I've got some good news for you guys. Our text this morning is going to be in Romans. But before we look at that text I want us to look at another text that I think is one of the most dramatic texts in all of literature. It comes from the gospel according to John, and it describes the death of Jesus on the cross.
28 Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29 A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. 30 When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. (John 19:28-30 NIV)
My friends if you have been paying attention at all to anything you know about the Bible you should be in awe at what I just read. Because in those few words we have heard described all that was necessary to reverse the curse of Adam and Eve and bring the world back into relationship with God.
But I want us to consider the word Jesus uses to describe the event. "It is finished." In the Greek the word is tetelestai. Interestingly, it is a word from law and commerce. The root of the word is telos which means end. But in this formulation the word applies to a legal and commercial transaction that is completely finished. So in this way it calls to mind the English idiom "signed, sealed, and delivered."
It indicates that a legal transaction has been completely accomplished. In law, the proper use of the term is "Signed, sealed, delivered. The deed is done." What's interesting about this I think is that I doubt that we think of our relationship with God in legal terms.
I think we tend more to think of things in terms of family relationships. We want to see God as a loving but often disappointed parent who is willing to overlook our waywardness and quick to let us off the hook for our misdeeds. Certainly God is a loving parent. But God is also holy. And because God is holy, no sin can be overlooked. If God could allow sin without consequence, He would not be a holy God. He would instead be a capricious tyrant: holding some, maybe his favorites, to a lower standard than others. That kind of a god would not be worthy of worship.
Today we are going to come to the end of Chapter 8 of Paul's letter to the Roman Church. At the same time we are going to come to the end of Paul's exposition of the Christian faith. As we look back on it we can see that Paul has presented his arguments in legalistic fashion from the beginning. In the section we are going to read today we see Paul summarizing his case. It is like a lawyer making his closing remarks before sentence is passed. Let's look at it:
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39 NIV).
Amen.
Let’s spend just a couple of minutes reviewing Paul's argument. We have spent quite a few weeks looking at it and it is quite complex, but we'll try to just focus on the main points and then we'll be able to work our way through this last section of Chapter 8.
The main idea of the first three chapters was that God has a case against every single human being who has ever lived. In the case of the Roman church Paul addresses two groups of Christians: the gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. Which follows the idea of the way first century Jews divided up the world between those who are among the chosen (the Jews) and those who are not (everyone else).
To those who were not among the chosen God made himself known in nature. Everyone had the requirements of God's law written on their hearts. Yet because of humanity's corrupted nature, people chose to worship created things rather than the Creator. And thus they were deserving of God's wrath. To the Jews, who relied on the fact that they had been given the Law of Moses. Paul pointed out that they had been unable to keep the requirements of the law. And thus they too were deserving of God's wrath.
In legal terms, at this point in Paul's argument what he has proven is that all people are guilty and deserving of the full penalty of law. Thus, the scene that is set at this point is that the criminal is standing before the judge. The guilty criminal is every human, including you and me. The jury has already declared its verdict:guilty as charged. The judge is about to pass sentence: death.
We might think at this point that the criminal would be remorseful, and maybe he or she is. But it's just as likely that the criminal is defiant and disrespectful. If we were watching on a TV show we might hope at this point that the judge will throw the book at this criminal, who isn't even sorry for his crime. That is, until we realize that we are that criminal.
Then, at the end of Chapter 3, Paul makes the most amazing statement. God looks at the guilty criminal, who might be sneering at him in contempt, and says, "You know, I love you so much, I can't stand to sentence you to be separated from me forever. I can't stand to see you spend the rest of eternity without love, eaten up by a longing that can never be satisfied. But the law requires that the penalty for your crime must be paid in full."
