Introduction:
A couple who had been married for twenty years went to a wedding of a close friend’s daughter. During the ring exchange ceremony, the husband started to cry. The wife, surprised by her husband’s emotional outburst, said, “I didn’t realize that you had such a sentimental heart." He replied, "Twenty years ago, your father threatened that if I didn’t marry you, he would put me behind bars for twenty years. The husband said, "If I had just gone to jail, I would’ve been a free man by now.” Freedom, sweet freedom what a wonderful thought. We want to be free from stress, conflict and pressure that comes from simply living life. Most of us would readily admit that we would like to be free from guilt and our past. Unfortunately, this seems much more like a dream than reality. We want to have a more balanced life and a spiritual walk where we can actually see measurable progress. If you are like me you are simply sick and tired of the frustration and pain that accompanies life in this world. We want to be truly free! Is that even possible? As we raise the curtain on Romans 8, we discover that God’s answer is a resounding yes. However, it will never be achieved by our own feeble efforts, it takes much more than what we have to give. This new life is a direct result of our new position in Jesus Christ. As a Christian you are now in Christ and the Holy Spirit is at work in your life. As the Spirit works we begin to see changes in our attitudes and behaviors. In fact many of these changes are not possible from a human standpoint. Today our goal is to discover the changes that come into our lives as a result of being in Christ.
I. Our new position in Christ.
A. In Christ you no longer stand condemned of your sin.
1. The construction of verse one in the Greek shows that Paul is forming a conclusion based on the material he has just presented.
2. The life that was dominated by the attitudes and behaviors of the world no longer dominates the life of the believer.
3. The prospect of going down in defeat that Paul presented in chapter seven has been totally reversed in chapter eight.
4. Jesus has literally snatched His people out of the hands of sin and death and guaranteed that the victory has been won.
5. Why is there no more condemnation? Jesus Christ has paid the penalty of our sin with His blood on the cross.
B. In Christ you are free from the grip of sin and death.
1. There is no reason to fret over whether or not our sins are really forgiven, Jesus secured this for us on the cross.
2. Too many times we live looking over our shoulders in fear because we question if Christ’s victory really applies to us. However, Paul should remove any doubts here in chapter eight.
3. Bruce Shields describes the situation this way in his commentary on Romans. “Being a Christian is not dependent on feeling like a Christian, since one becomes a Christian by the Lord’s initiative and one remains a Christian by that same power and authority.”
4. Our forgiveness and ability to live the new life we are called to is not dependent upon our effort. Jesus has provided the forgiveness and the Holy Spirit empowers us to live this life.
5. Even though we still live in this sinful world and are prone to sinful behavior, we are not under sin’s power and penalty because Christ has set us free.
C. In Christ you are declared righteous before God.
1. We are well aware of all the sins we have committed in our lives and with Satan’s help we feel guilty and regularly beat ourselves up over them.
2. The Law could not make us righteous in God’s sight, but because of Jesus paying the penalty for our sins we can now be declared righteous before God.
3. How can this be? Paul shows that the demands of the Law have been satisfied because Jesus offered obedience and paid the penalty on our behalf.
4. A transformation has taken place, the Holy Spirit has now moved in and taken up residence where sin once lived.
II. Contrasting the old and new lives.
A. The character traits of a life lived without Christ.
1. To live according to something literally means to be under its control. So Paul will contrast life according to the flesh and life according to the Spirit.
2. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:14—NIV 2011)
3. Without the Spirit our mind will be focused on satisfying the desires of the sinful nature and we will engage in the behavior that violates God’s commands.
4. Life by the flesh will cause us to be condemned by the Law and subject to the penalty for disobeying the Law.
5. Life by the flesh literally causes us to be in a state of rebellion against God. It is like saying, “God I don’t care what you say, I am going to live the way I want to.”
6. The bottom line is that there is no way for us to please God on our own. Life by the flesh leads us down a hopeless road toward our own destruction.
B. The character traits of a life lived in the Spirit.
1. The Holy Spirit instills within us the desire to please God, which is the basis for the struggle that Paul described in the closing verses of chapter 7.
2. No longer do we find ourselves in rebellion against God, life by the Spirit allows us to be at peace with God because we know that we no longer stand condemned before Him.
3. Where sin condemns us to death for all eternity, the Spirit makes us alive for all eternity.
4. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and well in us. Just as Jesus was raised from death to life, we will experience the same.
5. 9 Don’t lie to each other, for you have stripped off your old sinful nature and all its wicked deeds. 10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him. (Colossians 3:9-10—NLT)
6. We no longer have to settle for life the way it is, the Spirit truly sets us free and allows us to live a life that has a bright future.
III. Understanding what God expects from us.
A. We are not to continue living with the behaviors and attitudes of the world.
1. When you consider the privileged position we are in through Christ, one would expect us to have some responsibility and that is exactly what Paul begins to outline in verse 12.
2. Becoming a Christian does not make us robots. We still have the responsibility to strive to live a life that is consistent with the calling that has been placed on our lives.
3. Becoming a new creation does not automatically do away with the fallen creature it simply restores our relationship with God.
4. The Holy Spirit gives us the ability to say no to the behaviors and attitudes of this sinful world. In enables us to choose the narrow path rather than the broad one.
5. We are now not under any obligation to obey our old sinful nature, its hold upon us has been broken.
B. We are to strive to live a life guided by and empowered by the Holy Spirit.
1. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit empowers us to be able to live within the bounds of God’s will.
2. Life in the Spirit enables us to enjoy the blessings of our new relationship with God. We are now His children and He is our Father.
3. We are indebted to God. We owe it to Him to say no to the sinful things of the world and to strive to live a life that is pleasing to Him.
4. Paul’s bottom line for us is this…With privilege comes responsibility.
IV. Answering two very probing questions.
A. Are you completely sure of where you will spend eternity?
1. When you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, your eternity is not in question because you have been saved from your sins.
2. We need to remember that salvation is a present reality for those who are striving to live life in the Spirit.
3. If you examine your life right now and discover that you are still living according to the flesh a change needs to take place.
4. It is our responsibility to decide which nature we are going to follow. No one can make this decision for us.
B. Does your lifestyle reflect the flesh or the Spirit?
1. When God looks at us what does He see?
2. When you look in the mirror what do you see?
3. Our obligation is to strive to live a life that displays Jesus Christ to all those we encounter.
4. Salvation is a free gift of God’s grace but it must be accepted on God’s terms, not ours.
Closing:
A good many years ago there was born in Russia a boy who thought himself so ugly that he felt there was no happiness for such as he. He had a wide nose, thick lips, small grey eyes, and big hands and feet. When he grew to be a man he became a famous writer. In one of his books he tells that he was so anxious about this ugliness that he besought God to work a miracle, to turn him into a beauty. If God would do this the boy promised that he would give God all he then possessed, or would possess in the future.
That Russian boy was the great Count Tolstoi who would become known as Leo Tolstoi. Happily as he grew older he discovered that the beauty for which he sighed was not the only beauty, nor the best beauty. He learned to value more the beauty of a character strong and great and good in God’s sight.
