I keep coming across people who are struggling with whether their faith is real. People whose Christian experience is something like what Paul describes at the end of Romans 7. They struggle to believe that they could be truly God’s children when their life is so full of sin. If you’re one of those people then I hope today’s passage may be of some help to you. You see, we come today to the culmination of Paul’s explanation of the basis of the Christian faith. He’s just finished describing the dilemma he finds himself in as a Christian who tries and tries to keep God’s law but who finds himself failing time and time again. And his conclusion is that the only hope he has is if God does something to help him overcome his own weakness. By himself he can’t meet his own standards let alone those of God in heaven. And so he cries out from the heart, "Who will rescue me from this body of death?" And the answer comes from what he’s already explained; from the gospel. It’s Jesus Christ who will rescue him, indeed who has rescued him, and all those who call on his name. And so he goes on in chapter eight to explain how this all works.
As I said, there are still people around who see themselves as failures because of their apparent lack of godliness, their apparent lack of spirituality. They feel that there’s nothing they can do to match up to the standard they understand a Christian needing to meet. They look at others, they compare themselves to their Christian friends and they think there must be something wrong, something that they’re missing. If you’re one of those people who think like that at times, then you need to pay special attention to this passage.
You see the conclusion that comes from all that we’ve discovered so far in this letter to the Romans is this: "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Not "there is not much condemnation." No, "There is now no condemnation." Those people, you see, who compare themselves with others, who ask whether they’re good enough for God, are asking the wrong question. The question can never be, "Am I good enough." The moment we ask that question we’re sunk. Of course we’re not good enough! The greatest saint who ever lived wasn’t good enough. So what hope do I have?
No, the question we need to ask is "Am I in Christ Jesus?" "Am I one of his followers?" "Do I have his Holy Spirit within me?" That’s the important question because if I’m in Christ Jesus, then, we’re told, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and of death. The results of that inevitable tendency to disobey that we talked about last time are removed by God’s Spirit coming to dwell within us, purifying us, making us acceptable to God.
Here’s how it works. V3: "God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
God, in all his wisdom, saw what was needed to make us acceptable to himself. He knew that we could never meet his standards by our own efforts. What was needed was a human being who was without sin and who would obey God in every way. But more than that. What we needed was someone, one of us, to take the penalty for sin on himself, by dying a human death on our behalf; to satisfy the just requirements of the law and thus silence its demands forever. And then we needed that person’s life to be given to us.
Well, that’s exactly what’s happened with Jesus Christ coming to live and die as a human being, and then, having ascended to heaven, giving us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us. So that, now, we no longer walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
Well, that’s all very well. It’s nice theory if you can get your head around it, but how does it work in practice? How do we know whether we’re in Christ? How do we know whether we have God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within us? How do we know whether we’re walking no longer by the flesh, but according to the Spirit?
Well, can I say at the outset, that there are all sorts of people around who’ll want to give you a definitive answer on this. They’ll point to the gifts of the Spirit; they’ll ask you whether you’re experiencing renewal in your life; some will ask whether you can speak in tongues; others will ask whether your life is exhibiting the sort of holiness that you might expect in someone who was filled with God’s Spirit. But the danger in all of those sorts of approaches is that our natural tendency is to revert to legalism, to performance based assessment, to judgement, based on feelings of success or failure in obeying! In other words we simply turn back to law. Oh, we mightn’t compare ourselves on the basis of obedience to the law. But we do compare ourselves. We do the exact thing we’re trying to get away from. We look at others who seem to be "filled with the Spirit" and we make comparisons. Do we pray as much or as long as them? Are we as joyful as them? Are we as demonstrative in our expression of our faith in God as them? Are we as excited by our faith as much as them? And inevitably we fail to match up. We come to the same conclusion that we came to when we were thinking about our obedience to the law. We’re not good enough.
I remember a time when we were in a church that had a strong group of Christians who’d been influenced by the charismatic movement. These people were turned on for God. We’d get to the point in the communion service where we used to say "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again" and they’d shout it out with great gusto. Now there wasn’t anything wrong with their enthusiasm. I think it’d be great if we were all that enthusiastic about the thought that Jesus has conquered death and is coming again to take us to be with him. But what happened was that those who weren’t caught up in their enthusiasm, who couldn’t share in their exuberance began to question their own faith. People who’d been strong Christians for 20 years or more began to wonder whether they were really converted; whether there was something wrong with their faith. Well, there wasn’t anything wrong with their faith. The only problem they had was the criteria they were using for judging their faith.
The danger we always face in this sort of discussion is judging our faith on the basis of performance. And when we do that we ignore the fact that our salvation depends in its entirety on the work of Jesus Christ, not on our performance. And the presence of God’s Holy Spirit within us depends entirely on the work of Jesus Christ, on the grace of God.
