Romans 14:1-13

Romans 14:1-13
As fallen human beings we have many failings that are all too often common among us all. One of those failings is our constant need to live in comparison to others. We want to be able to look at others around us and say, “Hey, at least I am better than that!” I had a friend in college who told me that she enjoyed watching day time talk shows because when she watched those shows, she could look at the lives of those people and KNOW without a doubt that her life was better than theirs, qualitatively, morally, whatever, her life was never anywhere close to being as messed up and hopeless as the poor peoples’ lives on that show. I suspect that this is exactly the reason why these types of shows are so popular. They give the viewer as sense of superiority. Something to look at and say, at least my life is not as messed up as that.

As children we also had this innate need to feel as if we were somehow better than those around us. After all is it not the desire to show themselves to be better than a particular peer, at the heart of every tattle-tale? There is an overwhelming desire in the heart a small that wants the adult to know exactly how bad little Johnny has been, thus highlighting what a good boy or girl they have been, all though not realizing that they are putting themselves on par with little Johnny because most of the time tattle-taleing is just as naughty as whatever it was that Johnny had been doing. That of course does not seem to matter to them and they do not understand why they too are being reprimanded for bringing Johnny’s short falling to the adult’s attention, in their own mind they have the moral superiority, after all compared to little Johnny they are being a saint.

Paul is dealing with this common human problem among the Christians in the church in Rome. The Christians in Rome were comparing themselves to each other and different individuals had come up with different reasons as to why they were better Christians than those other Christians that were not doing as they were doing. You see the people of that church were split in their opinions on two issues that they thought were very important.

First of all there are those that eat meat and those who do not eat meat. Surprisingly the vegetarian/meat eater debate is still one that rages among Christians and non Christians alike. Although the vegetarians in Paul’s day did not abstain from eating cows because they are so cute, or because human beings should learn to live without killing other living things, or for environmental reasons or for any of the other half-dozen reasons that a modern person might be a vegetarian. They abstained from eating meat for religious reasons and depending on whether they were Jewish Christians or Gentiles they might have had entirely different reasons for abstaining from eating meat.
Some of the Gentiles would have chosen to not eat meat because they felt that it had been defiled. You see most of the meat that would have been available in the Roman market would have come from the slaughtering facilities in the local pagan temples.

The Gentiles who had come out of these pagan religions would know that before the meat was sold that it would very likely have been offered as a sacrifice to a pagan deity. They felt that they would be accepting and promoting the worship of these pagan deities by eating meat that had been previously used in this way. Since there was no way of knowing which meat had been offered to pagan idols and which had not, some of them choose to abstain from eating meat altogether.

The Jewish Christians on the other hand would abstain from eating meat on reasons of Jewish dietary laws. Rome was far away from Jerusalem and any large community of Jews, therefore making it hard for them to find meat that had been prepared in a “kosher” way, in other words the meat at the market was unclean. Finding themselves living in a city where it was nearly impossible to find meat that they would consider clean, some of the Jewish Christians chose to abstain from eating meat.

Note that I said that only some of the Jews and only some of the Gentiles chose to abstain from eating meat altogether, others did not feel that either of these issues had any bearing on their Christianity and chose to eat whatever meat was available to them there in Rome. The problem is not that some ate meat and other did not, but that each group thought that they were necessarily right and the other group was necessarily wrong.

As if this was not complicated enough, there were more issues in the church at Rome than meat. There were meat eaters and vegetarians, but there were also those Jewish Christians who strictly observed the Sabbath, as well as all the feast and fast days that God instructed the Jews to follow in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The Gentile Christians had probably never read Deuteronomy or Leviticus and did not see why observing these days had anything to do with being a Christian. And of course those that observed the days thought that those that did not observe these days should and those that did not, did not see why those other Christians were so concerned about something that seemed so trivial to them.

Paul would not have had such a problem with people having different opinions if it was not that those that abstained from eating meat and those who abstained from observing the special days despised those that ate meat or observed the special days, while those that ate meat and those that observed the special days judged those that that did not eat meat and did not observe the special days. Paul did not really care if some people liked beef and others did not, what he cared about was all the despising and judging that was going on over what seemed to him to be unimportant issues.

Before I delve into what it is that Paul is saying in this passage let me begin by telling you what he is not saying. Paul is not making a blanket statement to all Christians everywhere not to judge, not to declare what sin is and expect all Christians everywhere to flee from it. He is not saying that all morality is relative, that sin does not matter. He is not telling us that we cannot call sin, sin and wrong doing, wrong doing. In the verses preceding this chapter he does just that, he declares to the people of the Church of Rome just a short list of what he considers sinful and should be avoided if we as Christians are to live honorably as Christ has called us to live.

No Paul is not telling us to be soft on sin and to allow it to seep into our lives and corrupt who we are as Christians. Paul is instead telling us not to live our lives in comparison to those around us. We are not live act as if the rest of the world is a day time tv show and live trying to see that our life is better than theirs. We are not to be five year old tattle-tales that are constantly looking around the sanctuary and telling God exactly how sinful so and so is, so that God will see, and will know exactly what good, wonderful, moral upright Christians we are. We are not to live our Christian lives looking to our neighbor on the road, see their short comings and the areas in which they struggle with sin in their lives and see that we do not struggle or fall short in the same ways they do and therefore judge ourselves to be better than they.

On the other side of the coin neither are we to look at others who are doing their very best to be the people that God has called them to be and in an attempt to flee from anything that might even have the appearance of wrong doing go a little farther than we do, or think is necessary, we might think that they are taking their Christianity to far, or being to strict, surely those things that they are so worried about are not things that God is worried about. We are not to compare ourselves to these people and think how enlightened we are that we are encumbered by the same sensibilities that those people have. We are not to look down our noses and silently call them backwards or simple. In short we are not to despise them for being extra cautious when it comes to their relationship with God.

Paul wants us to know that when we look at other Christians who are striving their best to be the people that God has called them to be and they don’t do things exactly the same way that we do and we think that they are wrong, that if they are truly reaching for God and searching for his guidance in their lives, they are seeking to honor and serve the same God that we honor and serve, they are worshipping the same risen Christ that we are worshipping. Those of us that are seeking the face of God in all that we do, should not be split amongst ourselves. We should be striving together, building each other up and glorifying Jesus Christ as OUR Lord and Savior.
Paul is telling us that in the end we will all stand before the judgment seat of God, after all it is God’s right and not ours to judge our fellow Christians. We will not stand before God and get to have a giant three-year-old-esk tattle-tale session with God, telling him all the things that those other Christians were doing wrong and how we were such better Christians than they were, because we did this and did not do that. We do not get to sit back and watch everyone else’s lives and show God how much better we have been compared to them.

Paul reminds us that when we stand before God each of us will not be accountable for “their lives,” but we will be accountable for ours and ours alone. Remember that one of the most important lessons that we learned as three year old tattle-tales was that we were just as wrong for standing in the judgment seat of the capable adult that was there and declaring the wrongness of our peer, when we ourselves, in the very act of tattling were doing something just wrong. Think how much worse it will be when we stand shamefacedly before the judgment seat of God pointing at our fellow Christian, who Christ declared that we were suppose to encourage and build up, instead of despising and pushing them down with our judgmental attitude towards them and God stands before us and says that we were not called to live our lives as better than “theirs,” but we were to live our lives according to the loving instruction that God himself gave to us.

Romans 12:9-21 - Living Live of Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:9-21

In the first half of Romans 12 Paul instructed his readers to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. Last time we met together, we looked at this passage and explored what it meant to be living sacrifices and what it meant to live the holy, God pleasing lives of the living sacrifice to which God calls us. In the latter half of this chapter Paul gives us a pretty descriptive explanation of what a holy, God please life of living sacrifice looks like. In fact I think that many of us could spend the rest of our spiritual journeys reading, re-reading this passage, studying each of these 40 some odd exhortations, and working to live these simple instructions out in our daily lives. Living out these forty exhortations is being holy, being the person in this passage is being the person God created us to be, these 12 verses tell us what it looks like to be a living sacrifice.

