Sermon Notes 8/26 “Victory!”

OK so we know that the summer is almost over. Next week will be Labor Day and after that everyone will be back in school. You probably noticed that the weather has already started to change. We still have a lot of nice summery weather ahead of us, but winter’s coming.

You may or may not know I am a hockey fan and I used to subscribe to what’s called the Center Ice package where I could watch almost all of the NHL games on any given day. The way that works is that you get to watch TV from different parts of the country and from Canada. I remember one time watching an ad for hockey on a Canadian TV station and it showed a wintery scene and the announcer voiced over, “The bad news is, summer’s over, winter’s coming. The good news is, winter’s coming, hockey’s started.”

So that’s kind of where we are now. Summer’s almost over. I love summer. But time marches on. But Christmas is coming. That’s something to look forward to. I went through a time in my life when I wasn’t keen on Christmas because I think what our culture has done with it is an abomination. But in the last few years I have learned to appreciate the value of it. I can avoid the excesses of our materialistic culture and appreciate the beauty of what Christmas represents. I can also listen to my favorite Christmas CD “Christmas With Weezer”!

This is all appropriate because this week we’re going to look at a part of Paul’s letter to the Romans that describes as being in that kind of situation. Christmas is coming. We know it’s coming. But it’s not here yet. We have to wait. But if you love Christmas (some people really love Christmas, there is this sweet anticipation. We can’t wait. There’s a lot of excitement. That’s where today’s reading leaves us. It won’t seem so at first, but by the time we’re done I think you’ll get it.

What I’m going to do with today’s scripture is I’m going to start with Paul’s cry of anguish and triumphant proclamation of victory, then spending some time talking about what we have gained victory over, and how.

So let’s look at the scripture.

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:24-25 NIV)

The Man of Chapter 7

Well you’re probably thinking you’re in for it if I start of the scripture reading with something about wretchedness. And what has this got to do with Christmas anyway? Here we go with the whole sin thing, again. But trust me this really is good news, even though it might not look like it on the surface.

What does Paul mean and who is he writing about when he proclaims “What a wretched man I am!”? Is he writing about himself? That doesn’t seem right. Paul is an apostle. He’s a holy man. He’s seen Jesus in his glorified state. He goes around telling other people about freedom in Christ. He’s told us, just a few paragraphs before this writing, that we can’t live in sin; that we have become slaves to righteousness. So why is he so miserable? And is this even about him?

First off, let’s see if we can figure out why he’s so dejected. In the verses previous to the ones we read we can see that Paul describes being stuck in a dilemma. The dilemma is that the person being described wants to be good, to be righteous, to be holy, but continues to sin anyway. Let’s read it.

¹⁴ We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵ I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. ¹⁶ And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. ¹⁸ For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. ^u For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. ¹⁹ 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. ²⁰ 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.

²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ 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. (Romans 7:14-23)

Ouch! This doesn’t sound very happy at all. Here we see a person engaged in a real struggle. A life and death struggle, we might say. Because we see a war being waged between the spiritual life and the unspiritual life. As we will see as we go further on in Paul’s letter, the struggle is between what he calls the Spirit and the flesh. And the outcome of the struggle determines whether we will live in misery and defeat or whether we will live the life of God.

But I think, given all of the things that we’ve heard from Paul, it’s fair to ask whether he’s talking about himself or someone else in this part of the letter. And let me tell you that we’re not the only ones who wonder this. There has been a debate among Christian scholars dating all the way back to the earliest times about this very question.

The question, “who is this man?” can generally be answered in one of three ways. The first way is that Paul is referring to himself before he became a Christian. The second view is that Paul is referring to someone who is a Christian but is immature, the so-called “carnal Christian.” The third idea is that Paul is referring to himself in the present as a mature Christian.

Now you may be wondering why you should even care about this. It all sounds like a bunch of religious hair-splitting and Christians are always arguing about everything anyway. But there is at least one good reason why we should consider these arguments. By understanding the debates about various scriptures in the light of differing doctrines, we can come to understand who we really are as Christians. We can come to understand better what we believe and why. And in the end, this will make our lives as Christians less anxious and more fruitful. So let’s think about each of these ideas in turn.

The first idea suggests that Paul is writing about the unbeliever, the one who has not been regenerated into new life in the Spirit. The one who has not been “born again.” At first glance that seems right. Paul writes “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.” (Ro. 7:14) And he explained very well, we might think better than necessary, that before we were redeemed by Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross we were slaves to sin.

But let’s think about some other things that he writes here. He writes, “I agree that the law is good,” (Ro. 7:16 NIV), “I have the desire to do what is good,” (Ro. 7:18 NIV), “I want to do good,” (Ro. 7:21 NIV), “I delight in God’s law,” (Ro. 7:22 NIV). If what we’ve learned from Paul (and from our experience) up to now is true, this can’t describe the man who is not “in Christ.” Because the unbeliever, the unregenerate man, hates the law, and could care less about doing good. One of the things we know for certain is that it is our sanctification that makes us conscious of sin. I think, really, it is the indwelling Spirit, which we didn’t have before we were reborn. Consider this quote by C.S. Lewis:

When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both bad and evil: bad people do not know about either. (Mere Christianity, 88)

What Lewis is saying, and what we will realize if we ponder our own experience, is that before we were born again we did not know we were sinners. Try this out on your unbelieving friends. If you tell them they are sinners, they will at best think the idea ridiculous. At worst they will be offended. If Paul is so concerned about his sinful nature, these verses can’t describe him before he was a Christian.

The second idea is that Paul is referring to the man who has been born again but is still trapped in sin. This imagines that when people are converted to Christ they go through a phase of spiritual immaturity, but at some point they pass from that state into a state of maturity where they no longer struggle with sin.

Again, it seems like there might be some justification for this view. Paul does write on a number of occasions, especially when he is rebuking immorality in the various churches, about being “spiritual infants.” But of course the problem with this is that it presumes at least a “three stage” process of sanctification: unregenerated -> immature Christian -> mature Christian. This is not in keeping with Paul’s doctrine that we have already considered even in the letter to the Romans, the doctrine we refer to as the “Doctrine of the Two Ways.” If you were here the last couple of weeks you will recall I pointed out where Paul’s theology hinges on it.

