is no freedom at all but slavery to self which separates you from God and leads you to to an eternity apart from him.

So, perhaps you’re here as someone who isn’t a believer in Jesus yet. Can I just get you to consider for a moment that you’re not as free as you think you are. You’re at loggerheads with God, you’re living an incredibly short-sighted life because if you continue in this path it is an eternity apart from God in hell which awaits. As we’ll get to see in a moment that actually the true path to freedom is found in Jesus. May I encourage you to consider, to think that you aren’t as free as you think you are and that the only path to freedom is through Jesus Christ.

Or perhaps you’re on the fence. You’re a Christian but you’re just considering throwing in the towel, friend, please don’t. This is where it leads. It leads not to freedom but to slavery, it leads not to life but to death, it leads not to peace with God but enmity with God now and forever. Don’t go back to your old way, but press on in repentance, faith and obedience.

2. True freedom is better than you think it is

So true freedom is not what you think it is just doing your own thing and pleasing yourself, what is true freedom then? And how is it better? On the face of it, it seems equally as limited. The flesh can only set its mind on the flesh the Spirit can only set its mind on what the Holy Spirit wants. Except that’s not what it’s saying.

Before Jesus intervenes, we’re in a situation where we only please ourselves and cannot please God, we therefore cannot change at the deepest internal levels even if we can modify our behaviours. Yet when Jesus, by his Spirit, intervenes he opens up a new way to us. We’re still subject to death because of sin. (See verse 10) Sin is still a feature, it’s still a part of our life but because the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the picture and into our lives we can change with his help. It means we are directed in a new way.

But how is this freedom? If we’re still subject to something or someone, how can we be free? Well, under the Spirit of God, he is at work in us making us the people we were originally intended to be to live the lives we were meant to live. The Spirit sets us free to be who God intends us to be. Furthermore, the Spirit sets us free from the cycle of self and enables us to move towards God and others.

I said this last week in Leven but the common misconception about Christianity is that it’s a list of rules and therefore people say, ‘Ah, you’re a christian, does that mean you can’t do that? Does that mean you have to do this?’ It’s as if we’re somehow brainwashed or held against our will. The reality is when you put your faith in the Lord Jesus, are indwelt by the Spirit you are given new desires, desires to please him and honour him. (See John 14:16, 15:26, 16:14)

So all of a sudden, we have a new desire, a desire to honour God, a desire to live for him and that isn’t a coincidence. Whereas in the ‘flesh’ we have no power to change, actually in the Spirit we are freed from the same destructive patterns which repeat themselves because we have a new way opened up to us.

And it isn’t marked by the same level of frustration and wheel-spinning-but-going-nowhere because there is a new power living in us whose very role is to lead us on in worship, in faith and obedience. And when I say a new power, I mean the same power that raised Jesus is living in you right now as a believer. (See verse 11)

This isn’t about anything impressive about the you or me, this is all the Spirit’s doing. We, once unable to change ourselves, now in God’s kindness have a desire to change and a power to change and his name is the Holy Spirit.

The mark of a true believer that their life takes on this new direction and this new purpose which is Godward. If you are filled with the Spirit of God and belong to God, your following after him it’ll be imperfect, it’ll be messy, it’ll be coloured by sin but yet it will be marked with a desire to know and love and honour God.

And so that is one of the ways in which true freedom is better than you think. Life in the flesh it’s very black and white. The law simply says to those in the flesh, ‘This is what I require and you fall short, death is your end.’ Whereas life in the Spirit says, ‘This is what I require, and though you fall short, Jesus’ righteousness is what covers you and by His Spirit you are given new life.’

Christian, do you feel a bit discouraged as you come today? You want to change but you see so many areas of your life which is contrary to God’s way and what he calls you to. And you perhaps reason there isn’t sufficient change in your life. Can you really be a Christian if you still struggle with areas of pride or anger? Can you really be a Christian if you let out these swear words?

I think if there is a genuine fight and battle, a genuine desire to honour God you’re on the right track. Do you see, if we flip back to ‘life in the flesh’ the flesh doesn’t want to honour God, but those who are in the Spirit want to honour God.

Most likely there are 101 things you see that need to be sorted out and they probably do, but the fact you see that as a problem and aren’t sleepwalking into sinful patterns is crucial. Of course, feelings aren’t the be all and end all, sometimes we are unmoved by sin, sometimes we are unmoved by God. But feelings can be a strong indicator. People in the flesh don’t want to honour God only those who are in the Spirit.

And so if you feel down and out today, if you wonder if you could be a Christian because of the mess, the junk and the sin still in your life, yet that troubles you and grieves you, and you are seeking with his help to change, stop and think, ‘If I weren’t a Christian, none of this would bother me.’ The Spirit of God gives you new desire to honour and obey him, repent and ask for forgiveness for your shortcomings, but know that if your life is marked by a tender conscience which wants to honour the Holy Spirit and is grieved when you don’t – that is a healthy sign. As the text says in verse 10: ‘… though your body is dead because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness.’

That is to us life and peace. (See verse 6) In the midst of our ongoing battle with sin, in the midst of our failings and imperfections that for those of us who have the Spirit of God, we are children of God, that is settled. We have new life, not to the degree of spirituality in us but to the degree to which God is life and light.

A new start, a new life that was not and is not our own doing. The life belongs to God it’s not down to our genius or our spirituality, he has given it to us. And as a result we can know peace. Our relationship with God isn’t based upon our performance.

Our relationship with God through faith in Jesus is settled and it’s final because it rests in what God has already done for us. Do you want to talk about freedom? What is more freeing than that? That God doesn’t love you more because of the good things you do and he doesn’t love you less because of the bad things you have done but in Jesus his love for you is settled.

There’s nothing more enslaving than feeling the need to prove yourself because you’re always on edge, always watching out and hoping that nobody notices when you mess up, hoping that your good is good enough. Yet in the gospel, we aren’t looking over our shoulder wondering if God is going to cut us off at any moment, we rest in the reality of God’s settled love for us in Jesus Christ.

Do you think of God as one who, is gracious to save you and rescue you but once you’re in you need to prove yourself? A kind of ‘Over to you now’ situation? It couldn’t be further from the truth, it is from beginning to end: grace.

I love how Paul describes the totality of salvation in Ephesians 1 as ‘every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’.

• He chose us before the foundation of the world
• He predestined us for adoption into his family
• We have redemption through the blood of Jesus
• He revealed his will to us
• Chief among the gifts is the Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our coming redemption and rescue when Jesus comes again.