And then the most amazing thing happens, the judge calls his own son before the bench. A beautiful, innocent little boy, who has never gotten in trouble, or ever done anything wrong. Who the Father -- the judge -- loves so much that now we see him weeping. And he says to the contemptible criminal, "I am going to sentence my own son to pay the penalty for your crime. I am going to sentence him to death instead of you. Because you will never obey me, and he will, and without obedience the law can never be satisfied. And more than that, I am going to adopt you into my family. And I am going to put into you my Spirit, the Spirit of my son, so that from now on when I look at you I am not going to see your rebellion and disobedience, I am going to see the righteousness and obedience of my beautiful son. And my Spirit will eventually change you from the contemptible creature that you are now to the likeness of my own son. You are free to go." And the son obediently is led away to the most horrific execution, and you are set free. This is mind boggling. You couldn't make this stuff up.
In the world Paul lived in to be adopted into a new family was legally and actually the same thing as being given a new life. Everything about your past was forgotten, and you instantly received the full benefit of being a member of the new family, including becoming an heir to the family fortune, but also becoming responsible for the family business. In this case, becoming the heirs of God makes us incredibly fortunate because God has all things, so that is why Paul is able to say in verse 32 that God will graciously give us "all things." And, becoming a part of the family business means that we are involved in the same business as God's only son Jesus, and that is the restoration of the world.
I know this may sound silly but this is a great illustration of our new condition. And that is the comparison of a cucumber to a pickle. Before the sentence that was passed that set us free we were cucumbers. After, we are pickles. We are fundamentally different than we were before. We can never go back from being pickles to being cucumbers. Now there is a lengthy discussion of the difference between cucumbers and pickles, only luckily for us Paul describes it as the difference between life in the flesh and life in the Spirit.
Life in the flesh is the way we lived before we were saved. This is the way of the world. What does this look like? Look at the values of our culture. We value physical beauty, wealth, power. We think of things in a transactional way; we think that we have to earn our value. We rarely care for others, only when doing so will benefit us. We always worry about what's in it for us. We can't see the future very well. We live for the moment. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul quotes the prophet Isaiah in the slogan of those who are perishing, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." (1 Cor. 15:32 NIV).
Now let us contrast that with what it looks like to live in the Spirit. I can't think of a better description of this that what Paul writes in his letter to the Galatians: "22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Gal. 5:22-23 NIV).
Life in the Spirit is a life that is lived to please God. It is a life that is lived to participate in the family business of restoring God's kingdom. It is a life that is characterized by the same kind of obedience we saw from God's own son. The self-sacrificing, self-forgetting love that is willing to give all for the stranger, even for the enemy, without any thought of reward other than the welfare of the other. This is a way of life that values things very differently than the world. This is a life, in fact, that is offensive to the world. That is why anyone who is very good at it is bound to suffer persecution or even death.
Paul tells us that because God gave us his Spirit our lives driven to look like what I just described as life in the Spirit. Here we run into a real conundrum because any of us who are honest with ourselves know that our lives don't always look like that. Some of us, especially when we are new Christians, look a lot more like people who live by the flesh than those who live by the Spirit. So how can we seriously say that we have been given new lives when our behavior makes it look like we're still living the old way?
Part of it, we have seen, has to do with what we intend, what we desire. People who are driven by the desires of the flesh are not concerned about pleasing God. They are only concerned about pleasing themselves. People who are driven by the desires of the Spirit are concerned about pleasing God. The fact that they are not always able to demonstrate the characteristics of life in the Spirit, that they are not always able to produce the fruit of the Spirit, that they are still prone to selfishness and sin; the fact that that causes them to suffer guilt and remorse shows that they are in fact being changed into someone who is a member of this new family. What Paul calls being conformed to the likeness of Christ.
Let's recall how Paul describes his own struggle with sin in Chapter 7 of Romans:
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. 24 What a wretched man I am! (Ro. 7:21-24 NIV)
"What a wretched man I am!" This is not the cry of a man who doesn't care about pleasing God. And it is not the cry of a man who is free from sin. It is the cry of every Christian; none of us are able to live up to the standards of our new family. Not yet, anyway. But we will be.
