1 The astonishing thing that God has now done in Messiah Jesus is that he has brought the end of all things forward into our present. The past, present, and future come together in Jesus. God's final righteous verdict on our human life is pronounced -- revealed here and now!
Now I know that asserting such a thing may seem very fearsome indeed. When we look at our own weakness in following God's commands, we are frustrated and, if we are honest, we are inevitably afraid of condemnation before God's judgment.
But amazingly, what we discover is that for those who are in Messiah Jesus, God imposes no verdict of condemnation at all! "No Condemnation!" Do you hear that? Rather, welcome, acceptance, unconquerable love! It is all because of Jesus' faithfulness!
By faith we trust in what God has done in Jesus -- God's faithful righteousness in keeping his promises. Our faith simply responds to what Jesus has done, and God by his grace brings us to share in Jesus' life and identity, in who he is and in all that he did. "No condemnation" defines being in him, participating in all the effects of his faithfulness and sacrifice.
2 Through Jesus, God has brought the way he works within us humans to a new level. The ancient Law or Torah, which expressed God's will and intended to give us life, was always frustrated by the sin and brokenness dwelling in us -- what I've called our "flesh." But now the Law is under the power of God's Spirit, who is the very
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[The right-hand column carries the text of Romans 8 as it has been printed in the sermon series "Embraced by a God of Love" 1-7.]
1 Now, however, nothing can bring condemnation for those who are in Messiah Jesus!
2 For now the law, under the power of the Spirit who gives the life in Messiah Jesus, has itself set you free from
one who gives life to those who are in Messiah Jesus. And under the Spirit, that Law itself enacts a new Exodus, setting you free from the Law's own legal regulations that were manipulated by sin to bring about your death and alienation from God.
3 There are simply some things that the Law itself cannot do because its high intentions are rendered powerless by the weakness of our human "flesh." Let me be clear. When I say "flesh" I mean everyone's human physical life as a whole in that we are all deeply vulnerable to sin's power to deceive and corrupt us and undermine our relationship with God. I also mean our guilt in following sin's corrupting deceit. In our "flesh," sin enslaved us so that we can never on our own break free from the corruption, brokenness, and alienation so deep in human life.
But now God has done for us the very thing that was impossible for the Law to do. God intervened in our human predicament by sending his Son, who is uniquely himself. He sent him in fully human flesh, that flesh that we experience as so vulnerable to sin. But he was distinct among us humans in that he was faithful and did not yield to sin's power to corrupt us and alienate us from God. Rather he came precisely to break that power sin has to enslave us humans by giving himself for us. He gave his own unique self over to our situation of brokenness, pain, and death. To put it in the language of scripture, he came as a "sin offering."
In this unique offering, God created a way to do the impossible: Instead of condemning us humans for our sin, he broke sin's pervasive power and condemned sin itself! Sin is the destructive intrusion into God's good creation. We humans are his beloved creatures. It is important that
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that same law as it was wielded by sin to bring death.
3 For God has done what was impossible for the law on its own to do, because it was weakened by the flesh. By sending his own Son in flesh so like our sin-enslaved flesh and to deal with sin, God condemned sin itself in that very flesh.
this cosmic judgment took place in the very human flesh of the Messiah, God's unique Son. When sin conspired to kill him on the cross, he became God's ultimate sacrifice for sin.
4 God's purpose in such a profound intervention in human life was to fulfill the intention he has had all throughout human history. That intention was powerfully expressed in giving the Law through Moses, namely, to set the world right, to bring his people into real life in a right relationship with their creator. Ultimately, bringing that intention to full realization required all that Messiah Jesus did in his life, death and resurrection. But it now also deeply involves the continuing work of God's Spirit in our lives.
We don't live our lives in increments of centuries or eons but in a day-by-day, moment-by-moment walk, choosing a path at every step. The great event of Jesus Messiah is brought into that everyday scale of life by God's life-giving Spirit. He guides and empowers us to break out of our desires to follow the destructive path of "flesh" and instead to be transformed in our everyday life by the image of Jesus.