All of it is grace. From beginning to end. This is why we are secure in his love, this is why we are freed up to serve him because its ultimately his doing.

Of course we have to exert ourselves, that comes up in verse 13 unmistakably and in so many other places but it is in the wider context of God’s power and grace at work leading us home.

To tee us up for verse 13 which will be covered next week, this is what empowers our obedience, this is what empowers our lives as Christians: the glorious freedom of the gospel. Our identity, the love lavished on us, the Fatherhood of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit isn’t ours because of how we measure up or because we’ve earned it, it’s ours because of his grace.

As you go out in service to him, you needn’t fear that God is leaving you to get on with it, go out sure that the Holy Spirit will empower you, he will strengthen you, he will enable you to live obedient lives and where you fail his grace is waiting for you to scoop you up and to set you back on your feet again. So you needn’t give up, or feel helpless, in fact you have all the reason more to keep going and to press on.

Friends true freedom is not what you think, it’s not found in doing what you want to do. True freedom is better than you think because the Spirit of God enables new life and eternal hope, he enables great change in your life and though at times you fail he walks with you.

Sermon: Sunday, 12th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4

1. An anchor

We all know how important anchors are to give ships stability allowing them to securely hold their position and to stop them from drifting dangerously into rocks or other vessels. Sometimes there are strong winds or currents or tides that push against a ship or a boat. You need to make sure your anchor has been dropped, to keep both you and your boat safe. When it comes to the Christian life, stability is extremely important. We need certain spiritual anchors, which are the promises of God, to give us assurance of our salvation and to provide stability in the storms of life. Sometimes these storms can be long-lasting and ferocious. Our circumstances might be so tough that we think God must be against us, or must have forgotten us, or doesn’t really love us.

The old hymn asks the question:
‘Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
when the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,
will your anchor drift, or firm remain?’

The answer is given:
‘We have an anchor that keeps the soul,
steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.’

Romans chapter 8 begins with one of the most magnificent anchors of God’s love in all the Bible. These 12 words can keep us stable when circumstances seem against us or when Satan is dredging up our weaknesses and sins of the past: ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

No condemnation! If you knew how black my heart has been, even as a Christian, then you’d realise how much these words mean to me. I ought to be condemned by God. I agree with the Psalmist; ‘If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?’   (Psalm 130:3) In Romans chapters 1 to 3, we explored how both pagans and the religious fall well short of God’s standards. We live in a world full of pride, greed, racism, exploitation, hatred and lust. The truth is, these vices aren’t just in the hearts of other people- they are in our hearts too. There’s something in us all that wants to dethrone God and put ourselves on the throne instead. We wrongly think freedom means pushing God out of the centre and occupying the centre ourselves. However, the reality is that this results in selfishness and slavery rather the freedom we think we will get. Only lives centred in Jesus can experience true and lasting freedom.

Even Christians still behave in shocking ways and were it not for God’s grace would still deserve to be condemned. Think of Peter denying he even knew Jesus. I can think of my own life and the catalogue of wrongdoing in the book of my Christian life. There’s a lot from my past which Satan can dig up and hold before my face. And he does. And I need to say to him, ‘Yes, but there’s now no condemnation for me, not because I deserve pardon, but because I am now in Christ Jesus.’ I never need to fear being rejected by God. I never need to fear being condemned by God. Why? Because Jesus has already been condemned in my place. He was condemned for me, and that’s why there’s no condemnation to be experienced. What an anchor!

Again, the hymn says: ‘grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love’. That’s exactly right. ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3) In love, God the Father sent Jesus to be our ‘sin offering’. In other words, he would die on the cross in our place, paying the price for sin. And as we need to remind ourselves again and again, God never demands payment twice. That’s unfair. If you pay a bill in a restaurant, you don’t have to pay it again. Bills are settled once. Jesus has settled our account and so nothing more can be demanded of us, and thus rather than being condemned we are in fact justified – made right in the eyes of God.

The hymn ‘Before the throne’ puts it so well:
‘When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see Him there who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Saviour died, my sinful soul is counted free,
or God the Just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.’

God has given the verdict ‘not guilty’.

Let me be more personal. Is this an anchor you have in your life? Can you say with confidence that you don’t need to fear God’s judgment and that you will never be condemned by God? Let’s take a closer look to remind ourselves of who is able to say this wonderful thing. Look at the end of verse 1. It is for those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’. The ESV translates verse 2 better, and we hear the same phrase: ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.’

There’s only one place to be in all the world if we want to be free from condemnation, and that is ‘in Christ’. The ‘not guilty’ verdict is not found in the false religions of the world or in humanism or paganism or agnosticism. The Bible is clear. You must be ‘in Christ’. What does this mean to be ‘in Christ’? It means we trust that he is King and that he died on the cross for our sins. Christianity is not a bunch of rules or a philosophy but rather a relationship of trust, where we rest on the work Jesus has already done on the cross.

Here’s the good news – let’s allow it to sink in – we are free from the penalty of our own sin. The hymn Man of sorrows says this:
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned he stood,
sealed my pardon with his blood:
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’

2. A rudder

It is indeed wonderful news that there is no condemnation for those who rest in Christ. However, imagine a prisoner who has been imprisoned for serious crimes. He receives a pardon from the prime minister; however, he remains locked up in jail. That would not be ideal predicament: ‘Yes, you are free from the guilt of these crimes, but you will remain imprisoned.’ The stunning thing about how God treats us in Christ is that he not only frees us from the penalty of sin saying ‘No condemnation’, he also frees us from the power of sin, by filling us with the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit gives us the desire to do what is right and opposes our old sinful desires to do what is wrong.

A rudder is the part of a ship which controls its direction and allows it to change course. Before we trusted in Christ, we were unable to change course in our own strength.

John Flavel: ‘We are more able to stop the sun in its course or make rivers flow uphill, as by our own skill and power to rule and order our hearts.’

In other words, we cannot really change within, in our hearts, without God’s power. Let’s make this statement more positively – we must never think as Christians that we cannot change for the better. You can change. With the Holy Spirit within us, we can change for the better. We can have more of the love and forgiveness and peace of Jesus in our hearts. Before the Spirit of Jesus was in our hearts, the 10 Commandments were just a reminder of how far short we fall from God’s standards. But what does the Holy Spirit do with these commandments? The prophet Jeremiah speaks of the blessings of the new covenant: ‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares 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.’   (Jeremiah 31:33) The Spirit gives us new desires and inclinations and empowers us to root sin out of our lives.

