What’s In You?
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Romans 8:1-12
Rev. Brian North – Westminster Presbyterian Chehalis, WA
August 8th, 2010
For many people, the book of Romans is the single-most profound section of Scripture. To be sure, it’s a book that receives a lot of admiration from Christians, and a lot of attention from scholarly types, but not much serious attention from the average John or Jane Doe Christian because it’s so densely packed with high-minded theology and rhetoric, and it has a lot of Old Testament references that assume a working knowledge of those references, making it difficult to understand. Romans is much bigger than just the words on its pages. But this morning I hope to boil down this one particular passage to answering one question: What’s in you?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that question, or very close derivatives of it, has been getting asked a lot in the last few years. For instance, a credit card company that’s been advertising quite heavily on television keeps asking us the question: “What’s in your wallet?” A lot of people, especially in this economy, would answer: not much.
Or perhaps you have seen the television and print commercials for Gatorade with their tag line, “Is it in you?” meaning, their product.
And as you’ve probably seen, heard, or read over the past few years, Gatorade isn’t the only one who’s asking, “what’s in you?”…Baseball’s head honchos and even the US Government have been asking that question the last few years to some specific Major League players, “Uh, what’s in you?”
But Paul isn’t writing to us about credit cards, sports drinks or muscle-enhancing drugs. What he tells us needs to be in us is the Holy Spirit, and he writes about it prolifically here in the 8th chapter of Romans. In fact, you could say that the 8th chapter of Romans is all about the Spirit. Over 20 times in Romans 8 Paul refers to the Spirit. Up through the first 7 chapters, he writes of the Spirit all of three times.
The Spirit is probably the least understood, least preached, least taught, least acknowledged aspect of the trinity. God, three in one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is taught in the Scriptures from the first three verses of Genesis onward. Yet the Spirit is often ignored. Not here in Romans. We’re given a full dose of it.
And the ultimate point of this passage is that for Christians, the Spirit is what is now in us. Through the Spirit, we who follow Christ now live lives that are qualitatively different from the lives we lived prior to knowing Jesus Christ; we are free from the condemnation that sin brings upon us; there is now no condemnation when the Spirit is in us and we are in the Spirit.
Now, whenever we look at a passage in Scripture, it’s important to remember that it’s not isolated by itself. It’s connected to the whole of Scripture, and particularly to those verses immediately around it. That’s one reason I almost always preach through a passage of Scripture, and not pick a verse here and a verse there and pull them together under some theme. And Romans 8 is no different. If we look back just a few verses even, we see Paul asking a question of himself near the end of chapter 7: “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). It’s not so much a question about after he dies, but about the fact that as he lives, he finds himself giving in to temptation and sin, which steals life and its joys from him. It’s a question that comes out of everything else he has written in the previous verses of chapter 7, and even back into chapters 5 and 6: He is deploring his own sinful self, “the ways of the flesh” as he likes to call it. For instance in 7:21, he writes, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me” (Romans 7:21). That sounds to me like it belongs as Murphy’s first law. But it’s an issue that we all struggle with because it’s part of being human. Sin is on the scene, and we suffer the consequences. And so he’s led to this question of “who will rescue me from this body of death?”
And in the very next sentence, before we can even catch our breath, he gives us the answer, “Thanks be to God—Through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25). It’s not that he’s giving thanks through Jesus Christ; he’s answering the question of who will rescue him: Jesus Christ will.
And it is then that he launches into this great passage in Romans 8, which we read this morning, beginning with, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). So the answer to the question is Jesus Christ. And through Jesus the Spirit sets us free from the prison of fallen humanity, and the prison of condemnation that sin brings upon us.
That, my friends, is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And we can put our trust in Jesus and everything that Christ claimed because it was backed up, was justified, was vindicated, in his resurrection. Without the resurrection, Jesus Christ history would call him one of the most delusional characters ever to grace the face of the earth.
C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse” (Mere Christianity, p. 41).
Without the resurrection, we would all conclude that indeed he was a madman or worse. But Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and it’s attested to by the four gospel writers, and non-Biblical writers. Did you know that? Have you ever heard of the Greek Jewish Historian, Flavius Josephus? Josephus lived and wrote just after the time of Jesus’ death, and resurrection, and he writes, “Now, there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man…He was the Christ [Some debate about whether or not this reads “the Christ” or “the so-called Christ”]; and when Pilate at the suggestion of the principle men among us, had him condemned to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day” (Antiquities of the Jews). Josephus—remember, he’s a non-Biblical, Jewish historian of Greek descent who lived in the 1st Century A.D. (he died in 100 A.D., and notice the “among us” reference — records for us that Jesus appeared to his followers on the third day after his death.
So we know that Jesus not only talked the talk, he walked the walk and rose from the grave just as he said he would. We can say with confidence, therefore, that he’s not on par with a poached egg, and Paul can assure for us that we are forgiven of our sins and that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And after Paul gives this great cry of victory over the condemnation that sin has brought upon us, he then turns repeatedly to speaking of the Spirit and what it means to have the Spirit living in us and us living in the Spirit; and what it means not to have the Spirit. And it’s from these verses, 5-11, and beyond, that I ask the question: What’s in you? And more specifically: Is the Holy Spirit in you?
Now, Paul draws for us a line in the sand: on one side are those who live their lives according to the Spirit; on the other side are those who don’t. Paul writes, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:5).