5 For, when our existence is defined by flesh, that means not only our external actions are misdirected, but also our interior life of imagination, thought, and decision is distorted and scarred because it does not see beyond the realm of flesh. Conversely, when our existence is stamped by the life-giving Spirit, our interior world is vastly expanded as our will, imagination, reflection, and sense of beauty are opened outward by the vastness of all that God's Spirit is and can do.
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4 God's purpose was that his faithful righteousness promised by giving the law might come to its full reality in us, who walk a path not determined by the flesh but empowered by the Spirit.
5 For those who live lives determined by the flesh think in a way that can't see beyond the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit think in a way opened to things that only the Spirit can do.
6 The way of thinking that is limited to the flesh constricts our mind, confines our imagination, alienates us from the life of God, and binds us to the delusions of our human-sized gods. That is ultimately death itself. But when our way of thinking is filled with the expansive world of God's Spirit, he lifts us up to see the real life that God intends for us. The Spirit's very presence also begins to bring us into the experience of that life from God, and we realize that his life in us cannot be destroyed by external circumstances. That experience of life brings a genuine peace that carries us through all the ups and downs of everyday living no matter how good or bad.
7 The problem is basic. The way of thinking stamped by the flesh has a fundamental self-focus. It does not recognize God as truly God. It pushes the true God out, replacing him with a god on our own controllable scale. It is an enemy to all of God's claims as our creator and redeemer. Just look at the story in scripture. When God gives his Torah, the flesh's way of thinking does not submit to the claim of God's will. But it's more than simple disobedience or rebellion. That way of thinking is caught in the delusion of sin, a vision of a world revolving around our own selves and our human-sized gods. It is blinded to God's will and can't break free of sin's deceit so as to be guided by God's Law.
8 Thus, people with lives stamped by flesh may well think that they are powerful within their own world, a world revolving around the gods of money, power, ambition, sex and other such idols. But in reality they have no power or strength to secure their lives or to draw near to the true God who is their own creator and the source of all life, power, and meaning that really lasts.
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6 For it is death to limit the mind to its enslavement to the flesh, but to open the mind to all that the Spirit does is to receive true life and peace.
7 For the pattern of thought of the flesh with its self-focus is hostile to the very reality of God being God. It does not submit to God's will expressed in the Law; it even blocks off the possibility.
8 Those who live in the realm of the flesh and its small gods simply cannot be the people the one true God created them to be.
9 But you, my brothers and sisters, you must let this great truth sink in. You are no longer caught in lives stamped by flesh and broken by sin's delusions. Rather your lives are shaped and filled by God's Spirit!
This, of course, as you well know, is not something that you could accomplish for yourselves. Such a reality can only become true when God's Spirit really chooses to come make his home in and among you as God's people. This Spirit is the determining factor, the underlying reality, in all true life, life that really lasts.
God's Spirit is also the Messiah's own Spirit. And if anyone does not have that Spirit of the Messiah dwelling within them, they are not part of the Messiah's life, not in Messiah Jesus.
10 But this is the wonder of God's work. This sharing-of- life that the Spirit brings about through his creative work is really already taking place! The Messiah really dwells in all of you -- high and low, Gentile and Jew, male and female, slave and free, just as you all are in the Messiah. Hold onto that truth! Then you will be able to see what God is doing.
We all share a common humanity, living in a mortal body that will die -- a body-life that still struggles with sin, brokenness, and all its consequences. But the presence of God's Spirit in you is the presence of real life, God's own eternal life, given as a gift within you here and now. God gives us that gift of life that he has always desired to give, a gift that manifests his faithful righteousness in fulfilling his promises.
11 In fact, what happens in you as God's people is the playing out of what has already happened in Messiah Jesus. When Jesus was crucified and took on himself the unimaginable weight of all our sin and death, it was God
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9 You, however, do not live lives determined by flesh but lives encompassed by Spirit, if in fact God's Spirit dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Messiah's Spirit is not part of him.
10 But if Messiah is in you, although the body is dying, still struggling with sin, the presence of God's Spirit is life itself because of God's faithful righteousness.
