The country once called Zaire is gone. It’s hard to believe how fast it happened, isn’t it? The suffering has been terrible, but 7 months is an incredibly short time for a civil war to begin, run its course, and end, especially a country the size of Zaire. I mean, the Republic of Congo. It’s as big as all of Europe! And everybody - all of us international affairs junkies - were afraid of a massacre when the rebel troops entered Kinshasa; after all, look what happened in Monrovia during the Liberian civil war. But this was so astonishing, I almost want to say miraculous. We’ve certainly prayed hard enough for peace there. When Kabila’s soldiers entered the city the government troops, by and large, simply handed over their weapons. The TV cameras showed huge piles of surrendered rifles on the streets. It’s been about two weeks now, since Kabila took over the country, and it’s simply remarkable how smoothly it all went.
What happened? Why were people so willing to let the rebel forces just walk in and take over? They weren’t from any local tribe, they had no local backing, hadn’t even made any promises of anything except change.
Well, when people are desperate enough, almost any change will do. And Mobutu had looted the country for decades. In the 32 years since he took over, he reduced what had been one of the most prosperous countries in Africa to an economic basket case. It’s estimated that he got away with about $3 billion over the three decades. And not even the troops had any reason to be loyal. Most of them hadn’t been paid for months. They’d been living off of a combination of moonlighting and extortion; their only hope of survival was to transfer allegiance as quickly as possible to the new regime. And the bureaucrats were just as eager to change sides. The ones I heard being interviewed were hoping that they’d get jobs similar to their old ones as soon as the new government started taking shape. “They’ll need people with our skills,” they said, “it just makes sense for them to keep people in the jobs they’re good at.”
The interviewer noted that these were the same people who had helped Mobutu stay in power, who aided and abetted his plundering of the country. The viewers were left to their own conclusions. I’d say chances are at best fifty-fifty that either the police or the bureaucrats will behave any better under Kabila than they did under Mobutu. Probably less. And you may think I’m cynical, and you may be right. But I know how hard it is to change, even when you want to.
And I suspect that many of the people who are so eager to swear allegiance to their new rulers have no particular desire to change their life-style, they just want to be paid on time. But they probably expect to go on acting just the way they always did.
And that may be what happens. It may be that the new government will be just like the old one but with a new name and a new flag and a different set of slogans. We just don’t know enough about Kabila yet. He may tolerate corruption, overlook police brutality, practice nepotism, and buy villas in the south of France. But he may not. He may demand a higher standard of behavior. And he may enforce it. And the smart ones will watch, and take their cues, and shape up.
As the old saying has it, an honest politician is one who stays bought.
And if any of the expectations of those who were tossing their hats in the air with joy over Mobutu’s ouster are to come true, all of these changed allegiances will have to amount to more than just words. It’ll have to go deeper than that.
Allegiance is an old-fashioned kind of concept. People don’t talk about it much these days, it’s kind of gone out of style, along with words like duty and honour. It has to do, more than anything else, with whom you obey (that’s another word that’s out of fashion). And it’s the kind of thing that you generally don’t think about unless either you - or your circumstances - get shaken up.
There are a lot of different reasons why people might identify themselves as Christians. There was a time when church-going was pretty much automatic. Some people call themselves Christians just because they aren’t Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist, or because their parents took them to Sunday School when they were little. Some people use the word “Christian” as a synonym for “good person.” But it’s not as simple as that. It’s not even a matter of saying a prayer or two and showing up at church for an hour every week. It’s not about words, or about ceremonies. It’s a matter of allegiance. It’s a matter of obedience.
Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” [Mat 7:21]
“But,” I hear you say, “that sounds like salvation by works. That sounds like earning your way into heaven. I thought salvation was a free gift.” And that’s true, it is. But think about this. Have you ever gotten a present you didn’t want?
What do you do when your boss gives you the world’s fanciest espresso maker for a wedding present, but you drink tea. Or Great-Aunt Agatha (the one with the money) sends you a hand-knit sweater every Christmas - but you’re allergic to wool. Or your mother-in-law gives you season tickets to the opera.
What do you do?
Do you smile, and say thank you, and put it away? What do you do when the question comes up - as no doubt it will - as to which opera you liked best? Do you hem and haw and finally confess that you would rather go to the dentist than to the opera? Or do you just lie?
Is the gift of salvation something you really want, or something you think you ought to want?
Is the gift of salvation something you really want, or are you just hedging your bets?
Is the gift of salvation something you really want, or have you put it away to unwrap some other day when you’re not so busy?
If the gift of salvation is something you don’t particularly want, you might as well never have gotten it.
But how could anyone not want it?
What is the gift of salvation, anyway?
The book of Romans is one of the greatest theological expositions ever written. Paul spends over 7 chapters answering that question - and I’m going to try to do it in a single sentence. But here goes:
The gift of salvation is the door opened to a relationship with God for people who know they’re separated from God and don’t want to be.
In the early chapters of Romans Paul explains at some length how it is we came to be separated from God. He talks about how sin came into the world, and how people, by and large, have always preferred to go on sinning rather than face the truth about themselves and seek God. He reminds them of how God gave Moses the law, so that people would know how to live, and then shows them how just knowing the law wasn’t enough. People are just not able to live up to God’s standards under their own power.
In the year 740 B.C. the prophet Isaiah, a devout and observant Jew, was granted a vision:
“He saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, YHWH Almighty."