You cannot change for the better just by trying really hard to obey God’s rules. ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For 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 for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’   (Romans 8:2-4)

Before, we were unable to keep God’s rules. The problem wasn’t with the law. The law is good. The problem was our sinful flesh was unable to obey it. We needed an external power outside of ourselves. We needed the power of God. God enables us to walk according to the Spirit.

John Owen: ‘Our minds now, have a new saving supernatural light to enable them to think and act spiritually.’

Before we were Christians, the master of the house was the evil one. We were under his dominion, and the evidence of this was that we lived for ourselves and pushed God out of the centre. But now we have a new master of the house, and that is the Holy Spirit. Yes, there’s still an unwelcome guest in our house, a squatter – that’s our sinful nature. He’s guest to get rid of. In fact, it’s only in Heaven that we’ll be totally free of him. But although the change is not total, it is nonetheless enormous.

I’ve been a Christian for well over 40 years. I’m ashamed how little progress I’ve made in some of those years. I think I spent too much of it trying to change myself, rather than coming to Jesus and asking for his help. Perhaps you can relate to that. But let’s really let this sink in, we’ve been given not only a wonderful anchor in our justification, but we’ve also been given a new rudder – the Holy Spirit. Will you open your Bibles through the week and listen to the Spirit speaking to you? And when Scripture comes to mind and you feel the Spirit prompting you to do something, or not to do something, will you be directed by the Spirit? Will you keep in step with the Spirit? If you are willing to, you can change. You can make real progress. You don’t have to give up.

In the excellent book ‘You can change’, Tim Chester asks: ‘Have you despaired of ever changing? Do you think you are a lost cause? Maybe you think it’s different for you. Other people can change but your history or temptations or problems make it different for you… Only God can bring true and lasting change. And that’s because only God can change our hearts.’

Let’s keep these two images before us. Our anchor is the fact that God will never, ever condemn us. And our guiding rudder in life is now the Holy Spirit. These are great truths which we need to rub into our lives each day. Why did we sing the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’? Because it speaks of Jesus saving us from the guilt of sin (we are not condemned) and also of the power of sin (we have the Spirit):
‘Let the water and the blood,
from thy riven side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure,
save me from its guilt and power.’

Often human beings think their main problem is their unhappiness. ‘If only I could be happy…’ God knows our deepest problem isn’t unhappiness but unrighteousness and powerlessness. So, in his kindness, he provides us with a Saviour and his Spirit. He provides us with exactly what we need. And this leads to our eternal happiness, and more importantly, the glory of God: ‘… the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us.’   (Romans 8:4) How good our God is.

Sermon: Sunday, 1st December, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 7

The theme of Romans chapter 7 is the law of God which is mentioned well over 20 times! For many weeks, we have been reminding ourselves that none of us can enter into a right relationship with God by trying to keep the law. Nor can we earn our way to Heaven by keeping God’s rules. The law is not a ladder which human beings are able to climb up to reach God. The letter to the Galatians makes this plain. ‘Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’   Galatians 3:11

This means that before people become Christians, they have a negative relationship with God’s law. They are under the curse of the law because the law condemns them as guilty. Quite clearly, none of us have loved God or our neighbours as we ought to have done. We could not do so, no matter how hard we tried. But here’s the good news. Jesus sets us free from the condemnation of the law by keeping it perfectly on our behalf and by paying the enormous moral debt we owe to God for flouting his rules time and time again, by dying on the cross for our sins.

1. A marriage ended and a marriage begun

Paul uses an illustration to help us understand that we are free from the law’s condemnation. A married woman, says Paul, is bound to her husband as long as her husband is alive, and is not free to go with anyone else. However, if the man dies, she is set free and can marry someone else. The main point is that it’s death which dissolves this marriage. In the same way, before we were saved, we were married to the law of God, which brought condemnation. The consequences of our disobedience to the law is death. This was not a good marriage! Only death can dissolve the marriage. The good news is that because we are united to Christ, when he died, we also died, and our death meant that our marriage to the law has been dissolved and we are no longer bound to the condemnation of the law. We are free. We are no longer in bondage to the law, having the obligation of perfect obedience to it, and we can no longer be crushed by it, not because the law died, but because we did. Our previous unhappy marriage is over and now we’re happily married to Christ.

Ash: The key point is that death ends the first relationship and makes possible the second.

This is a wonderful marriage in total contrast to our marriage to the law. The fruits of our first marriage were death and condemnation. Listen to verse 4 to hear what flows from our marriage to Jesus: ‘…you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.’   (Romans 7:4) What a wonderful marriage! Our purpose becomes bearing good fruit for the glory of God.

This raises a question – can Christians just ignore God’s law if we have died to it? Absolutely not. The law is good and reveals the holy character of God.

John Stott: ‘This does not mean that we have been divorced from the law altogether, in the sense that it has no more claims on us of any kind, or that we have no more obligations to it. On the contrary, the moral law remains a revelation of the Lord’s will, which he still expects his people to ‘fulfil’ by living lives of righteousness and love. This is what Calvin called the 3rd use of the law – it shows us what is pleasing to God.’

Christians now have a new relationship with the law and it is a much more positive one. By God’s grace, Christians are married to Christ and given the Holy Spirit to empower us to keep God’s law. It’s actually a wonderful thing that Christians are no longer married to the law, but instead are married to Christ! Why was being married to the law so bad? The law was a powerless to make us holy. The law could not make us more like Jesus. Quite the opposite. The law was impotent. The law could not change us.

2. The law – a poor marriage partner

Let’s examine just how rubbish a marriage partner the law was. What did the law do? The law reveals just how sinful we are. ‘I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’   (Romans 7:7) Imagine a room that’s badly lit but it looks ok. However, someone turns on the light and suddenly you see the thick dust and grease and damaged paint- things you didn’t see without the light. The law is like that strong light. It reveals what we are really like. So just hearing the command ‘do not covet’, can reveal how black our hearts really are, as so often we wish we had someone else’s job or partner or children or money. The command ‘do not covet’ reveals our sinful hearts.

What is sin? The Bible says: ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.’   (1 John 3:4) That’s why the catechism says: Q.14. What is sin? A. Sin is disobeying or not conforming to God’s law in any way. The 6th commandment says that we should not kill. That includes the unborn child and the terminally ill person. Just because the UK government might change the laws on these things does not mean they are not sinful. If our actions to the unborn or elderly break God’s law, expressed in the 6th commandment, then it is sin, no matter what direction public opinion moves in. The 6th commandment shines a light onto UK society revealing how far away we are from God today.

