What is so great about celebrating Christmas? There is something fun about getting into the Christmas spirit. The malls, the songs, the decorations, the food all contribute to that feeling. Sometimes it is just great to enjoy reliving the nostalgia of childhood. I remember the Christmas gatherings at my grandmother’s house. We didn’t have a TV, but at Christmas, my grandmother always rented one. I think it was so we would not make so much noise, but we enjoyed it. Of course if we get into talking about memories, we would be here all morning and never get to the point. The point is that although we enjoy these things and although it is possible to allow these things to become the important things, we know that “Jesus is the reason for the season.” But is that more than a cliché? How great is it that we are celebrating Jesus’ coming?
There are some common texts which are often used to remind us of the Biblical truth of what it means that Jesus came into the world. This morning, however, I would like to point to a text that I have never used as a Christmas message before. It is found in Romans 8:3 and speaks of “God…sending His own Son.”
Of course this little phrase is part of a much larger text which communicates in great depth not only the fact of God sending His Son, but much more the meaning of that fact. As we examine Romans 7:7-8:11, we will discover why it is that God sent His Son and we will discover the good news that Jesus is the one and the only one who is strong enough to deliver us from the power of sin.
Romans 7:7-25 is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible. If you read commentaries on this passage, you will find that it has been interpreted in many different ways. One of the primary questions asked about this passage is “who is this talking about? Is it Paul? Is it a Christian’s pre-conversion experience? Is it a Christians post-conversion experience? Is it Israel?” Each interpretation makes sense in some ways and not in others. I believe that this passage is a description of the way things are. I would not want to say that it is pre-Christian or post-conversion, but rather a realistic description of the power of sin, the place of the law and then leading to a description of the victory of God in Romans 8.
The ideas in this passage, as we would expect in Romans, pick up from ideas that have been spoken previously. In Romans 5:20 we read, “the law was added so that the trespass might increase.” Then in Romans 7:4 we read “you died to the law.” The implication of these statements seems to be that because the law caused trespass to increase and because we have died to the law, therefore, the law is a bad thing.
For Jewish people, that implication would have been a serious problem. If the law is sinful, it destroys the basis for the relationship which Israel had with God and it makes God look bad. John E. Toews says, “if the law is sinful, then God is a fraud who tricked Israel by giving her evil in the name of good.”
So, “Is the law sin?” Paul’s immediate answer is the same as it was to the questions which he asked in Romans 6:1,15 - “By no means!” It is not the law which is sin. However, there is a relationship between the law and sin. That relationship is that the law reveals sin. It makes known how strong the power of sin is to bring about disobedience and ultimately destruction. The law is there to show the evil of sin as Romans 7:13 says, “so that sin might become utterly sinful.” How does that work?
On a tour of the Manitoba Legislature we were shown a chair in one of the rooms. It is called The “Prince of Wales” chair and is reserved for visiting royalty. Prince Edward VII first used it in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1860. Following the death of Queen Victoria, he became King of Great Britain. When we were told that it was reserved for royalty, what do you think my first thought was? I thought, “I wonder if some cleaning personnel have ever sat in it.” Bingo! The rule says don’t, my first thought was, “I wonder if anyone has, I wonder how I could?” Is the rule bad? No! The rule shows my rebellious nature.
That is what the law does. The law says, “This is what you must do” and immediately it is in our heart not to do it. This shows how great the power of sin is in us. It shows the wickedness of our hearts as we are tempted and even willing to disobey that law.
John Toews says, “The good, which is the law, unmasks sin and gives it clearly defined boundaries. The result is that the law works death, because people are pulled across the boundaries by sin.”
If that is true, then the next question is: “Did that which is good become death to me?” This question, from Romans 7:13, is once again answered with the, now familiar, “By no means!” In this section Paul demonstrates that it isn’t the good thing, the law, which causes death, but the power of sin and our disobedience. How does it do that?
In Romans 7:16, Paul says, “I agree that the law is good.” Which person does not agree that the law is good? The reference here is primarily to the ten commandments. Most everyone on earth, even in our day, would agree that the law is good. We would all agree that when it says, “don’t steal, don’t commit adultery, don’t lie…” these are good laws. We fully understand that breaking these laws hurts people and thus we agree that the law is good.