This list of exhortations given to the church by Paul in this passage are pretty basic. Almost simplistic, reading through this reminds me of a poem that was on a poster when I was in High school. It was by Robert Falghum it went like this:
All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten.
ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not
at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the
sandpile. These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some
and draw and paint and sing and dance and play
and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic,
hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.
Remember the little seed in the styrofoam cup:
The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody
really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even
the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die.
So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books
and the first word you learned - the biggest
word of all - LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.
Take any of those items and extrapolate it into
sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your
family life or your work or your government or
your world and it holds true and clear and firm.
Think what a better world it would be if
all - the whole world - had cookies and milk about
three o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments
had a basic policy to always put thing back where
they found them and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you
are - when you go out into the world, it is best
to hold hands and stick together.

The heart of what Fulghum has to say is simple basic life lessons but these basic early learned lessons are the hardest things to remember in the general goings on of our everyday life. The same is true with this passage here in Paul these are the basics of living the Christian life. These are the basics of what a lived submerged in the love of God. These are the basics of Holy living. A life lived this was is a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God. At the end of it all is holding hands and sticking together. Paul has told us this as well, as Christians, we are called to hold hands and stick together. Live, our holy, living sacrifice lives as a part of a holy community of faith, as a part of the Body of Christ, to work out holiness and holy living in, among and with the Church.

Being a holy person and being a holy community, the holding hands and sticking together part of being a child of God, begins with love. But not feigned love, not false love but genuine love. Truly loving people, as opposed to fake or put on love. That is not loving people because we are “suppose to” love them, but loving people because we want to love them, because we really do love them and care about them and care about what happens to them. This is about loving people because Jesus loves them. We love because we are loved. We love because as persons who are living Christ-like lives we will love all who Christ loves. This means that we do not love people with ulterior motives; we not only care about people because of what they can do for us. We don’t reach out and love people because we want to get anything out of them. We don’t only love people because the act of love, words of love, or sharing the love of Jesus with them is some kind of notch in our spiritual belts. As Christians we simply and genuinely love people.

The love that we have as Christians begins with one another, first and foremost, and last and finally we are, as the people of God, the body of Christ, to hold hands and stick together, i.e. love. For Paul being a Christian begins with being a part of the community of faith, a part of the body of Christ, a part of the Church. Being a Christian is not an “alone” kind of thing, being truly Christian, living a life of holiness and holy love can only truly exist within relationship with the body of Christ. In many ways, I am only as holy as WE are holy. I am only living a life of living sacrifice as much as WE are living sacrifices and MY love is only genuine as much as OUR love is genuine. The Christian life is not lived alone, it is lived within community. So Paul tells us that holy, genuine love is first exemplified within the Church community.

So how do we genuinely love one another within this community? We begin by doing our best to out do one another with mutual affection. It is like school yard contest. “I bet I can hop on one leg longer than you can!” “I bet I can jump farther than you can!” But instead of trying to out do one another with our mad grad school skills, we all are trying to be the best at showing love to one another. In this game of out loving one another, each of us is striving to exceed each other in showing more and more love, loving more and more. It is a Loving competition.

Paul tells us that as we are doing this will are not to lag in zeal for genuine love. If loving were a running race, this means we are not to be the straggler who is only half heartedly making her way down the track not caring what place she ends up in, but we are instead to strive to be first and win the loving race. We do not want to be out done or let ourselves “come in last.” The imagery used here makes me think of the girls in my gym class who would choose not to “run” the mile when we were all suppose run it, but they would instead walk it, lagging behind and just doing what needs to be done to finish the “requirement.” Paul does not want us to be like those girls but strive to out do one another in loving each other.

As a community we are also to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer. These are all ways that we can love one another. When you truly love another person, you care about them so much that when they are rejoicing you rejoice with them hoping for the best for them. But it is more than just that, we all know that together we can rejoice in the fact that through Jesus Christ we can hope for a world the way that it should be. We can rejoice together knowing that there is hope for life lived as it was meant to be lived, life lived as it was created to be lived, hope that one day all things will be set right, that one day we will no longer live in a broken, bent, sin twisted world. We can rejoice because by living holy lives we are bringing the holiness of God down to earth, allowing the kingdom of God break into this broken world in our words, actions and interactions.

We also love one another through patience in suffering. When those in this community are suffering, we patiently suffer along side of them, allowing our hearts to break, even as their heart is breaking. But also knowing that suffering is a consequence of the sin and evil which we brought into to this world and the world is not the way that it should be, or could be and knowing this we are patient in our hope.

Lastly as a community of Christians living lives of living sacrifice, we persevere in pray. Pray and keep on praying, even when it does seem to accomplish anything. In all things we pray. In rejoicing we pray and thank God. In suffering we pray. We pray at all times in all things for God’s will to be done on earth as it is done in heaven. We join our hearts with God’s and pray for what it is God desires most, that someday things will be as they should be, that all things will be as they were created to be, that all things will be set right, that in the end God’s love wins.
As people living lives of living sacrifice, living the holiness of God, Paul tells us that our love does not end at the church doors. We do not only love those who are a part of us, who have chosen to join themselves with God and join themselves to this community, Paul call for our love to extend beyond the borders of our churches into the world outside of our sanctuaries and church walls. Genuine love is begins with us but it reaches out to those in need. We are to give to the saints in need and extend hospitality to strangers. In Paul’s day and age, by definition strangers, that is people who are not from around here, were in need. When someone choose or was forced to travel far from home they were at the mercy of the hospitality of strangers. A person would not get far on the shelter and provision he could bring with him, so he was dependant upon the people he met along the way to extend kindness and hospitality to him along his journey. So in essence Paul is telling us that holy Christians love not only their community, those who are needy inside the body of Christ, and outside their community as well. The love, which we have for one another blossoms and grows and extends beyond us into the world around us.

God has blessed each of us in many and differing ways and as Christians we share that blessing with one another and with anyone who God might put in our path who needs what we can spare. God bless us and then God blesses others through us. Christians are by virtue of the generosity of God extended to them are therefore likewise generous. No matter how hard up we may feel or may actually be, there is always someone who has less than us. No matter how much or how little we have we should be generous with what we have and even more generous with anything that we have in surplus.

Being living sacrifices means reaching out with the love of God not only with this idea and feeling of love but with action of love and generosity, giving to those in need within and without our community. Loving people in these physical generous ways is speaking a language of love, which those who do not know the love of Jesus, can understand.
There are many ways to be generous. You can help out at the local homeless shelter, you can always carry something to hand to the man on the corner who asks, you can give to Hope’s cradle (or even volunteer to help out), you can give to the Haiti Hot water project or any other number of organizations who are wiling to help you be generous to people all around the world who have less than you do.

But we are not only to love those who “deserve it.” We are not only called to love those closest to us and those within our surrounding community, but we are called to love everybody in all things. That is a pretty tall order. It is easy to love our family, it is not all that hard to love others our church, especially when our church is filled with loving members of the body of Christ, it takes little effort to turn our pity for those who have less than us into actions of love, compassion and generosity. But Paul calls for us to love everybody in all things. No matter who they are, no matter what they have done, no matter what they are doing or have done to us, no matter what is going in their lives. We are to love everybody. Even when we don’t want to.

So rejoice with those around you, weep with them, mourn when they mourn. Live in harmony, seek to live peaceably with those around you. Don’t think yourself better than them for any reason, associate with the lowly, the outcast, the disenfranchised, and those who society has deemed unworthy or less than worthy. Be kind and generous to everybody.