The law actually increases sin in the heart of the unbeliever. It stimulates sin. ‘… but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.’   (Romans 7:9) This is an amazing but sad truth. For example, you see a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass’ and what does this law do inside you? It makes you walk on the grass! It stimulates our sin. The knowledge that we cannot have something makes us want it. There is nothing so attractive to us as the forbidden, such is the rebellious spirit of man. If your friend is watching your house when you are on holiday and you say: ‘Please don’t read my private diary’, just by saying that, there’s a greater chance she will read it. Law can arouse sin in people. An excellent example of this is the prohibition era in the US, when it was forbidden to make or consume alcohol. The law became ‘Thou shalt not consume alcohol.’ What happened? The number of places which sold alcohol, despite being banned, doubled or tripled! The US saw the rise of speakeasies, illegal pubs. The law actually stimulates more disobedience. It is not God’s law which is bad (in fact, it is good) but it brings out what is sinful in fallen humanity.

This week I’ve been reminded of when in Jesus’ day, those with leprosy had to go to the priest. Could the priest help the leper? No! In fact, the priest was in a sense like God’s law, condemning the leper, showing him, yes, you have this disease and need to be sent away. The priest was impotent in that he could not change the leper. In contrast, how marvellous it was when lepers went to Jesus for healing. He touched them, changed them, and set them free from the disease. Who do you go to if you want to be changed, to the law or to Jesus? Who do you want to be married to?

3. A Christian’s tug-of-war

Let’s move on to consider verses 14-25. These are verses which many Christians disagree on. From verse 14 Paul stops using the past tense and uses the present tense. The personal pronouns are all in the first person. So, it seems likely to me, that in this section Paul is still speaking about the law, but now he is considering how the law impacts him as a Christian man. I believe that Paul is speaking as a Christian believer here. Look at verse 22: ‘For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.’ Surely, only a Christian can delight in God’s law. And this phrase ‘inner being’ found in verse 22 is found in 2 other places in the Bible, and in both it is speaking of a Christian.

‘Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’ (2 Corinthians 4:16)

‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being…’ (Ephesians 3:16)

However, there are parts of this passage which might suggest that Paul is thinking back to before he was a believer. ‘We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.’   (Romans 7:14)

‘For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.’   (Romans 7:18)

‘… but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!’   (Romans 7:23-24)

Over the centuries, and in commentaries, Christians have disagreed about who this wretched man is. The early Greek Fathers thought Paul was still speaking about himself as a non-Chrisitan Pharisee under the law. Others, such as Augustine, Luther and Calvin (and this is what I believe) view this section as a description of normal Christian life. There’s another group who think it describes a backslidden Christian. Still others, say this wretched man is a personification of Israel’s existence under the Mosaic covenant, and describes the way in which they tried to establish their own righteousness by obeying the law, even though that struggle was impossible.

Personally, I think the plain reading of the passage is the best explanation, especially because Paul speaks in the present tense, suggesting his present struggle with sin. Although he has been delivered from the dominion of sin, until Heaven he still knows the presence of sin in his heart. This is the tension with us, we know the presence of sin in our hearts but we also know the presence of Christ in our hearts. ‘… so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.’   (Ephesians 3:17)

Scotland is famous for its Highland Games. There are many different events. Perhaps you have taken part in some of them. One of the events is the tug-of-war. Two teams pull on the same rope as hard as they can – a test of strength and sure-footedness. It’s not easy- it’s a real struggle. But you are not on your own. It’s a joint effort.

The Christian life is like an ongoing tug-of-war event. This can be exhausting.

R C Sproul: ‘Before I became a Christian, I wanted to go only one way: [my way] the way of the flesh. I acquiesced to the desires of the flesh. I had a mind of flesh. I had no inclination toward the things of God. But then God changed my heart and planted in it a love for him and an inclination to walk in his ways. Now I have a desire to please God, but I still have a desire to please myself. I would like to think that every time those desires bump into each other, my desire to please God wins, but it does not, and I still sin. When I get to Heaven, and all the remnants of that flesh are removed from me, I will have one heart and one will and one mind-set to please God and God alone. Only then will I become conformed to the image of Christ.’

What is Sproul saying? Before he was a Christian, there was no tug-of-war. He just did whatever he liked- with no thought of God! But now, his Christian walk is a struggle between the way of the Holy Spirit, and of the flesh. Paul says; ‘For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!’   (Romans 7:18-24)

Like Paul, sometimes we can feel wretched. Like we are making no progress. Like it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Yet the Christian life is supposed to be a life of transformation. Gradual transformation usually. We call this sanctification.

I can relate all too well to Paul’s experience here. Indeed, this is the experience of every true believer. We are, as Luther said, ‘at the same time just and a sinner’. We are creatures of mixed desires. Jesus says: ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ (Matthew 26:41) ‘There is within us a constant daily struggle and warfare with the old self whose desires are battling the desires of the new self

R C Sproul says, ‘It is not easy being a Christian! It is a fight.’ ‘So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.’   (Romans 7:21)

RC Sproul: ‘It seems that whenever we desire to do good, we experience the closest proximity to evil. Sometimes… in our most precious hours of devotion to Christ, the most wicked thoughts will creep into our minds’.

I think it’s important to state that Paul is not saying he feels this way some of the time or even most of the time. He has already spoken of the experience of God’s love which floods his heart by the Holy Spirit. Paul knew great peace and joy in Christ. However, there are times when we feel like wretched men and women. Jesus even says: ‘Blessed are those who mourn (over their sin) for they shall be comforted.’

Leon Morris: ‘Great saints throughout the ages don’t commonly say ‘how good I am’; ‘go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man’ is the authentic cry not of someone who does not believe but of one who does’.

We don’t want to leave Paul in his wretched state here. He asks a question: ‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?’ (Romans 7:24) It is not the law which will rescue him! He answers his own question. ‘Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Romans 7:25) Paul’s struggle has led him back to Jesus for strength.

Just as a law cannot justify the sinner, so the law cannot sanctify the saint. Only Jesus can empower us to be more like him. So if as a Christian, the law convicts you of sin and you feel the internal struggle of the Christian fight, don’t stay there, but rather run into the arms of Jesus, confessing your sin and asking him to empower you to know victory over sin in your life.