11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
who condemned sin itself and conquered the enslaving power of death by raising up Jesus uniquely from among all the dead. He raised him not to a resuscitated mortal life in which he would die again but to a resurrected, eternal life -- the life that is true life.
It was by the creative life-giving power of his Spirit that God raised Jesus as a physical human being like us to that new resurrection life. And it is that very Spirit that now dwells in you!
But Jesus was not only a physical human being like us. He was also Messiah, the one anointed by God to incorporate all his people -- all of Israel and ultimately all of humanity. This means that the very same God who raised Jesus as Messiah from death to resurrection life will also ultimately deal with your dying physical bodies that can suffer so much. With all our different histories we're all in that same boat of mortality. God will raise and transform those mortal bodies and give them life -- true, lasting, resurrection life -- through the power of that very Spirit that is already living within you and is shaping your day-by-day life. The process has already begun!
12 What does all this say to us, brothers and sisters? Sometimes we behave as though we were so enmeshed in life defined by flesh that we cannot make a clean break from it. It's as though we felt that because we live in a physical world we owed some debt to the "flesh" that we had to keep on paying. We don't! The very idea that the ways of sin and its corruption are inevitable and inescapable is just another expression of sin's deception.
13 The reality is that if you live a life stamped by flesh -- pushing God out of the center of life in favor of our destructive little gods -- you are refusing the only source
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he who raised Messiah from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you
12 So then, brothers and sisters, the fact that we are physical does not mean we owe a debt to keep on living lives determined by the flesh.
13 For if you live a life stamped by the flesh and its little gods,
of true life and you are going to die in the ultimate sense. But instead of that, you can join with the Spirit's
work and condemn to death all the destructive practices that sin and flesh have made part of your body's everyday life. I wrote about these practices earlier, everything from immorality to greed, envy, hatred, violence, slander, deceit, insolence, faithlessness, heartlessness, and other such destructive ways. If you join with God's cosmic work in Jesus by condemning sin to death in the everyday walk of your own life, you will truly live by the power of God's Spirit.
14 You see, all people, whoever they are, from whatever background or status, who walk in the paths where God's Spirit leads share in the life of the Son of God and are themselves truly God's sons and daughters. Such a claim may sound extravagant to the point of blasphemy, but by God's grace it is true!
You -- Roman, Greek, Jew, slave, anyone -- you become what ancient Israel was called to be. When God delivered them from Egypt, he led them through the desert toward the promised land as his "firstborn son" [Exod. 4:22]. You are led through a wilderness of life that tests and transforms you so that you may truly be the children God calls you to be.
15 Although it was God leading the Israelites through the desert, they often failed to trust God out of fear, and even wanted to go back to the slavery of Egypt. But the Spirit that you have received can never lead you back to enslavement to sin and flesh or to fearful subservience to circumstance or superstition or anything else.
God's Spirit assures you of God's love as he adopts you as his true sons and daughters. This becomes clear
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you're rejecting the only true God and source of life and you will die. But if you join with the Spirit in condemning to death sin itself, all the destructive practices that it has made part of the body's everyday doings, you will live.
14 For all who are led through life's wanderings by God's Spirit are God's sons and daughters.
15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a Spirit who declares us to be God's children, in whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"
when we are drawn into the intimacy with God that Jesus himself knew and taught to all of us as his disciples. He modeled a way of approaching God with simplicity and boldness, calling to him with the freedom of a beloved child -- "Abba! Father!"
16 Now the God of the universe is truly so unimaginably powerful, that we very naturally feel our distance, and we are awkward with such intimacy. It is again God's Spirit dwelling in us who makes all the difference. The Spirit teaches us not only to say those words from Jesus but also to trust the love of God that makes those words possible -- to cry them from the depths of our hearts. Thus, the Spirit joins together with our own spirit in shared testimony that God's astonishing love is real and that he has truly adopted us as his own children.