Furthermore, Paul declares in Romans 7:18, “I have the desire to do what is good.” Of course there may be exceptions, but I think that most people would want to do those things that are good. In every society, there are principles which are agreed upon because people recognize that they want to do good things because they are good. For example, when it comes to being healthy, there is not a person here who would dispute that it would be a good idea to eat healthy food and exercise. We really want to do these things. Our intentions are good. But what happens?
So we agree that the law is good and we affirm that we want to keep the law, but the power of sin within us is so great and we are so weak that we don’t do it. Toews says, “The knowledge is informed, the will is active and strong, but the practice is mortally wounded.” So we find, as Romans 7:23 says, “the law of sin (is) at work within my members.” Romans 7:18 says that “nothing good lives in me.” Romans 7:20 reminds us that “it is sin living in me.” If you take a careful look at Romans 7:14-25, you will notice that similar patterns are repeated three times and come to the same conclusion three times. In Romans 7:17, 20, 25 it says, “not I working it, but the sin living in me.”
Therefore, in answer to the question asked in 7:13, we find that it is not the law which is the cause of death, but sin. The result is inescapable! Death is upon all of us. We are in a battle and we have been defeated and taken captive.
The season of Advent is a season of longing. It is a season of anticipation and waiting for the coming of God. It is a time when we acknowledge that we need God. Romans 7, brings us to such advent longing. The law says “do” but we don’t. Because we don’t, we die. What a terrible place to be! This strong advent type of longing is expressed in Romans 7:24 when it says, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Up to this point the tone of the writing has been in the nature of an argument. The questions and answers are like a mental debate. However, in Romans 8:1-11, the language changes to an assertion because there is good news to proclaim! Here we discover that Christ’s coming into the world means victory over the power of sin.
The passage begins with the conclusion in Romans 8:1, and then gives the means by which that conclusion has been reached. However, we will look at the means first. What did God do? How did He do it? What was the result?
What God did, He did by sending His own Son into the world. This is the Christmas story. Jesus came from heaven because He was sent by God. He was, and is the Son of God in a way that is unique and different from how we are sons of God. He was the Son of God as representative of God. In fact we could say that He was God with us or we could even say that in Jesus, God Himself came into this world.
Romans 8:3 says that He came “in the likeness of sinful man.” This is an important part of the plan of God. Theologians have debated the exact nature of Christ’s coming and it is critical to understand that while being fully God, Jesus was also fully human. It is important to know that God came down, but also important to understand that He became fully human. Jesus had to be a human being in order to fully experience human life as we do, to be tempted like we are, to live within the force field of sin and to know its power.
However it was also necessary for him to come in the likeness of sinful man so that, as Romans 8:3 says, he could “condemn sin in sinful man.” It was necessary, because of His holiness, for God to condemn, to punish and to deal with the power of sin. He could not condemn Himself because He was holy. He had to condemn sin in those who were under its power and so Jesus lived as a human under the power of sin and God condemned sin in Jesus. Jesus took our place and the wrath of God was fully poured out on Jesus. The reason that Jesus could take our place and that God’s wrath was fully poured out on Him is because Jesus never sinned. If He had yielded to it, he would have experienced God’s wrath on His own sin, but because He did not yield, when God’s wrath was poured out on Jesus at the cross, it was not for His own sins, but for our sins and because of that, the power of sin was broken. It no longer has the force it had before that.
When Jesus died on the cross, He overcame the power of sin and opened the way for the power of the Spirit of God. Because of that, as John Toews says, “The Spirit now lives where sin once lived. Therefore, the law is fulfilled.” And since the law is fulfilled, death is also overcome. Romans 8:1 says, “there is therefore now no condemnation.” That is good news!! It answers to the advent longing. The question was asked in 7:24, “Who will rescue me?” The answer is that Jesus has rescued us. Because He has, there is therefore now no condemnation. That is, there is no end time judgment for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is the present reality. This is “the already” that God has accomplished in Christ. This is the victory we celebrate when we rejoice over the coming of Christ at Christmas. Because of it, we don’t need to live a paranoid Christianity! We have assurance because the faithfulness and sacrifice of Jesus have assured freedom from God’s wrath to all who are in Christ.