Isaiah - even Isaiah - when faced with God - fell to his face on the floor in terror.
And when Moses, the “friend of God”, asked for the privilege of seeing God’s face, God spared him a sight that would have killed him.
I know a lot of people - and I’ll bet you do too - who think that because they do their best to live a good life that they will “go to heaven.” Some of the best people I know - the kindest, most honest, most generous people around - don’t think they need Christ because they haven’t a clue how far above us, how totally holy and awesome and dangerous God is. Their approach to religion is sort of like preparing for climbing Mt. Everest by packing an extra pair of socks and a box of granola bars. But you need more than that. The first thing a mountaineer has to learn - even for less challenging peaks - is to respect the mountain, and know your own limitations. It reminds me a bit of that passage in Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” The top of Mt. Everest is not a place humans are equipped to survive. There’s not enough oxygen.
In Chapter 7 Paul shares his own struggle to be good - to be worthy of standing in the presence of God - under his own power. “I do not understand my own actions,” he says. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ... I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. So I find ...that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind.... Who will rescue me?” he cries at last. “Who will rescue me?”
And that, my friends, is the gift of salvation. The one who answers that cry for help, our rescuer, is Jesus Christ. He clothes us in his own goodness so that we can stand before God without being burned to a crisp, and gives us the Holy Spirit to live in us and change our allegiance from the things of this world to the things of God so that we can begin to change into the kind of people who are happier living in God’s Kingdom than on Easy Street.
And so now, finally, we come to Chapter 8, and the passage we just read. What does it mean to have the Holy Spirit live in us? How does it work? What is our part? And why should we do anything at all? Let God do all the work.
The reason is that we’ve changed allegiance.
We’ve switched from following one master to following another.
It’s like Zaire-I-mean-Congo. People who were unhappy with Mobutu had no other choice. They had to wait until someone stronger than they were defeated him and drove him out. But now they have a choice - or at least, we hope they do. Now, God willing, they will have a chance to live honest and productive lives, at peace with their neighbors and with hope for the future. The key question is, were they unhappy with the whole system, or did they just resent being on the bottom of the pile?
Satan has been defeated by Jesus Christ, and now there is an alternative way of living in the world. All the rubble of Satan’s rule still lies around us, and will be there as long as we live. But we can, by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, live amidst all the trash as if there were more important things in life. There are three reasons why we want to do that.
The first reason is that we are, as Paul tells us in v. 1, indebted to the one who rescued us. “We are debtors,” he says, “but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” Our lives belong to God, because of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ, and it is wrong for us to throw our lives away on garbage. Everything that we need for life comes from God - our daily bread, our relationships, our work, our futures. All the temptations that Satan uses to try to lure us away from God are illusions.
The lie with the biggest currency in our culture is the one that says there’s no such thing as truth, all things are relative, the most important thing is to be free to choose. Freedom from truth is a false freedom; it’s like being free from hunger when you snort cocaine. You may not feel hungry, but if you don’t eat you’ll die. Freedom from the truth of God may feel like freedom, but it means the death of the soul and a life emptied of meaning and purpose. That is what Paul means when he says, “If you live according to the flesh, you will die.” But if you allow the Holy Spirit who lives within you to turn you toward Jesus, and away from the world’s false promises, you will be given lasting life by the very One who (a) made you in the first place and (b) paid his own life to get you back again.
The second reason to change our behavior along with our leader is that “We did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear... the spirit bears witness within us that we are children of God.” We aren’t to obey God out of fear, resenting our chains, looking for time off for good behavior, sneaking forbidden treats in the corners of our lives. Instead, our spirits rejoice in the presence of God, crying “Abba, father!” just as the prodigal son rejoiced when his father ran to him in joyful forgiveness. And because of the Holy Spirit’s assurance that we are children of God, we don’t have to seek meaning and affirmation in the things the world values like money or success or sexual relationships, nor do we have to fear rejection, or abandonment, or failure. Next to that delight, the things of the world begin to seem tawdry and shallow. Nothing the world can offer us is sweeter than the sense of belonging, of being loved, that is the gift of the Holy Spirit alone.
And the third reason to stay faithful in our allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, even when times are hard, is the promised reward. . God who raised Jesus Christ from the grave can and will raise us up from hardship, sorrow, poverty, and despair. Nothing that life can do to us can destroy that certainty. Just a few short verses further on, Paul gives us some of the most precious lines in all of Scripture: “Who will separate us from the love of God? ... I am convinced that neither death, nor lif e, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Some of you who have known Christ since before your earliest memory have wondered if you are not perhaps missing some of the intensity that often accompanies an adult conversion experience. It is true that living without Christ is bad enough that the contrast is very sharp. But it is a far more wonderful thing to have grown up with Him.
One thing is certain, however. The challenge to faithfulness is no less demanding for the old Christian than for the new. For the new Christian, the greatest temptation may be the false, familiar promises of Satan’s regime; they’re piled as high around us as the stacks of rifles on Kinshasa’s street corners, and there are times when the old reflexes take over. For the older Christian, the temptation may be to stay indoors, out of the fray. For some, the challenge to obedience is to act; for others, the challenge is to wait. For all, the challenge is real.
So whether you received Christ as an adult, as I did, or were clothed with him at baptism shortly after your birth, let us give thanks to God who by the power of the Spirit who lives within us makes it possible for us to remain faithful to Jesus until the day we see him at last.