17 When a human family adopts a child, the child can become heir to all the family possesses. Amazingly, God does the same thing. It seems incredible, but we are heirs of the God who created the universe with all its wonders and who truly owns all that is. Since we can't know all that this astonishing creation contains, we can't imagine all that it means to be heirs of God. As heirs we stand side by side with Messiah Jesus! It's hard to even say such an amazing thing. In a very real sense, everything God has created belongs to us!
But just as we let such a promise begin to sink in, we must also remember another deep truth. When God's Son came into this world that he made and that belonged to him, he showed God's love by suffering with and for the world. We may not wish to think about it, but participating in his life includes participating in his suffering -- sharing pain, struggle, and distress that may
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16 The Spirit himself is bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
17 and if children, then heirs -- heirs of God and fellow heirs with the Messiah, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
take countless forms. But just as Jesus' suffering led to his resurrection and glorification, we also, if we suffer with him, will share in his inexpressible glory, participating in the roles that God always intended humans to have as we bear his image.
18 Suffering is really hard to think clearly about. From experience we know that suffering can be inexpressibly horrible, whether it takes the form of being attacked with stones and left for dead, suffering violence that storms out of irrational hatred, being terrified in a shipwreck on a stormy sea, hearing the cry of a starving child during famine, or feeling the bitterness of betrayal when a friend becomes an enemy. Every one of us shares some experience of our own suffering and can empathize with the different sufferings of other people.
Nevertheless, in spite of their horror, all the sufferings of this age share the fact that they are limited; they come to an end. But our experience of God's unlimited love in Messiah Jesus and in his Spirit has completely convinced me that the long catalog of sufferings I have gone through cannot compare to the unending glory of life, peace, and fulfillment that God is going to reveal for all of us who share his Spirit. We cannot imagine the surprise of it all, but even now we can know the love of God that is creating that future glory.
19 We are part of a story that is far bigger than ourselves. It is the process by which God is going to renew his whole creation. God loves his creation in all its variety, and we are a part of that vast totality. And in that story of renewal and recreation, God has chosen to give us a key role -- perhaps because we sinful humans embody all the possible brokenness of creation, physical body, mind,
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18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed for us.
19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
emotions, all of it. In any case, the result is that God has interwoven the entire process of renewal into his work of redeeming and transforming us through Jesus by making us his own children. It is as though the entire physical universe stood on tiptoe in expectation waiting for God's love finally to unveil the grandeur of his sons and daughters, adopted by God and gloriously recreated from enslaved and sinful humanity.
20 Just as we humans have been enslaved by sin, so the whole created order, as we see it through the narratives of scripture, suffers its own subjugation to seemingly meaningless corruption, violence, and change. This is not something creation chose for itself; rather God made it this way so that creation would embody an ever-changing incompleteness that would point toward a perfection yet to be realized. Thus the very corruption and change that we see everywhere embody a hope that points to something greater that the Creator will do with his creation.
21 The signs of what God has done in the past and is doing now are our best signs of what God wants to do with his whole creation. God has always moved us toward freedom. He broke the grip of Egypt's slavery to set his people free in the Exodus. He has broken the enslaving power of sin and death in Messiah Jesus in order give freedom to his children and bring them into the glorious responsibility of being his image-bearers in his world.
The ever-changing cycles of the physical creation also represent a slavery to death and decay that God will ultimately overcome in a new creation of life that will share the glorious resurrection life of God's children. It is a level of hope we can hardly imagine.
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20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope
21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and enjoy the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
22 We look at God's creation now and see its amazing beauty and life and at the same time its corruptibility and impermanence. It is as though we could hear all parts of creation groaning together like the cries of a woman in childbirth struggling through labor pains to bring forth new life. And these birthing cries have been part of our story and the story of the universe right up to the present moment.
23 We can see the whole creation in this way and ourselves as part of that creation only because we experience God's Spirit. In the present time, God's Spirit is the "first fruit" of that life to come, like the first cluster of ripe grapes tasted from a great vineyard. The Spirit is the presence of the creator God within us. He gives us the first taste of God's great future, and so we are able to see vividly and realistically the struggle and hope of our present time.