"Who will rescue me?" is Paul's agonizing question. And the triumphant answer is, "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Ro. 7:25 NIV). Remember the scene I just described earlier in the courtroom, where the judge went off his head and substituted his own son for the criminal. That is the deliverance Paul is describing here.
Let us go back to that scene and finish out the legal scenario. Here we are the criminal who has been acquitted and adopted into a new life of freedom. That life of freedom we now live is not something that will become evident right away. We may not feel that we are worthy of our new life. We may doubt that what we just witnessed was real. After all, it makes no sense whatever. We know we are guilty and continue to accuse ourselves.
And there are others who accuse us. The world, the flesh, and the devil. We can imagine our great adversary, Satan, rising up at the verdict and shouting "Objection!" And we might be filled with fear that our newfound freedom and righteousness will be short-lived indeed. This is where Paul's closing argument poses four unanswerable questions that lead to the assurance of our salvation and ultimate glorification.
The first question is: If God is for us, who can be against us? God is the judge in this courtroom. There is no higher court, there is no one to appeal to. Anyone who would want to see us condemned is without recourse. God's judgment stands, even if it doesn't make sense. If God has acquitted us, no one can stand against us. We will come to glory.
Question number two. Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It's not that no one wants to bring charges against us. We can see all of our enemies: the world, the flesh, and the Devil, angrily pointing at us and accusing us of all of our transgressions, past and present, and even future. Can you imagine it? "How can you do this? How can you let this criminal off the hook?" But since it is only God who judges, and only God who condemns, and since we have already been acquitted by God, the judge's ears are closed to further accusation.
The next question. Who then is the one who condemns? No one can condemn. The penalty for all crimes has been paid by Christ. God's own son is standing at the dock, and whenever anyone suggests that we owe anything to God, he says, "No, dad. I already paid for that. This person has no debt to pay. I already paid it in full. Tetelestai, it is finished."
Finally, Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Christ's love has been demonstrated only because of his love and not because of anything we did to deserve it. God loved us when we were totally undeserving of love. When we deserved to be condemned forever, God loved us unconditionally. Because we didn't do anything to earn God's love, we can't do anything to lose it. And even though for now we may have to endure the conditions Paul describes: trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, or the sword. In the end, because we are in Christ, we will rise with Christ. As Jesus told his disciples, "In the world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NIV).
And so we are more than conquerors. Nothing can stand between us and eternal peace and happiness. The curse of the world has been reversed in us and can never harm us again. Jesus paid it all. "Tetelestai. It is finished." As Paul has stated elsewhere in his letter to the Philippians "I always pray with joy, because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion, until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil. 1:4-6 NIV)
And so Paul can triumphantly announce:
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Ro. 8:37-39 NIV).
Signed. Sealed. Delivered. The deed is done.So how should we respond to this? Let's once again take Paul's advice, this time from his letter to the Philippians: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything." (Philippians 4:4-6 NIV).
This week, do something that publicly demonstrates your assurance of salvation. Show someone selfless love. Be public in your joy of salvation. Be a peacemaker. Use forbearance. Be kind. Be good. Be faithful. Be gentle. Use self-control. Let the world know that your life is driven by the awesome Spirit of the living God. Amen.
Let us pray.
Blessed be the Lord our God for the love which you have shown us through Jesus Christ our Lord. In him who loved us we are conquerors over hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and the sword. In the silence of abandonment and solitude, of sickness and death, pour out the riches of your blessing, that we may be ever more faithful to serve you in our sisters and brothers, and that our joy to do your will be ever greater. We bless you and glorify you, for you listen to the silence of our hearts. You act within us with power, healing us and leading us to speak in the name of Jesus, your Son. Send us into the world to carry out your will and to break down the walls of silence which separate us. May we witness to you, our only Savior, being ever more united by “one faith and one baptism”. And may we grow in grace and in the peace of God which passes all understanding, that your name may be glorified. Amen.
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