This doctrine essentially puts forward the notion that everything has to be considered in the context of two opposing realities. One is the reality of God’s perfect love, and the other is the reality of man’s rebellion. God and Satan, Light and dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Spirit and Flesh, Redemption and Sin, Christ and Adam; we are all familiar with these great opposing realities. And, according to the New Testament writers, we are all in one or the other of these realms, but never outside or in between. We see this everywhere in Paul’s writings. Can we seriously imagine that he would now, at the end of Chapter 7 of Romans, deviate from this fundamental doctrine and propose three stages of salvation? I don’t think so.

So final we are left with the third alternative, that Paul is writing about himself now. That he is writing about the mature Christian. At first glance this seems like the least acceptable and least likely choice, particularly because of what we have been looking at for the last two weeks, that Jesus Christ has liberated us from sin. If we are liberated from sin, how can we still be slaves to sin, as Paul states here in verse 25?

But if we think about it logically, we will see that this idea is foreign neither to Paul’s theology nor to the overall worldview of the New Testament.

The first thing we must recall is that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that Paul’s argument had moved beyond the topic of “justification,” the process of being declared “not guilty” because of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, to “sanctification,” which we said was becoming more and more Christ-like. The fact that we are expected to make progress at something indicates that there is a process involved. And if there is a process, we cannot suppose that we will flip a switch which will instantly turn unregenerate sinners into glorified saints in the practical sense.

One thing about sanctification is that it leads to glorification, but we never achieve it in this lifetime. Or at least I am not aware of any human being who has ever achieved the glorified state while still in mortal life. Not even Jesus. Another thing about sanctification is that, as CS Lewis commented in the quote I read a moment ago, the more Christ-like we become, the more we realize how sinful we are.

Further, we will recall that the New Testament age we live in now has been described as the age of “the already and the not yet.” The background for this idea is the Old Testament expectation of the “Day of the Lord.” The Day of the Lord is a day when God will intervene in the affairs of earth in order to bring about justice and vindication. All wrongs will be made right, all trespasses accounted for, and the earth restored to the unfallen state. Everyone in Israel expected it to happen sometime. Nobody knew when. The Jews are still waiting for it. You can find the Day of the Lord throughout Old Testament prophecy. One place that paints a particularly compelling picture is in Isaiah Chapter 61 where we find this prophecy:

61 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

to proclaim freedom for the captives

and release from darkness for the prisoners,

2 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor

and the day of vengeance of our God,

to comfort all who mourn,

3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty

instead of ashes,

the oil of joy

instead of mourning,

and a garment of praise

instead of a spirit of despair.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

a planting of the Lord

for the display of his splendor. (Is. 61:1-3)

Jesus declared that this prophecy was fulfilled by his coming (Lk. 4:18-19). Because of that the contemporaries of Jesus were convinced that the resurrection of Jesus marked the beginning of the Day of the Lord. And we still believe that. But the first Christians had the idea that everything was going to happen immediately, like maybe by next Tuesday. The fact that it is called the “Day” of the Lord led most people to believe that it would be a sudden and decisive event. Even Paul probably believed that, as indicated in some of his earlier writings. But it didn’t happen immediately. The early Christians learned that when God says a day, we don’t know what he means. The apostle Peter writes:

⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Pet. 3:8-9 NIV).

So within the first couple of generations of Christianity we see this idea develop that the Day of the Lord has started, but that it is not complete. Thus we inherit the descriptive phrase “the already and the not yet.” The Day of the Lord has already come with the resurrection of Jesus, but it is not yet fulfilled, meaning that the restoration of all things has yet to occur.

As Christians, because we are intimately tied to the Day of the Lord by our identification with the risen Christ, we too ought to expect that we are living in a time of already and not yet. And this, I think, is how we see Paul describing himself. He has already and forever been completely saved by the atoning sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus, but he is not yet glorified. So the bottom line here is that Paul is using his own experience to show that even though we are saved we can expect to struggle with sin on a daily basis for the rest of our lives.

I. Deliverance from Sin

That’s not a very happy prospect is it? This sounds like another one of those bait and switch things: “Hooray! You’re free in Christ! Now get ready to suffer…” Where do we find “Good News” in this?

In one sense I think we ought to be grateful to Paul for being so honest and open with us. The reason why is we tend to compare ourselves unfavorably with others. Paul could very easily have let everyone think that he was some kind of holier-than-thou who didn’t have to struggle with sin. I think we all want to do that, we don’t want anyone to know that we struggle. But we all do. And we look at other peoples’ façade of sinlessness and compare it with our own inner knowledge of failure and conclude that we don’t measure up. So I think that when we look at Paul and consider how hard he worked and how close he was to the Lord and yet he still struggled with sin, it gives us hope that we are not as bad as we make ourselves out to be. If Paul did all that and was still a sinner, maybe there’s hope for me. And in this, I think that he sets an example for us. I think we should be forthcoming with each other about our failures. That is the only way to really be free.

The most important point here though is that Paul answers his own question asked in agony: “who will deliver me from this body of sin?” Who? “Thanks be to God!” Paul writes, “who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25 NIV). Though we still struggle, the victory has already been won.

If Jesus has set me free from sin, what does that mean? Let me propose that Jesus has delivered us from sin in three ways: deliverance from sin’s penalty, deliverance from sin’s power, and ultimately deliverance from sin’s presence.

The first one, deliverance from sin’s penalty, is probably the one we have the best understanding of, at least intellectually. We know that before Jesus we were lost, living in sin, not even knowing we were living in sin, and that the wages of that sin was death. What we meant by death wasn’t necessarily physical death, but the wrath of God, which was that he looked away from us and left us in our depravity. When Jesus died on the cross, he took that penalty. He cried from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt. 27:46 ESV). And he died. And so the penalty for our sins, past present and future, was paid.

Last week we read the scripture “²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 NIV). This scripture assures us that those who continue in sin are bound to die, as we just said when we were talking about the penalty of sin. Our understanding of what Paul has been telling the Romans is that we have been freed from slavery to sin by becoming slaves to righteousness. Because we have the Spirit dwelling within us, we are not able to continue in sin. We do sin, but we can’t live in sin. So because of that we have been delivered from the power of sin. Paul writes to the Corinthian Church:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Cor. 15:54-57 NIV)

The power of sin is broken by the power of the cross.

