Vicar’s sermon 12.7.26: Romans 8.1-11 12.7.26

Romans 8.1-11 12.7.26
One thing that has always struck me when Kim and I have been exploring bits of France is the way that regions, cities, towns and even the smallest of villages market themselves around one thing. Agen, in the south of France is (for our family at least) ‘prune town’. Noron le Poterie is, as its name suggests a centre for potters. This year we visited a little village where every other shop was selling metalwork, but we have also visited places where the thing was lavender…or brassware – Villedieu les Poeles (gorgeously expensive pots and pans, bells and decorations) or some particular delicacy. Montelimar? …nougat. Normandy: apples, cider, calvados. Butter from Isigny…let alone all the special regional cheeses. And when it comes to wine…well we know just how preciously our French neighbours guard their AOC (the Appellation d’origine Controllee): Champagne can only come from the Champagne region of France – you can make sparkling wine elsewhere, you can use the same recipe but you can’t use the name.
I quite like this intensity of focus. It sets one place apart from another in a good way, but I mention it because for the last few weeks we have been reading our way through the book of Romans and it may just be the case that we’re not sure where Paul is leading us in his argument. Chapter 8 is that place. Chapter 8 (only part of which we read) is where a number of the long strands of Paul’s complicated letter come into land: it is where we find the focus, the main thing that Paul wishes to get across. So what is this one thing we must hold on to as we hear today’s passage? It is this: that the church – you and I and all Christian believers – is the place where God’s new creation is coming into being and from which the renewal of the earth will flow.
Our own former Bishop Tom Wright has written at length about Paul and he helpfully gives us the context for understanding our passage. As we hear Paul each week it is hard to hold the thrust of what he is saying in our minds but +Tom gives us a simple outline to help.
Firstly, Paul believes that God has created and is creating the world and He wishes men and women to reflect His character and purposes into His creation. As a Jew Paul knows from the scriptures that the world is not as God would have wished it to be. Why? Because of the Fall that has infected Creation…because of Sin.
So (secondly) God must do something about Sin. By the 12th chapter of Genesis we learn what that something will be. God chose a man, a family, a tribe, a people to be His people and He entered into a covenant with this people. He hopes to work with and through this people to put the world to rights. But, we don’t get far into the Book of Exodus before Israel reveals that it is not up to the task. Even as the covenant is being agreed between Moses and God on Mount Sinai the people are worshipping the golden calf. They are faithless. God will prove faithful down many centuries and he will not abandon them, but the essential problem of the rupture between Creator and Creation has not been addressed.
So, thirdly, God creates a new covenant: through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, His Son, the anointed representative of the people (known as the Messiah or ‘Christ’) a new relationship with God becomes possible (I’ll say a bit more in a moment).
The result (our fourth step) is that a new community,(the church, that is made up of those who are ‘in Christ’ ) becomes the dwelling place for the Holy Spirit of God (if you glance down at verses 9,10 and 11 that’s what it says)…The church community becomes what Israel was meant to be and what the old Temple was – the place where the Spirit dwells and from which the renewal of the world can flow.
So we have (1) Creation (and fall); (2) the Covenant with Israel; (3) Jesus and new Covenant; and finally (4) the renewal of creation where the Spirit of God will fill all things.
It is into this overarching story that we read our passage this morning and it begins with a headline statement that Paul will then explain: ‘there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’.
The problem of Sin cannot be shaken off. The difficulty is that we cannot do what God desires of us. He can guide and instruct us – ‘don’t eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden’ (He says to Adam and Eve): ‘these are my commandments’ he says to Israel at Sinai – but the Law or the commandment provokes in us a response that leaves us forever falling short of God’s best. Paul is at pains in the previous chapters to say that God’s law (the commandment) is good. God doesn’t cause us to Sin. But the law, the guidance, the instruction God meant for our wellbeing simply highlights our inability to keep it. This thing called Sin (which I have been at pains over these last weeks to explain is not just stuff we do wrong but a condition, (a flaw within us) that we can’t shake off) plagues us…it seems to lie in wait for us to pull us down, so much so that Paul (in chapter 7) recognises that he can’t do what he wants to do. He wants to serve God…but at every turn he falls short.
Paul, and much of Israel in the first century, held to a belief that if all Israel could just keep God’s Law for just one day then Messiah would come and all would be well. But this is impossible. Why? Because whilst Israel had been chosen by God for His good purposes to be a light to the rest of the world, even Israel was infected by Sin, Israel is still ‘in Adam’ or ‘in the flesh’ – and there was no way of not being ‘in Adam’ or ‘in the flesh’.
Paul’s insight is that God’s plan, from the beginning (and that bears some thinking) , was to deal with Sin once and for all. Israel’s election was not to send the chosen people spinning off into an elite relationship with the Almighty and leave the rest of the world behind. No. The good and perfect Law of God, revealed to His chosen people, was given on order to highlight (to bring into focus in one place) Sin in all its destructiveness so that God can judge it, condemn it and deal with it.
Which brings us to the key verse in our passage which is verse 3. We are set free from the law of sin and death. How? ‘For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh (because we can’t respond to it properly) could not do.’
What has God done? He sent ‘His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, (and) he condemned sin in the flesh’. Notice that God does not condemn Jesus – God condemns Sin. Notice that God’s action is to deal with the curse that is sin that we haven’t been able to escape. Notice too that God initiates this action: Salvation comes from God , only He saves– something we heard again when we studied the creed last year. And then notice in this really concisely packed sentence, the purpose of what God has done which is ‘that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.’
The events of Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost bring us, at last, to the possibility of a new start, the new (or renewed) creation. Resurrection life is not something we are to wait for when we die but is a possibility for us now. More than this: it is our calling now – to live according to the Spirit. Of course we will struggle. Like the Israelites escaping across the Red Sea we are now in the desert, free but up against it! Free but learning to be dependent upon God. But ahead of us is the Promised Land and our task now is to learn to inhabit God’s Kingdom now so that we can better inhabit it when it comes in its fulness – which is next week’s sermon.
There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus: we are free people.
God has done what we could not do ourselves: God has saved us through Jesus’ death on the cross, His resurrection and the gift of His spirit. Why?
So that we can fulfil the just requirement of the law- we are free to live as God would want us to live. All our lives have a divinely inspired purpose because the Spirit of God Himself dwells in us. We are called to live according to the Spirit. So that the original purpose of God in Creation – that we reflect His image into the world as we steward it on His behalf- might finally become possible.
Just wait till you hear what that might look like next week….or perhaps you’ll take a sneaky peak by reading Romans 8 for yourself when you are back home?