Sermon: Sunday, 24th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 6:15-23

God’s law sometimes gets bad press, even in Christian circles. This is partly because the purpose of God’s law is misunderstood, or should I say purposes (plural). That’s the thing about God’s law. It has several different functions. It reveals God’s character to us. For example, when we say, ‘Do not lie’ that’s because God is a God of truth. It also functions like an x-ray of our hearts, because when we read the 10 commandments, we are meant to think, ‘I actually haven’t kept any of those.’ So, the law is meant to show us our sin, and in doing that, it sends us to Jesus the Saviour we need.

But another function of the law is to give Christians freedom, in that it shows us the way God wants us to live. God’s laws are designed to give us freedom. For example, imagine there were no traffic laws and you could drive without any rules. Would that be freedom? Of course not. It would be harmful to us, not to mention other drivers. If all drivers stuck to the rules of the road, driving would be safer and more enjoyable. The same is true of God’s laws. God’s people are called to obey them, not to cramp our style, but to bless us. They show us the way of love and true freedom. Do you have a positive attitude to the law?

However, if God’s laws are so good for us, why does Paul say that Christians ‘… are not under the law, but under grace.’   (Romans 6:14) It would be easy for us to misunderstand what Paul is saying here. What does he mean when he says we are not under law? He means that we cannot get into a right relationship with God by obeying the law, summarised in the 10 commandments. The law is not a ladder we need to climb and climb in order to get to Heaven. He means that as Christians, the judging and condemning power of the law no longer has a hold on us, as in Christ we are forgiven. Because of God’s grace, we are treated as if we had never sinned. We cannot climb up to Heaven, but in Christ, God has come done and kept the law which we could never keep, and died on the cross to remove the curse of the law from us.

However, we must not go too far. Some people read verse 14, and when they hear that ‘we are not under the law’ they wrongly assume that the law has no place in the Christian life. They think that we don’t really need to try and keep the law. This is not true. Whilst we cannot earn God’s forgiveness through keeping the law, once we are saved by God’s grace, we are given the Holy Spirit in order to help us to keep the law. We keep it not to earn brownie points, but out of gratitude to the God who has saved us. RC Sproul once said: ‘The essence of the Christian ethic is gratitude.’ This is so true. All Christians ought to conscientiously keep God’s law out of a response of gratitude to how much Christ has done for us. So, we are not under the condemnation of the law as Christians, but we must still keep all his laws, motivated by gratitude. We must understand that keeping God’s law out of gratitude to God is the way of freedom and blessing.

As we saw last week, some people heard the gospel and twisted its teaching saying that Christians might as well live any way they choose, ignoring God’s law – after all, God will just forgive us anyway. Some even wickedly argue that the more we sin the more God’s grace is displayed, and so we should sin as much as possible. Paul has already strongly opposed this false teaching, arguing that Christians are people who are in union with Christ and have died to sin, and received Christ’s life-giving power. Sin has no place in our lives. We are new creations. We are new people. We are ‘dead-to-sin’ people. We cannot continue in sin because of what God has done for us – joining us to Jesus Christ.

1. You have a new master

In verse 15, Paul returns to this twisted thinking: ‘What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!’ Some people, even some Christians might have a careless attitude to sin. We slip into thinking, ‘What difference will this little sin really make? God will understand.’ We might fool ourselves into thinking that we can ‘play with sin’ as if we are in control of sin, and can go so far, but will be able to stop when we want to. That is not how sin works. The Bible speaks of ‘… the sin that so easily entangles…’ (Hebrews 12:1) It’s like an octopus with its tentacles around us.

Once again, Paul gives another reason why Christians can never treat sin lightly. The reason is this: when we became Christians, we pledged our allegiance to Christ. He is our master now. ‘Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey…’   (Romans 6:16) If we are slaves to Christ, and we are, then we must obey his commands. We are no longer slaves to sin. Our allegiance has totally changed.

At first, this might sound shocking. You might even think, ‘I’m a Christian but I don’t want to be a slave to anyone, not even Christ.’The word ‘slave’ almost always carries negative connotations for us. But not here. Think of the very first words in this letter. ‘Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle…’   (Romans 1:1) Paul identifies as a ‘slave’ of Christ. This is not all Paul says – for example he also identifies as an adopted son of God and an heir with Christ, in chapter 8. God is our Father and we are his children.

Nevertheless, we need to grasp what we mean when we say that we are ‘slaves’ of Christ. It is a voluntary slavery! In Roman times, around a third of the population were slaves, and many others had been slaves and so around half of those Paul is writing to know what he means. It was commonplace for people in severe poverty to offer themselves into slavery, so that they could guarantee they’d have a roof over their heads and food on their tables. If you surrendered yourself as a slave, then of course, you had obligations to fully obey your new master. Everybody knew that. ‘Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?’   (Romans 6:16)

Christians are people who voluntarily pledge themselves to be servants or slaves to King Jesus. We present ourselves to him as his slaves. The only other alternative is to present ourselves to sin, and be slaves to sin. There is no other option. The thing is, to be a slave to Jesus, to pledge our allegiance wholeheartedly to him is true freedom. Don’t get too worked up about the language of slavery – Paul is just using it as an illustration. The point is this, the hallmark of slavery is obedience, and those who pledge allegiance to Jesus must obey him. We are not free to do a little sinning on the side.

John Stott: ‘Conversion is the act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery; and slavery demands a total, radical, exclusive obedience. For no-one can be the salve of two masters as Jesus said. So, once we have offered ourselves to him as his slaves we are permanently and unconditionally at his disposal. There is no possibility of going back on this. Having chosen our master, we have no other choice but to obey him.’

This is a helpful reminder that becoming a Christian, or conversion, is when Jesus becomes both our Saviour and also becomes our Lord or master. You can’t have Jesus as just your Saviour and then live any way you please.

You might find this teaching of Paul offensive. Do we really either have to be slaves to sin or to Christ? Can’t we be neutral? In Jesus says; ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’   (John 8:34-36) We cannot be neutral. We cannot remain slaves to no one, even if we think we can. All humans are by nature those who serve themselves. We can be slaves to our work, pouring ourselves into work and living for it. We can be slaves of our possessions, always wanting more stuff, the latest gadgets and more new clothes. We can be slaves to all kinds of negative habits, such as being bad-tempered, greedy, or lustful. We are prisoners of our appetite to sin. We cannot escape sin or its penalty, which is death.

Kent Hughes: ‘Characteristically, the most enslaved argue that they are the most free’.

Think of the prodigal son, who felt so free as he headed off to the far country. Was he really free? Of course not!