Finally, we will eventually be freed from sin’s presence. We do not see it yet, but it is coming. It is on God’s calendar. It is inevitable. There will come a day when there will be no more sin, no more crying, no more tragedy, no more suffering, no more struggle. This ought to shape our outlook on life with anxious and joyful anticipation. It’s like looking forward to Christmas. You know it’s coming. And it’s going to be great. But it’s not here yet. Our liberation has already been accomplished. Christmas is on the calendar, but it is not yet fully realized.

There is a contemporary Christian song by a band named Tree63 that observes “It’s Friday but Sunday is coming.” Of course this brings to mind Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday. In some ways we can consider ourselves to be in that in-between place between Friday and Sunday. It’s not a perfect analogy because we are not in the grave. We are alive, risen with Christ. We’re not yet glorified, but we will be. He who promises is true, and the promise is real. Sunday’s coming. The victory is certain.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. (Rev. 22:20)

Sermon Notes 8/19, “Who Will You Serve?”

I’m not really all that interested in criminology but as I was putting together today’s message I thought, how can I illustrate what Paul is telling us in the second half of Chapter 6 of the book of Romans? And it seemed appropriate to me to think about the effect of being imprisoned and then suddenly and unexpectedly being released from prison.

So I did a Google search on the word “recidivism.” Recidivism indicates going back to prison again after serving a prison term and being released. To be honest with you I don’t even know why I know that, but I do. I actually found a shocking statistic that in California 70% of released prisoners return to prison within 3 years of being set free.[1]

I am no expert on this but I did a little research and I found out that most people who return to prison do so because they go back to the kind of life they led before they went to prison. They do not see a need to lead a different kind of life than the one they led before they were locked up. They re-enter the same environment, fall back into old patterns, and end up back in jail. Those people who succeed at remaining free after release are those who see the need for and are committed to a fundamental change in their lives.

So you might ask why I suddenly became interested in criminals and the answer is that we are all in the same boat. So far in Romans we have seen how Paul made the case that left to our own devices we are hopeless sinners, deserving of and receiving God’s wrath. Then we saw how suddenly, unexpectedly, we received a reprieve. We were set free, not because we had paid the penalty for our crimes, but because Jesus had paid the penalty for our crimes.

But then we saw that some of the newly freed prisoners were not well-equipped to handle their new found freedom. We have seen so far that Paul has argued against two separate wrong ideas about what it means to be Christian. On the one hand he has argued against legalism, the idea that I can earn my way to justification (remember we said that means being declared “not guilty”) by following the law.

The Jewish Christians of Paul’s time insisted that you could not be a Christian unless you meticulously kept the requirements of the Law handed down to Moses, including circumcision, the ceremonial calendar, and the dietary laws. In our time there are still plenty of people who believe in the principle of legalism: you have to be good to earn God’s favor, even though they may have dismissed the Mosaic Law. For them, being good means being religious.

The other wrong idea that Paul argued against, which we talked about last week, was what’s called antinomianism. Remember that we said that the core of that word is the Greek word nomos which means law. Antinomianism doesn’t mean saying that it’s OK to break the law, it means saying that the law doesn’t apply to me anymore. The idea behind antinomianism is that since I have been saved by grace and not by anything I did, it doesn’t matter if I break the law, it doesn’t matter if I sin, because I’m already saved, so I might as well just do it.

Last week we saw how Paul said this idea was wrong because if we have truly become identified with Christ, we are not able to continue to live in sin. Not that we can’t sin, but that we can’t live in sin. We will be convicted by the Spirit within us, and eventually we will have to give it up, or die. Really. Literally. The change within us is as profound as the change of a cucumber into a pickle. Once the cucumber is pickled, it can never go back to being a cucumber.

Today we are going to see how Paul makes his case against antinomianism, lawlessness, in a different way, by pointing out that our freedom isn’t from bondage to sin to no bondage, but from one kind of bondage to another. From bondage to sin to bondage to Christ.

¹⁵ What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. ¹⁸ You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹ I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. ²⁰ When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹ What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:15-23 NIV)

The Doctrine of the Two Ways

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to you that the New Testament understanding of reality is marked by two co-existing but completely separate and contradictory realities. This idea, like pretty much everything else I talk about from up here, has a fancy theological name; in this case it is called “The Doctrine of the Two Ways.”

This doctrine essentially puts forward the notion that everything has to be considered in the context of two opposing realities. One is the reality of God’s perfect love, and the other is the reality of man’s rebellion. God and Satan, Light and dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Spirit and Flesh, Redemption and Sin, Christ and Adam; we are all familiar with these great opposing realities. And, according to the New Testament writers, we are all in one or the other of these realms, but never outside or in between.

This doctrine is what is underneath Paul’s message about slavery. We saw last week that before Jesus set us free, we were slaves to sin. Now we are not. But what Paul is telling the Romans, and us, today is that we are not free from bondage. We have moved from the one reality: bondage to sin, to the other reality: bondage to Christ. There is no state of being in which we can think of ourselves as free from bondage. There is no “third way.”

Now, we hate this. We look upon slavery as something that is absolutely evil. And we should. When we think about slavery, as Americans we think about the brutality of the system chattel slavery of the antebellum South. This is why there is a debate among biblical scholars over whether the word that signifies slavery in Greek should be translated as “slave” or “bondservant.” Because the word slave has a certain connotation for modern Americans that it would not have had for ancient Romans.

As a historian I can tell you that for most of human history most people in the world have thought of slavery as normal. There are even cases where being a slave would have brought about certain advantages to the individual they might not otherwise be able to achieve. In the book of Acts the Apostle Philip evangelized the Ethiopian Eunuch. (Acts 8:26-40). In fact a eunuch was a slave, but a slave that had a high position in the Kingdom as a servant of the King. Not all slaves were forced into brutal captivity.

But even in Roman times, for most people slavery would not have been your first career choice. You were still not free. You still were at the mercy of the person who owned you. I think that’s why Paul uses this image of slavery to illustrate his point about sin. Sin is a cruel and ruthless master; slavery was not something you would normally aspire to.