But the victory is not just over death and the end time wrath of God. Theology says –“the power of sin has been neutralized and so there is no condemnation. Life says – “I still submit to the sinful nature.” But, because we live in Christ, we can also live in obedience to God. This is the good news of Romans 8:4-14! How does Christ’s victory over the power of sin make a difference in my life?
Before Christ came into the world there was only one effective power in the world and that was the power of sin. We all yielded to that power. The person who lives under that power is described in Romans 8:5-8. There we read that the mind of the person living under the power of sin is set on what that nature desires. Those who live under the power of sin are under death. They have a mind that is hostile to God and are unable to live in obedience to God.
Now that Christ has come into the world, however, there is another power which takes us in a new direction and gives us a new possibility. Up to this point in the book of Romans, the word “Spirit” has occurred only 5 times. In Romans 8, it appears 21 times. Victory over the power of sin comes by the Spirit. Romans 8:4 says, that “the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who live…according to the Spirit.” In other words, it is possible for us now to live in obedience to God’s law.
Why is that possible? It is possible because as Romans 8:5 teaches that, if we live by the Spirit, we desire what the Spirit desires and the result is life and peace. The promise in Romans 8:9 is that every Christian has the Holy Spirit living in them. Therefore, we now are filled with a new power. The power of sin has been overcome by Jesus and the power of God, by the Spirit, is now within us. That is why it is possible to overcome sin.
How is it possible? There is a difficult concept in this passage that I admit I don’t fully understand. It is logically difficult, but we understand it because it reflects our experience. It is found first of all in 7:25 which says, “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” This idea is also found in Romans 8:10 which says “your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” It seems to me that what it is saying is that because of what Christ has done, our spirit is obedient to God even if there is still the flesh within us which sins. This certainly reflects our experience. On the one hand, we know that we are redeemed and forgiven. On the other hand, all of us know that we still sin. Where then is God’s victory?
It is not only in the promise that there is no condemnation when we are in Christ. Romans 8:11 indicates that “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.” This tells us that we not only have eternal life, but that our present life is being made righteous as well by the Spirit, with the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. The Spirit of God is in us making us new creatures and teaching us to obey and giving us victory over sin so that there will be no dichotomy between our spirit and our mortal selves. Through His Spirit, Christ is renewing us all the time so that we are constantly learning and growing in our ability to obey Him. His resurrection power is available to us so that we can live in obedience. That is why we don’t need the law any more and it is also why we don’t walk in sin any more. We live in a new way by the Spirit of God. We can and will have victory over sin in our lives now by the Spirit of God.
The question is, “How do we live by the Spirit?” The answer to that question is given in Romans 8:12-14.
The first thing we notice is that we have an obligation. The obligation is to the recognition there is no condemnation because Christ has overcome the power of sin and death. The obligation is not to live under the power of sin nor to engage in acts of sin, but rather to live under the new power system of the Spirit of God. Therefore, our obligation is to live under the Spirit of God and to gain victory over sin by the Spirit of God.
When we daily recognize that we are Spirit filled people who are free from death, that reminder becomes an encouragement. It is also more than a mental trick because the Spirit of God in us is powerful – more powerful than the power of sin. To think in this way is to think with faith in God that what He has promised in these verses He will also do.
The way to make that real in our life is in relationship with the Spirit. Notice the very important phrase in Romans 8:13, “by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body.” This is the most important knowledge for a Christian disciple. We are able to overcome the power of sin by the presence of God within us. It is not by obligation or discipline or even a mentor that we will win over the power of sin. All of these things have their place, but the victory over sin is won in relationship with the Spirit of God. The promise is, as given in Romans 8:14, that those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. There is the means of victory! There is the way in which we must live our Christian life. It is a life lived by the new power structure, the power structure which is resident in us by the Spirit of God!
The advent longing is expressed in the plea, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” It is answered in the Christmas message, “God sent His Son who did what the law could not do and by His death made us righteous so that “there is no condemnation for those who live by the Spirit?”
The victory over the power of sin has been accomplished by the sacrifice of the righteous lamb of God. The victory over sin in our daily lives is accomplished as we live by the Spirit.
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