The proof of what’s in us is found in our living and in what our minds are set upon. So, each of us would do well to examine our lives and ask: what’s my mind set on? What does my life revolve around? “Who will rescue me from your body of death?” as Paul wrote. Who or what is the tether, the anchor, that keeps me from floating away on the seas of life? Who or what gives my life purpose? Who or what drives me, leads me, compels me to get out of bed in the morning, keeps me up at night, gets my blood pumping…Who or what is the overwhelming priority in each of our lives? What is in you? What’s inside your head, your heart, your emotions, your soul, and your body? Those are the questions that come out of this verse as we look at our lives. And every human being has an answer, and every one of our answers has spiritual implications. For the Christian, our mind is on the Spirit and it is the Spirit that drives us and that keeps us going. It’s like the engine in a car: You don’t see it most of the time, but without it, the car is useless. In fact, I came across an Associated Press quote from a few years ago that said, “Leslie Puckett, after struggling to start his car, lifted the hood and discovered that someone had stolen the motor.”
Sometimes our lives are like that car without an engine, and it’s like the Holy Spirit has been lifted out of us. Christians aren’t perfect in keeping their mind on the spirit. Now, the Spirit is still there – it hasn’t been stolen; it’s just that we ignore it. There are so many times where I’ve sensed I needed to say something or do something that was the right thing to say or do, and I’ve gone another direction, and my life got really difficult as a result. And I could then look back on that and say, “The Holy Spirit was telling me what to do” and I ignored it. Why? Because my mind was not on the spirit, but rather on the flesh.
Let me share with you a story I have once before, that’s not from my life. A man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman. He comes to an intersection and the light turns yellow. Of course, we all know what culture dictates we do when the light turns yellow (step on the gas)…Well, the man stops, and the woman behind him goes completely ballistic. She’s honking her horn, yelling at him and waving at him and in mid-rant someone taps on the window of her car. It’s a police officer. He takes her to the station where she is fingerprinted and photographed and locked up in a cell. After a couple hours, they let her out and the arresting officer gives her back her personal belongings.
This is what he says to her, “I’m sorry for the mistake. Here’s how it happened: I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing the horn and using bad gestures and speaking bad language and then I noticed the “What Would Jesus Do?” bumper sticker on your car and the “Choose Life” license plate holder and the “follow me to Sunday School” window sign and the Christian fish emblem on your trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.”
So we aren’t perfect in living out our faith. Our mind wanders from the Holy Spirit, we start listening to other people, let other things influence us that aren’t holy and Godly. But that only gets us into trouble. It gets us out of balance.
Just this week, while on vacation, I played a game with Blakely and Hailey at a little park on Vashon Island where we were for a few days. The park has this toy that looks like a plastic doughnut, maybe 5 feet in diameter, that spins around, and it’s on a bit of an angle, so it’s not level. You can sit on it, stand on it, etc. I don’t know if we were using it the way it was intended, but we stand on it and walk on it, like it’s a round tread-mill. But we’ve turned it into a competition to see who can stay on this thing the longest. So we all hop on, start the thing moving, and try not to fall off, while trying to get the others to fall off at the same time. We’ve played this game before. This time, though, when Blakely and I first got on, he won the first 7 competitions. I was 0 for 7! And I have good balance! The whole point is that you have to stay balanced on the toy. And to do that, you have to be focused on the toy. You can’t look at the ground on either side, or the people around you or your competition. You have to keep your mind focused on what you’re doing. It’s the same with the spirit. Paul says our minds are set on the spirit. If we’re going to live life in balance with God, we have to be in tune with the spirit, with our minds focused on God’s spirit, listening to his leading through other Christians, through Scripture, through his still, small voice that speaks to us.
Listening to the voice of God through his Holy Spirit is something that takes time to cultivate. Sometimes that’s just an excuse we use, because there are some ways God’s spirit speaks to us pretty clearly, like through the Bible. But the Spirit will remind us of the truths of the Bible when we need that prompting. And then it’s a matter of listening to that spirit and obeying.
My guess is that the Holy Spirit speaks to us more often than we realize. Because the spirit is kind of slippery, can’t be seen or really defined (unlike the other 2/3 of the trinity: Father, and Son), we chalk it up as a big mystery, and something that only really spiritual, way out there Christians are in touch with. But the Spirit is something that’s deep in side of every Christian, that anyone who’s put their trust in Jesus has access to and can be guided and led by. And: When we’re guided by the spirit, we experience life and peace. That’s what Paul writes in verse 6. If you want life to the full, and if you want peace that surpasses the circumstances of life, then living the by the Spirit is the only way to live. That’s living how God intended us to! And that’s the best living there is. It’s the most peaceful, the most vibrant, the most life-giving and life-receiving way to be.
And so, for a Christian, the answer to the question “What’s in you?” is the Holy Spirit, through faith in Jesus Christ. It’s the Spirit that guides us, leads us, prompts us, transforms us, heals us, and gives us life, and it’s his spirit that dwells in us. It’s the Holy Spirit that descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove; it’s the spirit that raised Him up to life after three days in the tomb. And it’s through God’s Spirit that we are given a new chance at life, a “do-over,” and the daily chance to walk with God, guided by His Holy Spirit in us. Let’s pray…Amen.