So how do we know whether we have God’s Holy Spirit within us?
The first answer to that is that Jesus promised that he would give his Holy Spirit to all who believe in him. So that’s the first test. Are you someone who believes in Jesus? Again, that isn’t a question of performance. The question isn’t have you got to the point where you’re good enough for Jesus? It’s simply do you believe that he’s the Son of God? Do you believe that he died and rose again? Do you believe that his death has made it possible for your sins to be forgiven? Have you come to the point where you’re willing for him to be the Lord of your life? If you can say yes to those sorts of questions, then you can be confident that he’s kept his promise. That his Spirit is working within you already. Look at v9: "You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness." In other words, everyone who belongs to Christ has the Spirit of Christ dwelling within them. Now there are 2 things we might want to observe from that. First of all, it means that anyone who suggests that some Christians are still waiting to receive the Holy Spirit hasn’t understood what it means to be a Christian. But it also means that anyone who has believed in Jesus Christ, who has given their life over to him, has the Spirit within. And that means that they’re now living a life of righteousness through his indwelling.
But let me suggest a couple of more immediate ways to tell whether we have the Spirit within. Look at v5. "those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit." Now I think this is both an imperative, i.e. an encouragement to behave in a certain way, and a description of how things are for the Christian. I think it’s true that those who are followers of Christ have an inner desire to follow the things of the Spirit, i.e. the things of God. So if you’re unsure whether you’re really a follower of Christ, whether you really have his Spirit within you, here’s the first test. Are you aware of an inner desire for the things of God? Are you aware of being dissatisfied with your failure to do what God desires? Do you resonate with the frustration that Paul expresses in ch7 at his inability to keep the law? Well, that inner desire to obey God, that frustration at your inability to do so, may well be the work of God’s Holy Spirit shaping your will to God’s.
Or look at v15: "When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." I wonder who it is that you pray to, when you pray. Are you praying to a remote, inaccessible deity, far away from you? Up in heaven looking down from afar? Or are you praying to one who’s like a father? One whom you can be confident in confiding in, whom you look to for care and comfort? Even if you’re unsure whether you have enough faith or whether you’re good enough for God, when you bow your head to pray, if you find yourself speaking to the one who’s your father in heaven, then that’s a sign for you that you’re already a child of God. That’s the Holy Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
So let’s give up the self examination, the sense of failure, of unworthiness. See ourselves as God sees us: as his beloved children. Then, having changed the way we see ourselves in relation to God, we’ll begin to see our lives as an outworking of God’s presence within us.
This is the new life in the Spirit. Instead of our lives being driven by sin, we’re now under the control of the Holy Spirit. Our minds are now set on the things of the Spirit. Even when we fail to obey, we’re brought back to God in repentance by the Spirit who moves our minds along spiritual lines rather than along fleshly lines. The Spirit is constantly bringing us back to God, reminding us of the things that God wants us to focus on. The Spirit is constantly putting to death the deeds of our old bodies, so that in the end we have life, not death.
In the end, what matters isn’t our ability or failure to keep the law, what matters is that God has made us his children. Children don’t stop being children because they disobey their parents. Good parents don’t love their children any less, just because they rebel against them. In fact if they’re teenage children that’s almost a given! No matter how much their children rebel, they continue to love them. And as much as the children may try to escape the influence of their parents, they remain and will always remain their parents’ children. That may or may not be a good thing for human children, but it’s certainly a good thing for us who are children of God. It means that we will always be his children; that he will always love us and provide for us, even if we turn away for a while.
And it means that if we’re children of God, then we’re also heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Mind you Paul points out that if I’m a joint-heir with Christ it may mean that I’ll join him in his suffering as well as in his glory. But as we’ll see next week, the small amount of suffering we may experience in this life is nothing compared to the glory that God will reveal in us at the end, the glory that will be part of our inheritance. And that glory will come, not through our ability to achieve a particular level of godliness, or a particular level of spirituality, but through the power of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling within us, through the new life he gives us and through the righteousness won for us by Jesus Christ.
So here’s how it is. If we wonder whether we’re truly followers of Christ then this is one way we can tell: are our minds set on the things of God, is our failure to obey something we struggle with, do we relate to God as our father, rather than someone distant and remote?
And if we’re truly followers of Christ, then are we setting our minds on Jesus Christ? Are we calling on God our Father to help us by his Holy Spirit?
And if we believe in Jesus Christ, if we belong to him, then this is the assurance we’re given: that he’s given us his own Spirit to dwell within us, to fill us with his righteousness, to change our minds so we’ll focus on pleasing God, not our sinful flesh; to testify to our spirits that we are indeed children of God.
I pray that everyone here will go away today knowing that God is our Father, that we are his children and that his Holy Spirit dwells within us bringing us the life, the righteousness, we need to live in God’s presence for eternity.
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