We find ourselves, in union with all of creation, groaning deeply as though we were giving birth. We experience that shared suffering on every level of our existence, but it is a pain that carries hope to give birth to new life. Ultimately we await the full realization of our life as sons and daughters of God, the deliverance of our bodies from every possible slavery in the resurrection life of God's new creation.
24 Such hope is at the very heart of our salvation. The Spirit brings a foretaste of God's future and shows us that life is not simply determined by the past, as if everything worked mechanically by itself through cause and effect. The creation moves toward the purpose God has for it. We can't see its full grandeur; we don't even know how to imagine it, but we receive a first taste of it in God's
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22 For we know that the whole creation is groaning together and together suffering the pains of childbirth until this moment.
23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first taste of life created by the Spirit, we ourselves groan in ourselves as we wait eagerly for full realization as God's children, the deliverance of our bodies from slavery.
24 For in this hope we were saved. Now a hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what they already see?
Spirit dwelling within us.
If we spoke of a hope that did not extend beyond
the broken world we can already see, that would be no hope at all. Who lives in anticipation of something that is already all too present?
25 But if our hope is not limited to the outcomes of the past but is focused on who God is and where God is going in his future, then things change. Just as a mother in labor is focused on seeing her child coming to birth, we also can go through all the struggles of this present birthing age with joyful anticipation.
And at the same time, we can patiently weep with those who weep, serve those in need as Jesus has served us, and in every way let God's self-giving love flow through us to others.
26 It is in all of these experiences that God's Spirit comes to our aid when we are dealing with pain or injustice or suffering and we are overwhelmed by it in our weakness. We want to pray about our struggles or about our world but realize that the depth of what is needed is so great that we don't know what we should pray. Our groaning with the whole of creation becomes very real. But we are not alone. God's Spirit himself is dwelling within us, joining us in our intercession but going beyond anything that we could understand or say, lifting up our deepest inarticulate longings in groans that could never be put into words. In spite of our weakness we find ourselves united both with the suffering world and with God himself in the Spirit in our pain for the brokenness around us and in longing for a world reborn.
27 God, the great Searcher of Hearts, who knows the depths of every human life, knows intimately the way of
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25 But if we hope for what we cannot yet see, we wait eagerly for it, yet with patience.
26 In the same way the Spirit is helping us just where we are weak. For we do not know what we should pray for -- what is really needed -- but the Spirit himself intercedes on our behalf with groans that can't be put in words.
27 And he who searches the hearts knows the
thinking of minds and hearts where the Spirit dwells, because the Spirit is always there interceding on behalf of God's holy people, shaping them toward a life centered on God and leading them toward God's will.
28 The Spirit does his work in God's people, so that the child-like cry, "Abba, Father," expresses a genuine and intimate love toward God, fulfilling that first, greatest commandment, that calls us to love God with our whole heart [Deut 6:5].
And from our own experience we know that God works together with those who are shaped by such love to deal with every circumstance that they encounter in a way that ultimately brings forth something good.
That genuine love for God is the sign of people who have been called into a relationship with him that embodies God's intention. Their love is real, unforced, freely given as a response to all that God has done in Messiah Jesus.
29 The process of transformation that is embodied in this love is no surprise to God. Ever since the first humans sinned and corrupted God's image and glory in them, God anticipated how he would restore humanity through
Jesus.He marked out in advance that their transformation would come through the love and faithfulness of Jesus. People would trust him and be stamped by his form so that they regained God's image in the image of God's Son. As God adopts people as his children, he calls them to grow up into the true life embodied in Jesus, who unites God's life and human life.
Thus, Jesus is in the unique position to stamp the life of every person who receives him with his image, the
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way of thinking that belongs to the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to God's reality.
28 And we know that with those who love God, he works together in all things for good, with those who are called in accord with God's intention.
29 For from the start he knew what they would be and he marked out their profile in advance that they would be shaped like the image of his Son, in order that he might be firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
image of God as their father. He thus becomes the first- born brother of a host of sisters and brothers.
