“Between the Lines: Taking Control of Your Life”
Romans 8:1-17
It was a media heyday as thousands, if not millions, sat glued by their television sets watching a white Ford Bronco speeding down a California freeway with scores of the California Highway Patrol cautiously in pursuit. O. J. Simpson, public hero turned public enemy turned public goat, was the center of attention as he had never been before. We know only too well the rest of the story. My interest this morning is not to defend or defame O. J. Rather I want to draw attention to a letter he wrote while he was on the run, before he was arrested. As read to the press by a friend of his, it said, “I’ve had a good life. I’m proud of how I lived. My Mama taught me to do unto others. I treated people the way I wanted to be treated…Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life, great friends. Please think of the real O. J. and not this lost person.” O. J. knew something deep inside him was wrong – very wrong. And he didn’t want to be remembered for it.
And that’s understandable – how would you like to be remembered for the worst moment or experience of your life? Or to have your entire life, no holds barred, hung out to dry in full public view? It’s a frightening thought, isn’t it? The apostle Paul addresses this in the 8th chapter of Romans where he wrote that BUT FOR THE HOLY SPIRIT WE ARE LOST IN OUR SLAVERY TO SIN. Let’s see how he explains it.
Paul said there is, first of all, A DIVISION WITHIN US. Read again verse 5: “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” To illustrate, imagine your body as a house. It has three floors – a basement, main floor, and an upstairs. Consider THE BASEMENT. The basement represents the depths of darkness, death, and despair. It houses sin, rebellion, disobedience, pride, selfishness, sensual drives. It’s significant that even Sigmund Freud, who was not a believer in God, said we had an Id full of these desires. He postulated that this Id was like original sin – something warped and twisted in human nature that needed fixing. Through his years of practice and study, Freud came to the conclusion that EVERY PERSON’S BASIC NATURE IS EVIL.
That, of course, is what we’ve been hearing from Paul throughout this book of Romans. We are all poisoned by sin. As the great R. A. Torrey put it, “No matter how excellent our ancestry, we have come into this world with a mind that is blind to the truth of God…Having affections that are alienated from God, we love the things we ought to hate and hate the things we ought to love.” It’s natural to be this way. It’s unavoidable - the basement voice of our lives pulls us down into sinful living. What people do every day for greed, power, sex, anger, revenge, selfishness, fear, and ambition is astonishing – but these are the untamed instincts of our human nature. Evil resides in the basements of our lives. We’re all capable of hideous things. We can never look at some evil action and truthfully say, “Oh, I’d never do that.” The truth is, we could do that. There, but for the grace of God, go I.
Preacher Charles Spurgeon once said, “Everything that is evil lurks within the heart of everyone that is born of a woman. Education may restrain it, imitation of a good example may have some power in holding the monster down; but the very best of us, apart from the grace of God, placed under certain circumstances which would cause the evil within us to be developed rather than restrained, would soon prove to be a demonstration that our nature was evil, and only evil, and that continually. You may take a bag of gunpowder, and play with it if you care to do so, for it is quite harmless as long as you keep the fire from it; but just put one spark of fire to it, and then you will discover the force for evil that was latent in that innocent-looking powder. You may tame a tiger if you begin training it early enough, and you may treat it as if it was only a big cat; but let it once learn the taste of blood, and you will soon see the true tiger nature flashing from its eyes, and seeking to destroy all that come within reach of its cruel claws. In a similar fashion to that, sin is originally latent within every one of us…” Whether you want to admit it or not, the right spark could set your basement of sin powder exploding in ways you never thought possible. But for the Holy Spirit, we are lost in our slavery to sin.
But all is not lost. We also have, in this house of ours, AN UPSTAIRS. Residing upstairs is a voice that keeps inviting us to a higher kind of living, to be more than we are by nature, to be what we are by our new, second nature. THERE IS A HIGHER, LOFTIER VOICE CALLING DOWN TO US. Remember the young son in the parable of the Prodigal? He went to his father and asked for his inheritance. The father gave him all of it. He went off and spent it all in loose, sinful living. It didn’t take him long to lose it all – soon he had no food, no friends, no place to live. Working on a pig farm, knee deep in mud he (Lk. 15) “…came to himself and said, ‘I will return to my father.’” The higher voice was getting through! The son realized he did not belong to the swine, he did not belong in a far country; he belonged to his father at home.
What about Jesus’ beloved disciple Peter – he was impetuous, impulsive, impossible to manage or control. One minute he was loving his Lord openly, another denying him publicly; one minute obeying him and the next arguing with him. Yet, to him Jesus said, “You are rock! You are the stuff faith is made of! Upon your faith I will build my church!” The higher voice kept calling to him!
This voice reminds us (1) “…there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” Think of it – since we are in Christ Jesus, God treats us the way He treats Jesus! Because God does not condemn Jesus He does not condemn us. YOU ARE NOT CONDEMNED. Our identity is not rooted in our past, but in Jesus’ past! He has taken care of our sin and guilt. Your identity is not in anything you have done or failed to do, it is not in your failures, it is not in your successes, it is not in what others think of you; your identity is in Jesus, the Son of God.