2. You have a new lifestyle

Verse 19 highlights to us that being a slave to sin is not something static, but is a downward spiral. In contrast, being a free slave of Jesus Christ leads to a virtuous upward spiral on the path of holiness: ‘For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.’ In other words, in the past you used to use your energy to serve yourself; now, use your energy to serve Christ.

What does it mean to ‘present our members as slaves to righteousness’? It is comprehensive. It means to use our hearts and minds and hands and feet and gifts and talents and all that we are and yield them to Christ.

A well-known hymns puts it like this:
1. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee…
2. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love…
4. Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold…
5. Take my will and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine…

Paul states it memorably; ‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ &nbsp: (Romans 12:1) Living as a Christian involves a radically new lifestyle. We were pleasers of self and now we are driven, albeit imperfectly, to please God.

Think back to before you were a Christian. Perhaps you were single-minded in climbing the career ladder, or getting more money, or enjoying yourself as much as possible with good holidays, food, wine and experiences. Our pursuit of holiness should be just as dedicated as that. And this single-mindedness doesn’t make you a fanatic, nor does it mean your life will be impoverished. You will not be the loser. In fact, as the end of verse 19 says so clearly, yielding to righteousness leads us to become more like Jesus – it is for our sanctification. Just as fish are made for water and birds to fly, so we are designed by God to be most free when we live for his glory.

St Augustine said that all human beings are like a horse, and the horse has one of two riders. Either Satan or Christ is riding the horse. Before conversion, Satan held the reigns to your horse, and you were free (verse 20) in regard to righteousness, which means you were enslaved in darkness. Now, Christ has your reigns, and he leads us to beautiful places. Who would you rather have in control of your life? Who do you want holding your reigns?

3. You have a new destination

What was our destination before we trusted in Jesus? Verse 21 says the end of slavery to sin is death. We know it leads to separation from the goodness of God. Paul wants us to think back to our pre-Christian days and to realistically consider what our sinful actions produced. We might have enjoyed sexual immorality for a time, but in the end, it ruined a marriage and a family and brought intense suffering to many. The fruits were dark. You used to spend so much of your money on yourself without a thought for others. Did it satisfy you in the end? No. Sin promises much but delivers so little. It’s been that way since Satan told Adam and Eve they would have knowledge through disobeying God. Sin destroys our relationship with God, with others, and even prevents us from being our true selves, the people God intended us to be. Sin is a terrible master every single time. There is one thing which sin the slave master will always do – he always pays us fair wages. The thing is, the wages of sin is death (verse 23). And this is what we deserve by refusing to yield to Christ.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a wonderful alternative. Those who are slaves to Christ and to righteousness are not given wages. Instead, we are given a free gift, and that gift is eternal life. ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 6:23)

What do you want from God, the wages you deserve or his free gift?

Sermon: Sunday, 17th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 6:1-14

There are times in our lives when we experience a radical change in our identities and this change must bring about a change in our thinking and in our behaviour. What do I mean? For example, when you get married, you become what you were not before, a husband or a wife. This becomes part of your identity. But it ought to also change your thinking and behaviour. Before, you might have done whatever you wanted in your free time, but now, you have a spouse to consider. You can’t carry on living as a single person. In fact, each day you need to remember this new aspect of your identity, so that your actions will be those of a loving husband or wife. You need to remember who you are. Likewise, if you have children, that too shapes your identity. You are now a parent and now have two or three or more people to consider when you are making decisions. You need to sacrifice time and energy for your children, as well as your spouse.

Last week, we were reminded of the marvellous truth that God’s grace is greater than all our sin. What a relief it is to know that although we cannot earn our way to heaven, or pay off our huge moral debt to God, God in his grace and love has provided Jesus as the Saviour and substitute who does this for us. We’re not treated as we deserve, but rather with grace. Hallelujah! This is the gospel! Christ does for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. However, some people might distort and twist this teaching and say that Christians might as well live any way they choose, ignoring God’s law – after all, God will just forgive us anyway. Some even wickedly argue that the more we sin the more God’s grace is displayed, and so we should sin as much as possible. Paul anticipates this false argumentation and responds: ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means!’   (Romans 6:1-2a) People who argue that way fail to understand that when people are ‘born again’ they die to sin, and are raised with Christ. ‘We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’   (Romans 6:2b)

The greatest and most radical change a human being can ever experience is when we become followers of Jesus, when we are converted, or ‘born again’. This is a permanent change to our identity. Before, we were ‘in Adam’ and slaves to sin. Now we are ‘in Christ’, united to Jesus through faith, and those who are dead to sin. Yes, we continue to sin. But we have been set free from the tyranny and penalty and power of sin. I am a dead to sin and alive in Christ person. And the more I understand my new identity, the more it will impact by thinking and behaviour. We are not in the kingdom of darkness any more. We are in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This must permeate our thinking and impact our actions every day. This might sound strange at first, but I think it would be transformative in our Christian lives if we could say to ourselves each morning, ‘I’m a person who is dead to sin and alive in Christ. I have a new boss – King Jesus, and I live for him.’

Paul is not saying to us that we ought to try and die to sin. He is saying, as a matter of fact, that we are those who are dead to the control of sin. In other words, sin is no longer our master – Jesus Christ is now our master. Yes, we shall still be tempted. However, each time I am tempted I now have the God-given power to resist that temptation. I am a new creation. Is that right? ‘And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’   (1 Corinthians 10:13) It’s so frustrating when I fall into the same kinds of sins again and again. Each time I sin, it’s an anomaly; a deviation from what ought to happen, because God always gives us a way of escape.

It’s not just Paul who wants you to grasp your new identity. John says: ‘No one who lives in him keeps on sinning… No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.’ (1 John 3:6 and 9) Of course, this does not mean that we become perfect before heaven. But it means that salvation is not a licence to sin more, but gives an inner resolve and power to hate the sin God hates.

Last week, we thought of being ‘in Christ’ as being like a rock climber unclipped from Adam’s rope and onto Jesus’ rope. Jesus is scaling the mountain as our leader and representative. What happens to him happens to us. We are ‘in Christ’. In verse 10 we’re told that Jesus died to sin. This does not mean he himself was sinful, but that he lived in a world surrounded by sin and was tempted by sin. When he was raised and ascended to Heaven, this was no longer the case. Let’s remember the truth that what happens to Christ our representative happens to us. ‘Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’   (Romans 6:3-4)

Kent Hughes: ‘The specific emphasis of verses 3-5 is that we are so profoundly identified with Christ’s death and resurrection that we actually did die with him and truly were raised with him, so that now we share in his resurrection life’.