30 This personal and often challenging process of life- transformation is also part of a great plan of God from the start. People were to be shaped to the image of God's Son. Thus the Son came, lived, taught, worked, suffered and died for our sins and was raised to new life. The Gospel that announces all this began to call people to respond in faith to the faithful love of God in Jesus. God set all who heard this call into a right relationship with himself in a remarkable way. He drew them into the life of Messiah Jesus so that his righteousness and triumph over sin and death applied to them. In this way God was able to give to them here and now the verdict of "No Condemnation" in spite of their sins. But God's amazing grace did not stop there. Because the Messiah has been resurrected and glorified, those who are in him, though they still live and serve in this world, already share his glory!
31 When we see all that God has done -- his extravagant love, his astonishing grace, his self-sacrifice in Jesus, the whole story of his faithfulness -- all we can do is fall silent in awe and thanksgiving. We have done everything possible to make God our enemy, but he stubbornly refused. Out of his own love he has insisted on being on our side. And if God is for us, who can be against us?
32 No sacrifice, no demand was too great: God did not even spare his own unique Son, his very self. Rather, for the sake of all of us -- weak, sinful, enslaved, helpless, and still rebellious as we were -- he gave his Beloved over to the power of sin and death, to all that was the very opposite of God. When we receive such a gift, can we
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30 And those whom he marked out he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give all things to us?
possibly believe that God's grace will hold back in giving for us anything else we need along with Jesus -- even to the extent of the whole universe?
33 Now just who is it who is going to be the prosecutor bringing charges against those whom God has chosen through such sacrifice? God is the final judge of the world, and he has already set us in a right relationship with him and pronounced the verdict of "No Condemnation" over us.
34 Who is it who is going to push God aside as judge and pronounce us condemned? Jesus the Messiah has already suffered the condemnation of death and then has conquered death through his resurrection. Indeed, as the scriptures long ago attested, he has already been glorified "at the right hand of God." [Psalm 110:1] He is the very one who intercedes for us, defending us, as it were, before God's throne!
35 Who or what can ever separate us from the powerful love of the Messiah Jesus? Oh, there is a long list of things that would like to try -- things that seem powerful and destructive against us, things that we are taught to live in fear of. What about times of tribulation when the world seems to be collapsing all around you? What about situations when you are pressed on all sides by enemies? What about persecutions when your faithfulness to God brings suffering on you and your loved ones? What if you're suffering famine or poverty so that there is nothing to eat or nothing to wear against the elements? What about living with danger all the time? What if they are about to kill you with the sword or any other weapon?
36 You know, again there is a passage of scripture that 15
33 Who will bring a charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who declares them in the right.
34 Who is to condemn? Messiah Jesus is the one who died -- more than that, who was raised -- who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
35 Who shall separate us from the love of the Messiah? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
36 As it is written, "For
anticipates all this. In one of the Psalms is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered."
[Psalm 44:22]
37 But the truth is that all the threats of such things are part of the battle of deception that sin wages against God. All these things loom up fearsome before our eyes of flesh. But through the God who has loved us so powerfully in Messiah Jesus, we are already completely victorious over the worst that all of them together can do. More than that, we already share in his eternal life by God's Spirit, a life that will thrive when these troubles are not even a memory.
38 Behind these sufferings that plague our life, there is a great cosmic struggle of God's love against all that would destroy us. But I have become fully convinced that in Jesus all possible enemies of God have already been defeated. Death with its power to terrify can't separate us from God's love, nor can the troubles or dullness or pleasure of this life. No angels or supernatural powers can do it. Nothing in the present can. Nothing in the future. Nothing that is powerful is as powerful as God.
39 Nothing that is high extends as high as he. Nothing that is deep is beyond the reach of his love. The truth is quite simple: God is the creator of everything that exists, and ultimately no part of that creation has power to stand against God so as to separate us from God's amazing, self- giving love graciously poured out for us in Messiah Jesus, who is Lord of all that is and Lord of our lives!
Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift! Amen.
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your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
[Psa 44:22]
37 No, in all these things we are completely victorious through the one who has loved us!
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Messiah Jesus our Lord!