But then Paul tells us in today’s message that when it comes to the spiritual life you can never be free. You must always be a slave. And there is no way to deny it. Whether we like it or not, no matter what our historical memory tells us about slavery, when it comes to spirit, we are all slaves.

Free to Love

So what about all of this talk about freedom in Christ? The problem is, I think, that we have a wrong definition of freedom. We are pretty clear on the definition of slavery, but we have a skewed understanding about what it means to be free. As we talked about last week and even today, we think that to be free means to “just do it!” Let yourself go wild. Do whatever you want. But in most cases when we do that, we are really not free, but still slaves to the cruel taskmaster sin. Because we know that sin isn’t harmless fun, it’s terrible and destructive.

Again, we can see this in the place where sin entered history, in the Book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve. God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree in order to keep them free from death. But Satan lied to Eve.

[3:1] Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” [2] And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, [3] but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” [4] But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. [5] For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5 ESV)

We can learn so much from the Bible if we pay close attention to what it says. What do we see happening here? Satan lied and promised Eve freedom. He told her “You will not surely die.” And he promised her something really cool, being like God. Of course one of the problems was that they were already like God. They were created in the image of God. But the other problem was that eating the fruit, far from making her free, would make her a slave to death. And this is exactly the way sin works. It promises us something really cool. But it gives us something really terrible.

So what is freedom? Real freedom, just like this story shows us, involves obedience to God. Think about what Adam and Eve had to give up when they chose to disobey. They had to give up perfect freedom under God’s care. And for what? Sin, and death, and corruption. That was not a good bargain.

So we can see clearly illustrated here in the Garden of Eden the truth of our bondage. We are either bound to obey God, which gives us true freedom, or we are bound to serve ourselves, and die in our sin. There is no third way.

Like those prisoners I talked about at the beginning of today’s message, they thought they were free, but really they just went back to their old ways, and they ended up with the same result: prison. The ones who were able to stay out of prison were the ones who became obedient to the law. By making themselves subservient to the law, they were able to remain free.

How Do I “Just Do It!”

All of this is really heavy, isn’t it? Some of you might be thinking, “Oh come on Pastor! I don’t want to think about all of this deep theological stuff. I just want to be mildly entertained and marginally inspired and go get some lunch!” But that is a perilous thought, because the stakes here are enormous.

If we have been touched by Christ we are free to choose whether we will be obedient to him or whether we will continue to obey our passions and the call of the world around us. We know what it looks like to be obedient to the world, and it ain’t pretty. How do we obey Jesus?

We looked a little bit at that last week. I mentioned then that there are two aspects of obedience: one negative and one positive; one that tells us what not to do, and one that tells us what to do. The not to do part is, don’t sin. Resist sin. The to do part is, live righteously. It’s simple. Don’t sin; live righteously. But it’s not very satisfying is it? Because the call of the world is so loud, and it seems that God’s voice is so faint. No matter how much we want to resist sin and live righteously, we just feel so overwhelmed. And we fail. And sometimes our failure just makes us want to give up.

We’re not alone. Let me read to you something from a book titled Making All Things New by Henri Nouwen. Nouwen was a twentieth-century spiritual writer and theologian who wrestled with the meaning of what it means to be obedient to Christ. Here’s what he writes:

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible.... it is clear that we are usually surrounded by so much inner and outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. We have often become deaf, unable to know when God calls us and unable to understand in which direction he calls us. Thus our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin word surdus, which means “deaf.” A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means “listening.” A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance. Jesus’ life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Jesus was “all ear.”

From my own experience, I know that Nouwen is really on to something here. If we just go about our business as if we had never met Jesus, as if we could live like we did before, like everyone else around us seems to live, we will never experience the freedom of being “in Christ.” We will not be able to hear God. We will remain deaf to his voice, living absurd lives.

We don’t want to do that. We want to obey. But if obedience means listening, how can we listen if we are deaf to God’s voice? And the answer is just what Nouwen is pointing to here: discipline.

Now here’s another thing we don’t like very much, discipline. Because when we think of discipline we think of punishment, the consequence of doing something wrong. We’re late for class, and we’re disciplined by getting detention. We run a red light or get caught speeding, and we’re disciplined by having to pay fines. If we do it enough we are disciplined by going to jail. This is the way we have come to think of the word, but this is not what it means.

Jesus had disciples. Disciple comes from the same root as discipline. Were Jesus’ disciples people Jesus constantly punished? Of course not! They were people who followed the teachings of Jesus. If we follow the teachings of Jesus, we are his disciples. So in one sense discipline means learning to follow the path that Jesus laid out for us.

When Nouwen talks about discipline in the quote I just read you, he means spiritual discipline. A spiritual discipline is something we do on a regular basis. It really means setting aside time on a daily basis so that we can learn from Jesus. It means making a new habit. It means changing our lives from the habit of listening to the world and following our baser passions to the habit of listening to Jesus and doing what he tells us.

When I told you before that I know from experience what Nouwen is talking about here, I meant it. I used to be like most other people, getting up in the morning and stumbling into the day doing the next thing that popped up in from of me. But when I became a Christian, I found myself confronted with the dilemma that I knew that my life was supposed to change, but that it was not changing. I knew that I was supposed to live differently, but I wasn’t. I kept doing the same old sinful things over and over again as if I had not been redeemed by Jesus. The only thing that was different was that now I felt guilty about it.

Why? It was because even though I knew I needed to listen to God’s voice, I couldn’t hear it. I needed to make space in my life to listen. And so I learned that I had to set aside some time every day just to listen to God. When I developed the habit of listening to God, it became easier to resist sin and live righteously. I cannot overemphasize to you how important this is. A spiritual life without discipline is impossible.

Now how do learn to listen? That’s what a spiritual discipline is. It means prayer and meditation. I have to set aside time every day to pray and to meditate. And I do. Every morning before I do anything else I spend time reading the Bible and praying and meditating. Meditating in the Christian sense means listening to the Spirit, not like in the eastern sense of trying to empty my mind or anything like that.

And it has made a difference in my life. I used to dread spending time in prayer and meditation, now I miss it if I don’t. And because I have learned to listen, I can more easily obey. And so I am more free than I was. And this will happen to you too, if you begin the practice of spiritual discipline.

