In seventh grade government class, I had a great teacher who taught us how the “laws of the land” were made and why they were made.  We learned the responsibilities of each branch of government (executive, judicial and legislative) that were designed with checks and balances.  Laws are made to protect us from each other and certain circumstances that arise in daily living.  “Our freedom ends where another person’s nose begins” (Oliver Wendall Holmes) she would quote often in her teaching.  That meant laws are also meant to help us get along with each other. We were also taught that even though legislatures, people elected to make the laws, have the authority to create, add, or rewrite certain laws, that doesn’t mean that people’s attitudes will be changed just because a law is written to do things a better way.  That’s when the judicial branch, those who enforce the laws, take precedence.

This teacher demonstrated how the judicial branch enforces and upholds the laws written.  We first wrote the laws of the classroom. Some of us were enforcers of those laws by “arresting” those who disobeyed.  We would then bring the accused to court (held on Fridays) and have mock trials with real “cases” brought before a judge and jury of our peers.  Our teacher appointed a judge, a defense team, a prosecting team, bailiff, court recorder, and jury.  Our “homework” was to get the facts so that we could present a good case with hopes of being on the “winning” team.  After closing arguments, the judge would have the final say—along with our teacher, as she would be the one to give us a grade.  I will never forget this teacher who brought our government process to life in a memorable way and allowed us to experience what the law means to each one of us. Thank you, Mrs. Gamble!  I hope you enjoyed this quick history and government lesson and will see the connection in our passage today.  Laws do not give us the power to behave.  The intent of the law is to point the difference in what is right and wrong along with the consequences.  We decide to obey or not.  We need help.

The Law of God.  Paul puts the Law in perspective for us as he explains it to the Romans.  The Law convicts us but it does not save us.  Only Jesus saves us.  We are guilty as charged and owe a huge debt for our sins.  But it is Jesus who redeems (buys us back with His life). Jesus chose to take humanity’s place for the punishment for all sins and pay the sin-debt in full.  Jesus went to court, in others words, and took all the blame for the sins of the world and then was pronounced guilty by His accusers.  He died in our place for our sins.  We are “free to go” with eternal life.

Yes, the Law convicts us of wrongdoing but it is Jesus saves us and set us free from the wrapping of our sins when we call on His Name and repent.   This act of repentance solves our sin problem once and for all because Jesus’ sacrifice set us right with God!

Only Jesus Christ, our Advocate, has all authority to judge us but instead stood and still stands on our behalf before God the Father eternally to plead our case, asking for God’s generous grace and mercy.  Because God so loved the world, we are immediately forgiven and set free.  Jesus has been given all authority from God to judge when He comes back for his own.  Be ready!

God’s love with the power of His Spirit immediately comes to live in us, helping us to transform our attitudes and behaviors that the law did not provide.  We now have a new desire to love others in the same ways God loves us.  Because we love God and now know the extent of Jesus’ love for us along with the bonus gift of His Holy Spirit’s power within us; we learn to forgive others in the same way Jesus forgave us—quickly and completely. Jesus changes everything!

Romans 8, The Messaage

The Solution Is Life on God’s Terms

^1-2 With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

^3-4 God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

^5-8 Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.

^9-11 But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!

^12-14 So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do-it-yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go!

^15-17 This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Mrs. Gamble taught us more about life in her process of teaching us lessons in government than anyone else.  As a believer, she added, it all boils down to this; “treat others better than they treat you.  This is the “golden rule” of behavior.” 

As I grew in my faith and study of Gods’ Word, I realize where she got her information—from Jesus!  She read Matthew 5!  Read this passage and you will understand!  “You have heard it said, but I say to you, says Jesus; —do better than the law dictates because you are my rep!”  Yes, this is a paraphrase from me, but when you read it you’ll get it! 

For example:  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^[i] and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” —Jesus, Matthew 5:43-47

The law cannot control us. The believer lives a righteous life, not in the power of the law, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. The law does not have the power to produce holiness; it can only reveal and condemn sin. But the indwelling Holy Spirit enables us to walk in obedience to God’s will.  Warren Wiersbe helps us to understand;

“The unsaved person does not have the Spirit of God and lives in the flesh and for the flesh. This person’s mind is centered on the things that satisfy the flesh. But the Christian has the Spirit of God within and lives in an entirely new and different sphere. This person’s mind is fixed on the things of the Spirit. This does not mean that the unsaved person never does anything good, or that the believer never does anything bad. It means that the bent of their lives is different. One lives for the flesh, and the other lives for the Spirit.” –Wiersbe, Study Bible

“WHAT’S NEXT, PAPA?”  A response that flows from a growing intimate relationship with God…

The Law does not contain the spirit of adventure.  The Law merely points out right and wrong ways to live in this world with others.  What the Law did not do, Jesus did.  When we sin, Jesus saves us from our sins.  Upon repenting we come into God’s family by believing what Jesus did for us.  We become new creations, a “rebirth” from old attitudes and behaviors to a new way to think and act.  We now live a new life that is very different than our old lives lived only for self-satisfaction that led nowhere. God adopts us and gives us positions as sons and daughters! A child of God by faith can draw on his or her spiritual wealth as an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ to live an “adventurously expectant” life by God’s Holy Spirit in us!  This is amazing love!

Lord,

Thank you for teaching us how to love and live by demonstrating the extent of your love for us through your sacrifice for sins.  The Law convicts but you save.  Help us to abide in you as you abide in us.  We haven’t fully arrived and still need your care and correction along with the power to change.  Cleanse our hearts and change our minds.

In Jesus Name, Amen