And least you are at all confused about what “everybody” means, that includes those you don’t like, and those who don’t like you. Loving everybody in all things, extends to our enemies, and to those who wish to do us harm. This means loving those who are not kind to you, those who disappoint you, those who would do things maliciously against you. But we are actually to go one more step than simply loving them but we are to bless them. Show them the love of God, extend the same amount of grace, forgiveness and blessings which God has extended to us to anyone who would work to do us harm. That is hard. That is sincerely difficult. They have done nothing to deserve your kindness, they have done nothing to earn your favor, but Paul spent enough of the book of Romans showing us exactly why we don’t deserve God’s grace, but receive it none-the-less. Of Course they don’t deserve it, but neither do you.

Do not repay evil with evil instead do your best to out do your enemies’ evil with goodness and kindness. Paul than uses an image that does not really make sense and when taken at face value, seems contrary to what Paul has been saying about the place of genuine love in all our relationships with everyone. But Paul is drawing from a common practice, which was when it was cold it was common to send a person who was leaving your house away with a coal from your fire to keep them warm. Paul is saying that if you are dealing with your enemy with kindness and generosity that the extent of your generosity should be as such that instead of just giving them one coal to keep warm heaping coals upon them when they leave. It not simply about being barely hospitable to your enemy, it not about simply being cordial, this is about going above and beyond showing them extreme kindness, over abounding generosity, leave whatever judgment they do or do not deserve up to God, you love them, treat them with overflowing kindness and give to them more than they would ever even think to require of you. Out do their evil with goodness.

Whew, now that is a lot! That is a lot of loving. Can you remember all that? I have gone over it once and there is going to be a test. (pause) No I am serious. There will now be a test. After I finish my sermon, we will depart from here. Some of us will fellowship for a while down stairs and our love for one another will be tested in our actions and interactions with one another, can we be genuinely loving with the body of believers in which God has called us to live in community? Then eventually we will all disperse from here, each to our daily lives and every morning we will wake up to another test, will we live lives of love today? That is the question asked of us each and everyday. Will we love our fellow Christians? Will we give to the needy? Will we reach out to the lowly? Will we live peaceably? Will we treat even those who wish us harm with over abounding kindness and generosity in all things? Will we be living sacrifices to God today? Tomorrow? In this moment? With this person who is before me right now?

Romans 12:1-8 - Living Sacrifices

Romans 12:1-8

Our world shapes who we are. The world in which I grew up is really different world than the one in which many of you grew up. I do not remember when Jimmy Carter was president, nor have I ever watched the Ed Sullivan show. Many younger members of our congregation may not remember a time when nearly every household did not have a Personal Computer, not to mention remember the world of computers prior to Microsoft Windows and the wonderful thing that once was MS Dos. Many may not remember the world before cell phones; while my grandmother could tell me of the first time she saw an automobile and how frightened she was.

The world in which we live shapes the way we think and the way we understand things. Sometimes I still find it odd that when I was in 4th grade science I learned that we were living at the end of an ice age while today’s young people are learning about global warming and its effects on us and our environment. The world in which some of you grew up in believe it or not was not the same world in which I grew up. The different world in which each of us has lived has form and shaped us and how we see the world around us. It affects how we live and how we think, in ways that we don’t even know and probably will never fully understand.

In today’s passage Paul calls for us to step outside of everything that we know about our world and do something radically different that really does not make much sense at all. He calls for us to give ourselves to God as sacrifices, as living sacrifices. Giving yourself as a sacrifice was pretty much just as much of a radical idea in Paul’s day as it would be today. As daily riding in a motor-powered machine that can travel at speeds upwards of 60 miles an hour would be to people who lived right here in Cambridge at the time this church was formed. It would have been a completely non-sensical idea to most of them. Likewise, for many reasons the idea of a living sacrifice utter non-sense to most of us.

Before we can come to any kind of understanding what a living sacrifice is we need to first understand how the people to whom Paul would have understood sacrifices. The Jews in the church at Rome would have understood the idea of sacrifices; because sacrifices are were a part of Jewish worship. The Jewish sacrificial system had dual purposes. First it was a way for the worshiper to acknowledge who God was in their life. It was a way of thanking God for giving the things that gave you and your family sustenance, thanking God for continually providing the things that are needed to make it from day to day, week to week and season to season. It also helped maintain the priesthood. Many offerings, such as grain offerings and oil offerings were not burned at all but were simply given to the temple, and most sacrifices were not whole burnt offerings, meaning that they were not entirely consumed by fired, but instead were simply cooked or only a certain portion was burnt on the alter. Anything that was not wholly burnt on the alter was used by the priests and their families, since they had no other means of supporting themselves.

So the Jews in the Church at Rome understood what a sacrifice was, but so did the Gentiles I the Church. Sacrifices were not exclusive to Jewish worship but were a part of most common religions of that day. Sacrifices in the pagan religions was about giving to the god what the god demanded to keep the god happy so that the god would act on your behalf. Sacrificing was the way in which a person showed honor and respect to the god. So no matter who you were Jew or Gentile the idea of a sacrifice being offered up to God made sense.

But Paul was calling for the people to be living sacrifices, which were offered up to God. I mentioned earlier that there were several different kinds of offerings or sacrifices the Jews would bring to the temple. Some offerings were to be taken offered up on the alter and then taken home and eaten. Other offerings were given to God and then were used to support the priest and his family. Still other offerings were put on the alter and were completely consumed by the fire have been burnt completely in the process. These later offerings were called whole burnt offerings, they were completely consumed by the fire and in doing so the sacrifice was seen as having been given completely and wholly over to God

Many different things were sacrificed in the Jewish sacrificial system lambs, goats, pigeons, but there was one thing that was never considered an appropriate sacrifice and that was the sacrifice of a human being. From the very beginnings of Jewish history God forbade human sacrifice. God did not want God’s people to sacrifice their children, as so many other deities required. God said that is was an abhorrent practice and was not under any circumstances to be practiced by God’s people.
But then here in this passage we have Paul calling for Human sacrifice, a different kind of human sacrifice but a human sacrifice non-the-less. This is what made what Paul was saying here so radical to the people to whom he was writing. The kind of sacrifice he is calling for them to make was unlike any other kind of sacrifice these people had ever heard. It was not a pagan human sacrifice where human blood was spilled to placate a false god, nor was it like any sacrifice found in the Jewish sacrificial system.

It was a sacrifice but it was completely different from any sacrifice anyone had ever made to God on several levels. First of all, with this kind of sacrifice one did not offer something, or someone else, whether it be a goat, lamb or a pigeon; a slave, a captured enemy or your first born son, on the alter. Paul was talking about offering up one’s self as a sacrifice to God. This was not offering something that was ultimately not yours to offer, like the life of someone or something outside of your self, but this was about putting what is nearest and dearest to you on the alter, giving up what really mattered to you. It was about putting yourself on the alter, not laying anything, or anyone else down as your sacrifice but laying yourself down.

This is about truly following Christ’s example in ALL things. Giving yourself up, just as Christ gave himself up. Jesus did not offer anyone or anything else up on our behalf but offered himself up on our behalf, likewise Paul is calling for us to be Christlike in the extreme, giving up even ourselves to the glory of God. Sacrificing yourself to God

This is different kind of sacrifice on another level as well. The sacrifice Paul is calling for us to make is offered up in a way that is not in anyway like any sacrifice had ever been offered before. Sacrifices were by definition dead, they were either inanimate objects or living things that had been killed. Paul was calling for people to give themselves to God as living sacrifices. He was asking the people of the church at Rome to give themselves as alive sacrifices, to place their own lives on the alter as a sacrifice, but not giving their life up as in ending it, giving up their lived life to God; living life as if they belonged to God. And the thing is was we not just to live any kind of lives but we are to live lives that are holy and acceptable to God.

In the Bible holy has two meanings. First it means, having the attributes of God. Secondly it means, being set aside for use by God. Having the attributes of God means, reflecting who God is in all we do and say, in all our actions, interactions and reactions with every person we encounter each and every day. It means that our words and actions are the words and actions that God would have, if God were in our position each and every moment of every day. In this sense, being holy is being who and what God is in all in all things.