You might be thinking, well that’s OK for you Pastor because you’re the preacher after all and you’re supposed to do that but I’m just not that religious. Really? I’m not different from you, and like it or not, if you’re a Christian you’re not that different from me. You know that you are faithful. Just like Paul tells us in today’s reading. You are either faithful to your sin nature and the call of the world, or you are faithful to the commands of Jesus. There is no third way.

So if you’re not making time to listen, let me offer some suggestions for getting started. You don’t have to do anything elaborate. Set aside a time in your calendar and a physical space where you can be alone and quiet. It doesn’t have to be a long time. Five or ten minutes is OK for a start, the main thing is to be consistent. Do it every day. When your mind starts telling you all the reason you can’t, just tell it to shut up and do it anyway.

Read the bible every day. There are a lot of Bible reading plans. It’s not important how much you read, but it is important that that you do it every day.

There are a number of different devotionals, little books that contain inspirational writings and sometimes prayer and scripture. There is a whole cottage industry that has grown up around these. Some are really good, and some not so good. Some of the best ones are free online of you have access to a computer. Others are really inexpensive. I bought a copy of Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost For His Highest, one of the best evangelical devotionals in print, for $5.00. That’s less than you spend on a trip to Starbucks.

Take time to listen. Just quiet your mind and listen to what the Spirit is saying to you. Do this every day. I have compiled links to a number of resources that you can take advantage of that are free and freely available and I have place a link to them on our Facebook page. And I would be happy to spend time with anyone who wants to learn more about spiritual discipline.

Some helpful links for Spiritual Disciplines

Conclusion

In the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament we read the story of how the Israelites were able to end their wanderings in the desert and finally enter the Promised Land. Just before he died, Joshua called the people together to give them his final blessings. At that time Joshua spoke for the Lord and described how the Israelites’ ancestors had been brought through disappointments and trials to the Promised Land through faith in the mighty hand of the one God. He spoke of how God was completely intolerant of idolatry and demanded the full devotion of those he called his own. When we hear about idols we often think of bowing down to tiki gods and that sort of thing. But really, idolatry is putting anything ahead of God. Joshua urged the people to renew their commitment to God:

¹⁴ “Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵ But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14-15 NIV)

I will serve the Lord. Even though I may stumble, I will serve the Lord. Even though I sometimes fall prey to the temptations of the world, I will serve the Lord. Even though imperfectly. I will serve the Lord with all my strength, and all my heart, and all my will. I will serve the Lord.

Who will you serve? You cannot serve two masters. You will be a slave to sin, or a slave to Christ. Who will you serve? If you will serve the Lord, make time to listen to his voice.

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[1] Clipped on 17-August-2012, 9:57 AM from 70% of state’s released inmates return to prison, but San Mateo County program combats stat « Frontpage Featured « Peninsula Press

Sunday 8/19 at RPC, “Who Will You Serve?”

As I was preparing the message for this week on Romans 6:15-23 I thought a good way to illustrate Paul's message would be to think about what it might be like to be a prisoner who experienced a sudden, unexpected, and undeserved release. What would that feel like? What would I do with my new found freedom? Then I started looking into some issues surrounding criminal behavior and I came across a kind of shocking statistic, that 70% of prisoners released from prison go back to prison within three years of their release. Why? It seems that the majority of those released think they are being released to freedom but in fact go back to their old ways; we would think of it in Christian terms as slavery to sin. Without seeing the need for a fundamental change in their lives, they end up associating with the same people in the same environments as before, do the same things, and get the same result. Prison.
Join us this Sunday at 11:00 AM when we will consider how we are like these convicts released from prison, and how we can learn to listen to our new master and avoid going back to the prison of sin.

One of the things we will be talking about is spiritual disciplines. I have compiled a short list or resources to help you get started.

Some helpful links for Spiritual Disciplines

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

After service there will be a Bible Fellowship for the youth. There will be pizza! Also this week we will be doing our homeless mission at God's Extended Hand. This is a great opportunity to experience the blessing of being Jesus' hands and feet in the world. Everyone is invited to participate.

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch.There are some pictures from the Vacation Bible School and the Carnival.

Hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Keith

Rock Presbyterian Church 6910B Miramar Rd. Second Floor, San Diego 92121. rockpresbyterian@gmail.com. 760-271-7285

All Ears

Sorry I can’t post the sermon notes from last week because my whiz-bang computer erased the files and I don’t have backups . So here’s some cool stuff from Henri Nouwen we’ll be looking at this week.

A spiritual life without discipline is impossible.... it is clear that we are usually surrounded by so much inner and outer noise that it is hard to truly hear our God when he is speaking to us. We have often become deaf, unable to know when God calls us and unable to understand in which direction he calls us. Thus our lives have become absurd. In the word absurd we find the Latin word surdus, which means “deaf.” A spiritual life requires discipline because we need to learn to listen to God, who constantly speaks but whom we seldom hear. When, however, we learn to listen, our lives become obedient lives. The word obedient comes from the Latin word audire, which means “listening.” A spiritual discipline is necessary in order to move slowly from an absurd to an obedient life, from a life filled with noisy worries to a life in which there is some free inner space where we can listen to our God and follow his guidance. Jesus’ life was a life of obedience. He was always listening to the Father, always attentive to his voice, always alert for his directions. Jesus was “all ear.” - Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen, Making All Things New

Sunday 8/12 at RPC: “Just Do It!”

I hope you have been with us the past several weeks as we have been making our way through Paul's letter to the Romans. It has been pretty rough going because we had to digest some things about ourselves that we probably don't like admitting and would just as soon forget about. But we finally made it through the things that discourage us and got to the good stuff. You know, the part where all of our sins are forgiven and we live "happily ever after." It all sounds great but the problem is that suffering continues, both in the world and in our personal lives. So what's all this talk about "new life." Is is just a bunch of wishful thinking and pious gas?

Join us this Sunday at 11:00 AM when we will consider the beginning of Paul's argument about sin and righteousness and how we can't (that's right, I said can't) live in sin if we're Christians..

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

After service there will be an adult Bible Fellowship off campus!

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch.There are some pictures from the Vacation Bible School and the Carnival.

Hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Keith

Rock Presbyterian Church 6910B Miramar Rd. Second Floor, San Diego 92121. rockpresbyterian@gmail.com. 760-271-7285

Called to be Jesus

I have a very dear friend who is a Sikh. He is one of the most loving and open people I know. I remember him relating to me how he was attacked after 9/11. In this case it wasn’t violent, and there was no permanent damage done. But my friend was attacked for no sane reason. Someone apparently thought that anyone wearing a turban must be a Muslim. I know it’s unpopular to say it, but not all Muslims are responsible for 9/11, and not all Muslims are our enemies. So even if my friend had been a Muslim, the attack on him would have been a demonstration of stupidity. But he isn’t a Muslim. He is a Sikh.

I think there is today, in the wake of the killings in Wisconsin, a wave of indignation rolling across the nation against the kind of thinking that misidentifies enemies and lashes out blindly just to hurt. This is to our credit.

But I think we should not be so quick to congratulate ourselves on our openness and solidarity. Yes it is heartwarming to see people stand with the Sikhs, but I venture to say that many expressing that unity hold in their hearts condemnation for some other group.

Unfortunately we tend to demonize those we disagree with. My guess is that many people who today cry for understanding of the Sikh community at the same time hold unreasoned and false prejudices against someone or something else. As a Christian I am always saddened when I see all Christians categorized with the most extremely hateful examples of people who so identify themselves, people who by their actions really deny the teachings of Christ. And of course we see it everywhere: Democrats demonize Republicans and vice-versa, Christians and non-Christians, gays and straights, Muslims, homeless, the old and the young, people who differ from us in physical appearance or ethnicity or culture, the list goes on and on. The only thing that all of these judgments have in common is that they are driven by a willingness to ignore the truth in order to make “points.” But every time we abandon the truth we damage not only our opponents but ourselves. Every one of these judgments is destructive.

John 3:16 is one of the best-known passages in all of scripture. I think it is too bad that we know that verse but not the one that follows it:

    [16] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. [17] For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17 ESV)

As Christians we are called to follow the model of our Lord. Thus, we are called not to judge, but to serve. Everyone. Jesus didn’t reserve his love just for people who were like him. He shocked his contemporaries by ignoring social taboos and opening his arms wide to everyone, most especially to those who were outcast and demonized.

We are commanded to love in the same way:

    [34] A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. [35] By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

    [20] If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. [21] And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (1 John 4:20-21 ESV)

And, we are called to demonstrate our love by sacrifice for our brothers and sisters:

    [16] By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [17] But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? [18] Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16-18 ESV)

I am reminded of these words spoken by Mother Teresa, "How you live your life is proof that you are or not fully His. We cannot condemn or judge or pass words that will hurt people. We don't know in what way God is appearing to that soul and what God is drawing that soul to; therefore, who are we to condemn anybody?"  We can’t know God’s relationship with any other person, but we can be certain that we are called to be Jesus to everyone we meet.

I pray for the day when we will all give up judgment and be able to live together in love, as Christ commanded us.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/06/opinion/kaur-sikhs/index.html

4 Wrong Answers to the Question “Why Me?”

Tim Keller writes a great article about the question of evil that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. I recommend just about anything written by Keller.

http://redeemercitytocity.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=446

Sermon Notes 8/5: “How Much Greater the Grace than the Trespass”

Have you ever heard the phrase “a few bad apples spoiled it for everybody?” You know the story. You’re in a situation where you have some freedom but somebody abuses their liberty and the result is that everyone loses out. Maybe it’s like being at summer camp, and even though there is a curfew, it is loosely enforced and everyone is allowed to stay up having a good time. Until somebody decides to pull a prank that causes damage or somebody gets hurt, and then after that the curfew is strictly enforced. I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced something like this in our own lives. And when this happens, we tend to think of it as unfair and to be upset with the culprits. But ultimately we know it’s not unfair because we knew the rules all along. Today’s message is about a situation just like this but with cosmic consequences. It concerns the story of Adam and Eve.

Let us recall what happened to Adam and Eve. God created Adam first, and then created Eve to be his helper. Adam and Eve were created in an immortal state, had an intimate relationship with God, and lived in a perfect environment. They were allowed to do whatever they wanted except for one thing: they were forbidden to eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden. God told both Adam and Eve, and they were well aware, that eating the fruit of that tree would bring death. Eve was tempted by the fruit and deceived by the serpent, who told her that eating it fruit would not result in death, into eating it. Then Adam also willingly ate.

The Bible tells us in Chapter three of the Book of Genesis that as soon as Adam and Eve ate the fruit they were changed. As soon as they disobeyed God, they were instantly corrupted, weighed down by guilt about things they had felt no guilt or shame about before. The intimate relationship they had enjoyed with God was shattered. They tried to hide from God, not so much because they had disobeyed him, but because of this sudden corruption in their nature that had come from their disobedience. Then in we read about how God found them in this corrupted state, and drove them out of the Garden into the world of sin and death. Let us notice that in none of this did God choose death. That choice was willfully made by Adam and Eve. And from their disobedience all of the creation became corrupted. Mankind was cut off from the perfection Adam and Eve had experienced in the Garden.

In today’s section of the letter to the Romans Paul is going to consider the story of Adam and Eve and its long term consequences. Because that story is central to our human story. All of history is the motion of God’s overwhelming grace in rescuing his children from that long ago disobedience.

¹² 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—

¹³ To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. ¹⁴ Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.

¹⁵ But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! ¹⁶ Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. ¹⁷ For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!

¹⁸ Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. ¹⁹ 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.

²⁰ The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, ²¹ so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Ro. 5:12-21)

The event of Adam and Eve’s rebellion happened so long ago in history we can’t even guess as to an approximate date. But since Adam and Eve every human and indeed every creature who has ever lived with the exception one: Jesus, has had to experience death. Death is so pervasive that some have suggested that it is natural. But the funny thing about it is that every culture denies that death is natural. Every culture imagines that physical death is somehow not the end of existence. Every culture has imagined what we call an “afterlife” in some form, whether it be Heaven and Hell, Sheol, Hades, Valhalla, Nirvana, or whatever. This I think ought to give us a clue that death is not natural, that deep down inside us all is the idea that death is a terrible corruption of what ought to be.

