Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
This morning’s epistle reading, as you now know, was Romans chapter 8, the first 11 verses. It begins with perhaps one of the most direct and blunt proclamations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as you’ll find anywhere in the Old or New Testament. It should be for every Christian one of those comforting texts, one of the more comforting in all of Scripture. Yet many Christians fail to even pay attention to it, let alone appreciate it in its fullness and its boldness. But to gain a deeper appreciation of what Paul wrote in chapter 8, we need to spend a few minutes on its predecessor, chapter 7. Because chapter 7 and chapter 8 are all about one fundamental thing: justification, connected to the struggle of what it means to be a Christian in this sinful world. It’s all about the civil war between the old and the new natures. No one can earn eternal life. Paul has made that case in the opening chapters of the book of Romans, that salvation — eternal life, forgiveness of sins — is not something merited. It’s a gift of God. He wrote that in chapter 3, verse 10: “None is righteous, no, not one.” And the wages of sin is death, but the gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s a gift. In chapters seven and eight, though, Paul is addressing strictly the Christians — people who have been baptized into Christ, and who by virtue of the Word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit not only have within them the old sinful nature, the old sinful way of thinking and desiring and doing, but now by virtue of Baptism and the Holy Spirit have a new nature, one created in the very image of God. And the old nature hates with a passion the new nature. The old nature is sinful, born in original sin. And the new nature is something utterly and completely different, born of the water and of the Word.
The best way to illustrate the conflict between the two natures that live within you is to read Paul’s own self-assessment in chapter 7: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Lutherans have a Latin phrase we love to use. It’s in the confessions. It’s often shown up in sermons and Bible classes: lex semper accusat — the law always accuses. It’s inevitable. Even if we’re talking to Christians, even the seemingly most pious Christians, when we speak of the law, it accuses us. So when we hear the command “thou shall not covet,” the command is not only teaching us that we aren’t to covet the things that don’t belong to us, the things that we have envied and that God hasn’t given to us. We’re also hearing an indictment that in fact we do covet, despite our best efforts. We often are jealous of what other people have. So the Law always accuses. You can’t simply use one form or part or use of the law and expect the other two to be suspended — although we have a society now that thinks that’s the case.
Romans 7 teaches that every Christian is faced with a brutal reality each and every day of their life in this world. And while the Christian life is a life of rejoicing over the free gift of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation, the Christian life is also one of struggle between a part of us that wants to do what’s wrong and the other part of us that wants to be and do what’s good. Thus we are always, at all times and in all places, guilty of violating the law — the whole law, the Torah of our God. We cannot escape who we are or what we do. We are trapped by sin and God’s Law. Thus Paul’s cry: “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And then the answer comes. And I want you to know the answer is past tense, meaning it’s already been done: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” The rescue has already come. Which is, by the way, why the fight is now joined. The Christian doesn’t have to fight for something that he already has. He has to fight for something that he desires, that he wants. The fact that God has already rescued us in Christ Jesus serves also as the introduction into what chapter 8 talks about, and specifically chapter 8, verse 1. We go from “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” — “Thanks be to God, he has done it in Jesus Christ” — to “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” The word “therefore” means “as a result of” — in this case, as a result of being rescued by Jesus our Lord from the internal conflict that every Christian must contend with. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” And what is the law of sin and death? Well, it’s the wages of sin, which is death. There is no condemnation at all. You have been set free from the law of sin and death. “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
In chapter 7, Paul made it clear Christians are in a constant state of conflict between the old and new natures. The old nature is about the old nature. It’s about its old sinful self. The new nature is about pleasing God and serving him in all righteousness, innocence, and blessedness. That’s what the new nature desires and does. That’s what the old nature prevents from doing, from time to time. The new nature loves the law of God, for it is righteous. The old nature doesn’t love the law, doesn’t love God. It loves evil. That’s the truth of us: one big giant contradiction, one war and battle after another, as we struggle with the depths and frequency of our sin. God’s Word declares — an irrational declaration — that despite the fact you struggle with sin and fail time and time again, you are not guilty. We’ve been taken off, effectively, death row. “There is therefore now” — listen to that, the word “now” — “no condemnation.” In other words, at all, for those who are in Christ. First notice the Bible says that there is now no condemnation. Right now. There’s none. In this moment, you are not condemned before Christ. The statement, though, implies that there was a time when condemnation was in fact in effect, but it is no longer. Condemnation no longer exists for a particular group of people: namely, people who are “in Christ.” The text says we’re taking it on. Christ took the verdict that belonged to us into himself. He became our sin, took our guilt, our punishment, and our death upon himself, and became our substitute under the law. Remember that criminal Barabbas? He was a criminal set free in exchange for Jesus’s condemnation on the cross. The Bible says he was a notorious prisoner. To be specific, he was a robber and a murderer. And on Good Friday, Barabbas the sinner — through and through, unrepentant though he was — and Jesus stood before both Pilate and the people. And Pilate asked, “What do you want me to do with them?” “Barabbas,” they said, “let him go.” And of Jesus they said, “Let him be crucified.” So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. Jesus took Barabbas’s place on the cross. He took the sinner’s place on the cross — the robber and the murderer. He also took your place and mine on that cross. When Paul says there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, he is referring to Christ in the fullest sense of the title: both as our ransom on the cross for our sin, and as the one who brings about a union in the waters of Holy Baptism. That’s what he says, by the way, in chapter 6, the predecessor of course to chapter 7. He’s given a theological dissertation about what it means to be a Christian and how one got to be one in the first place.