Being set aside for the use by God is the way in which the articles of the temple were holy. Everything in the temple was set aside as holy unto God in that they were not used for common usages but were only for temple use; for use in worship and for the specific purposes in the temple. They were holy, they were set aside for use by God in the temple.

When Paul is calling for the people of the Church of Rome to live lives of living sacrifice, he is saying that they are to reflect both of these usages of the word holy. They were to be set aside for use by God, AND that they were to reflect the very nature of God, they were to reflect the Holiness of God in this world.
In living lives as Living sacrifices one becomes what a person could never be on their own. When a Christian lives a life of holiness then their life is pleasing to God. When one who belongs to God’s Church place themselves on the alter, giving themselves wholly and completely over to God, God transforms forms them into what they could never be on their own.

As humans with the tendency to live in self-serving ways as opposed to the in the loving ways God calls us to live, we are NOT holy; we are NOT pleasing to God. But a life given completely and entirely over to God, sacrificed and gift freely given, then we as Christians become through the power and transformation of God, holy AND pleasing to God.

When we as Christians we live these kinds of lives we are transformed, not conformed. Conformation is a power from the outside changing who you are. When something is conformed is it more like being pressed into a mold, or shaped and crafted by something on the outside. Being conformed is being shaped and formed by the world in which we live. It is easy to allow our environment or something outside of ourselves to determine who we are and what we are becoming.

Transformation is something coming from within changing who you are. Christians are changed by a power that resides within. Christians are changed by a power greater than any power on the outside, changed by the power of Jesus Christ. Changes by the one we have allowed to dwell within us, allowing God to shape us and transform us into the people God created us to be, who we were meant to be in the first place. As Christians we are shaped and formed by the one who dwells within and are not to be conformed by the world that is fallen and given over to destruction.
Once we as followers of Jesus Christ are living sacrifices, being transformed into the holy Godly people we were created to be, Paul give us a warning to not think too highly of ourselves, to use sober judgment and for each of us to work on the faith given to us. This is Paul’s quick way of saying to not be all up in each others’ business, that each of us should not always be looking at those around us and be critical of everyone else thinking our faith and our relationship with God is better, stronger, deeper, more spiritual than so in so’s who sits in that pew on the other side of the sanctuary. Working on the faith walk that God has given to you should be enough of a worry for you, and if you have time to be thinking that you are better than someone else, you are not spending enough time on your own faith.
But even as we are not suppose to be worrying about the other person and how much better we are than them we are to be working together. As believers we are all one body, one Church, all apart of Jesus Christ we are to work together as a living body works together. By giving ourselves as sacrifices we become parts of a unified Body. The Church is the Body of Christ that remains in this world even as he has returned to the Father. We make up the physical presence of Christ in this world. As the Church we are the body of Christ alive and working the will of the Father here.
As different parts of the same body we all have different gifts, different functions. But we are all essential parts of God’s Church and Christ’s body. We are all good at different things and because of that have different functions in the body; feet, walk; hands clap; voices sing, eyes see. We all are different parts fulfilling different functions all working together to make the body work. Paul says the sign of a healthy body is that we are all working together; working to together; unified to do the work and the will of God in this world

Ultimately this is what it means to be living sacrifices to God. Being holy, acceptably, pleasing sacrifices to God means that we are living in community with the Body, the Church of God, living, working, together to do the work that God has called us to do; loving God, loving one another, loving the people in the world around us, striving and working together to bring the light and love of God to those who as of yet do not know what it means to be loved by God, to love God and to love as God loves.

Sometimes we get confused and we think that being a Christian is about just Jesus and me, sometimes we get confused and we think that Holiness is about me and my life alone, but truly living a life that is lived a Christ would life it, living a holy life, a life set apart to God, a life that is lived loving as God would love, is a life that is lived working together in the community of faith, as the Church, as the body, all fulfilling our different roles but working together for the common goal of reaching the world around us with the love of God, so that not only can we be transformed but that they (who ever “they” may be) may also know the love and transformative power of God in their lives. Holiness begins with me, it begins with you, but from there it extends to us, and we and ends with us and we extending God’s holy love to the world around us, to the people I come in contact with each and everyday, to the people you come in contact with each and everyday and by allowing our community and the world around us to come in contact with us in great and small ways through you and me and through what we do together as we are living in community as the body of Christ.

Romans 8:26-39 - God On Our Side

Romans 8:26-39

Thus far Paul has let us know that we can be free in Christ, free from the slavery to sin, free from the inability we have to live the way we were created to live, but instead we are adopted children of God, belonging to God, and belonging to God’s family. We are not just saved from slavery to sin, but we are saved into a family, into a community, a loving caring family in which all of us have the position of privilege. We are not just all in the family, but we are all first born sons, co-heirs with Christ, all receiving the greatest portion, the full inheritance, the best that God has to offer. In this family no one is second, no one gets the cast offs or hand me downs. We are all first, we are all the favorite. We are together, we are united and we all receive all the privileges in God’s family.

The thing about being apart of a family is that we all belong and we all belong together. Being apart of a family is a wonderful thing. First of all it means we are not alone. It also means that we have others to help and support us. (It also means that we have someone to poke us continually until we want to scream and break their neck on long car rides but that is beside the point) Nothing makes my children happier than when we are walking down the street and we all hold each others hands, a string of four people all joined together, for them this is the essence of being family. It is when we are so obviously linked together like this, that they feel that we are truly a family.

As members of the family of God we all belong together. We are joined together and together we are who we truly are. We are children, brothers and sisters all apart of those who belong and to and are joined together with God.
As members of this family we have God as our parent, as our father, working on our behalf, striving on our behalf. God is not just about being up in Heaven being all holy and Godlike, creating the universe, keeping the cosmic laws in place and all that, God is at work on our behalf, on behalf the family of God, the children of God. God saved us not merely from sin, but saved us unto God’s-self, into a body, a community of those that belong to and are apart of the family, we are saved from the loneliness and self destruction of our lives apart from God into God’s family, in to THIS community, we are saved into relationship with God and with each other.

Because God has called unto God’s-self a community a family, God works for that family. Paul begins by explaining to us that although we as the people of God don’t always know what to pray for that because we are apart of this community and the Spirit knows that our deepest desire is truly for what God wants, for God’s greatest desires, that even when we are at a loss, and are not even sure what it means to align our will with the will of God, because lets face it most of the time we don’t know what is God’s best, the Spirit will take the core of our desire which if for God, for God’s best, to be aligned with all that God wants and desires not only for us as individuals, but for us as God’s Church and also for all creation, and the Spirit will speak on our behalf. The Spirit will speak in sighs too deep for words in groans that words cannot express. We are told elsewhere the all creation is groaning for redemption, groaning for all things to be set right. The Spirit joins in that groaning and deep sighing speaking on our behalf for God’s will, for all things to be set right.

The Church may not always know what being set right is, what being the people, the faith community, the body God knows we can be is. The Church may not always know what is God’s best for us. We may not always know exactly what the will of God entails or where it will take us, but even when we don’t know, even when we don’t know what to pray for or how to pray the Spirit of God, knowing that our deepest desire is to be the people of God we are called to be, to be the people of God, God envisions us to be, that our hearts longing is to live, act, move and be who we were created to be, will then pick up where we fail, pick up where our knowledge and our abilities fall short and pray for what we don’t even know how to pray for.

