WE GET GRACE INSTEAD OF CONDEMNATION
Karma is an ancient belief that’s prominent in Hinduism. The belief is that your intentions and actions influence your future and your reincarnation, your situation in your next life. So, you think and do good things, then good things will happen to you and, in addition, your next life will be a favorable upgrade. Bad motivations and behavior result in bad things happening to you and then a downgrade for your next life.
I don’t have to say any more to convince you that Christians have no business even using the word karma, do I? It’s from another religion, your position after death is dependent on your works, and heaven isn’t a thing, you’re simply born into the world again as another creature or a human in better or worse circumstances. So, if that’s a word you have used even casually or a philosophy you have believed in…trash that. Today is the last day for that. As a Christian, you wouldn’t want people to think that you believe that or that it is even a real thing!
The reality is that with God, things are entirely different! God does not operate on a merit-based system. He operates from a heart of grace. That’s what we’re thinking about in worship today and what we find in what Paul wrote to Christians living in Rome. His words are for us too because we have the same natural spiritual condition they did, and God’s approach toward sinful people hasn’t changed in the least since then. If you want to simply summarize these truths: we’re a mess, and God’s love is amazing.
1. We Deserve Condemnation (v. 5-8)
The Apostle Paul was a brilliant man—gifted and called by God and author of 13 books of the Bible. If you’ve looked for a favorite Bible passage to call your own, you might very well have chosen something the Holy Spirit had him write. I know that some of you find your favorite verse in chapter 8 of Romans and Romans 8 is even the favorite chapter of the Bible for some people. You can tell by the way Paul wrote that he “got it” he understood the love of God, the grace of God, the gift of Christ, the treasure of the Spirit.
But Paul also understood well the struggle he had with his sinful nature. Maybe you remember him saying this, which comes right before our reading. He said, For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not keep doing what I want. Instead, I do what I hate (7:15). I fail to do the good I want to do. Instead, the evil I do not want to do, that is what I keep doing (7:19) What a miserable wretch I am (7:24)! We can relate, right?
Imagine this: your life is literally on the line it’s your heart and a surgeon saves you from dying. You would come out of that experience a different person, wouldn’t you? You would appreciate the knowledge and skill and commitment of a doctor in ways that you never had before. You might also see, in a new way, the blessing that each day is
Or imagine being stuck in the bottom of a desert canyon, desperately dehydrated and exhausted because of the heat and unable to even get up and rescuers came to your aid. You would be so grateful for their response to your emergency—literally saving your life.
Your awareness of the danger posed by a malfunctioning heart or the desert heat is heightened by being smacked in the face with the reality of those things. Then you can appreciate how dire the situation was and how great the rescue from those deadly things.
In a similar way, how can you know and appreciate the love of God through Jesus if you don’t know the deadly disaster he rescued you from? You can’t. You have to be smacked in the face with the reality of your situation before a holy God. Paul does that here. He tells you how bad you are—how bad everyone is—and how eternally devastating and deadly your situation is.
You have a spiritually diseased heart. You’re spiritually stranded. You will die without God coming to the rescue. There’s no way for you to fix your own heart or crawl and claw your way out of that chasm that exists between you and the righteous God. When Paul talks about the law of sin and death—he means the control that sin has over us. He says that the law—and this is God’s law—was unable to make us righteous because we couldn’t keep it. That is a lost condition, isn’t it?!
The Apostle Paul knew all of this was true for himself and that he deserved to be condemned by God. Do you realize it too? We don’t even need to leave what Paul writes here to find some of our sins that prove that!
Maybe we have at least had a fleeting thought that we aren’t that bad, that we’re certainly better than others so we deserve God’s love and attention—at least a little bit.
We might be guilty of pointing at the terrible sins of others while underestimating the seriousness of our own.
We come to church, but maybe during the week we don’t think so much about what Jesus saved us from—or we’ve heard it so often that it’s lost its specialness. We kind of take it for granted.
Or and this is pretty awful we’re okay walking according to the sinful flesh doing godless things instead of living according to the spirit. Thinking according to the sinful nature will cause that.
Can we admit, like Paul, that our lives often look like what he speaks about here? He says: To be sure, those who are in harmony with the sinful flesh think about things the way the sinful flesh does…the way the sinful flesh thinks results in death…the mind-set of the sinful flesh is hostile to God, since it does not submit to God’s law, and in fact, it cannot. Those who are in the sinful flesh cannot please God.
The truth is that this describes us by nature; this is the way we are born into this world. Because of it, WE DESERVE CONDEMNATION every one of us. We should be declared guilty by God and punished by him
Just like when a police officer tells a driver they were wrong to run through a red light and then issues a ticket just like when a parent tells a child they were wrong and puts them in timeout or grounds them…God should tell us we are wrong and then punish us. Obviously, when we’re talking about sin and our souls, it is a much bigger deal than a ticket or a timeout! God should send us to hell when we die because we are sinful and we do things that go against God time and time again. The amazing thing that we hear today is that even though WE DESERVE CONDEMNATION, CHRIST BRINGS US GRACE instead!
2. But Christ Brings Us Grace (v. 1-4, 9-11)
Let me read again what Paul wrote just after telling about his struggle with sin: So then, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. Indeed, what the law was unable to do, because it was weakened by the flesh, God did, when he sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to deal with sin. God condemned sin in his flesh, so that the righteous decree of the law would be fully satisfied in us who are not walking according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
Have you ever heard sweeter words than these? There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! You trust in Christ, God will not condemn you! And he explains why because Jesus took our place. The holy law of God could not save us; it only condemned us because our sinful natures could not meet its demands. So, God stepped in. God the Father stepped in and sent his one and only Son to live as a human being in the likeness of sinful flesh.
After a life of perfectly pleasing God, Jesus became a sin offering for all people when he died on the cross. Just like one sin in the Garden of Eden caused sin to trickle down to every person, Jesus’ one action giving up his perfect life on the cross also affects every person. The payment for sin was made, and through it, full and free forgiveness was earned for every person. Christ brought grace for us all.
The grace of God is that sin was condemned in Jesus so that all who trust in Christ will not be condemned. Instead of seeing the perfection of his Son on the cross, he saw our sin piled onto him. Instead of seeing us as people who continually break his law, he sees that, because of his Son, the righteous decree of the law has been fully satisfied in us. God’s grace in Jesus causes him to see us as righteous! It’s as if we’ve kept every one of his laws! It’s not because we have, but because Jesus did it for us and then traded his perfection for our sin. That is precisely why there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus!
The good news continues when Paul writes this: But you are not in the sinful flesh but in the spirit, if indeed God’s Spirit lives in you… If Christ is in you…your spirit is alive because of righteousness.
What good news this is! We do not have to be bullied around by our sinful nature anymore because we belong to Christ… and the Holy Spirit lives us… and our spirit is alive and we can live freely in love and thanks to God! This is what his grace has done for us!
A surgeon’s quick and skilled work on your heart or a rescuer’s dropping into a canyon to pull you out could be very dramatic and life-saving, but those things are nothing compared to the dramatic action of God sending his only Son to live and die and rise again in order to heal our hearts and rescue us from certain death because of our sins… and rip away control from our sinful nature… and empower us with the Spirit… and promise us eternal life with him when we die!
We DESERVE CONDEMNATION, BUT WE GET GRACE instead! Walk out of here today knowing this sweet truth: there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! Amen.
Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.