The Roommate From Heaven: The Sequel

Today’s sermon is part two of a two-part sermon series.  Last Sunday’s passage from Romans 7 explored the depth of the problem of our inability to avoid sin.  Today’s passage from Romans 8 explores the height of the solution.  The title of last Sunday’s sermon is “The Roommate From Hell” Part 1.  The title of today’s sermon is “The Roommate from Heaven: The Sequel”.  For the full sermon from last week, you can go to our parish website to watch the sermon in the video or read the written version.  We’ll have a quick recap of it now in case you missed it or to refresh your memory.  

We talked about a thought exercise in which you look back on something you regretted as soon as you had done it.  And when you look back at what you were thinking and believing in the instant before you did it, in that moment, did you have a choice?  When I look back at that moment when I was so full of anger, I realize that in that moment I did not have a choice.  When I look back at that moment when I was paralyzed with fear, I realize that in that moment I did not have a choice.  The point of this is not for us to refuse to take responsibility for our actions.  Instead, it is to give us an entry into our scripture from Romans 7, in which the Apostle Paul exclaims, “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate!”  He can agree wholeheartedly that the law is good.  He even says, “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.”  In other words, in that moment, I had no choice.  Paul is someone with an enormous amount of willpower, zeal, courage, endurance of suffering, a dramatic conversion, knowledge of the scriptures, fervent prayer.  He has wanted so much to always live a righteous life and has tried so hard, only to find that he ends up doing the opposite.  

He says, “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.”  Sin is dwelling within him like a nightmare roommate in the house he lives in, the house of his mortal body, the house of flesh where he dwells during his life on earth.  This nightmare roommate often trashes the place, undermining him and betraying him and his best intentions.  Sin is the roommate from Hell.  In frustration, Paul calls out, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from this body of death?”  

And the answer arrives.   Paul exclaims, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  None of us, even the best of us, have enough righteousness to overcome sin.  If we rely only on our own righteousness, we inevitably fail.  The solution to this problem has to come from somewhere other than us.  And here at this turning point in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Paul shifts from frustration with the inadequacy of his own righteousness to gratitude for the righteousness of God.  

So now we move into today’s sermon on Romans 8, where Paul explores what this solution means.  First, a bit about the structure of this passage.  Today’s passage alternates between talking about the Spirit and talking about the flesh.  To prepare for sermons, I like to take a big sheet of paper and some coloured markers and map out the scripture passages I’m preaching on (an idea I got from Anna Carter Florence at a continuing education event).  For this passage, I wrote the sections that talk about the Spirit in purple, and the ones that talk about the flesh in orange, and you can see how often they alternate here.  Paul is clearly contrasting them.  But what Paul means by the flesh is broader than what we might assume.  It’s not all about sex.  And even when it seems to be about sex, it’s about more than that.  We might think that ancient societies prohibited fornication from prudishness.  I want to remind us of two facts: for all of history until very recently, reliable birth control didn’t exist, and economies in which an ordinary woman could earn enough to support herself and her child all by herself didn’t really exist until recently either.  As a result, fornication meant that a man was choosing to cause the birth of a child and then abandon the girl he’d impregnated, and abandon his child, with no way for them to survive economically.  It meant that for a fleeting pleasure he was choosing to ruin the girl’s life and ruin his child’s life.  Is ruining people’s lives that way a sin?

And as we mentioned last week, sex isn’t really Paul’s focus when he’s talking about the flesh.  Paul describes what he means by the flesh in Galatians 5 where he says, “the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.  

Also in Galatians 5 he says, “by contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”  So we get a feel for the difference in Paul’s mind between the works of the flesh and the gifts of the Spirit.

In today’s passage in Romans 8 talks about us in three ways:

1. we walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (verse 4)
2. we live not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (verse 5)
3. we set our minds not on the flesh but on the things of the Spirit (verse 5)

Paul concludes, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” (verse 6).  Still, all this is in the context of what God does for us, because what makes all this possible is not our own righteousness, what makes all this possible is the gift God has given us.

Today’s passage begins with the exclamation “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  All of us have done things which deserve condemnation because they are wrong, and the law has told us they are wrong.  Still, the law is not enough to prevent us from doing what is wrong, because we are too weak to do that.  So God sends his own Son and sends him in the same flesh that we have.  The difference is that Jesus does not sin.  Jesus condemns sin in the flesh and fulfils the just requirement of the law for us and in us.  

There are two striking things in this passage.  First, I want to point out that Paul’s theology here in this passage is deeply Trinitarian.  In this passage he talks repeatedly about all three persons of the Trinity--God, Christ, and the Spirit—and in the way he talks about them they are inseparable.  

The second thing I want to point out is that Paul looks at our relationship with Christ from two directions in this passage.  At the beginning of this passage, in verse one, he says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  He expresses it as us being in Christ Jesus, giving us the sense that Christ Jesus is much bigger than we are, and we belong in him.  Also, verse 9 begins, “But you are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit” so we get the Trinitarian inseparability of Christ and the Spirit here.  Paul is also by saying we are “in the Spirit”, giving us the sense that the Spirit is much bigger than we are, and we belong in it.  Then, right in the middle of verse 9, Paul also looks at our relationship with Christ from the opposite direction.  He says, “you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.”  So looking at it from that direction, he tells us also that the Spirit of God is not just around us, it is within us.  It has moved into us and is dwelling in us.  We have this paradox of opposites that are both true: We are in the Spirit, since the Spirit dwells in us.  So we do have sin, the roommate from hell dwelling in us.  The good news of the gospel is that by the grace of God we also have the roommate from heaven in us: the Spirit of God dwells in you.  Three times in three verses, Paul expresses the sense that these inseparable persons of the Trinity are dwelling in us.

verse 9 the Spirit of God dwells in you

verse 10 if Christ is in you

verse 11 if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you 

In fact, you can see that one phrase in verse 11 includes all three persons of the Trinity: if the Spirit (the 3rd person of the Trinity) of him who raised from the dead (that is, God, the 1st person of the Trinity) Jesus (the 2nd person of the Trinity) dwells in you.  So you’ve got three-in-one roommates from heaven here!

And the good news of the gospel is that God has already conquered death by raising Jesus from the dead.  That is good news in general, and it is also good news for each of us, because it means that God has already conquered the death and sin in each of us, because Christ is in you.  As Paul puts it, “But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”  And Paul says even our mortal bodies are not rejected or left out by God.  “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

The more we look at this passage the more we see the layers of God’s gifts: God gives life to us, even to our mortal bodies.  We dwell in God, we dwell in Christ, we dwell in the Spirit, God dwells in us, Christ dwells in us, the Spirit dwells in us.  Even with all our sins, by the gift of God there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  By God’s grace, we are given life and freedom and all three persons of the Trinity.  Thanks be to God.