But that is not all there is, (at this point I almost feel like a car salesman) not only are we apart of the family, growing and moving together in relationship not only God but with each other, not only do we all have the rights and privileges of first born sons, all have the place of honor, not only does the Spirit of God step in and express our hearts deepest longing for all that it means to be truly shaped, formed and made over by the will of God but God will also step in and intervene on our behalf. God is working on behalf of this family, on behalf of the Church. God did not call us into this family and ask the children to fend for themselves. We are apart of a loving family with a loving father who works on our behalf, who does not self-servingly strive for merely that which benefit his life and his plans but we have a father who lives and seeks what is good for the family, who works and strives on OUR behalf, working to make all things work together for the good of us all, so that Church, the family of God can be who we are called to be, who God saved us to be.

God called the church into existence. It for the church that Christ died. It was the Church, the family, the children of God whom God envisioned and destined to exist from the beginning. God works and strives for the good of the Kingdom and in Paul that means that God works and strives for the good of all those who are children, for this family God has called into existence for the Church. Let me tell you folks, no matter how bad it looks. No matter how hostile our culture seems to be to the truth of the Gospel, no matter how many poor representations of God and what it means to belong to God prevail in our society, the Church, God’s church will never fail. God is continually at work, for the betterment for the good of those, those that gather and worship, for those who love one another and are marked by the love of the Lord God. No matter what is going on. No matter how bleak the future may look from the limited vantage point we have here, God will not let God’s church fail. God is always working on behalf of the family, for the children of God, for the Church, not just this Church but for THE CHURCH as it exists in all its congregations, bodies and forms all over the world. God is at work, the Church will not fail!

Nothing can stand against God’s Church and ultimately win. As long as we are God’s living, working and striving together to be the people, the Church God is calling us to be, as long as we are children of the most high, then God nothing can work against us will succeed. It is actually not so much that nothing can come against us, because believe me things do. But it is more that it does not matter what comes against us, because God is at work on our behalf, strengthening, teaching and guiding down the paths that she should go. God is at work on behalf of God’s family and God’s children and God will assure that his family will not be destroyed.
This does not mean that things cannot and do not move to work against God’s Church. Because believe me they do. But many of them do not come in the form we expect. The things that come against God’s church tend to not so much be people or outside institutions trying to destroy the church from the outside, but tend to be more subversive than that, the things that destroy churches are things like apathy, despair, despondency, distraction, a general feeling and attitude of hopelessness. These are the things that can threaten to tear a body of believers apart. These are the things that come against The Church. But it does not matter. No matter what comes against The Church, no matter what threatens to dismantle a community of faith God is still there at work. And if we are working together to love God and neighbor, willing to align our actions, our will, our desires with those of God, it is not so much that nothing can come against us, because things will. Things will come against this particular body of believers, but it won’t matter, because nothing can win when we align ourselves with God. God is working with us, for us, on our behalf, so that in truth nothing can succeed should it try to dismantle God’s church, God’s body, God’s community.

Nothing can separate God’s children, God’s beloved, God’s Church from God. We are a family and a family is always a family and like any true family nothing can really dissolve a family. A family can ignore each other, a family can feud, they can fight, they can move to the corners of the earth to get away from each other, but they are still a family, a dysfunctional family but a family none-the-less.
There are four children in the family I grew up in, four sisters, who grew up together. Let me tell you we drove each other crazy, and sometimes still do. We fought, we bickered, we called each other names and there were times in which we wished we could just be rid of each other, but through it all we are still a family. We have all grown up now and have all started our own families. We have all gone our separate ways. The two younger ones have set up house and home with in 10 miles of my parents house in Maryland but us two older sisters have wandered far and wide, my elder sister has live as close to my parents as North Carolina, but now lives in Utah, having lived for nearly a decade in Phoenix, Arizona in between. After having graduating from ENC I have lived in Kansas City, in a small town outside of Wichita, KS and now here. But no matter how far apart we live, or how close, we are all still a family. And nothing or nobody can take that from us.
With God is it is similar, but as with all things when it comes to God, so much better. Nothing can remove us from God’s family. As the family of God, as the body of believers, the community of faith, things may be difficult, we may become distressed by circumstances in the world around us, the world may rise up against us, we may loose everything that we hold valuable, we may be in danger, or threatened with death, there may be wars waged all around us, we may be separated by height or depth or distance, but none of these things can separate us from God. This is a family that can not be apart due to distance, this is not a family that can be torn apart by the actions of anyone from the outside. God’s family is united, joined together, sharing life, living in relationship with God and with each other. God is on our side, because we are united with God and with one another. WE are not called to be united with God and remain alone, it is not Jesus and me all the way to Heaven, we are each called out of our lives of sin and loneliness, out of being orphaned in our distorted, shadowy lives lived apart from God, love and community and we are saved into a family, saved into relationship, saved to be together. Part of living the way we were created to live, being who we are created to be is living in holy relationship, not just holy relationship with God (which is important) in relationship with one another, in relationship with the Body, with a community of faith, we were called to BE the CHURCH, to be God’s children together, no longer orphaned in our sin but united as a family.

The fact of the matter is that not only does God call each and everyone of us to be children of God, to love God and to love others, but we are called not only into relationship with the most holy God of the universe, but we are called to be in relationship with one another. We are called to be the Church working together, striving together, loving God together and loving this world, this city, this neighborhood together.

The truth of the matter is that God called US, The Cambridge Church of the Nazarene into existence and God called us to living in holy community with one another, living and loving and being the people of God, the children of God, the Church together, in this place, at this time. We are God’s church, we are God’s people. But it is more than that, God did not call us and leave us, God did not call us and the expect us to do this on our own, God called us and told us that as long as we are striving for God’s best, seeking the will of God in all things, even when we are uncertain, even when we do not know what it is God is calling us to, or who it is we need to be, as long as we are aligning our will with God’s and truly desire God’s desires for us as a community, then the Spirit of God will speak on our behalf, praying the things, that we don’t even know how to pray. And God, God, is working and striving on our behalf, and will not allow any force to dismantle the Church, the family God has called into existence. If we are truly being the Church God is calling us to be, allowing God to call us into existence, allowing God to make us the family that God envisions us to be, doing the work and the ministry God has called us to, God will not allow the distance between us, the struggles, the quarrels, the differing opinions we have, our own sense of despondency or despair, to tear us apart. We are united as a family we are God’s family and God will work to draw us together and move the work and ministry God has called us to forward. The future we have here in this place is one of unity and purpose, we merely need to join with God and be the people of God the children of God, the united family, God is calling us to be, together.

Romans 8:12-25 - Not Debtors but First Born Sons

Romans 8:12-25

Paul wants us to know that our new lives in Christ are not in any way indebted to our old lives. We do not owe sin or sins power over our lives anything. That way of life may have seemed to work for us for a while but now we can leave all that behind and never look back. We are free to forget, free to simply walk away, wash our hands of that way of life and move on the greater things, which God has in store for us. We owe nothing to the lives we lived in to our former life; the life we lived apart from God, to who we were when we were living in ways contrary to which we were created to be and how we were created to live. We owe nothing to our former way of life. We are not in debt to the life that we once led or the life we would have led if we had not come to know Christ. We owe nothing to sin. It holds nothing over us. There is nothing in us that belongs to sin. We owe nothing to it, and therefore should not let it have a say or place in our lives.

At this particular time in history if a person was hard up. If they could simply not make ends meet, or if they had some how accrued debts they could not pay, a person had the option of selling themselves into slavery. They would form a contract with the person with whom they would serve as a slave, which would mark out the amount of time that the person would be enslaved and the amount of money that would be given to the person for serving as a slave. The money was given to you; you could pay off your debts or do whatever you needed to do with it and then you would work off that money by serving as a slave for the allotted amount of time. Now someone could come and buy you out of slavery; that is pay your master the amount of money of the time you still had remaining on your contract.