There’s a danger that verses 1-5 sound too abstract for us, with all this talk about being ‘dead-to-sin’ people. An illustration might help. One of the most famous Christians of all time is St Augustine. Before he was born again, he lived a life of ‘wine, women and song’. One day, after he became a Christian, he met one of the prostitutes who had known him in his ‘old life’. She approached him seductively and said: ‘It is I, Augustine’. His answer was simple: ‘Yes, but it is not I, Augustine.’ In other words, Augustine had become a new creation with a new identity. The old Augustine she had known, who was a slave to sin, was dead. The new Augustine was in Christ and that changed everything. The question is- what helped Augustine fight off temptation that day? It was his understanding that the old Augustine had died with Christ, coupled with the fact that the new Augustine now had the power of Christ within, new power to resist temptation. And he did. This is the way we all need to be thinking more and more. Our sins were put to death on the cross and we were released from the bondage of sin and into newness of life.

Baptism is mentioned in verse 3. Baptism does symbolise the washing away of sin. But it also symbolises our union with Christ, marking our identification with the death of Jesus.

R C Sproul: ‘My baptism signifies my identification with Jesus’ death on the cross, and that I am mystically crucified with Christ. I identify with that act; I put my personal trust in the act of Christ on the cross, and as Christ was taken down from the cross and buried in the ground, so I, in terms of my old nature, am put to death and buried.’

‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.’   (Romans 6:5) In other words, when we become Christians, there is a new power at work within us, that of the Holy Spirit, and over time He changes our inclinations and desires and He given us power to resist temptation. We now have the life of God in our souls, because of our union to Christ. We are attached to Christ the vine, and his sap flows into us, his branches. We bear fruit.

Once again, let’s grasp that becoming a Christian involves a change of master – from slavery sin to freedom in Christ. ‘For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin…’   (Romans 6:6)

But there’s also a sad truth Christians must wrestle with. Even though we are no longer under sin’s dominion and have new power to resist, sometimes we still fall into sin. There’s the story of a great eagle (see Christopher Ash commentary on Romans) tethered to a post, walking sadly round and round: ‘One day a new owner announced he would release the bird. A crowd gathered – the rope was removed – and the eagle continued walking round and round in the same old rut. He was free to fly and yet did not. The sad absurdity of that scene is like the Christian who continues to sin.’ To my shame, sometimes I can relate to that eagle. Christ has set me free, and yet still at times, I wallow in the mud of sin.

Those who twist the gospel, arguing that it means we can live as we please don’t understand the gospel. The truth is, at salvation we are justified by God, declared righteous in his sight, but we also begin a life of sanctification, where we walk the path of holiness and not the path of sin. Practically speaking, how can we ensure that we see growth in this walk of holiness? This section ends with Paul commanding us to remember who we are, to root out sin in our lives, and to consciously offer ourselves to God. Let’s unpack this now.

Remember your identity. ‘… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’   (Romans 6:11) To ‘count ourselves’ means to really grasp and keep coming back to this reality. We are dead to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. Say this to yourself each day. Pray for more of the Spirit’s power. Paul states four times in this short section that we are dead to sin (verses 3, 6, 9 and 11). He hammers the message home to us. He really wants this to shape our identities. This is something we need to keep on doing – we need to keep on counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.

Kent Hughes: ‘Have you ever taken the time to consider the fact that you participated in the events of the cross, that you died and that you were resurrected with Christ? If not, why not do so right now. This is prevention theology’.

I love the idea of ‘prevention theology’ which Hughes mentions. Instead of just focusing on confessing our sins after we commit them, why not spend more time considering how to not commit them in the first place, by remembering who you are in Christ. Just as we invest in preventative health care by eating well and exercising to avoid ill health, so we must discipline our minds each day, with God’s help, to be sensitised to how out of place sin is in our lives as new creations.

It’s said that before her children would go out to a party, The Queen Mother would say to them: ‘You are royal children, royal manners.’ That is to say, you have royal identities so behave that way. Paul is saying to us that we are royal subjects of King Jesus and so we must live as such.

Respond to your identity. How do we respond? By weeding out sin in our lives and by positive planting through offering ourselves in service to God. We always need both the negative and the positive together – taking off the old and putting on the new. ‘Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness…’   (Romans 6:12-13) Let’s be honest and realistic – all Christians continue to be tempted and struggle with wrong desires and ambitions. But we can use our new freedom in Christ to fight these desires. Desires which are wrong must be fought against. Wage war against the enemy of sin. Since now in Christ we are ‘alive to God’ the natural thing for us to do is to give the whole of ourselves to God in service. Don’t withhold anything from God. Serve him in your work and in your family and in your community. Yield your mind and your heart and your will to God.

Sermon: Sunday, 10th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 5:12-21

Why is it that we live in a world where no one is capable of living a life without selfishness or without hurting others? Why are human beings capable of goodness and kindness but also of terrible evil? Why is it that all people eventually die? Is this just part of the normal cycle of life, as Sir Chris Hoy has recently asserted? These are big questions. Why is the world the way it is? This section of Romans explains why things are the way they are. And like it or not, the explanation is that the actions of two men, Adam and Jesus Christ, have had dramatic repercussions for the human race. Today in 2024, we tend to think about things individualistically. We often recoil from thinking about how one person’s behaviour can shape reality for other people as well as their own. We might think this is unfair. However, it is true, nonetheless. We are not islands, but are part of families and countries and are also part of the human race. We are more interconnected than we like to think.

For example, think of a man who aged 45 inherits several million pounds from his parents in their will. This man did not work for the money – his parents did. I might think, ‘That’s not fair. I’ve never received that kind of a benefit.’ But it’s because he is in the family. Think of an opposite example. A family of six is living in relative comfort for many years. But then the father makes an unwise and risky investment using all the family’s money. He loses everything. Suddenly, the family become homeless and the parents split up and their children have to relocate to a new area far away from their friends. We could say, ‘That’s not fair on the children.’ But like it or not, the foolishness of one family member spills over into the lives of the whole family.

If a country has a wise leader who improves the economy and housing for his people, then many benefit from their representative. However, if a country has a foolish leader, who enters into an unjust war, it will be a disaster for the ordinary people in the country. In this way, human beings are bound together by the decisions of others. If the Scotland squad win we say ‘we won’ because they are our representatives. We weren’t playing on the pitch.