Jesus was the payment offered to God for our sin. Peter says it this way: “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” Day after day, week after week, year after year, century after century, the priests of the Old Testament kept offering animal sacrifices before the Lord God. For as Hebrews 9:22 says, “Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” When people saw those sacrifices being offered to the Lord God in the Old Testament, they knew that they were supposed to trust in the Word of God, and that all of those sacrifices were being offered to earn for them in their stead the forgiveness of their sins. And the greatest of the Old Testament sacrifices was the Passover lamb. From the exodus on, the lamb was the fundamental sacrifice. It was the substitutionary sacrifice, and it foreshadowed the sacrifice to come in the person and work of the Lamb of God named Jesus Christ. As John said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” In verses 8:1–3, Paul gives us the good news that for all of those who have been born of the water and the Word, all of those who trust in Jesus Christ, there is no longer condemnation at all. For the sins of the Christians, they’ve been condemned in the cross of Jesus Christ. It’s already taken place. The victor, the one who stands in your place, named Jesus Christ. Then Paul teaches us that we’ve been given what the Christian needs to live in true Christian faith, and to champion the cause of the new nature’s struggle and fight against sin, death, and the power of the devil. “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.” Remember last week’s sermon: Christians are supposed to be people who are about the good, the right, and the truth. Paul simply compacts it here and talks about setting your minds on the things above, setting your minds on the Spirit. You should not be thinking like the rest of the world. “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
One of the first things that has gone wrong in the 20th and 21st century in churches is we stopped rightly teaching. We stopped forming, shaping, influencing the minds of the members of the congregation and of their children. We let the world teach them morality, ethics, philosophy, religion, and the like, instead of having them trained in the ways of thinking in righteousness and truth and the good. The essence of the carnal mind is rebellion and hatred of God and against his ways. And this disposition is shown in deliberate expressions of thoughts, words, and deeds that are displeasing to God. But the Christian mind is different. It does not exhibit such hostility toward God. Rather, it seeks the Word. It loves the Law. It loves the Gospel of Jesus Christ even more. However, he writes, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you.” You have been born of the water and the Spirit. Jesus’s substitutionary life and death on your behalf leads to all the gifts that he’s given you in the waters of Holy Baptism and in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In Romans 6:3–5, Paul ties all of it together in the sacrament of Baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” We were supposed to be walking in the good and the right and the truth. All of that equals walking in the Spirit and in life. But for you, there’s no condemnation at all, because you have a union with Christ. You’ve been taken into Christ as our substitute through Baptism. Jesus clothed himself with you, and he clothed you with himself, and with the indwelling of the Spirit. When God the Father looks at you, he sees the new nature, the one he created to be in the image of his holy and righteous and good Son, Jesus Christ. He remade us in his image in the new nature, and joined us to himself in the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ. Or to quote Jesus: he is the vine, you are the branches. When we live by the Spirit of the Word, we live with confidence in both our forgiveness and the resurrection. We live in confidence that the Word of God is true. We live in confidence that we can boldly confess and speak Christ and his Word anytime, in any place the occasion is provided. You are not judged according to your natural thoughts and your natural works and your natural deeds. When the Father sees you, he sees a union between the Son and you, the Spirit in you, and even between the Father and the Son himself.
When Paul said there is now no condemnation at all, he meant it. And he meant much more than that. When your conscience troubles you, when family and friends, others, and even the devil himself tries to set your sins before your face — sins of which you have already repented — remember the words of Romans. Speak it back to your friends. Speak it back to your family. Speak it back to even the devil himself: “There is therefore now no condemnation for me, for I have been baptized into Christ, and I have confessed my sins, and he is faithful and just to forgive my sins and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness.” Rejoice in what the hymn writer just wrote, and what you just sang in hymn 163: “The death of Jesus Christ, our Lord, we celebrate with one accord; it is our comfort in distress, our heart’s sweet joy and happiness.” Your sins are forgiven. There’s no condemnation at all here. Amen.
In the peace which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.