One of the metaphors which Paul likes to use is the metaphor of being enslaved to sin. We had a contract to be enslaved to sin and Christ came and paid off our contract. He paid whatever needed to be paid so that we could be free, so that we would no long owe our sin master anything. When Christ “bought” us out of slavery he did not leave any debt behind for us to pay off. There is nothing that that part of our lives can cling to in us. No part of us continues to belong to it.
We owe nothing to sin. Paul wants to be perfectly clear we are free from our old master, sin. We are not in any way at all indebted to sin. We owe nothing to that way of life – it did not thing good for us. Sin was not a good or kind master. It did not bring us joy or happiness. It did not help us to be better people. It did not thing that bettered us in this world. It was a way that lead to nothing but death and destruction. We owe it nothing, it did nothing to help us or improve us. In fact all it did was enslave us and bind us to live half-lives, shadow live, less-than live. Lives that were so much less than they could be or should be. It robbed us of living the way that we were created to live. It took everything and gave back nothing. We owe nothing to that way of life.

The Spirit lives within us; this is what we were talking about last week. The Spirit has swept out the “deep dwelling sin,” no part of it is left; nothing in us belongs to it any longer. It has no place in our lives and in our lives there is no place for it. The Spirit has come and taken up house and dwells deep within us; cleansing us from the inside out; remaking us into Christ image from within. It is because of the Spirit’s presence in our lives that we know that we are God’s children. Not only has the Spirit come in and taken up residence within us but in doing so we have been marked as God’s children.

The inhabitation of the Spirit is what makes us not only God’s own, slaves of a new, master but more than mere slaves, so much more. We are children. God has adopted us as God’s own. God has given us God’s name. God has made us children. We are adopted children that have all the rights and privileges of birthed children. Adopted Children are to be treated just like birthed Children. Once adopted a child is just as much a child in the family as any other child in that family and unless the family makes it known, no one from the outside would even know that the child was once, not a child. They are true children in every sense of the word!
Look at this picture. This is a picture of a family with both adopted and biological children, but you would not know it by looking at the picture. I am actually friends with this family and I can tell you that when you see them interact with their four children you would not know which ones are biological and which ones are adopted. They love all their children equally and they treat all their children with the same love and respect. It is as if all the children were biological children, but it is more than that, they are simply all their children, loved cared for, nurtured and disciplined. This is what it is like to be adopted into God’s family. Although we are adopted into God’s family we are true children nothing more nothing less.
We are true children of God. Belonging to God and belonging to God’s family. Not just slaves, not just servants, or unwanted distant relatives, but children, true legitimate children of the most high God. But not just merely children, not just merely sons and daughters, we are all first born sons.

In the ancient world not all children were seen as equal. First born sons held the position of honor. They inherited a double portion of everything that the family owned. They also became head of the family when the father passed on. Second and other sons did not get as much; the younger sons would always be under the rule and authority of the oldest son. They would always be second (or third or fourth best) when it came to the family hierarchy. And daughters, well, all they were good for was marrying off and making alliances with other clans and families. They were little more than property to be bartered and traded to make peace with the neighbors. We are not just merely second sons and daughters, but we are all first born sons! We are Co-heirs with Christ we inherit what the first born son inherits. We hold the place of honor in the family, we are not second or third, we all are number one!
We are children, and such children we are able to call God, “Abba Father.” The cry of “abba Father” means something to the affect of Daddy. It was a loving term. It was something you only called your Father if you were really close to him. It is a term of endearment that a dearly loved child calls their Father. Early Christians would begin their prayers and petitions to God with theses words, naming God as their dearly beloved father before they began. Even before Paul penned these words, the church was already acknowledging the place that they held as God’s children and the place that he held as their Father. The glory of being able to cry "Abba Father," to call God our dear Daddy, is that God is all that a father (or parent) should be. God is kind, caring, loving, just, and merciful in all aspects of our lives. God nurtures us, guides us and teaches us along life’s journey. God raises us as a loving father raising his children with kind nurture and love. God raises us up to be the strong people that God created us to be. God raises up to be the people that God knows we CAN be. God raises us up in the ways that we should go, by guiding us, directing us, teaching us and speaking kindly to us even when we are choosing to go in ways contrary to those God would have us go.

The Father metaphor we find here and in most of the New Testament is an echo of the Mother of the Old Testament. Where the New Testament uses mainly fatherly metaphors when speaking of God, the Old Testament mainly uses Mother metaphors. In the Old Testament it is God who protects and shelters, just as a mother bird protects her young under her wings. God nurtures us and feeds us, helping us grow strong just as a mother feeds her children and nurturing them and drawing them to her bosom. God comforts us, just a mother comforts her small children in her loving arms, drawing them close, wiping away the tears of fear or sadness. God is the ultimate parent.a
The Bible makes clear that that the God the “Father” is everything that an earthly parent should be and is everything that too many earthly parents are not. God our father is every girl's dream, the one who holds her, protects her, walks her down the isle with a tear in his eye because he is proud of who she is and who she is becoming. God the father is every young man's "idol," he is the strength in the tough times that hold him up, is guiding and leading when advice is needed, he knows all the answers to all the tough questions about girls and proudly hugs him and tells him how proud He is of the man that he is has become.

We are sons are sons and daughters. And all are treated as first born sons! Hallelujah! We are joint heirs with Christ. Not second sons, not "mere girls" but all first born sons, with the rights and privileges to inherit all that our Father has for us. This means we don’t get hand-me downs. We don’t get the leftovers, we all inherit it all. This sounds impossible. The inheritance of God is an inheritance that can't be divided up, split, or parceled out. It is an inheritance that must be received in it fullness and completeness. We all inherit the fullness of God’s inheritance!

But the question then is, “What do we inherit?” We inherit full life, right life, life the way is should be. Life the way that it truly could be. A hope for a not only a life that could be but a world that could be. We get everything that God has to offer, everything God hoped for us when God brought us into existence. We get a relationship with the one who made us, who made all that is. We get to be loved; we get to live up to our full potential. We get to live life as it should be lived, as it was meant to be lived, as we were created to live it. We get to live now and all eternity in Holy Communion, perfect relationship with God. Folks I don’t know if it gets much better that!

Romans 8:1-11- The Indwelling

Romans 8:1-11

We are now officially halfway through the book of Romans. Paul has thus far teased us with his theology bringing us to a certain point in his way of understanding the state of human beings and then starting over and bringing us to the same point using slightly different logic. Everything he has been saying thus far in the book brings us to the “therefore” her at the beginning of chapter 8. Paul has been slowing teaching us what it means to live by faith and how it is that we on our own can not live the way we were created to live but that it is faith alone which brings us into relationship with God and allows us to live right, good lives, which reflect the love of God in this world. Paul has shown us that we can not earn God’s favor, that we can never be “good enough” but that God’s love and God’s favor is given freely to all those who choose to accept God’s love.

Then in chapter seven he commiserated with us over the struggle we all have with sin in our lives, how even when we are trying to do the things of God, sin is there. Even when were doing everything within our power to move in Godly ways, we find that sin is at hand. Even as Christians we are continually at war with ourselves, with the sin that dwells deep within that moves us in ways that we do not wish to go.
Before I move on, I thought I should share something with you, which may or may not come as a surprise to you, the divisions between chapters in the Bible are all artificial, the original writers did not put them there. Paul did not put a division between the last sentence in chapter 7 and the first verse in chapter 8. They were put there later so that, no matter what translation or language from which we read, we are all able to generally find the same spot in our Biblical texts. Paul did not put a break between chapters 7 and chapter 8, he just kept on going it was all part of the same thought. There was not even a pause between last week’s verses and this week’s verses in Paul’s writings. So I many ways the division between last week’s sermon and this week’s sermon is just as arbitrary. Just as Paul has continued to build from one thought to the next in spite of the chapter divisions, that were put in later on so we can all be on the same page, so to speak, I am building from sermon to sermon, because I am building on Paul, and what he has been saying.

