Romans 8:1-4
In 1987 I was part of a team helping the Christian students at the University of Surrey to present their faith to the campus. In those far off days, when reasonable dialogue with serious Muslims was possible, we put on a meeting with a pretty aggressive title, "Mohammed, Jesus, Buddah... which one is right?" You just couldn't get away with that these days but back then we drew a multi-racial audience of about 300 students (about six times the size of the CU!)
I gave a thirty minute talk focusing on the Christian gospel, explaining how Jesus died for us and paid the ransom-price for us so that we could be set free from sin. I stressed that we do not have to earn forgiveness, Jesus death means that forgiveness is a gift -when we accept the gift, God accepts us. I went on to explain that, we begin our spiritual life knowing that we are accepted by God, we express our gratitude to him by living a life of faithful service to him. The service is our way of saying 'thank-you', it does not earn our forgiveness because we are already accepted.
I asked for questions and a young Muslim man stood up and said, "Can you explain again about forgiveness?" So I went through the cross again and re-stated the fact that God's gracious gift means that we are accepted.
Another Muslin man stood up, "I am sorry to ask you to go over this again, but can you explain this to us - you say you know you are accepted by God, how can that be?" I went through it again.
An elderly Muslim man stood up next; I really thought that he was going to have a go at me, instead he said, "You say that God we do not have to earn our place in heaven, and that God accepts us because of the death of Christ... that's amazing!"
It took me a moment to realize that he was not winding me up - then I had one of those experiences of God's presence that I will never forget. I had just explained Christ to a Muslim man who had never heard the gospel before and he was dumbfounded with the wonder of what was on offer! Looking 'round the room the other Muslim men present were genuinely amazed, they had not expected this: they came for a fight with an arrogant western Christian and instead they heard a gentle explanation of God's grace. You could hear a pin drop and from the lectern I could see the Christian students beaming with joy.
We had connected!
Pick a religion, any religion, and you will find that you have to work to earn God's acceptance. You do good works, you clock up hours of religious activities, you visit Mecca, walk up an Irish mountain on your knees; you do religious stuff to get God on your side. You live with a sense of never having done enough, a faint murmur of condemnation constantly whispering like tinnitus in the background. To be free of this is wonderful, simply wonderful... and this is the Christian gospel:
Read Romans 8:1-4
After his complex and magisterial explanation of the gospel, Paul puts it in a nutshell, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" - it is breathtaking, but how does it work?
Paul puts it powerfully in verse 2, "For the Power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you, through Christ Jesus, from the power of sin that leads to death"
The prison with two doors
A lot of people dismiss salvation from the start because they wonder what it is we need saving from. Ask people what they need and they will probably talk about more money, longer holidays and a brilliant relationship. We don't want what Jesus has to offer.
Or do we? Paul tells us here that every human being needs to be freed. As though w are locked in a prison at the end of a long corridor, and there are two doors stopping us getting out: one is death, the other is sin.
The death door - we are all going to die, and no-one seems to know what happens next. But Jesus does because he has been dead and come back to tell the tale - he has power to reverse death.
The sin door - we die because we suffer from a spiritual disease called sin - our refusal to live God's way. We try to change but find that we cannot - sin has power to enslave us and we cannot break free. But Jesus never sinned; he had power to remain sin-less the whole of his life.
Every human being is locked in a prison cell - there are two doors that keep us behind bars - Jesus lived his entire life outside of that prison. So he can save you from sin and from death - if you think that is not relevant then you have not been listening, or you have not been honest!
So how do we escape the prison?
Jail house religion
For a lot of people, religion is the way out - and the law of Moses was an attempt to change people through giving them a system of rules to follow such as the Ten Commandments.
We may think of the Law of Moses as representing any of the world's religious systems: from Christian Science to Melanesian Frog Worship[1]. Yet these codes are deceptively simple... it is impossible to legislate for all the variations of human behaviour.