One of the best Biblical examples of this is the story of David and Goliath. David is fighting on behalf of the Israelites, and what happens to David will have a profound effect on the whole nation, because he is their representative. If he loses to the giant Goliath, then Israel will become the slaves of the Philistines; however, if David wins, the nation will be free. It all hinges on one man, David. If Goliath loses, then his people, the Philistines, will lose with him. The war is not being handled individualistically, but through two representatives.

1. The ruin of mankind (verses 12-14)

Our passage today explains why human beings are born with original sin, leading to wrong thoughts and actions and rebellion against God: ‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned…’   (Romans 5:12) It is because the representative of the whole race was Adam, and he chose to disobey God by eating from the tree he was forbidden to eat from. It’s all detailed for us in Genesis chapter 3. Adam’s disobedience was a tragedy for the human race. We could even say that through his disobedience, he squandered the family fortune, bankrupting the human race.

Think of a river being polluted at the source. Adam is that source, at the head of our family tree. Just as faulty genes of disease are often passed down through the generations, so Adam’s sin is passed down to each one of us. We call this original sin.

R C Sproul: ‘Original sin refers to the result of the first sin, not the first sin itself… it is not that we are sinful because we sin, but rather that we sin because we are sinful. The activity of sin flows out of a sinful nature, a fallen nature, a heart that is out of sync with God. Man is fallen in the depths of his being, and has a basic disposition towards sin rather than towards righteousness.’

We might find this teaching of original sin unfair and offensive. However, it is true to the way things are. If people were really born neutrally, then we would surely expect some of them not to become selfish or greedy or those who hurt others. But that is not what we find. What we find is that 100% of people fail to keep their own standards far less God’s. Only Jesus lived a flawless life. And we find that 100% of people die. We find that even very young children quickly begin to display selfish tendencies, no matter how consciously their parents bring them up. The teaching of original sin might be uncomfortable and seem unfair, but it describes the way the world is in a way in which nothing else does. There is no other reasonable explanation.

Jesus teaches exactly the same thing. ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.’ (  (Mark 7:20-23) Jesus, of course, is right. No matter what you might do, you cannot stop these thoughts, proving that we have sinful natures. What a mixture human beings are! We are made in the image of God, with dignity and the ability to love and plan and design. And yet, as a race we can’t stop waging war on one another and exploiting one another. The world is full of injustice and poverty, even though there is enough food to go round. Why did one of the most civilised and educated countries in the world, Germany, murder six million Jews? Why the silent holocaust of the unborn? Why divorce and drugs and fraud? Because the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

Sadly, throughout the history of the human race, this behaviour has always come to the surface. We are not improving over time! Even in the days between Adam and Moses (which verses 13-14 speak about) before the Ten Commandments had been given, the wickedness of our race was obvious. There was murder and rape and cruelty on a massive scale. When the law was eventually given, that just served to highlight our twistedness and rebellion all the more. Chuck Swindoll tells the story of riding his bike across his neighbour’s grass, making a mess of the lawn, even though he knew he shouldn’t have been doing that. Eventually, a sign was put up: ‘keep of the grass – no bikes’ This was like the giving of the law. But he carried on cycling over the grass anyway, so the sign just made his misdemeanours all the more evident. That’s what happened when the law was given – the sins of humanity were highlighted.

It is a bit depressing thinking about Adam being our covenant head, or representative. My favourite illustration of this situation is to picture a rock climber scaling a mountain, with countless others clipped onto his belt. If he falls, then everyone else on his rope will also fall. What happens to him will happen to everyone else. And tragically Adam does fall. This describes the history of humanity.

But there’s also another illustration. Through faith, we are unclipped from Adam’s rope and clipped onto Jesus’ rope instead. What happens to him will now happen to us. And wonderfully, he defeats death and sin forever. He scales the mountain perfectly. His obedience becomes our obedience and his death becomes ours, and his life flows into us. This leads us to our next point.

2. The rescue of mankind (verses 15-19)

Christians are those who are clipped on to Jesus’ rope. God does not want to leave humanity in a state of sin and misery and so in love and grace he sends his Son into the world. And on the cross, our sin is imputed to him and his goodness and perfect obedience is imputed to us. We might say, ‘That’s not fair.’ But it is true. It is grace. It is God’s remedy for us. Whilst Adam’s disobedience is so destructive, Christ’s perfect obedience brings us forgiveness, peace, hope and eternal life. ‘Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’   (Romans 5:18-19)

Adam and Christ, the second Adam, do have something in common. Both of them are representatives whose acts has enormous consequences. Adam’s plunged us down into ruin. But Christ’s obedience and death on the cross changes everything for the good. Christ is able to deal with the sin which flows from our hearts. He forgives us. He gives us his Spirit in order to change us from the inside, and bring us back into God’s presence. His grace is greater than all our sin – much greater.

Adam failed at being a representative. But Jesus succeeded in every respect. What a privilege to be clipped onto him. He is always good and righteous and kind and compassionate. He did on our behalf what we could never do and perfectly kept the law. And he gave his life for our sins. You could not wish for or imagine a better representative than Jesus.

And this shapes our new identity as Christians. We are no longer in Adam but are in Christ. Yes, we still make mistakes, sometimes serious ones, but what happens to Jesus will happen to us, as we are clipped onto him by faith. The marvellous truth for the Christian is this: there is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in your heart.

Charles Wesley wrote the hymn ‘O Jesus full of truth and grace’:
O Jesus, full of truth and grace,
more full of grace than I of sin,
yet once again I seek your face;
open your arms and take me in,
and freely my backslidings heal
and love the faithless sinner still.
You know the way to bring me back,
my fallen spirit to restore:
O for your truth and mercy’s sake forgive,
and bid me sin no more;
the ruins of my soul repair
and make my heart a house of prayer.

Friends, let’s celebrate this amazing truth today – we are no longer in Adam but are in Christ. Christ’s impact on the human race far outweighs that of Adam’s impact: ‘But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’   (Romans 5:20-21)

Let’s end with another fantastic thought. Because Jesus is our covenant head, our representative, our salvation it totally assured. He has already defeated death and he cannot fail. And because he cannot fail, and what happens to him will happen to us, those who trust him are assured of eternal life. We are assured of eternal life. Were it down to my own efforts to enter Heaven, I would fail miserably. But it’s not down to me. It’s down to him. We are tethered to Christ!

‘And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.’   (Ephesians 2:6)

So, if you haven’t trusted him yet, then do so now.