So as we look at this passage we should see it all in light of that last few lines in chapter 7 toward the end of last week’s passage Paul said, ". . . Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" The text moves from thanking God for the fact that Jesus Christ rescues us from the struggle against sin that we all face as Christians and then telling us that we are either Slaves to God, or slaves of sin, and then moves to “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (and I could seriously stop there and preach 40 minutes just on that line alone)

Although sin is at work within us making our best efforts at living right and good live fail, we are set free from the law of sin and evil in our lives! There is no condemnation not because God over looks the struggle that Christians face with their “fleshy” selves but because, Thanks be to God we are rescued from this body, given over to sin and death, by Christ Jesus. God has done what the law, weakened by OUR sinfulness, could not do, which is rescue us from ourselves! God rescues us from our own sin, from the sin that dwells deep within us, moves us, motivates us and drives us in directions that are far from God and far from the people we were created to be.

Quick side note: When Paul speaks of the “flesh” here in this passage he is not trying to tell us that our bodies are evil or in and of themselves somehow contrary to God. He is not trying to tell us that all things material, physical things are evil and only spiritual, immaterial things are good and holy. For Paul the body in and of itself is neutral, physical things in and of themselves are neutral. They were all created to be good, but due to sin and evil and its workings in this world all things can be used in ways that are contrary to what they were created to be. When we live contrary to the ways God created us to live and are living lives ruled by sin and sin’s selfishness then we are living lives of the “flesh” as Paul uses the word here. So our bodies and this physical world are not necessarily used in “fleshy” ways but when they are moved and powered by sin they can be used and lived according to the flesh, as Paul would put it.

The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has set us free, rescued us, from this struggle, from this battle with ourselves, from the battle that all us have, even as Christians, with the sin that dwells deep with in us. We first need to remember, nothing that we can do, not even our faith can change the sin that dwells with in us. There is only one thing can change the sin that dwells deep with in each and every one of us; there is only one thing can rescue us from the battle that we fight with ourselves, and the sin that constantly pulls us in directions that we do not desire to go; only the Spirit, the Spirit of God, dwelling deep within, removing that deep dwelling sin and replacing it; living within us in sin’s stead, moving us, changing us, purifying us, making us clean from the inside out! holy!

Those that live according to the Spirit set their mind on the Spirit. We cannot live life “according to the Spirit”, that is living in ways that wholly glorify God; ways that reflect God’s goodness and greatness to the world around us, on our own. Our minds must be set on the Spirit, we must allow the Spirit to live within us, we must allow the spirit to have full reign in our lives, we cannot hold anything back for ourselves, because in that one little piece the deep dwelling sin will flourish and prosper – we cannot live according to the Spirit unless our minds are set on the Spirit. We cannot because WE are unable to do these things ourselves, only the Spirit can do them; we can only do them when the Spirit is working these, Godly Life, miracles within us. We cannot will ourselves to be changed. We cannot move ourselves wholly and completely in the ways of God. Our faith is not enough to change us fully and completely. The spirit must be within, the Spirit must be allowed to move in and keep house, to sweep out all that is impure and unholy and replace it with the holy and, pure things of God.

Living life this way is life and peace; life, because sin is death, plain and simple. Life, because living a life of sin is living a half-life, a shadow life, living but a dim reflection of the life you were created to live, a broken mess of the life that you could live and were meant to live. Peace, because only then the battle that we have with ourselves due to the sin, that dwells deep within each of us, is over. The sin is removed, swept out, eradicated, completely and absolutely demolished by the Spirit. Through the Spirit of God we are able to do what we are unable to otherwise do. Live the way we were created to live, meant to live, live the way we truly desire to live, free of selfishness and sin, free of serving ourselves and our own desires, free to live lives of love, receiving God’s love freely and giving that love in return.

Paul tells us that "But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit." He a way he is saying this to remind us to who we are. Paul is speaking, the Church of Rome, which was one of the larger and more established churches in the early church. He is not preaching in the marketplace in a pagan city, speaking to people outside the Church, who have little understanding of who Jesus is and the call the love of God has on our lives. Paul is speaking to Christians, to people who know and have faith in Jesus Christ; Paul is speaking to people Just. Like. Us. He is not speaking to people who don’t know who Jesus is, he is speaking to the people of the Church, (us). He is reminding them (and us) who we are. We are not of the flesh, no we are of the Spirit. That is, as the people, who make up the Church we should not simply be people of faith; we should not be people who are fleshy, being controlled by the sin that dwells within, we should be people of the Spirit who are controlled by the Spirit of the Lord God who is Jesus Christ. This is who God is calling us all to be, this is who God is calling the Church to be, because this is who we really are, and if we are not then, they are not living the lives of the people who follow Jesus Christ, as people who accept, live and reflect the love of God in this world, we are not living lives of the people of the Church! The Spirit living with in should be changes us, remakes us, recreates us, to be people that live, breath and reflect God, God’s holiness and God’s righteousness, in all that we say, in all that we do, in every crook and cranny of our lives (this is exciting stuff people!)

Being dead to sin is POSSIBLE because the Spirit dwells within. The Spirit within is what allows us to be righteous. The Spirit within makes it possible to live lives that are dead to sin and the havoc and destruction that sin can bring to our lives. It is possible to live HOLY lives that are not bound by the struggle and the battle with sin that that rages within. We do not have to do what we do not want to do. Sin does not have to be at hand even when we are trying to do good. But it means giving it all up, laying it all on the line, making your self fully God’s. It means allowing God’s Spirit to take up residency within your life. It means giving God control of every part of your being, every part of your life, every part of every thing that you do, today, tomorrow, and for always; giving up your hopes, your dreams; giving up control and allowing the Spirit, the love of God to have control. It means trusting God implicitly in all things, at all times, with everything; everything that you can think of and everything that is beyond your thinking, with everything that you know and everything you don’t know. It means giving up, surrendering the battle.

This is about stopping fighting a battle that cannot be won, and allowing Jesus Christ to win the battle for you. It is not your battle to win! Who will rescue me form this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! It is a battle that can only be won by Jesus Christ himself, and the results of that battle can only come to fruition in our lives through the work of the Spirit. This is about living the way that God is calling us to live; this is about being the people of God that we can be, being the people of God that we should be. This is about giving God everything, absolutely everything, even the things we feel entitled to, even the things that we don’t want to let go of, even the things that we wish we could hide from him. Giving God everything, allowing Christ to win the battle with the deep dwelling sin and allowing the Spirit to live there instead, allowing the Spirit to remake us, reshape us recreated us into holy, Godly people, from the inside out.
It is about ALLOWING God to do it all, about giving up, throwing in the towel, acknowledge that we are helpless and weak (like Paul told us we were in chapter five) and allowing God to move in our lives in ways that we have never allowed him to move before. Give it up, resign the battle, wave the white flag and let God have the control that you have been fighting for.

We are rescued (saved it you will) by Jesus Christ, through his life, death and resurrection. We are rescued because the Spirit of the one who lived, died and rose again dwells within us. We are able to have the love of God with in us, moving us and motivating us instead of sin. We are saved from living the life that is described in the first part of the chapter 7. This is the life that we begin to live as believers but God has something better for us. God does not desire for us to live that way.

THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO LIVE. We do not have to live in that kind of constant struggle with sin. There is a rescuer. There is a redeemer, a savior. There is life in the Spirit. There is life with the person of Jesus Christ living with in us, changing us, remaking us, from the inside out, into the people he wants us to be. The battle with sin is not our battle to fight. It is a battle that Christ rescues us from. The wonderful thing about Holy living is that it is a life lived purposefully, passively. A life lived in such a way that we allow the Spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ to live in us and through us. We give him our hopes, our dreams, our futures and allow him to move us in the ways that he desires us to move. It is freedom from the battle because we lay down arms and surrender to the only one who can win this battle, for it is a battle that is already won.

Romans 7:14-25 - Doing what we want to do.