This struck me a few years ago when, on a trip to the USA I went to the local store to buy a bottle of wine. As I left the house our host called after me, "Make sure you put the wine in the trunk, it is illegal to carry alcohol in the car with you". I was grateful for the advice, but it struck me as curious so I asked him "If I had a loaded Magnum handgun with the safety off on my passenger seat, what would happen then?"
"Oh, that's OK", he said cheerfully, "Wanna borrow mine?" Man-made laws can lead to strange contradictions!
But the Law of Moses is not just one religious system; it was the best that religion had to offer. Moses did not make the law, God did. Paul tells us here (and this is an astonishing thing for him to say) that even God-made laws are no more effective than man-made ones. However perfect the law may be, it is weakened by our human nature; we just cannot perform to the standard that God's law requires (3)[2].
Imagine that you go through life with an angel on each shoulder - you cannot see them but they are there. Both angels have a scroll, the one on your right writes down your good deeds and the one on the left your bad deeds. At the end of you life, which of those scrolls will be the longest?
If you thought, "The one on the left" you have got the hang of this: if you favour the other side then you are fooling yourself!
The law is weak because we are weak (3b)
The power of the cross
The law is weak but the cross is powerful (3b)[3]. This is worth a moment of reflection:
The law cannot bust us out of this double-doored prison; our sinfulness makes that option impossible. What we cannot do, God did for us by three dramatic actions:
First he sent his son into the human race (3b) - this is the Bible's way of saying that God himself became human and lived among us.
Second, his son became a sacrifice (or a sin offering): this takes us right back to the Law of Moses and invites us to see Jesus as a sacrificial animal killed to atone for the sins of human beings. These ancient sacrifices were a kind of gruesome reminder that our sin had fatal consequences - we deserve death. In the Old Testament the animal died in the place of the worshipper - in the New Testament Jesus died in our place.
This brings us to the third thing: Jesus' death fulfilled the requirements of the Law of Moses (4a). When you read this you suddenly realise that there are not two plans, but one. There is an idea around that God's law was 'plan A' and that it failed. Then God thought up 'plan B' and sent his Son to rescue us. But here it is clear that the whole story is 'plan A' - the law serves to demonstrate our fallen-ness and the Son died in fulfilment of that law.
The law is weak because we are weak, but the cross is powerful because the Son of God was a perfect sacrifice for our sins. So now the two doors are busted off their hinges and lie open: sin is paid for and death is overcome because the cross is powerful.
You receive this for yourself by accepting it as a gift - then you are free!
Anyone who plays monopoly knows how frustrating it is to wind up on the square that lands you in Jail, "Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass GO! Do not collect £200". Everyone else carries on as normal except you - you have to sit I jail for several goes. Life can deposit us in jail, we are defeated, we give in to temptation, and we hurt others or wind up being hurt. We are in jail and there is no way of getting out.
But in Monopoly there is a "Get out of Jail Free" card, and if you happen to have one it gives you the power to spring out of jail immediately and get on with the game. Every Christian carries 'round with them a "Get out of Jail free'" card. This is what it says: "What the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son".
One last thing
Accepting God's gift of the "Get out of Jail Free" card is just the beginning, not the end (4b) - becoming a Christian, someone who follows Jesus, is the beginning of a whole new lifestyle. We used to be governed by our own whims and instincts, but now we live by the Spirit.
This life in the Spirit is what this whole chapter is about and we will be working on this throughout the autumn:
- I don't like the way I am, how can I change into the person I want to be?
- How can I learn to be 'led by the Holy Spirit'?
- How can I know peace, even in the most difficult circumstances?
- What can I do about a polluted world full of pain and suffering?
- How can I pray 'in the Spirit'?
We start on this next week!
[1] I know there is probably no such religion - it is a killer metaphor used by Schulz in a famous Charlie Brown cartoon
[2]This is much sharper in the NIV, "For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering"
[3]See the NIV translation of verse 3 again