Curate’s sermon. 19.7.26: Romans 8.12-25

As we continue our journey through the letter to the Romans, we have a fairly tough one before us today. In today’s passage, Paul speaks of things in pairs: flesh and spirit, slavery and sonship, suffering and glory. I will try to explore each of these pairs, gradually walking through the whole passage, and then see how they may make sense together.
We will begin with the flesh and the spirit – the theme Paul already introduced in our last week’s reading. When he speaks of the two, it is tempting to read them as a dichotomy: everything bodily vs everything spiritual. Paul indeed can often be understood to speak of the evil, sinful, nature of our bodily desires and passions, which exist in opposition to our souls that gravitate towards that which is spiritual. But this is not the case. When Paul says ‘flesh’ he does not mean ‘body’ and when he says ‘spirit’ he does not mean ‘soul’. Instead, he uses the word ‘body’ in one of the most profound passages ever written, which we heard recently: that all of us who are in Christ are parts of one body. The body is not opposed to the spirit and has a sense of wholeness to it. The juxtaposition of ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’, I think, should rather be read as a battle of impulses in us – the proverbial angel and demon whispering in our ears. ‘Flesh’ and ‘spirit’ are not about a division within our nature but a conflict of motivations which we face every day, which inform our choices.
A choice made ‘in the flesh’ is sinful. Alec spoke to us about this last week. By the virtue of being Adam’s descendants we are forever tempted to choose ‘the flesh’, the sinful impulse. However, despite this impulse, we do have the ability to choose the opposite, and a choice ‘in the spirit’ is a choice of following Christ. It is a more difficult one, but this is why in today’s passage Paul turns our attention towards the encouraging consequences of this choice. He speaks of inheritance, of sonship, which is achieved by our turning to God.
In verses 15-17 Paul says that through receiving the Spirit, we are no longer slaves living in fear but instead are adopted to sonship and thus become heirs of God. This whole business of slavery and adoption in the ancient Roman world was quite different from how we might imagine it. Anyone could easily become a slave, and anyone born of a slave would automatically be a slave. Slaves had no rights and no possessions and were essentially property; however, the status of a slave depended on the status of a master, so many slaves were in fact treated well and enjoyed some respect in the society. Despite this, they could never inherit anything unless manumitted – made free. Adoption of slaves was rare, other than mostly in cases when the former, now freed, slaves were adopting their own children who had been born slaves before their manumission. Otherwise, adoption was more frequently practiced among family members, to secure a male heir to inherit the name, property and religious rights, rather than to offer a lovely home to an orphan. In short, it was about legal rights and inheritance rather than any personal bonds. In offering his readers the image of adoption, Paul uses something familiar, that would be easily understood to mean that if we are adopted by God we also inherit all he has, including His Kingdom. However, he also challenges the familiar image of adoption by suggesting a different, not just legal, bond between God and his children – the inheritance comes with a challenge: it is both in glory and in suffering.
Paul then goes on to speak of ‘present sufferings’. He develops the theme of creation that has been groaning in its fallenness, and all those who are part of this creation are groaning too. There is of course a broad definition of suffering which has accompanied human history from the beginning – illness, natural disasters and wars are all part of that groaning. In addition, in Paul’s time, there is a sense of groaning under the political burden of Rome and persecution of the followers of Christ. And here I would like to return to the dialogue between ‘flesh’ and ‘spirit’ we started with, because I think it speaks profoundly into the suffering and then the hope Paul is talking about.
I think there is a sense in which we make things real, depending on whether we perceive them through the lens of the ‘flesh’ or the ‘spirit’. I have a collection of greeting cards I randomly buy because I like them. I just accumulate them and never give to anyone. One of them has two pictures on the front. At the top is a grumpy-looking man sitting on a dirty bed in a dark prison cell. Below is the same man, with the same facial expression, except he is wearing a tie and is sitting at a dinner table with shouting children throwing food at each other and a wife who tries to calm them down. The caption below says, ‘Prison is a state of mind’. The card is meant to be silly but I think it is a good message. The reality is what we choose to make it, and the states of freedom and imprisonment are also subjective.
Paul approached his own imprisonment with an understanding that focussing on the suffering of the flesh and letting it rule his being means certain death – spiritually, mentally and physically. But the spirit that was in him gave him strength and life. His encouragement to his listeners is to bear hardships with the same awareness of the spirit, which will give life even when the flesh is weak and dying. The flesh cannot save itself, but the spirit can save the whole person. The spirit renders physical barriers irrelevant; it gives life and freedom amidst slavery and captivity. So, in other words, one can choose to focus on the flesh – the sinful, the worldly, the material – and be its slave even as a free Roman citizen, or one can choose the spirit – looking to Christ – and remain a free man in the depths of the darkest dungeon. Exercising precisely this power of the spirit, people like Bonhoeffer and Navalny had greater freedom when they died than those who had the keys to their cells.
However, as Paul says, the spirit not only gives us freedom but also, through adoption, makes us God’s heirs, alongside his children. The children in this context are Israel. In Jeremiah 31, God says that only if the movement of the sun and the moon ever stops, then will Isarel cease to be His nation. This, in essence, means that Israel will be His chosen children forever. In Romans chapter 11, there is a beautiful image of a wild olive shoot being grafted into an olive tree and feeding of the sap from the olive root. The tree is Israel and the branches are the Gentiles who have found faith, those who have chosen to live by the spirit. Branches can be broken off – both Jews and Gentiles who turn away from God – but the tree remains.
So, overall, this means that all of us can be adopted, can become the branches, which will be sustained from the common root – God Himself. Without adoption, we are always in the flesh, in sin. With adoption, we become the heirs of God but we also have to face suffering. You may avoid the suffering if you never choose the spirit and never choose to be adopted but then if you don’t you’ll never see any hope either. So it’s either life ‘in the flesh’ as a slave which is probably quite secure (as lives of many slaves in fact were in the Roman era) or a life ‘in the spirit’, which gives freedom and hope, but also comes with suffering. It is a tough choice!
I think what Paul is saying is that faith is a risk, but it is a risk worth taking. It is a risk which is crowned by the most glorious hope that exists, that otherwise would remain unseen and unknown. There may be suffering now, but the glory will certainly come too. Amen.