Romans 7:14-25

I had the opportunity to do several fun things with my family this week. The first thing we did was go to the beach, usually we travel up the coast out to Nahant where there is a quiet beach full of tide pools and other little wonders, but we decided not to take the extra 10-15 minutes and choose instead to go to the closer Revere Beach. It was a 90-degree day and up to the beach we went to fend off the heat. As we approached we noted that the water was a funny reddish color but did not think much of it. We unloaded the car, staked out our little claim on the beach and let the girls run free in the waves. After some time Mike and I ventured down to the water’s edge where Stella convinced me to wade in with her so she could go jump waves (something they are not allowed to do without an Adult) as soon as I got in the water the reason for the odd coloration to the water became readily apparent, the water was thick with this red sea weed. It was like wading in soup with red noodles. The girls did not seem to care one way or the other about the seaweed but I did not like the way the seaweed in the water felt. I tried to stay in the water with Stella so she could enjoy wave jumping on our beach day, but my distaste for the feeling of weird red seaweed all around me won out and took her back in after only a few minutes. I wanted to stay in the water with her, I truly did, but I just could not bring myself to do it.

Later this week, we met another family at the Frog Pond on the Boston Common and let our children play together while their mother; Mike and I caught up on each other’s lives and talked. We had arrived early and were there when they first opened the pond up for wading, they did so by reminding us all of the rules. No carrying of children or adults while in the water, no running in the water, no horseplay and absolutely no food or drinks in the water. Now all these rules make sense to me and seem to be fairly self explanatory from a safety stand point, but when she said, “absolutely no food or drinks in the water” I had the over whelming desire to just toss the little blueberry which I was just about ready to pop into my mouth into the water. I don’t know why, even though I knew it was wrong and would never have thought of doing so otherwise, I still had to squelch the overwhelming desire to just (flick) that blueberry in, just to be contrary, just because she told me not to.
Paul has managed to put into words the struggle in which we daily live, individually and collectively. There are things we want to do that we know we shouldn’t do and there are things we should do that we simply don’t do. My desire was to stay in that water with my daughter, to let her happily play in the waves, lifting her up as each wave came rushing over us so that she could “jump” them, but the feeling of all that sea weed in the water, it was just . . .I don’t know, I just could not do it. Thankfully Stella was understanding but as with so many other things in life. I just could not manage to do what I know I should do, my desire was to allow my daughter to have the best possible wave jumping experience but I could not do it. I stopped myself from doing what I wanted to do and what I wanted to do was good. At least the better part of me won out in the blueberry battle. My children and I were not unceremoniously tossed out of the Frog Pond due to my lack of restraint. But it does not change the fact that my first gut reaction was to just toss that blueberry into the water.

We live daily having to stop ourselves from doing things we know we should not do, and telling ourselves to do things we know we should, whether it be not running that red light, or yelling choice words at that car that nearly ran us over while we were in the cross walk. Whether it be eating more fiber or stopping and helping out that woman who just dropped her bag of groceries all over the sidewalk even though we are in a hurry. We are constantly at war with ourselves to do the things we know we should do and not do the things we know we should not do.

In this passage Paul lays out, in the most confusing way he can possibly do, the weakness that we all experience in our lives, the struggle we humans daily live, the hopelessness our efforts find when we strive to live the way we know we should. As Christians we try to live the way God calls us to live. We desire to be kind to other people. We want live in ways that would glorify God. We try daily to love God with all our beings and to love others with the love God gives to us. But when we are honest with ourselves, when we look at ourselves in the mirror and really see the person we see there, we know that we fail, time and time again. It seems there is nothing to be done, we do not do what we want to do and we do do what we hate. We desire to live one way but we continually find the details of our lives show that we live an entirely different way.

We are hopeless, at every turn, no matter how strong our effort we fail. We know God’s way is good, we know God’s call on our lives is to be holy. We know that we should treat everyone we meet with kindness. We know that we really should not yell at our children or our neighbors. We know that we should reach out and help those around us whom we see are struggling. We know that we should not speak sharply to those whom we love most, even if they deserve it, even if we know we are right and they are wrong.

These are the lessons of kindergarten, respect others, use kind words, wait your turn, keep your hands to yourself, don’t run and always take a nap after lunchtime. We learned these lessons when we were but 5 or 6 but although we know them we do not know how to live them, how to continually act in ways that are kind and respectful to others. We can’t seem to keep our voices and tempers under control. Perhaps we know how to keep our hands to ourselves, most of the time, but we still can’t seem to stop our hurtful or angry words from reaching out and slapping our loved ones and strangers alike.

We know that there are 101 little things that we could have, should have done in each day that would have better reflected the love of God in this world. There are another couple dozen things that perhaps we should not have done, or said that we choose not to do because we were too busy, did not have the time, or simply did not care enough to make the effort it would have taken to do them. We might have been able to justify our actions, words or lack thereof at the time, but if we looked ourselves in the mirror or took the time to look into the face of God, we would know that our excuses and detailed logical reasoning would fall short and would be weak to say the least.

In many ways Paul knows you. He knows your daily struggles, because your struggles are the same struggles Paul faced, they are the same struggles I face, they are the same struggles we all face. Our desire to do what we want to do, to please ourselves and ourselves alone; our constant ability to not live up to our best intentions, our failure to be kind in the face of evil, to speak words of peace in the face of violence, to love those who hate, or to simply just not verbally snap the head off of those whom you love most when you are annoyed with them (or perhaps annoyed something or someone else entirely), this is the reality of sin in our lives. This is the power of evil at work in us, at work in our lives, at work in the very fabric of our world. We live in this reality. We want to live right and good lives, but we continually find that we live more like pigs. We try very hard to not be but we continually find ourselves right back where we are trying to not be.

Sin/evil is a very powerful force indeed. At our core we are selfish, at our core we are angry and self-righteous at our core our desire is for ourselves, what will make us happy, what will feel good to us, we do what will best fulfill our wants and desires, we use other people to fulfill our own ends, we walk through this world thinking of little more than us and our own pleasure. This is who we are when left to our own devises. When we work hard to not live this way, when we struggle and desire to put others needs ahead of our own desires, when we try to act kindly in all things, love others and speak gently we find that we fail at every turn each and every day. Our efforts are useless they are worthless. No matter how often we try to love others, to act kindly to others in all things we find that it is always easier to love ourselves and to act in selfish ways.

Paul says this is who we are in our sinful selves. This is who we are as long as evil runs rampant in this world. This is the reality of life here in a fallen broken world that is but a poor reflection of what it was created to be. This is the reality of our shattered splintered lives. This is who we are when we are living but a shadow of the lives we were created to live.

This may be the reality of our life, but the truth of the matter is, this is not the way we were created to live. Although this is the best we can do in our own efforts. We will find that our own efforts will always fail. Our wanting to live right is not good enough. Our desire to live right is not good enough. Trying to live right is not good enough. Our wanting, our desires, our feeble attempts will always fail.
At end of the passage Paul in his own way asks, “Is there any hope?” “Will anyone rescue me, wretched man than I am?” he says. And the answer, thank God, is YES! There is hope someone will rescue us. There is more to life than failing at being who we know we can be. There is more to life than falling short of living the way God calls us to live. We can love God and neighbor. We can not yell at our loved ones, we can stop doing all those things we try not to do and manage to do all the things we know we should. But we can’t rescue ourselves; we can’t succeed on our own. We can succeed because of Jesus Christ. We cannot overcome the power that sin’s selfishness has over our lives on our own but through the power of Jesus Christ, because Jesus shows us the way, we are able to live the way we are called to live. We are able to succeed where we once failed. With Jesus Christ we can do what could not do otherwise and stop doing those things we have tried so hard to stop doing. Through Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ alone, we can truly be who we were created to be. And THAT my friends it the good news of the gospel, that we come here every Sunday to celebrate, THAT is the good news of the gospel that we are called to share, THAT is the good news of the gospel that we all believe and have the opportunity to live! Through Jesus Christ we are able to be who we were created to be!