Paul tells us that “the wages of sin is death” (Ro. 6:23 NIV) and we have already explored in the first three chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans how everyone is trapped in sin. So we might conclude that people die because of their own sin. But in the passage we just read Paul tells us that this is not the case. He tells us, in keeping with the long standing tradition of the Jews, that our death and all death can be directly attributed to the actions of Adam and Eve. So here is where we come to the situation I brought to mind at the beginning of today’s message, how a couple of bad apples seem to have spoiled it for everybody.

Now, even though we know that God is just, and he gave fair warning to Adam and Eve, there is something about all this that just seems a little unfair. Or maybe a lot unfair. After all, why should we suffer for what these two people did so long ago we can’t even place them accurately in history? And never mind that we know that we too are sinners, and that our own sins merit the same consequence as that of Adam and Eve, why should we suffer the consequence for their disobedience? That’s exactly what Paul is saying is the case. But he is also saying something else, and that is that the remedy that God has come up with more than compensates for the seeming injustice, because through the work of Jesus Christ we who are “in Christ” are raised to greater estate than Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

We want to look at three main points this morning: how are Adam and Christ alike, how do we obtain the character of Adam and Christ, and how is being “in Christ” so much better than being “in Adam?”

Covenants of Grace and Works – The parallel paths of Adam and Christ

One of the things I have been emphasizing, and will continue to emphasize, is that our relationship to God “in Christ” is based on what’s known as a “covenant of grace.” This kind of a covenant is contrasted with what we might call a “covenant of works.” An example of a covenant of works would be God’s covenant with Adam in the book of Genesis. God placed Adam in the Garden and promised eternal life in exchange for Adam’s obedience in not eating from the fruit of the tree. The continued force of the promise was based on Adam’s continued obedience. As soon as the covenant was broken, the promise was no longer in effect.

An example of a covenant of Grace is God’s promise to Abram in chapter 15 of Genesis. God had promised to give the land we now know as Palestine to Abram and make him the father of a great nation, but Abram had become extremely old and his wife remained childless, and Abram had doubts. When he expressed these doubts to God, we read that the following happened:

⁷ [God spoke to Abram], “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

⁸ But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

⁹ So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

¹⁰ Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. ¹¹ Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

¹⁷ When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. ¹⁸ On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates—¹⁹ the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, ²⁰ Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, ²¹ Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.” (Ge. 15:7-11, 17-21 NIV)

Now this might not make sense to us but this is the meaning of this episode. In the ancient Near East the way that two people would make a deal – a “covenant” – was to take animals and cut them in two and lay them on the ground. Then the two who were making the covenant would walk in between the cut pieces of the animal in an act that symbolically said, “If I break this covenant, I will become like these animals: cut in two and dead.” Both of the parties walked in between the animals. That is, by the way, where we get the phrase “to cut a deal.”

But in the text we just read, only one party takes part in the ceremony. Verse 17: “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.” (Ge. 15:17 NIV) Abram was sleeping. Only God, represented by the smoking firepot with a blazing torch, made the promise. So this means that God’s promise to Abram is entirely by God’s grace. It doesn’t depend on any action on the part of Abram.

In the same way, God’s covenant with the Israelites led by Moses after the Exodus from Egypt was a covenant of works. God promised to prosper the Israelites if they obeyed the law. But God’s covenant with the new Israel, the Church of Jesus Christ, is a covenant of grace, based entirely on the work of Christ.

Now the interesting thing about all this in the context of what we read in Romans today is that God’s covenant with Adam and with Christ were both covenants of works. Both of these covenants were dependent on obedience. In the case of Adam, it was based on Adam obeying God’s command not to eat of the fruit. In the case of Christ, it was based on God’s command for Christ to give himself up to death. In the case of Adam, the covenant I think ought to have been difficult to keep. But in the case of Christ, we know it was difficult. We read about Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew:

³⁶ Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” ³⁷ He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. ³⁸ Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

³⁹ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.” (Mt. 26:36-39 NIV).

The point that Paul is making in his letter to the Romans is that no matter how easy it may have been and should have been for Adam to obey, he did not. And no matter how agonizing it may have been for Christ to obey, he did. So at the central point of history, the crucifixion, the corruption and death that was brought about by Adam’s failure to obey was completely, totally, and finally reversed by Jesus’ obedience on the cross.

The two states of existence: “In Adam” and “In Christ”

We may wonder why we can inherit both the sin of Adam and the obedience of Christ. The answer to this is to be found in an idea that is fundamental to understanding the New Testament message, and that is everything has to be considered in the context of two opposing realities. One is the reality of God’s perfect love, and the other is the reality of man’s rebellion. God and Satan, Light and dark, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Spirit and Flesh, Redemption and Sin, Christ and Adam; we are all familiar with these great opposing realities. And, according to the New Testament writers, we are all in one or the other of these realms.

We have already asked how it was possible for us to suffer the consequence of the sin of Adam; I think the best way to answer it is to say that we are born “in Adam.” Adam was the progenitor of the human race. He stood for all mankind. His actions have eternal consequence on all who come after. Because he is the progenitor, whatever he did, he did for all who would follow. So, when he fell, he brought down all of creation with him. Again, our sense of justice might tell us this is not fair. But it is real, whether it is fair or not. If we lived in the time before Jesus we might have really had cause to complain, because we would have inherited the sin of Adam with no recourse.

But let us consider things after the obedience of Christ. Like Adam, Jesus stands for all mankind. Jesus also had a “covenant of works” with the Father. But Jesus is more than Adam, because while he was a man, he is also God. And unlike Adam, Jesus obeyed. And so, because he stood for all mankind, we also inherit the consequence of his obedience, which is eternal life and being raised to glory as the King of Heaven. Because we are “in Christ,” all that comes to Christ also comes to us, as long as we remain “in Christ.”

Now it is interesting I think that we are loud in complaining about the curse of being “in Adam” but we don’t squawk about the blessing of being “in Christ.” But indeed we cannot have one without the other. If we were not dead in Adam, we could not have been brought to life “in Christ.”

