life in the Spirit
"To God be the glory," gospel hymn of gospel hymns! “Perfect redemption, the purchase of blood” opens the life gate to the kingdom in what Paul in Romans calls “life in the Spirit" on Earth here and now” You are baptized into it. I shall speak of it.
Gospel -> good spell, good story, good news! But
the Holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is not always good news. In Matthew last week Jesus’ parable contrasted weeds and wheat, followed by an allegory consigning weeds to the fire of hell, and again this morning, evildoers cast into the furnace of fire, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth; and again from Jesus in Matthew today, damnation to hellfire, weeping and gnashing of teeth. But Paul in Romans 8 is contrasting life in the flesh and life in the Spirit, and there’s a joyful take on salvation.
This summer we are reading through Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans is unlike Paul’s other epistles, which are to churches Paul established, and people (Philemon), with issues, and Paul is writing back to them as “correction burn,” often gentle, but also anger, vitriol, sarcasm, frustration, even irony with a touch of “gotcha” humor.
Romans is different. Paul did not establish the church in Rome, in fact he’s never been to Rome. He’s writing to Christians in Rome because he’s planning to visit. Paul writes to introduce himself, to overcome their doubts about him, to establish his credentials as an apostle of Jesus, to show them that the gospel he teaches and preaches is compatible with the gospel they believe. And Paul writes hoping they will help finance his missionary journey to Spain.
We know, of course, that Paul was martyred before he could go to Spain, but Spain was his plan at the time.
Today we finished Romans chapter 8, which many scholars say is "sublime," the most beautiful expression of the Christian message in all scripture.
Beautiful because it’s joyful, encouraging, assuring, uplifting, Victory in Jesus, our Savior forever. Romans 8 opens proclaiming “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No condemnation, salvation is ours, accomplished by the purchase of blood, the death and resurrection of Jesus, we are saved, God loves us. God welcomes us into his kingdom in this life, here on this Earth!
As Eugene Peterson’s Bible The Message says, we are pulled by the influence of selfishness and sin; but
“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.
The Message goes on, “God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He did not 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.”
Paul says all fears and worries are behind us now. We are justified by the grace of God, the death and resurrection of Jesus. Justified means that even though God knows you are guilty as sin, you are pardoned by the blood of Jesus, God finds you innocent, righteous in his sight: welcome to the kingdom of God (or, as Matthew calls it, the kingdom of heaven.
Because God loves you, God sends the Holy Spirit to live within you. As Paul says (1 Cor. 6:19), you are a “temple of the Holy Spirit,” God within you, you no longer live what Paul calls life in the flesh, a way of selfishness. Now you’re to have life in the Spirit.
It’s difficult: temptations of the flesh still and always make life an ongoing struggle, you cannot do it yourself, but by the Spirit within you, you can hardly go wrong, because the Spirit works for you, prays for you, guides you, keeps you mindful of God’s love, helps you live into God’s will instead of for yourself alone.
Thinking of God’s word to Jeremiah, “Before you were born I knew you, and before you were conceived in your mother’s womb I consecrated you” the Holy Spirit may live in every child of God from before your beginning, but Baptism marks you as a temple of the Holy Spirit for sure. Of course you still have a choice, either life of self, or life in the Spirit, an invitation and choice when you are invited to faith in Christ as your savior in Baptism (“faith” being of two parts, belief and action):
Do you believe in God the Father?
Do you believe in God the Son?
Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
And then by covenant you commit to the action that Paul calls Life in the Spirit:
Will you continue in the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
Will you proclaim by word and example, the good news of God in Christ?
Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
It’s all WITH GOD’S HELP: you cannot do it on your own, you are not expected to do it on your own, but entering “life in the Spirit”, the Holy Spirit works within you, Paul says “groans within you with sighs too deep for words,” reminds you, encourages you, prays for you, intercedes with God for you, keeps you connected to Jesus - - the Spirit within you provides everything you need to live in the will of God, the way of Christ, life in the Spirit.
Paul is so enthusiastically confident that he says nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Or, again, as Peterson’s The Message quotes Paul, “Nothing fazes us, because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing, nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable - - absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love, because of the way that Jesus, our Master, has embraced us.”
That's Paul's gospel, and it's all good news!
If you share Paul’s enthusiasm and accept his welcome to the kingdom of life in the Spirit, I invite you this morning, right now, to reaffirm your renunciation of evil and renew your commitment to Jesus Christ, with the words of the baptismal covenant.
In the red book of common prayer in the pew rack in front of you, page 292 as we stand.
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Homiletic endeavor by the Rev Tom Weller, Episcopal priest (Retired) in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida on Sunday, July 30, 2023, Proper 12A.
Clipart pinched on line.
Sermon hymn,
Stanza 1
To God be the glory, great things He hath done;
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son,
Who yielded His life an atonement for sin,
And opened the life gate that all may go in.
Refrain
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the earth hear His voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
Let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son,
And give Him the glory, great things He hath done.
Stanza 2
O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood,
To every believer the promise of God;
The vilest offender who truly believes,
That moment from Jesus a pardon receives.
(Refrain)
Stanza 3
Great things He hath taught us, great things He hath done,
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son;
But purer, and higher, and greater will be
Our wonder, our rapture, when Jesus we see.
(Refrain)
Text: Romans 8.
8 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!
* * *
18-21 That’s why I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what’s coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
22-25 All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it’s not only around us; it’s within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We’re also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
29-30 God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.
31-39 So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (The Message, Eugene Peterson)