Life in the Spirit

Earlier this year, my wife and I bought a holiday trailer, and we took it for a little trip to check things out, and everything seemed to be working. We brought it back home and parked it in our driveway. This week, it started making a chirping noise, and through some investigation, we found out that what was going on was there’s a CO₂ alarm in the trailer that was going off. This was getting so annoying that people inside the house could not sleep, so one of our kids took it off the wall, thinking maybe it was just a battery that needed to be replaced. But this particular alarm is hardwired into the electrical system of the rest of the trailer, so that didn’t work. Eventually, what we had to do was pull the fuse out to shut the thing off.

A couple of days later, I phoned the place where we got the trailer from and talked to a service technician. She said, “Well, it could be because you started the furnace and the furnace is going and it’s new, and maybe that’s what it’s responding to.” And I go, “No, that’s not it.” Then she says, “Well, or maybe it could be because you’re cooking and some of the cooking smells are setting the alarm off.” And I go, “No, that’s not it.” And she says, “Or maybe it’s because your trailer is not plugged in and your CO₂ alarm is trying to tell you that it doesn’t have enough power to protect you.”

I go, “Yeah, that’s it.”

And so I plugged the trailer in and the problem was fixed.

Alarms that Indicate a Deeper Problem

Now there’s a similar thing that happens in human life. Susan and I took our youngest son, Ben, to Kelowna on Monday to go back to school, and on the way back, we listened to an audiobook by Dr. John Delony called Building a Non-Anxious Life. In that book, he talks about anxiety in its various forms and how we tend to think of anxiety as the problem. But he says that anxiety is not the problem. It’s like a CO₂ alarm or a smoke alarm that’s going off to warn us that there is a much bigger problem that needs to be addressed. And the bigger problem that needs to be addressed, he says, is that we are now living in a world that our bodies were not designed to live in.

And if we look back to what we looked at in previous Sundays, as we’ve been going through the book of Romans—for example in chapter 5 where the new life we have with Jesus is described as a life of peace and hope and love—then there are other kinds of alarms that could be going off in our lives, like inner turmoil, hopelessness, and indifference toward others.

And if we went through life with these alarms going off through the span of it, then that would be a huge tragedy, because Jesus came to give us a different kind of life, an abundant life, life to the full as he describes it.

Therefore, the question we can ask ourselves is: Where do we find the power we need to live the abundant life Jesus promised to give us?

To help us as we think about that question, we are going to continue our journey through the Book of Romans and eventually end up in Romans 8:1-11.

God’s Righteousness & Our New Life

First, though, we will start with a brief review. In chapters 1 to 4, the main theme is the righteousness of God. In Romans 1:17, Paul gives us his Paul’s theme for the entire book: Those declared righteous through faith will live. And we saw how God’s righteousness—His moral uprightness, His holiness, His purity—is a problem in the sense that He cannot, because He is holy, relate to us sinful human beings. But because of His love and mercy, God the Father sent His Son, Jesus, into the world to bridge that gap. Jesus lived a perfect human life for us, then He offered up His one and only perfect human-divine life as a sacrifice on the cross to pay the full cost of forgiveness for all the people in all the world throughout all time.

The God the Father declares that everyone who believes in Jesus is righteous. God gives His righteousness to us. And He does it even while we are still sinners. It’s not because God is a little dim or not seeing clearly. It’s because the worth of Jesus’ sacrifice is so great that it completely covers over all our sin.

With chapters 5 to 8, the focus shifts to the new life that we have as a result of being given this righteousness from God through Jesus Christ.

Now I’m going bridge the gap between where we left off last week and where we’re going to start today.

From Romans 5:12 to the end of chapter 7, we find three main themes. The first theme is the origins of death and life. Death came into the world through Adam and his sin. All of humanity is infected with that sin and subject to death as a result.

But then a second man came into the world—Jesus Christ—and through Him, we have life because in Him we have God’s righteousness, which covers over our sin and takes it away.

A key passage for this section is: For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man—that’s Adam—how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the great gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. (Romans 5:17)

Then Paul goes into the now and the not yet of our new life. When we were baptized, we were connected with Jesus Christ in His death and in His resurrection. His death is our death, and His resurrection is our resurrection.

There is a now reality to that. Paul describes it in this way: 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—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. (Romans 6:6-7)

But there’s also a not yet aspect to this life that we have in Jesus which is the fact that we still struggle with sin. We’re still sinful, broken human beings living in this sinful, broken world. So we still have struggles with sin, even though we’re not a slave to it.