The Consequences of Grace

But now here’s something really interesting. For all of the brokenness we have to experience as a result of the fall of Adam, without it we would be worse off than we are now. Because if Adam had not disobeyed, we would be in the same estate as Adam, at the pinnacle of God’s creation. But because we are now “in Christ,” we have been raised to the level of God. None of us can say “I am God,” but because we are “in Christ,” we are in the life of God, and God’s life is in us.

We have to remember that central to the things we have been learning from Paul in his letter to the Romans is that the work of Jesus Christ was an exchange. It consisted of two parts. The atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross paid the penalty for the disobedience of Adam and Eve. So the result of the cross is that the curse of Adam is reversed. But the resurrection exchanges Christ’s righteousness for ours. In the legal imagery that Paul uses, we “in Adam” stand before the judge rightly condemned for the crime of Adam, but before the sentence is carried out our redeemer Jesus pays the penalty for us. This action puts us in the state of being “not guilty.” But going further, Jesus tells the judge, I want you to give them all of the reward that I deserve from my act of obedience.

When we start thinking about how unfair it is that we should be judged and condemned for the sin of Adam, we have to also consider how unfair it is that we are being blessed with the righteousness of Christ. Even if we weren’t condemned for the sin of Adam, we would deserve to be condemned for our own. Paul has clearly demonstrated that people cannot attain rightness with God on their own. And yet God has graciously heaped mercy on us.

When Paul writes in verse 20 “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20 NIV) he uses two different Greek words for increase. When he writes that sin “increased” he uses a word that just means “increase,” but when he writes that grace increased, he uses a word that means something like “super increase.” So it should read something like where sin increased, grace overflowed. Where sin was a trickle, grace was a river. This is love so extravagant it just doesn’t make sense. It is prodigal love from a prodigal God.

So let me make just a few closing remarks about grace. Because grace is a free gift, we can’t earn it by not sinning. But at the same time we can’t lose it by sinning. Because the “super-abundance” of grace that Paul wrote to the Romans about, which also comes to us, goes to erase the curse of Adam’s sin, not ours. We are not being judged for our own sins, we are being judged for the sin of Adam. So whether we sin or not makes no difference in regards to our salvation. And God’s grace is more than enough. If I sin more, God’s grace is no less. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so mind-boggling, so amazing.

Let me just close a pretty dangerous loophole here. Because we’re human, probably the first thing that pops into our heads when we learn about the free gift of grace, and how it is not affected by our sin, is that we might just as well go on sinning. If we’re not going to be punished, why not have at it? But of course this is a complete misunderstanding of sin.

I think because our minds are wired for law, we tend to think that sins are things that we would really like to do, that would bring us forbidden pleasures, but that we’d better not do because if we do we’ll get punished. The pain of punishment is greater than the pleasure of sin. So we don’t do it. Or we don’t do as much of it as we would like. And if we suddenly learn that the greatest consequence of sin has been removed, we might as well just do it. Just do it.

But there is nothing pleasurable about sin. The heartbreaking world we live in, the world of death and corruption and poverty and disease and violence and broken relationships and fear and hunger and neglect and frustration and anxiety and futility is the real consequence of sin, not a hypothetical supernatural hand slap from some petty schoolmaster. God is not doing these things to punish us; he is not doing them at all. We are doing these things to ourselves, and God’s wrath, as we have already learned, is that he lets us. As Paul has so eloquently made clear, even if the law did not convict us of sin, we would convict ourselves. To think that grace makes it ok to sin is just silly. Just because I know there is a cure for poisoning doesn’t mean I should run out and drink gasoline. Even if I am cured, I’m still going to get sick, and not just because someone told me not to drink gasoline.

As we will find out in the weeks to come, the answer to this argument that we should sin more because of the abundance of God’s grace is going to be that the blessing of letting Christ live his life through us far outweighs any fleeting pleasure that might come from selfishly living our lives for ourselves. But again, that is the subject of another day. For now let us agree that the amazing grace Paul announces in today’s reading is not an invitation to sin.

So what should our response to this abundance of grace be? Joy. We ought to be filled with joy. Think about how you would feel if you were the one facing the death penalty and you suddenly, unexpectedly got the news of your pardon. Not only pardon, but complete release. And an everlasting pension plan to go with it. You would be giddy. You would become the number one fan of the one who set you free. You would beam with joy, so much so that the people you came into contact with would not be able to keep themselves from asking you why you were so happy. And when they asked you would announce to them joyfully how much your savior had done for you. And you would enthusiastically encourage others to follow him.

If we are truly saved, this is what our response will look like. So I’m going to give you an assignment for this week. It is the same assignment Paul wrote from prison to the Christians in Philippi, “⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4 NIV). Let your light shine. You don’t have to preach to people about Jesus; let your joy be your preaching. In the words attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, “Always preach the gospel. Use words if necessary.” If we take seriously the joy of being free in Christ, and allow that realization to shine in our lives, few words will be necessary.

Sunday 8/5 at RPC: “How Much Greater the Grace than the Trespass!”

Have you ever heard the phrase "a couple of bad apples spoiled it for everybody?" That's when a small, irresponsible group or maybe even just one person messes it up for everybody. I'm pretty sure we have all been in situations like this. Maybe we have even been among the culprits! But I hope not. Anyway, this Sunday we are going to be looking at a situation like this, where a couple of "bad apples": Adam and Eve, brought down God's condemnation on all of creation. We will wonder how this can be fair, but we will also think about God's remedy for this situation in the work of Jesus Christ. Rather than complaining about how unfair it seems that we should be condemned for the sin of Adam and Eve, we will be left marveling at how amazing God's grace is in reversing the curse.

Join us this Sunday at 10:55 AM in the downstairs chapel as we celebrate communion together. After we will consider Paul's comparison of Adam and Christ and how our response should be one of unrestrained joy at God's amazing grace.

Don't forget we will have corporate prayer at 1015 in the second floor chapel where we can pray for our personal concerns and the needs of our congregation. All are welcome.

After service I will be meeting with the youth for pizza and fellowship. All of the youth are invited. I have new Student Bibles!

We are now on Facebook! Check out our new Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SDRockPresbyterianChurch. There are some pictures from VBS.

Hope to see you Sunday!
Pastor Keith

Rock Presbyterian Church 6910B Miramar Rd. Second Floor, San Diego 92121. rockpresbyterian@gmail.com. 760-271-7285