“For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
The Old Testament seems complicated. More specifically, the Old Testament Law of Moses seems complicated. There are just so many rules to keep (613 to be exact). How is someone supposed to get (and stay) right with God when it seems like you are always going to be breaking some law or another. It feels like the whole thing was just set up to condemn us. Well, as Paul has already talked about, that isn’t the case, but it became the case because of sin. Thankfully, God fixed that through Jesus. Let’s look here with Paul at how.
“…because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
In Paul’s letter to the churches in the region of Galatia (modern-day southern Turkey), he speaks at length about the freedom we have in Christ. But what exactly are we freed from? We know from the marvelous declaration Paul makes at the beginning of the chapter that we are freed from condemnation. Here, Paul spells out in a bit more detail what that means. Let’s talk about following Jesus and real freedom.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus…” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Here we come at last to the place toward which everything we have talked about so far has been aiming. Here we find Paul’s magnum opus. If all of Romans is Paul’s best work, chapter 8 here is the brightest jewel in the crown. We have spent several weeks working through the hard news of the Gospel. Sin is messy stuff to say the very least. But grace is bigger. Grace is better. Starting with today and this incredible declaration of freedom in Christ, let’s explore with Paul some of the wonderful implications of what God has done for us in Christ and what makes the Gospel such very good news.
It’s graduation season and this past Sunday we honored our graduates and scholarship recipients. With that in mind, the sermon this week was aimed right in their direction. We live in a culture that prioritizes happiness above just about everything else. We live in a culture that also tells us all the time that the best way to find that happiness is to follow our heart. But is that really how we get there? King Solomon didn’t think so. Let’s take a look at one of his more famous proverbs and talk about how to experience real happiness.
How to Be Happy
A couple of weeks ago, our youth participated in a kickball tournament. Actually, let’s correct that: they won a kickball tournament. The event was a fundraiser for a great local ministry called Faith Alive Ministries. They are driven by the idea that when Jesus’ brother, James, said that true religion is to take care of orphans and widows, that he meant it. Jordan and Taylor do an awesome job seeking out opportunities to do just that in practical ways both locally and globally.
In any event, a few weeks before the tournament, they emailed out a set of rules by which the games were going to be governed. The morning of the tournament, they had a meeting with all of the coaches to go over the rules one last time and emphasize that they would be followed carefully. The reason was pretty obvious: they wanted the whole thing to run smoothly instead of devolving into little more than an endless series of arguments about rules. That’s how kickball worked on the playground when I was in elementary school. We’d spent 20 minutes debating the rules, and about five minutes playing most days because while there were a few broadly agreed upon basics, everything else was choose-your-own-adventure…and we all tended to choose the adventure that worked best for us rather than working to make sure we had all chosen the same adventure. As long as we were committed to living as we pleased, chaos tended to be the result. The Faith Alive folks understood this and planned accordingly. On the playground…not so much. In life more generally, the same basic principle is in operation. Today, I want to reflect for just a few minutes with you on what this means for us, and how we can avoid the chaos.
“‘But you,’ he asked them, ‘who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Jesus responded, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)
I want to come back yet again this week to a passage we have looked at a couple of times recently, including just last week. If the church is the body of Christ, and if, as we talked about last time, the church is to be proclaiming the identity of Jesus to the world in everything we do, then what does it mean to be the church, and what should be the relationship of an individual follower of Jesus to the church? Let’s dig back in today to some more of the implications of what Jesus revealed about the church to His disciples.