In fact (16-17), “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…” WE ARE HEIR MINDED! Everything that belongs to Jesus Christ belongs to us! Everything Jesus is we will be! (2 Cor. 3:18): “We are being transformed from one degree of glory to another into His likeness…” (1 Jn. 3:2) “…When He appears, we shall be like him…”
I worked for one summer for the Zeeland school system, on the custodial staff. They were remodeling the high school and were throwing out some old chemistry cabinets but were willing to let anyone who wanted them to have them. They had glass doors but the finish was basically black, covered with years and layers of varnish. I wondered who in the world would want them. Barb’s mother took one look at them and took one! She knew the original finish underneath; she knew how to restore its beauty. It now stands in our family room as a wonderful antique. Similarly God sees through the years and layers of varnish in our lives and CALLS US TO BE TRANSFORMED INTO HIS BEAUTY – a beauty that is already within us
This higher voice within us overcomes the basement depths of our being. Many of us need, this morning, need to hear that voice again. It lives in our houses, in the upstairs. We need to hear it because but for the Holy Spirit, we are lost in our slavery to sin.
We’ve considered the basement and the upstairs – so now we examine the MAIN FLOOR, where we live, hemmed in between the basement and the upstairs – caught between the dark depths and the higher voice. There’s a battle taking place between the lower and upper floors. WE ARE THE ROPE IN A DAILY TUG OF WAR. We are frayed and pulled in the battle. As someone has said, there’s a pair of fighting twins within each of us, and one reaches for the stars while the other clings to the mud. It’s just a reinforcement of Paul’s great words in Romans we considered last week (7:18-25 MSG): “…if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it. I decide not to do bad but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone very wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time…I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope…” There’s a division within us. But for the Holy Spirit we are lost in our slavery to sin.
But for the Holy Spirit. THERE IS A DEVELOPMENT TAKING PLACE WITHIN US. Verse 9 ff.: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you... And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.” We are still in the season of Pentecost, celebrating that God lives within us. The Holy Spirit brings the life of God into you and me. We have more than just the divine voice upstairs calling down to us – we have the divine life and power within us. As children of God we have His nature within us. Now most of us believe that we are children of God – brothers and sisters of Jesus – but we have trouble living appropriately. We know we are heirs, His namesake, but we have difficulty living on our inheritance. WE NEED NOT ONLY TO BE HEIR MINDED, BUT ALSO HEIR CONDITIONED. So Paul tells us how to be heir conditioned and controlled by the Holy Spirit.
First, Verses 6 & 14: “…the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace … those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” THE HOLY SPIRIT LEADS US. To be led is to be laid hold of, to be brought to a point or destination, to be moved, encouraged, and driven. As a magnet draws iron to itself, so the Holy Spirit draws us to our Father. Have you ever, in a moment of crisis, cried out “Oh God!” or “Lord, help me!”? Look at verse 15: “For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father." Crying out is a sign the Spirit is within you, drawing you like a magnet to your Father. He’s drawing you to your Father so you can become like Him, so He can give you His mind, His heart, His affections, and His will. We become heir conditioned when we let the Holy Spirit lead us.
Second, the HOLY SPIRIT ENLIVENS US. The Holy Spirit is the breath and life of God. He brings to us everything that Jesus Christ has. We are, according to Peter, partakers of the divine nature. You know, I’d love to be able to play basketball like LeBron James – to shoot, dribble, hang in the air, and slam dunk like He does would be fabulous! Now I can watch him play game after game, but that won’t enable me to play like him! Just suppose, however, that somehow LeBron’s abilities could be transfused into me; then I could do it! I’d have a whole new power, a new law within me. It’s not going to happen; but with the Holy Spirit I have a whole new power, a new law within me that enables me to reach upward and get out of the mud, to listen to the voice upstairs and climb out of the basement. Verses 9-11: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you… if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
And, to be heir conditioned WE MUST PUT OURSELVES IN POSITION to receive the Holy Spirit. Billy Graham told the story of an Eskimo fisherman who went to town every Saturday afternoon. He always brought his two dogs with him, one white and one black. H had taught them to fight on command and every Saturday afternoon the townspeople would gather and the fisherman would take bets as to who would win. Some days the white dog won, and some the black. But the fisherman would always win the bets! His friends would always ask him how he knew the outcome. Finally he told them that during the week he would starve the one and feed the other. “The one I feed always wins because he is stronger.” WHETHER WE RESPOND TO THE BASEMENTS OR THE UPSTAIRS OF OUR LIVES DEPENDS ON WHICH ONE WE’VE BEEN FEEDING.
As C. S. Lewis put it, “Good things as well as bad are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire; if you ant to get wet, you must get near the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into what causes them. They are not the sorts of prizes which God could, if he chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very center of reality. If you are close to their spray, it will wet you; if you are not, you will remain dry.” Take control of your life – GET CLOSE TO JESUS. Put yourself in position to receive the outpouring of His life.
But for the Holy Spirit we are lost in our slavery to sin. Perhaps this morning you need to arise and go back to your Father; maybe you need simply to increase the Spirit’s daily feeding; perhaps you simply need to thank God that he has given you his Spirit and drawn you close to Himself. Come to Jesus right now. Pray for His Spirit to be released in you. Claim Jesus’ words (Lk. 11:11-13): “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