But Paul encourages us in the not yet aspect of life with Jesus: In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus…. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. (Romans 6:11, 14)

And then, because there’s a tendency for human beings to see this word grace and think, “Well, that means I can do whatever I want.” Paul explains some important things about God’s law. First, he says that God’s moral law is holy and good and true.

The problem is, when God’s law is applied in this broken, sinful world to us broken, sinful human beings, we tend to respond against it by hating it, by rebelling against it, and even our desire for sin and the intensity of our sin can increase because we are confronted with the law.

Have you ever said, “No!” to a two-year-old child? If you have, then you know exactly how we human beings tend to respond to God’s law. But the problem isn’t with the law. The problem is with the environment in which it’s being applied.

Everyone follower of Jesus has this same struggle with sin, even Paul. And this is a problem for us, in the sense, again, of that struggle. And even Paul had this struggle. He writes:

 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me….

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. (Romans 7:15-17, 21-23)

This is the life of a follower of Jesus Christ, and it can be frustrating, but Paul also tells us that there is hope. He writes: What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 7:24-25)

Life in the Spirit

And now we come to Romans 8 which starts off with the mind-boggling results of the deliverance Jesus has given to us.

Paul writes: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2)

It sounds like Paul is introducing another law here. What is the law of the Spirit who gives life? That refers to all of God’s promises in the Old Testament: promises of grace, promises of life, promises of a Messiah that He would send to save His people. And this law of the Spirit who gives life is also good, pure, and holy.

Paul then tells us that God does what His moral law cannot do. His moral law is good, pure and holy, but it cannot save us. So God saved us by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to take our condemnation for sin. And Jesus hung on a cross, God the Father condemned our sin in the body of Jesus Christ, and He did that so that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:4)

Now let’s just pause for a moment and let these words settle into our soul.

The righteous requirement of the law is fully met in us, that is, fulfilled in us sinful, broken human beings because of Jesus Christ and all He’s done for us and God’s resulting declaration of righteousness over us. Then, as we live in the Spirit that He has given to us, God’s righteousness is completely fulfilled.

Now you may ask, “What does it mean to live according to the Spirit?”

Good question, and Paul tells us in the following verses: 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. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. (Romans 8:5-8)

Dear reader, do you find yourself fighting an inner battle against sin? I know I do. That battle is not an indication of a problem in your spiritual life. It is actually a sign of something good: that you are a beloved, forgiven child of God, living in a sinful body in a sinful world, and you are engaging in that inner battle.

Living according to the Spirit means turning away from our sinful desires and focusing instead on Jesus, the new life He gives us, and the guidance that He gives us through His Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the one who helps us to focus on Jesus and His many blessings and gifts to us.

How can you know that you have the Holy Spirit? Because of your Baptism. That was when you were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. And your baptism also helps you to have certainty that you are living in the realm of the Spirit, you are living your new life as a beloved, forgiven child of God, and that the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, will also, at the end of time, raise you from the dead.

Feeding Our Soul with the Right Stuff

Several years ago, when I was much younger and in my home church, someone from LAMP—the Lutheran Association of Missionary Pilots—came and spoke at our church, and they told a story that I have not forgotten. There was a First Nations man in northern Canada who became a Christian, and a few months later, he was asked by one of the missionaries in that area how it was going.

And he said, “Well, it feels to me like I have two dogs within me, a black dog and a white dog, and they’re fighting against each other.”

The missionary asked him, “Which one is winning?”

The man answered, “The one I feed the most.”

Dear friends, being a disciple of Jesus is not easy. We all struggle with sin and temptation and brokenness, and there can even be times when we, like Paul, find ourselves doing things we don’t want to do and we are unable to do the things that we want to do.

But I beg you—please, please, please—don’t feed your mind and your heart and your soul with your failures. Instead, feed your heart and your mind and your soul with Jesus and all that He does for you, all that He is presently doing for you, all that He will do for you in the future.

For Jesus came not only to take away all your sin, but He also came to take away your fear, your inner turmoil, your hopelessness, and your indifference.

And so I invite you to let the Holy Spirit fill you again and again with God’s love, and through that love, transform you into becoming more like Jesus each and every day, becoming more like that person that God has in mind for you to be. Amen.